“It does!” Addison said. “There are rules! You have to follow them!”
Tears began to run down her cheeks.
“Why are you crying?” Bailey asked, her voice full of concern. Then a smile flashed across her face. “That was a question!” she announced gleefully to her dad.
“Okay,” Marcus said. “Okay, ladies. It’s been a long day. I think it’s maybe time for us to start thinking about getting ready for bed. Who wants to help me bring our things from downstairs?”
Bailey’s glance turned crafty. “And brownies?” she asked.
The mention of brownies even distracted Addison momentarily from the various injustices of the world. “Bailey and I should share one,” she said. “Since we tied.”
Marcus looked up at Molly, barely able to suppress his laughter. “She’s training to be a lawyer,” he said.
“I can see that,” Molly answered.
Addison was already marching toward the door, quickly trailed by Bailey. “I’ll split the brownie in two,” Addison told her seriously. “And then you can choose.”
“Why can’t I split it?” Bailey demanded.
“Your pieces are never the same size,” Addison said reasonably as they slipped out of the room. “If you split it, I’ll just take the bigger one.”
Marcus sighed, following them. “I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to thank you enough for this,” he said.
Molly raised her hand to wave away his concern. “It’s nothing,” she said.
“You can let me know if you still feel that way tomorrow morning,” Marcus said, disappearing through the door with a grin.
As he did, she checked the ring finger of his left hand for the first time. No ring there, or on any of his other fingers.
What happened with their mother, she wondered as she heard the voices of the girls chattering down the stairs, to leave this sweet family alone at Christmas?
“MADDIE,” JEANNE SAID, SINKING down on the stool beside their landline kitchen phone, as she held the receiver to her ear. “It’s great to hear your voice. It’s been a crazy day.”
“For you, too?” Maddie Perkins said.
At the sound of Maddie’s voice, some of the frustration and worry Jeanne had been feeling began to seep away. Maddie had served as their supplier and caterer for big events at Evergreen Inn from the day they had opened.
In fact, Maddie’s business had opened around the same time the inn did: supplying local goods to local restaurants and event spaces. Maddie wasn’t a transplant like Jeanne and Tim. She’d grown up in Vermont, a farm girl herself, raised with several hundred head of dairy cattle on her mother’s farm, which had been in the family for generations, and even boasted its own rare but delicious brand of Vermont cheddar.
And Maddie brought all the same attention to detail and passion for perfection to her work that Jeanne brought to hers. Jeanne always knew that whatever she ordered from Maddie would be exactly what she’d asked for, or better—whether it was dozens of pink- and brown-tinted farm-raised eggs, or perfectly turned crescent rolls, one of Maddie’s personal specialties. It was largely their partnership with Maddie that had allowed them to expand into hosting bigger events, while still keeping the quality their guests had come to expect from the inn.
But unlike Evergreen Inn, Maddie’s business was flourishing, because Maddie wasn’t in competition with the Starlight Lodge. In fact, they were now her biggest customer, placing such big orders for locally sourced produce that Maddie had had to comb the entire state looking for small farmers who could help her meet them.
Still, over the past decade, Maddie and Jeanne had become fast friends. And hearing her voice made Jeanne feel less alone in the swirl of all the storms, both outside the windows of the inn, and inside herself.
“I think it may be the craziest day we’ve seen here at the inn,” Jeanne said.
“Worse than those Brits with their antique convertibles?” Maddie asked.
Jeanne smiled at the memory. Evergreen Inn had been a featured stop for a group of British tourists who spent a few weeks each summer driving vintage American cars through the countryside. But when they’d tried to leave the morning after the feast Maddie and Jeanne had prepared for them, not one but three of their convertibles failed to turn on, which had spurred a three-state hunt for vintage car parts.
“Well, first of all, the wedding’s off,” Jeanne told Maddie.
“This storm?” Maddie said, taking in a quick breath.
