“We can stay at a hotel, if you want,” I offer, thinking this will be a great excuse to stay out of the house as much as possible, but Grandma holds up her bejeweled hand and snaps her fingers closed like a conductor quieting her orchestra.

“Where are your manners, child? Staying at a hotel is rude.”

Hall sneaks a glance at me, absolutely petrified. Clearly, he thought she’d be more like her spunky, pigtailed character from the olden-days sitcom Here Come the Warrens. Her role as Maggie Warren catapulted her to stardom, and her catchphrase was “You dare me to?” But if you say that to Grandma in real life, she locks you in the pantry and makes you listen through the door as she donates your inheritance to Scott Disick’s Patreon.

“Here you are,” Grandma barks, slamming a door wide open. The room is cramped, dim, with an odor of disuse. It comes with a single twin bed and one flat pillow. For comparison, Grandma has a temperature-controlled trophy room with four well-lit velvet stages that could each roomily support a hearse. Which one of them does. It’s filled with all the awards she got for her guest stint on CSI: Minneapolis.

“This is so small, though,” I hear myself whine, two seconds before I think better of it.

“Take it up with your older sister! If she and that man keep copulating, there’ll be kids coming out of the vents.” She brandishes her arms.

“I don’t have any kids,” I say haughtily, mentally stepping over Athena’s fallen body.

“That’s because you haven’t found a man who wants to have them with you,” Grandma replies, as if my devoted fiancé Hall isn’t right here. “Not much to brag about, mm?”

“Can I have my own room?” I beg right as she starts to leave. “We’ll put Hall on the couch.”

“No! The couch is too comfortable. Somebody’s bound to get pregnant on it—no guests are allowed to sleep on the couch. And don’t be a diva about sharing a bedroom, Bettie. It’s not like you’re saving yourselves for marriage.”

I begin to insist that we are, but it’s too late. She’s already gone, door slammed behind her, scolding Minnesota Moon for using too many consonants.

Hall and I carefully meet each other’s eyes.

“This is . . . cozy.”

“I can make it a bit more comfortable,” he assures me. The twin bed leaps up, a wooden ladder shooting out of it. Another bed pops into being right below, one outfitted in a red bedspread, the other in green. I watch the furniture connect, pillows fluffing themselves and sliding into silk covers with our names stitched onto them.

“Bunk beds?”

“Bunk beds make the most out of a small space.” He tucks-and-rolls onto the bottom bunk, a yellow legal pad appearing in his hands. All around us, the room begins to decorate itself. He’s definitely a man who needs a certain atmosphere in order to be at peace. “So here’s our itinerary of activities to complete in the days leading up to December twenty-fifth: Make ornaments out of Popsicle sticks. Make tissue paper wreaths. Play cold-weather sports. Go sledding. Build a snowman. Have a snowball fight. All indisputable classics.”