Room at the Inn for Christmas

by Mary Connealy

  There she stood in the living quarters where she’d grown up. The apartment was one large room with a couch and television up front. There were two bedrooms and a bathroom in the back.

  She’d come in and gone straight to bed last night, and this morning she’d gone right to work. She hadn’t really looked around in here. She was struck by how dated it was.

  Maybe time and distance opened her eyes, but it didn’t look like Dad had changed a thing since before Mandy had gone to college. Then she stumbled over that thought. Not college. No, before that. He’d never changed anything since Mom had died. Mandy had never thought of redecorating and Dad had never suggested such a thing.

  She set her plate with the sandwich on the low coffee table there in the living room. They had no kitchen of their own; they’d always used the inn kitchen and the breakfast nook. There was one bathroom in these quarters, all there’d ever been, and the three of them had shared an easy coexistence.

  What was missing? Mandy looked around, still conscious of the strange detachment Cart’s words had caused.

  Something was missing.

  She sank down on the couch and munched her sandwich as she pondered it.

  “You didn’t change a thing for all these years, but I know something is missing.”

  The sandwich gone, the cola swallowed, finally she got it. The wall behind Dad’s recliner had a large, round clock ticking away. But at Christmas that clock had come down and been replaced by a wreath. A big, pretty artificial wreath Mom had made with green and red plaid ribbon weaving through big pinecones.

  Mom had been so proud of that pinecone wreath, she’d taken a craft class and worked on it. Mandy had always loved the wreath and cherished the memory of Mom bringing it out every year. A Christmas ritual.

  After Mom had died, Mandy had carried on, hanging the wreath.

  Without hesitation Mandy walked to the bedroom she slept in and dropped to her knees and bent low enough so she could see under the bed.

  It was still there. A solid plastic wreath container. She dragged it out and saw more things; in fact, the whole bed was packed solid underneath.

  Mandy pulled everything out and knew a lot more was missing than she’d thought. She and Dad had always decorated for Christmas.

  With a quick flip of a metal clasp, Mandy had the wreath box open. There it was. Here it all was. She picked up the wreath and two boxes of ornaments and carried them into the big room. She took down the clock and slipped it behind an end table where it wouldn’t show, then hung the wreath.

  Next she opened the first box of ornaments and saw old, beautiful pieces that had been left from her grandparents’ time. Mom had always insisted on handling these herself. After she died, Mandy had taken over and never dropped a one.

  Next she opened another box and found newer glass balls in a rainbow of colors. She stopped as she realized she couldn’t hang any of these without a tree.

  Well, why would there be one? They’d always had a freshly cut tree and Dad had died before it was time to think of Christmas.

  Then Mandy brushed her hand over the thick dust on the box of fragile glass balls. Mandy knew exactly how dusty these boxes got every year; dragging them out had always been her job. This dust was much thicker. As simply as that, she knew Dad hadn’t taken these out since she’d left. They’d always decorated together, including through her college years when she’d get home a while before Christmas. They’d make a night of putting everything out.

  She held up the red ball and looked at her distorted reflection in it. Was her whole life distorted? Was everything her father said different than how she’d understood it? Had she heard “don’t come home” because she hadn’t wanted to come home? Was Dad’s rejection of her a test to see how badly she wanted to be with him? A test she’d failed?

  None of it made any sense.

  Once she’d quit coming home, Dad had never decorated again. Was that because he didn’t like decorating? She would swear he’d enjoyed it when she was little. He and Mom had made the holidays wonderful for the guests at the inn and for their family. So was he heartbroken that Mandy wasn’t there? Or had his heart died with Mom and after that he’d just done his best to pretend he enjoyed time with Mandy?

  He’d stopped her from coming. Why hadn’t Dad wanted her here? Maybe she was part of painful memories.

  A prickle behind her eyes warned that she could go into a crying fit, and she didn’t want that. She was sick of tears.

