The Nesting Dolls by Gail Bowen

‘just Declan’ is coming for supper,” I said. “Is he into tree decorating?”
    The tension drained from Taylor’s face. “He’s really stoked about this whole evening,” she said.
    “You look pretty stoked yourself.”
    Her expression was impish. “You’re the one who said I have to feed my art.”
    I went to our room to clean up for dinner and found Zack struggling with the price tag on a turtleneck the shade of a eucalyptus leaf. I handed him my manicure scissors so he could snip off the tag, and fingered the material. “Cashmere,” I said. “Very nice.”
    “I ordered one for you, too,” he said, pulling on his sweater. “It’s in that box on your dresser.”
    I picked up my gift and touched it to my cheek. The material was sinfully soft. “Thank you,” I said. “It’s gorgeous.”
    He raised an eyebrow. “But you’re not going to put it on.”
    “Mieka says that the day you and I start wearing matching outfits is the day she puts us into Golden Memories.”
    “I’ve got pull at Golden Memories. I kept the owner out of the hoosegow. I could get us adjoining rooms.”
    I unbuttoned my blouse. “So what did the owner do?”
    “He was alleged to have encouraged some of his female guests to give him power of attorney.”
    “Did he?”
    “All my clients are innocent, Ms. Shreve. Now come on, let’s see the sweater.”
    I pulled it over my head and held out my arms.
    “Looks better on you than it does on me,” Zack said.
    “Thanks,” I said. “For the sweater and for the compliment. Hey, guess who’s coming to dinner?”
    “The Green Knight.”
    “Close. Declan Hunter.”
    Zack’s smile vanished. “How come?”
    “Taylor invited him.” I sat down on the bed, so Zack and I could face one another. “She isn’t aware that Declan’s your client,” I said.
    “He’s under no legal obligation to tell her.”
    “But there are legal issues in his life,” I said.
    Zack wheeled closer. “Jo, you know I can’t give you any specifics, but if I thought for a moment that Taylor was in danger, Declan wouldn’t get past the front door.”
    “His transgressions are minor?” I asked.
    “So far, but they’re the kinds of dumb-ass things that can put a kid on the glide path to disaster, so I worry.”
    “You like him, don’t you?”
    “I do. We had a great time that night we went to the Broken Rack, so in the spirit of camaraderie I asked Declan why he’s so determined to make trouble for himself. He said that it’s easy to get lost when you live in your father’s shadow.”
    Our family had endured tree-decorating nights when our tempers were as snarled as the strings of lights. The mood the year before had been close to perfect until we hung the last ornament, flicked on the lights, and Pantera, responding to some dark atavistic impulse buried deep in his mastiff psyche, took a run at the tree, knocked it to the ground, attacked it, then streaked to the basement and refused to come upstairs for three days. This Christmas the tree-trimming was without incident, and there were some Hallmark moments: Declan, his dreads tied back with hemp twine, carefully examining each of the ornaments that held a picture of Taylor before he handed it to her so she could place it on the tree; Lena and Maddy suspending all the sparkliest ornaments from branches at their level, so that the lower third of the tree glittered as bright as a showgirl’sfan and the upper two-thirds were bare; Zack, his chair at a safe distance from the tree, his fingers looped through Pantera’s collar, murmuring reassurances to his dog.
    The one moment of real tension was short-lived. When Madeleine and Lena reached a noisy standoff about whose toilet-paper-roll angel would have pride of place as the tree-topper, Peter jammed the angels together on the top branch, where they perched, listing slightly, their silver doily wings mashed and their twin maniacal smiles reminding us all that Christmas is a time of sisterhood and