“The groom,” Jeanne said. “Cold feet. Last minute.”
“That poor girl,” Maddie said. “And your receipts. Did you get a deposit?”
“Not on the rooms,” Jeanne said. “But we’ve had a whole fleet of surprise guests show up. I guess they’ve closed the interstate down now.”
“Well, I hate to say it,” Maddie said, “but that’s a relief.”
Jeanne’s brows knit.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“It’s been a crazy day here,” Maddie said. “I was calling to tell you that we aren’t going to be able to make the delivery for the wedding. I’m so sorry, Jeanne. When I realized the storm was setting in, I actually loaded up everything early, thinking I could beat it and still get home. I didn’t think our refrigerated delivery truck would make it with the wind and such, but I got everything into our four-wheel drive and got about half a mile down the road before the engine seized up from the cold. Carl came to rescue me on his snowmobile, but we couldn’t get anyone to come tow the car, and now everything in it is frozen. I was holding out hope till the last minute that someone would be able to come and tow us, but there’s no way the lettuces survived this long. Or the fruits.”
“Or the canapés . . .” Jeanne added, still in shock.
Maddie sighed. “I was terrified that meant we’d be ruining someone’s big day, but I guess if the wedding’s off . . .”
Jeanne’s mind raced to catch up with what was happening. If Maddie didn’t come, Jeanne thought, what did she have left in the kitchen? Not much, she knew without even opening a cupboard or the fridge. She had deliberately let her stocks run down so there would be room for the huge amount of food required to serve a wedding, even one as intimate as Hannah’s had been planned to be.
I should have known, she thought, the guilt overwhelming her. If total strangers were pulling off the road into her driveway looking for shelter, why would she expect that Maddie would be able to make it here with a truck full of hand-harvested canapés? But Maddie had always been so consistent—wondering whether she would be there or not felt like wondering if the sun would come up. It wasn’t even worth a thought, because there was simply no question about it.
“But I’ve still got guests,” Jeanne said. “The place just filled up with stranded travelers. I don’t even know if I’ve got enough to serve them dinner, let alone get through the next few days. If there’s anything you could get to me, anything at all . . .”
“I’m sorry, Jeanne. I really am,” Maddie said. “I really hate to leave you in the lurch like this.”
“I know, Maddie,” Jeanne said.
“And they just started announcing that they don’t want anyone on the roads. Not just the interstate. Any of them,” Maddie went on. “I’d love to help you, but we need to be safe.”
“Of course you do,” Jeanne said, feeling a little pang of shame that she had even pressed Maddie, who was obviously trying to do her best.
“I’m sorry,” Maddie said again. “You know if there was anything I could do—”
“I know,” Jeanne told her. “You’ve never let us down before. And this isn’t your fault. I’ll figure something out.”
“Thanks, Jeanne,” Maddie said. “Stay warm.”
“You, too,” Jeanne said.
She put the phone back in its cradle and went directly to the refrigerator, half hoping that while she was on the phone some genie had filled it with succulent sausages and piles of fresh fruit, fairy-tale-style.
But the door swung open on a chilly, brightly lit void.
Aside from a few dishes for the rehearsal meal she’d already prepped, there was almost nothing fresh left in the fridge, only staples like milk and butter, and not enough of those to reliably hold out for days with a full house of guests. Everything else was supposed to come in from Maddie.
She shuffled through the cupboards, confirming what she already knew. Aside from healthy quantities of baking supplies, there was nothing: no meat, no cheese, no vegetables, no fruit.
In the potato drawer, she found a ten-pound bag of workmanlike Idaho reds, half-gone.
Were there at least enough for hash browns tomorrow morning?
She started to count them out on the counter, two at a time.
By the time she got to fourteen, tears were sliding down her face.
When she got to twenty, Tim came in, shaking snow off his blue watch cap as he stomped the snow off his boots.
