She closed the storm door behind her with an encouraging shove and sarcastically smiled at him with a spec of pepper wedged in between the two front teeth of her dentures. He had a hard time deliberating on what to shy away from, the pepper or the smugged stain of cranberry sauce on her orange Cashmere sweater. 

As she stood there glaring at him; huge, fluffy snowflakes started collecting in her curly platinum hair and he hardily noticed the contrast of white on white. She looked down at him with discouragement sneaking past her two gray cataracts and muttered in her smokers voice "Next year, why don't you bring your ex-wife. I think she's what I like the best about you."

She hobbled back into the red brick home, leaving her son alone at the end of the concrete steps. He rubbed his stubbly chin with his stained red fingers and wondered if that meant that he wasn't going to be invited to Christmas next month.