Jo had earned the nickname Grinch her first year in Eureka when she’d made a show of dumping all of the presents Vincent had sent her under the guise of Santa into the street in front of a snow plow. The next few years, she’d simply reinforced it by undecorating her house after a few spirited elementary schoolers had programed a few drones to do it for her, refusing any invitations to Christmas parties, stonewalling further attempts to give her gifts, mocking secret santas and arresting a few teenagers for attempting to start a snowball fight. She’d heard a few creative parents had replaced her with the Grinch in the Dr. Seuss book. The old Sheriff had delighted in reminding her of the day Jo stole Christmas whenever she was disagreeing with her. It had taken some creative methods of black mail and personal threats to stop Jack from hearing that particular story.
These days she was simply one of the few of the Eureka citizens that didn’t decorate her house to look like a high tech air strip, didn’t spend thousands on ridiculous toys for children they barely knew and refused to participate in the parties and secret Santas. When speaking of good cheer and peace among men, people left Jo out and she liked it that way.
Claudia’s conversations with Zane had told her that much, but no one had ever gotten a reason out of the former deputy. Her tryst with Douglas Fargo the year before had spawned most of her correspondence with the citizens of Eureka. Most of it was Zane, they were both great hackers, shared a last name, and were generally interested in the same things. She’d had a few conversations with Kevin, a few more with Fargo, but then Holly Martin had stolen his interest. Her close contact with Zane meant close contact with Jo as well.
Claudia liked Jo, she’d even come to Eureka a few times to hang out with them when Artie pushed her out of the Warehouse to have Artie time. This development about the day Jo stole Christmas was deeply disturbing, so she used the vacation time she normally would have devoted to her brother to go see Jo and spread the Christmas cheer into the head of GD security’s life.
She’d spent a day loading up a car with a little mini tree, a few decorations, presents, and some DVDs of funny Christmas movies. She simply couldn’t abide a Grinch in her life, well at least not two, Artie would be a tough nut to crack and that could wait until next year. She absent mindedly informed Zane that she was coming for a visit, he was surprised but pleased because he was unaware of her master plan.
The drive to Eureka was always long and boring, that’s generally how things were compared to work. Getting into Eureka was pretty interesting, the traffic monitoring drones and countless unexplained experiments going on were always exciting. In town a lot of the scientists were pushy and rude, but not enough to truly annoy her. They were all excellent drivers though, which she attributed to the number of vehicles they lost to scientific disasters.
Arriving at Zane and Jo’s house she sprinted up the stairs, Santa cap riding low over her eyes in a red velvet vest. Zane popped the door open as she reached the threshold. He greeted her with a one armed hug and smile. “Jo’s out doing security stuff, her and Carter have been at it for a few hours.” He explained. “Probably not coming home until the early morning hours.”
“That’s great. I have some things in the car. Some things that match my hat that we can string around the living room and make surprise Jo with.”
“No, No, no my lady, I’ve tried that, greater men have tried that route Claudia. Have you ever seen an exhausted woman fill a car with Christmas ornaments and then vaporize the whole car? She did that to my car the first Christmas after I moved in.”
“Well you see, Mr. Donovan. You are not a cute redhead with magical powers of pouting and sadness. Also I can flatter much better than you. It’ll be fine. It’s not a lot, I promise.” She sprinted to the car to grab all of the boxes before Zane would say no definitively. He shook his head and looked peeved for a second before following her to the car.
“She’s gunna kill you!” He called as she opened the hatchback and pulled a stack of boxes. She handed them to Zane before retrieving the potted mini tree.
“No she won’t. She loves me.”
“She loves me too and she still trashed my car.”
“Loves me more.”
They argued the whole way into the house, and continued as they began hanging the decorations. The bickering eventually faded out and they began discussing childhood Christmases, or how they would have liked to have had them. “I used to imagine that we’d be decorating and then my dad would come strolling in and kiss my mom and ruffle my hair and put the star on the tree.”
“I used to imagine that my parents would actually be there when my brother and I exchanged gifts.”
“I imagine that my brothers are going to invite me back to our parent’s house and that we’ll all be together and they’ll give me the perfect gifts like I used to give them.” Jo said from the door, her hand perched on her hip.
Both Donovans shot up guiltily. “Hi, babe.” Zane said weakly. Jo frowned.
“So you invite Claudia, decorate our living room with mediocrity and then expect me to come home and be totally happy with it.” She asked.
“No, you were supposed to be happy I was here. And able to look past the evils of Christmas, and then we were totally supposed to get into a three way make out session and then you would love Christmas.” Claudia piped up. “It was all my idea.”
“Well let’s finish decorating. Getting Claudia for Christmas is a pretty good gift, and I see Planes, Trains, and Cars in that box. We can look into that make out session in a few hours, but I promise that you won’t enjoy the following event half as much as I will.” Jo grinned wolfishly.
“You truly are a mean one, Mrs. Grinch.”