Dragonfly by Jax Hill 

Phyllis, Pete’s wife, had changed a lot since she met Torstein. For one thing, Pete said, she started actually taking the drugs her doctor had prescribed for the manic-depressive symptoms, and that helped a lot. For another thing, she seemed to genuinely like helping people. It gave her the same kind of lift it gave Torstein — and the rest of us I guess. She’d been a mom for many years, but the kids preferred each other to her, and now even they were gone. She’d been shopping and travelling, and somehow as fun as it was, it hadn’t made her happy. Actually doing something for someone who needed something done, that seemed to make her happy.

But she was still Phyllis. She had the maids in to go over her house top to bottom, even after she and Pete had cleaned it all up. She had made up each of the twins’ rooms into guest rooms, plus her sewing room and the regular guest room. She wanted to make sure each bedroom and bathroom had clean matching linens and little hotel bars of soap and bottles of shampoo. She made it like a spa for us! It was an awesome gift for everyone, like going to a nice — but homey — hotel.

Maggie and Sully got one of the twins’ old rooms to share, with a cot for Sully, but Phyllis made it up with bolsters and cushions so he looked like a little rajah propped on it. Tawny and Marigold got the other twin’s bedroom — it had a double bed in it they were happy to share. Bruiser and Franz got the sewing room with futons to sleep on, but they said they’d be perfectly comfortable there. Torstein got the guestroom to himself! I told Pete and Phyllis I would stay at my place. It was only a 20-minute drive away, and their house was packed now. But Torstein wanted me and Ferdy to stay, too, and Jack and Jazz. So Pete made places for us to sleep in the basement — his billiards room! The four of us were set up down there.

So on Christmas Eve we all moved in. Phyllis was planning a terrific banquet for us that night, and the smells coming out of the kitchen were insane. Pete had gotten a big live Christmas tree, and he’d somehow persuaded Phyllis not to decorate it with all her matching designer ornaments, but to set out boxes of decorations from when the twins were small, so Sully could decorate it. Actually, everyone fell in to decorate it, because it was so tall. Bruiser got assigned the top level, and then he lifted Sully up to put the star on top ...Tawny and Marigold were as delighted as Sully to be decorating the tree. Christmas carols were playing, and Torstein was just sitting in a big easy chair, with Maggie sitting on the floor beside him. She was holding his hand.

Torstein, he looked ... relaxed, I suppose, but tired. And ... subdued? Frightened? I wasn’t sure.

It was getting dark out by the time we finished with the tree, and then Tawny and Marigold went to help Phyllis. Pete and Phyllis had a big dining room table, and the girls were laying out plates and glasses while Phyllis had her blender and food processor whirring and her timers dinging and the stove-top hissing with sausages in a pan ... but she was also still trying to be the hostess, and she would bound through the family room every few minutes to see if anyone needed a drink or a snack. Once as she glanced in, Torstein looked up and said, “Phyllis, why don’t you sit down here with me for a minute?”

She smiled at him, but she said, “I’ve got stuff on the stove top — I just wanted to see if anyone needed anything —”

“I do,” he said. “I need you to sit down here a minute.” He motioned to the arm of the overstuffed easy chair where he was sitting. “I don’t have a wife or a sister. I spend my time with a bunch of rough guys like your husband ... Can you just stay a few minutes?”

She looked toward the kitchen where we could hear the sausages sizzling. “Maggie,” she said, “could you just —”

“No, no,” Torstein said, grasping Maggie’s hand harder. “I need you both.”

I was no cook, but I could stop a sausage from burning. I jumped up and said, “Don’t sweat it, Phyllis. I got the stove-top.”

As I was rushing into the kitchen, Phyllis blew me a kiss, something I could never remember her doing my whole life, and she and Pete had been married for almost as long as I’d been alive ... Then she sat down on the arm of the chair next to Torstein, and put her arm around his shoulder. I heard her talking to him as if she were speaking to her own son back in the day. “What’s wrong, honey? It’s Christmas. Are you sad?”

“No, well, maybe a little,” I heard Torstein saying. “I’m grateful for all you’ve done for me, Phyllis, and for having everyone over. But your sitting here with me, and Maggie sitting here with me ... that means more than anything. Thank you.”

Then I was turning sausages and juggling frying pans and asking Tawny and Mari if they knew what Phyllis had been planning to do with this sausage — they didn’t but they said they’d find out, and they went into the family room and didn’t come back! I figure they were sitting at Torstein’s feet, too, so I called Pete in. He said the sausage was for the stuffing, and he knew exactly what to do with it. He and I put the last touches on the dinner! And it turned out really good.