Holiday Home

HOLIDAY HOME BOOK ONE Jenna Albright HOLIDAY HOME: BOOK ONE Copyright © 2023 by Jenna Albright All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. First Printing Edition 2023 HOLIDAY HOME Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty AUTHOR’S NOTE ALSO BY JENNA ALBRIGHT Chapter One Next Door I n most cases, hearing that your next-door neighbors of ten years were getting divorced elicited either indifference—if you weren’t close to them—or sympathy—if you were. Most people, even if they knew the match had been strained for years, nodded somberly upon hearing the news, maybe muttering under their breath that they’d seen it coming. In rare circumstances, relief to see a toxic relationship finally end accompanied the news. Still, no matter which of these emotions the news sprouted within someone, they didn’t usually fist pump the air elatedly upon reading the ill-tidings through a text message. Liam Carr committed such an act—six raucous punches over his head—upon reading his mother’s message on December 4th. The divorce between Tess and Douglas Levine was finalized. And right before he headed home from his first semester of college. Christmas could come early. For any of his other neighbors, he would have commiserated for the end of a decade-long relationship. Really. But this one… this one he celebrated. Wholeheartedly and unabashedly, confusing his roommate as he went around grinning ear-to-ear during finals week, he celebrated. His Human Anatomy and Physiology I professor could have slammed his finals paper on homeostasis and the importance of organ systems as complete intellectual sewage, and Liam still would have spent the drive home singing boisterously alongside the radio blaring through his car. For a seventy-thirty split of selfless to selfish reasons, he figured he was still in the clear to face Tess once he made it back. On the selfless side, Douglas was an utter jackass. A man of dark glares and irate temperament, Liam had seen little of the man growing up, and what little he saw didn’t lead him to pity the sparseness of their interactions. He was an overworked actuary for a major accounting firm, or so Liam thought he remembered. For all the time he spent evaluating and assessing the risks and likelihoods of the future for his company’s business decisions, Liam wondered if he’d foreseen the end of his marriage coming. If he had, had he weighed his prospects for the future and decided that letting it end would be for the best? If he had, he was the biggest fool of all time. Liam couldn’t fathom how Tess, who was practically an angel, had ever let the unpleasant scowl of a man slip a ring onto her finger. As curious as he was, he didn’t imagine it was a question he should ask until a healthy burden of time separated her from the freshness of the divorce. Ten days probably wasn’t long enough. As he reached familiar neighborhood streets, his car hummed with the boisterous work of the hot air flooding its compartment. With it well past six o’clock at the end of his journey, darkness would have swathed the houses in its clutches if not for the Christmas lights stabbing colorful light into the night. Frost glistened on the grass, turning lawns pallid blue-white. Liam wondered if he’d see any snow over the break. So long as it didn’t bury him indoors like a nasty blizzard had two winters ago, he wouldn’t mind waking up to a winter wonderland. Taking the slope down into his neighborhood carefully, unsure if his car beams had seen ice on the asphalt, he turned off the road for his street after it flattened. Curving along the street he’d grown up on, he looked from side to side as he eked toward 4401 Cherry Lane. He saw Ernest’s lonely haunt, where the physicist cloistered within had left his home as one of the few untouched by holiday decorations. A few more down, he passed Clint’s family home, where memories of roasted chestnuts and toasty glazed hams filled his nostrils with their delectable scents. As an adolescent, he’d spent more Christmases there than in his own home just six houses down. His house appeared in view on his right. Unsurprisingly, though not due to any lack of holiday spirit, it was one of the few dark splotches on an otherwise colorful street. The houses to either side radiated bright and colorful, with Gary sticking enough lights and decorations on and around his large home to give Clark Griswald a run for his money. By comparison, Tess edged in the middle of blindingly overdone and completely devoid. I wonder if she put them all up herself, Liam thought as he turned into his driveway. His was the only car there, as it would likely be throughout the entirety of his winter vacation. His parents, dentists both, hadn’t meant to have a second son sixteen years after having their first—their last, according to their doctor, who’d told his mother she was lucky to have borne even one child. With the man retired years before his unexpected conception, Liam’s parents had sent him a droll family picture when his mom was in her third trimester. Throughout his childhood, he knew it’d pained them to put their