  She swallowed the pain hard and it almost seemed her throat would close completely with the hurt.

  With a wild swing that surprised her, she threw the bauble and watched it smash against the wall nearest the door.

  She’d have never done it with the old keepsake ornaments, but she was grimly pleased to see the ball shatter. Feeling safer with fury than with the stupid, bewildered hurt and guilt, she picked up a green ball and put all her strength into slinging it. It shattered into hundreds of pieces. The next was a pretty, deep gold. As if she was hungry for destruction, she flung it with all her strength.

  The crash made her nearly frantic for more.

  The box had at least two dozen decorations; she could work off a lot of rage. She reached for the nearest one, this one bright blue.

  The door banged open.

  “What happened? “ Cart rushed in and skidded to a stop. The door bounced against the wall and swung shut and smacked him so hard he staggered a step sideways. “Did you fall? Are you all right?”

  His eyes glinted with fear. But even as he spoke, he relaxed, seeing she was fine.

  “Did you knock the decorations off a table?” He looked at the floor. Looked at where she stood and how she held the next ball as if she were working on finding the strike zone.

  They stood staring at each other. She tossed the bauble up in the air a few inches and caught it, a little embarrassed to have a witness to her lunacy.

  And the embarrassment made her mad. She hauled back her arm and Cart dashed forward and caught her wrist with a hard slap of skin on skin.

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  Since she’d talked . . . inside her head . . . about being mad—another word for losing your mind—and pondered being a lunatic, just in the last few minutes, she said, “There’s a real good chance I have.”

  He wrestled the ornament out of her hand, laid it back in the box with a decent amount of care, then closed the box and set it and the other box of ornaments on the couch, behind him, then crossed his arms as if he was standing guard.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  She swallowed hard; a lot of her bad temper was his fault. This would be a really good time to yell at him and blame everything on him. Except she wasn’t much of a yeller. She wasn’t much of a thrower, either, though, and look at all this broken glass.

  “Dad quit decorating in here when I quit coming home.”

  “So since he didn’t put them out, you decided to smash them into a million pieces?” Then Cart stood silently, probably giving her a chance to say something that made a lick of sense.

  “So did he do that because he just didn’t care about anything? Did the memories hurt him or not matter to him? Was skipping it a relief or a sign of how sad he was that I wasn’t here?”

  No hard questions there.

  “We can wrangle with the answers to all of that, Mandy. But in the end does it really matter? Whatever was going on with your dad, does it change your decision about coming home? Shouldn’t you make that decision based on your own interests rather than on whatever mixed-up feelings your dad had?”

  “Earlier you said I was running away. You said you had too much sense to ever forget how quick I was to turn my back on the inn.”

  With a small shake of his head, Cart said, “I was thinking of . . . of . . . well . . . you’re not the first wo—uh—person I’ve met who didn’t like Heywood. But this isn’t about me; this is about a chance for you to pick a different life. When you came home yo
u looked tired and stressed. You checked that phone constantly as if every message was a career killer if you didn’t handle it fast. This morning you looked rested. I didn’t even see you look at your phone all morning. I wonder how often you get a good night’s sleep? Do you ever get a moment when you’re really off work?”

  “I’d live and work here at the Star Inn. There’s no time off when you run your own business and live at your workplace. How is that any better?”

  Cart shrugged one shoulder. “You’re right about living here. But you’ve got enough backup with Angel and Lorrie and me that you could get away if you wanted to—your dad did. And it’s quiet here in your room right now—not counting the sound of shattering glass. I’d guess your evenings are your own most of the time.”

  She knew he was right. She’d already felt some of the pressure of her old job ease. She’d gone back to it for a while before tea, but just now she realized she hadn’t checked her phone since she’d started rolling out that dough.

  For the most part she liked being busy. She had few friends and little social life, so she might as well spend time getting ahead at her career.