“I checked on all the animals. Everyone’s cozy in the barn, and I gave them extra hay. Made sure the piglet’s pen was dry so she doesn’t freeze to death in this . . .” As soon as Tim saw her face, he was silent. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
Jeanne shook her head, unable to get the words out at first.
Tim started to put his arm around her shoulders, then hesitated, as if waiting to make sure she didn’t shake it off.
But when she just kept crying, he drew her closer to him. “Hey, Jeannie,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Maddie,” she said.
His eyes widened. “Something happened to her?” he asked.
Suddenly, Jeanne realized how much more terrible the news could have been—which only made her feel like a baby for being so upset. And none of this, of course, helped her be any less upset.
Jeanne shook her head. “No, no,” she said. “It’s the catering and supplies. They can’t get here tonight.”
“Oh,” Tim said, stepping back and crossing his arms.
She could practically see him biting his tongue to keep from adding, Is that all?
“I don’t have anything else here,” she said. “I’ve got finger sandwiches and some brisket for the rehearsal dinner, but that’s not enough for even a single meal tomorrow. And the place is full now. We had three more groups arrive while you were out.”
“That’ll cover some of the shortfall from the wedding,” Tim calculated.
“But now we have to feed them,” she said. He wasn’t listening.
“They don’t expect five-star service in the middle of a blizzard,” Tim said. “You always think of something.”
Jeanne felt herself getting flushed with anger, because he was exactly right. She did feel like she was always the one who had to think of something—because he never seemed to be thinking about what she was worried about at all.
“People expect all kinds of things,” she said. “And anyway, I’m a cook, not a magician. I can’t make something out of nothing.”
“Nothing? Really?” Tim said, and pulled the refrigerator open. But at the sight of the empty shelves, he froze.
“Wow,” he said, and turned back to Jeanne. “How many people did you say we have here tonight?”
“All the rooms are full,” Jeanne said. “And some of them are kids, Tim. We can’t let them go hungry.”
Tim took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “Hold on. Maddie’s pretty far away, like twenty, thirty miles, right?”
Jeanne nodded.
Tim’s brow furrowed, thinking. “What if we went over to Hiram Fletcher’s?” he said. “I know he’s got sausages and cheese, and he’s only a mile down the road.”
Jeanne’s mind began to search through their neighbors. “And Daphne Hines has got incredible produce growing in her winter greenhouse. It’s not just lettuce and vegetables. I saw nasturtiums over there the last time I stopped by.”
But just as quickly as the light of hope had lit in her eyes, it died out. “But how would we get there?” she asked. “I just talked with Maddie, and she said all the roads are closed now.”
Tim frowned along with her, but a second later, he broke out in a grin. “Well,” he said, “they’re closed if all you’ve got is a car or a truck.”
“What were you planning on taking besides a car or truck?” Jeanne asked. “Your motorcycle?”
“This is why you should have let me get that old used snowmobile that showed up in the paper this summer,” Tim said with a look of mischief.
Jeanne just shook her head.
“Remember that old sleigh that Iris’s father had stashed in the back of the barn?” Tim asked.
Jeanne shook her head. Maybe he was trying to cheer her up, but she just wasn’t in the mood for jokes. “That thing is a wreck,” she said. “One of the blades is broken in half, and even if it weren’t, the mice ate all the leather off the seats. They’re nothing but springs and stuffing now.”
“Not anymore,” Tim said.
“What do you mean?” Jeanne asked.
“I fixed it up,” Tim said.
“Why?” Jeanne yelped.
Tim shrugged. “I like to fix stuff.”
Jeanne shook her head slowly. “If you had asked me, in a million years, would we ever need a sleigh . . .” she began.
“But now we’ve got one,” Tim said, going over to the door to pull on his boots. “Get your coat. Or get two of them.”
“Why?” Jeanne asked again.
“You’ve got to come with me,” Tim said. “I can barely find the turnoff to Daphne’s in broad daylight. Plus, you’re going to need to tell them what you want to order.”
