Aleksa Baxter - A Housebound Holiday

Nosy Newfie Cozy Mysteries

A Dead Man and Doggie Delights

A Crazy Cat Lady and Canine Crunchies

A Buried Body and Barkery Bites

A Missing Mom and Mutt Munchies

A Sabotaged Celebration and Salmon Snaps

A Poisoned Past and Puppermints

Nosy Newfie Holiday Shorts

Halloween at the Baker Valley Barkery & Cafe

A Housebound Holiday

A Housebound Holiday

Aleksa Baxter

A Housebound Holiday

Chapter One

When I imagined my honeymoonand I assure you I spent far more time imagining that than the actual wedding dayI never imagined that it would involve one over-active eight-year-old, his recuperating mother, and only phone calls with my gorgeous, sexy husband.

But that's what happened.

Because not long after Matt Barnes and I, Maggie May Carver, said "I do" the world decided to go into lockdown. At least we hadn't had any travel plans that were ruined. No resort in Fiji with a tropical bungalow that was standing empty, or lovely resort in some picturesque town in New Zealand or the Swiss Alps that was sending us a "we regret to inform you" notice.

Still.

No matter how I'd spun the potential possibilities for la luna de miel they had all involved my husband. Which meant that the reality really sucked.

But when theres a terrible infection spreading around the world and you're married to a cop and want to be able to take care of your elderly grandpa who suddenly finds himself housebound against his will, the choices are limited.

Since Matt was being exposed to every silly yahoo who thought being told to work from home meant hop into your car and go visit Colorado like you've always wanted to do, we'd made the painful yet practical decision to have him stay in the trailer with Jack, his brother, while Jack's new wife, Trish, and her son, Sam, moved in with me at what was supposed to be Matts and my new home.

Jack had a job doing construction so he was still out and about and Trish simply wasn't up to taking care of Sam on her own just yet.

Neither was I for that matter. I think having a kid is a lot like being a lobster in a pot of slowly boiling water. Over time parents get used to all the pains and tribulations of parenthoodthat's how a mom can heft a forty-pound kid onto her hip without batting an eye and make it through the teenage years without committing homicide, but one of us uninitiated fools tries to do the same? No. Not happening.

Which is how Trish could blithely ignore the sounds of her screaming under-stimulated, over-caffeinated child while Fancymy now four-year-old Newfoundlandand I were not doing quite so well.

As Sam ran around the living room with a toy plane in his hand making vroom-vroom and shooting sounds while screaming about taking evasive maneuvers, I clutched my fifth Coke of the day to my chest and prayed for it all to end.

Id always thought pandemics were some sort of fast-spreading wave of annihilation, not this slow-moving torture where nothing had really changed but at the same time everything had.

Fancy stared at me from the corner, her big amber eyes asking me what she'd done to deserve this. At least she'd stopped barking at him every time he moved. That had been the first three days. And it had not been fun chasing a hundred-and-forty-pound dog around the house trying to get her to stop.

Now she just sullenly slunk from room to room trying but failing to stay out of his way. It didn't help that we were in a two-story house and she wasn't one for stairs so she only had so many choices of where to hide.

She would've been outside where she'd been spending seventy percent of every day, but it was raining and thundering and I'd made her come in. Fancy would've happily stayed out there while tree limbs blew down and hail rained on her head, but the last thing I needed right then was an emergency visit to the vet.

I glanced towards the couch where Trish had her feet propped up on the dining room table. She flipped through her phone, never once looking up. How? How did she not notice the chaos around her?

"Sam," I said, trying not to snap the words out too forcefully, but probably failing. Even though Sam was downright adorable with his red hair and freckles, I was seriously at my limit.

"Yeah, Maggie?" He stopped, smiling at me from ear to ear.

"Will you do me a favor?"

"Sure. What?"

"I was going to go over to my grandpa's later and see how he's doing. Do you think you could draw him something for me? Like a plane? Or Lady?" (That was the miniature horse Jack insisted on throwing into my life every chance he got, including on my wedding day.)

Sam hesitated for a moment but he'd been raised with enough manners and was smart enough to know that my request wasn't really a request. He set down the plane. "Sure. Um"

I took the plane and put it on top of the fridge. "You better get started on it now. I'd hate for it not to be done when I go over there."

"Okay."

As he slunk off towards the room he and Trish were sharing I tried to feel bad for banishing him to his room to do something quiet, but I couldn't.

Don't get me wrong, kids are cute. In small doses and at large distances.

At a loss for what to do next, I went to the kitchen and stared at the cupboards wondering what I should pick up at the store or order in.

I'd tried looking online for advice about what to store up on in event of an emergency but all the advice was for what to do if you had no running water or electricity and perhaps were living in a gym with a hundred other displaced people with nowhere to go. Under those circumstances it seemed canned goods and pasta and lots of water were the answer.

But what do you stock up on when the grocery stores are still open? And you still have power and running water?

Each time there was a story about an outbreak at a meat processing plant I ordered more meat, so we were good there. (For like the next century.)

What else, though?

I refused to buy into the craze for homemade bread that had spread through all my corporate friends. Suddenly my Facebook feed was full of posts about sourdough starters and pictures of rye bread. (Who ever eats rye bread? Seriously.) I was surprised no one had bought raw wheat and a mortar and pestle yet, but give it enough time

And I wasnt about to start my own garden. That seemed a step too far. If the world really came down to me surviving on only the vegetables Id grown in the backyard and the sourdough starter I nurtured on a shelf each day, well, I was okay with just calling it quits at that point.

Id miss Matt and Fancy, but no. I was just not going to go there.

But I still needed to stock up on something. Nice, made-by-someone else somethings. I just didn't know what.

Which is how I'd ended up with five spare jars of peanut butter, six extra boxes of peppermint tea, forty cans of soup, three dozen packets of tuna fish, thirteen cases of Coke (that I'd actually had before things went crazy but let's not dwell on that), and enough frozen meat to last for years.

Still, though, I felt like I was missing something. Maybe it was the non-food items I was missing.

But no. I had four mega-packs of toilet paper, two mega-packs of paper towels, three dozen boxes of Kleenex, six things of dishwasher detergent, two extra deodorants, one extra toothpaste, an extra shampoo, and an extra conditioner. Oh, and of course, three extra bags of Fancy's dog food and more treats than she could probably eat in a lifetime.