  “Your choice is between two very different kinds of work. If this life suits you, then you stay; if it doesn’t, you go. In the end only you can decide. Not me, not Angel and for sure not your father.”

  The silence stretched and her eyes focused on the ornament box he protected from her.

  She went past him to the couch—he let her and she was grateful he didn’t put a block on her as she approached the ornaments. She sank onto the old cushions.

  “I have to forgive Dad. It’d be easier if I could understand why he did it. Or maybe if I understood I’d know there’s nothing to forgive.”

  Clasping her hands in front of her, she stared at them for a while; then she opened the box of old ornaments and pulled out one that looks liked a Victorian rocking horse. A beautiful old thing.

  “You’re not going to smash that, are you? Because it looks really valuable.”

  With a shake of her head, she studied the shining ornament, about the size of her hand, a dapple-gray horse with white mane and tail, all glass. Delicate but perfectly preserved by her mother’s care.

  It was like looking into the past. “My family’s gone. Broken up and gone just like those broken ornaments.”

  She lost the edge of her anger and burst into tears. “Go away.”

  “Nope.” A firm hand gripped her wrist. The horse was removed from her hand and Cart pulled her up. “Get your coat on.”

  The order came as such a surprise, the tears stopped. “What are you talking about?”

  Cart dragged her to the coat tree that stood just inside her door. He lifted her snazzy Burberry coat off the hanger and began stuffing her hand into a sleeve.

  “Why are you putting a coat on me?”

  “You need to get out of here. Clear your head. We’re going for a walk.”

  “It’s freezing outside.”

  “Well, then you’d better dry your tears and not cry new ones or your face will be coated in sleet.”

  “I’ve changed my mind about who’s insane.” But her hands were both in the sleeves. He towed her out of her room, through the kitchen and dining room and into the front entrance. Then he opened the front door. It wasn’t late, not yet six o’clock, but it was Oregon in December and the days were short. It was full dark when he dragged her onto the porch. Shivering, she tried to wrench free and go back in. He doggedly held on and closed the door, cutting off her escape.

  “Button up. That’ll ward off frostbite.” He didn’t let her hand go, though, so how could she button anything?

  He had her down the porch steps. She noticed her rental car was parked right where she’d left it, now under a fluffy coating of new snow. They went right on by it, across the street and into the town square, its trees all alive with white lights. He didn’t let go until they reached the gazebo.

  Then he finally released her and faced her with his arms crossed as if he was prepared to cut off an escape as if she were a maverick calf and he was a herd dog.

  Fumbling, her fingers already icy, she buttoned the coat quickly. Then she remembered her gloves and scarf in her pockets and pulled them on.

  “Good idea.” Cart got gloves out of his own pocket.

  It was the first she’d noticed that he had his coat on. Had he just come into the inn from the Community Dinner or was he on his way out after doing some chore?

  When her gloves were on and the scarf blocked the wind from her neck, the night didn’t seem quite so cold. In fact, it was as pretty a night as she’d seen in a long time. The snow fell in fat flakes. The gazebo was lined in white lights. Cart took her by the hand again and drew her up the steps so they stood in the middle of that Christmas beauty, the lights, the snow. Then she heard quiet singing in the distance.

  “Am I imagining ‘Silent Night’?”

  Cart smiled. “Nope, after the Community Dinner all the church choirs team up and go caroling.”

  Mandy had forgotten that. Now as the hushed voices reached her, became part of the beauty of the night, the charm of it helped her stop seething.

  “I have been acting like a crazy person tonight, haven’t I?”

  “My honest nature is clashing badly with the need to be polite.” That seemed to be all the answer she was going to get from Cart.

  The gazebo was lined with benches around the inside of its outer walls. “Let’s sit. You need a break from your troubles. Let’s talk about something else.”

  “My whole life seems to be trouble right now. If we’re going to leave troubles behind, maybe we should talk about you. You seem to have heard all about me for the last four years. What about you? I know the ranch was on shaky ground when your dad died.” Mandy had come home for the funeral in the spring of her freshman year of college.