Boots and coat on, he pulled a wool overshirt from the rack and held it out.
Somewhat dazed, Jeanne put it on. “I guess Iris can take care of the place while we’re gone,” she said.
“We’re going for a sleigh ride, Iris,” Tim told the older woman in the front hall, as Jeanne yanked her oldest work coat out of the hall closet and managed to yank it on over the work shirt. “So that means you’re in charge now.”
“What makes you think I wasn’t to begin with?” Iris said, raising one eyebrow with a merry smile as the two of them tramped out the front door, heading for the barn.
FOR THE FIRST FEW minutes after Hannah ran out through the front door, she hadn’t even felt the cold.
It had just been a relief to step out into the white, silent world, where there were no other voices speaking and every sound was muffled by the snow, both in the air and on the ground.
She’d headed for the woods without even thinking, because it was the woods that had always been her sanctuary while they were staying at the inn, whether she’d had a spat with her parents or was frustrated with Trevor or worried about a friend.
At first, they were just as familiar as they always had been. She’d always been a bit of a tomboy, climbing every one of the trees that presented any kind of tempting foothold. So she knew many of the trees by heart, and even how they’d changed over the decade since her family had been visiting the inn, their trunks growing thicker, their twigs turning to branches.
And even when the cold did begin to set in, it came as a relief. She was grateful to feel anything other than the sickening drop of her heart, which felt like it had gotten on a roller-coaster ride that might never stop falling.
Plus, she was wearing the thick, white, cashmere, cable-knit sweater her mother had bought her as a special part of her wedding “trousseau.” It was incredibly soft, but it was also incredibly warm. And Hannah knew she was so close to the house that she could make it back in just a few minutes if she started to get really chilly.
Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t know how long she wandered among the familiar pines before she tucked her fingers up into the cuffs of her cozy sweater, or how long after that the cold began to seep through the sweater itself in earnest.
Still, she resisted going back into the house, back to all the practical questions that had pressed on her within its walls, back
to her parents’ pain, and her own, until the bite of the cold was so sharp it was impossible to ignore anymore.
When she finally began to look at her surroundings, searching for a familiar sign to lead her home, she realized why the cold had intensified. While she’d been out in the woods, the sun, which had been dropping toward the horizon when she left the house, had fallen beyond it. Light was quickly fleeing the woods as night came on.
At first she thought that should actually make it easier to find her way back: just look for the lights of the inn, in the gathering darkness.
But as her glance darted from tree to tree, she didn’t see anything that looked like the welcoming light of home: just the fading glow of the sun beyond the snow clouds that were pouring the blizzard down. The snow turned bluer and bluer as even that light faded.
Around her, on all sides, a slight slope led up into the trees.
From this, Hannah recognized she was in the low valley in the trees that had been a favorite hiding spot of hers in younger days.
The problem was that part of what made the valley special was its uniformity. From the bottom of it, all the slopes looked the same. She knew she was close to the inn, but she had no idea in which direction the buildings lay.
As she tried to think what direction to choose, she drew the sweater closer around her—a mistake. The snow that had fallen on her had been sitting on the wool, a hairsbreadth away from her warm skin, for long enough now to start melting, so when she tried to snuggle into the sweater to warm herself, she only got painful hits of ice-cold water on the gooseflesh of her arms.
The sting of them sent her charging up the low rise of the valley’s natural bowl, hoping that if she got some more elevation, she’d be able to catch sight of something.
But when she stumbled up to flat ground again, all she saw was more snow, and more trees—and none she recognized.
By now, whether it was from cold or from nerves, or some of both, she was having trouble catching her breath.
Panic building in her chest, she dove back down into the bowl of the valley, trying to follow her footsteps before they were erased by the storm, so that she could at least keep track of which direction she had already gone. Even knowing where she’d failed was at least some information that might help her get back home.
The White Christmas Inn Page 7