  “It was never a big business, but we got by if we hustled. Dad worked off the ranch, and I always had after-school jobs and summer jobs. We’d sell the spring calf crop and it was touch-and-go, but we always made the land payments. It was always just the two of us and I thought we made a pretty good team.”

  “Until he got sick.”

  There was a stretch of silence and for a moment they were together, two people who had lost their fathers. It was a bond forged in grief.

  “Dad could never give up the cigarettes. He tried.” Cart managed an affectionate smile as if even painful memories were welcome after all this time. “He tried so many times. Every couple of years he’d swear he was done with them. He tried cold turkey. Cutting back a little at a time. Patches. Nicotine gum. Once he switched to chewing tobacco for a while, then he ended up using both, so he quit the chaw. That was a mercy; that stuff was disgusting. Any quack treatment or serious treatment he’d try. Once he got hypnotized. Once he had a doctor check him into a clinic for a while. And every time he quit, his temper would be awful and he’d yell around and tell me, over and over, ‘Don’t ever start smoking.’ I had a real good example of why I should avoid it and I did.”

  “But they caught up with him.”

  “Yep. He had his first heart attack in the fall when you first went away.”

  “But he survived.” She’d still been close to Cart back then; she’d listened to all his worries.

  “Four bypasses, but yes, he survived. Then the next spring came and he was almost back to full strength and he’d finally quit smoking. I really thought he was going to make it. Then a freak blizzard late in the spring devastated our new calves. Dad worked himself into the ground, and me with him, fighting to save the calves and we still lost so many it was almost a total loss for the year. In the middle of that brutally hard work, Dad collapsed. They thought it was pneumonia for about three days, and then they found lung cancer. It took him a while to die. And once he was buried, I wasn’t thinking too clearly for a while. Finally I started paying attention again and found out we were two years behind on the land payments. Dad had been too sick
to make the payments, and I’d never thought of it. The land is valuable, so I wasn’t going bankrupt, but it was a big setback. I renegotiated the loan and even got a better interest rate. Your dad helped me figure all that out. So I was solvent, but I was right back where I’d been, struggling to make payments, and now I didn’t have Dad to help earn the extra money.”

  Mandy took his hand. “I knew your dad died of lung cancer, and I knew about the heart attack, and I knew you’d inherited the ranch, but I had no idea you were in such financial difficulties.”

  “It was okay. It forced me to think bigger. To try and come up with a way to make that land turn a better profit.” He gave her a true, full smile. He even looked a little smug.

  “Don’t tell me you turned to a life of crime.”

  That got a laugh out of him. “Next thing to it. I started growing Christmas trees. And what a man can make on a tree is almost criminal.”

  Mandy sat straight up in shock. “You did? Why didn’t Dad ever tell me that?”

  That wiped his smile away. “Why didn’t you ever come back to hear about it?”

  He knew why; Mandy didn’t want to start fighting again. “So the Christmas trees saved the cattle ranch?”

  Cart gave a small, one-shouldered shrug. “Yep, they did. The Wilsons always had a Christmas tree farm and they wanted to retire. I bought it with a good crop of trees old enough to sell. So I went further in debt, but I started making good money, enough to pay my loan payments without two extra jobs.”

  “Of course I remember the Wilsons. That’s where we cut trees down for the inn.”

  “Well, it’s Carter’s Christmas Trees now and the trees in the inn are mine. I expanded it a lot. The Wilsons only grew enough for the local folks to come and cut them down, but I started planting about five times what they were, including some that are real fast growing so I could start harvesting them. It takes at least five years for the trees to get big enough to harvest and I wanted to start making money sooner than that. I got a great crop of good trees that I harvested for the first time this year. I’ve planted them on my land and on the Wilsons’ pasture and most of their yard.