“I can’t see anything,” she said. “It’s not stuck on this part.”
By now, Tim had started to pitch in. He circled around the sleigh, creating a storm within a storm of his own, as glittery flakes whirled up from where he tossed them away from the sleigh runner.
“You got anything?” she called to him.
“Not yet,” he answered, his voice thin beyond the noise of the wind.
Then Jeanne’s hand hit something. Where there had been level ground, a chilly, black outcrop of rock appeared, almost even with the grass at first, but quickly building to the size of a boulder.
The sleigh runner, no match for it, had been lifted into the air by its bulk, tilting at an increasingly severe angle. Beyond the rock, the sleigh left the ground completely, jutting toward the night sky through the snow with no traction at all.
No wonder they hadn’t been able to move.
“I think I found it,” Jeanne said.
When Tim tramped around the side of the sleigh to see, she had already begun to calculate their chances of ever clearing the rock. And they didn’t look good.
“It’s huge,” Jeanne said, brushing the snow away from the rock face as Tim came up behind her. “And if we go any farther, I’m afraid the weight of the sleigh on the fulcrum might split the whole runner. Or the whole sleigh.
“Maybe,” she said, twisting back to squint at Tim through the wind, “we could get some of the produce on Magnus. Enough to have something for tomorrow. You could take a load, and I can go back to the house and stay warm with Daphne, until—”
Tim didn’t even answer. Instead, in the middle of her sentence, he bolted for the back of the sleigh, kicking up a huge cloud of snow behind it.
“Tim,” she called. “What are you doing?”
When he slogged back to her, he was grinning.
“We can do it,” he said.
Jeanne looked down at the rock and the runner doubtfully. “I just don’t think we should risk . . .” she began.
“We’re not going to,” Tim said, heading for the front of the sleigh. “We’re going to go backward.”
He leaned his weight into the front curve of the old sleigh, shoving it backward with all his might. The sleigh inched back perhaps a foot, but even in the midst of the storm, they could hear the screech of the metal runner against the rock.
“Here, come help me,” Tim said, waving for her to join him.
Jeanne stomped through the snow to the front of the sleigh, put her shoulder to the opposite site from Tim, and pushed.
The sleigh, which had been stubbornly holding its position, giving up ground only an inch at a time for Tim, suddenly came free and slid back noiselessly into the fresh snow behind it.
Magnus, startled by the sudden pressure from the rig, whinnied and took a few nervous steps back himself.
“Magnus!” Tim said, reaching for his dangling reins. “Okay, boy. You ready for this?”
“Wait!” Jeanne said.
She ran ahead of them, into the snow between them and the road, kicking as much as she could out of the way, to make sure there weren’t any more hidden obstructions in the path: a fallen log, another big rock.
A yard or two later, she had made her way to the drive.
“It’s clear,” she called. “I think it’s clear from here.”
With a comforting clucking sound, Tim led Magnus forward, into the wind. It took a few steps for the harness to become taut again against the weight of the sleigh.
Jeanne held her breath without realizing it as she watched, waiting to see if the sleigh itself would move on the new path Tim was cutting.
Then she had to scramble into a snowbank to get out of the way, because the big horse and the onrushing sleigh slipped back up onto the driveway so fast.
“It worked!” Tim said, laughing. He ran over to help her out of the ditch on the other side of the drive. “That was amazing, baby,” he said.
Then he brushed the snow away from her face and kissed her, full and sincere.
At his kiss, Jeanne felt a wave of emotion roll over her: tenderness and hope that were so familiar that it took her a minute to even recognize them. She gazed up at him and noticed a twinkle in his eye that made him look twenty years younger. The past and present flooded her senses, and in a moment of pure giddiness a giggle escaped her lips.
Then he was grabbing her hand and pulling her up beside him into the sleigh, and flicking the reins to set Magnus trotting home. They rode in companionable silence on the short ride, Tim gently humming “Sleigh Ride.”
When they burst through the front door of the inn, each loaded down with bags and boxes of produce, Iris looked up.
“Thank goodness,” she said. “I was wondering if I should send the dogs out after you.”
“Parsley, Iris!” Jeanne said, waving an evergreen bunch of the herb from the top of the box she cradled in her arms.
“In December!” Iris said. “Will wonders never cease?”
Godwin, their English guest, had been standing at the front desk, apparently talking with Iris.
As Tim dropped a box of meats and cheeses near the coatrack and went back out into the night for more, Godwin padded over like a guard on duty, assigned to give a full inspection to any suspicious deliveries that might come to the house.
“What’s all this?” he asked, looking askance at the snow scattered all over the inn’s neat rugs, and the box Jeanne had just set down at her own feet.
But Jeanne was in no mood to be cowed by a grouchy Brit.
“Supplies!” she said. “Our caterer couldn’t get through because of the snow, so we took out an old sleigh and picked up a thing or two at some nearby farms.”
Telling the story that way made it sound a lot breezier than it had actually been, she realized. But it was all true, still. And she felt proud as she said it.
“A sleigh?” Godwin said. He gave Iris a questioning glance.
She smiled back and waved toward the door. “Take a look,” she said. “It’s a beauty. It’s the sleigh my grandfather bought to bring his bride home after their wedding.”
“Winter wedding?” Godwin said, arching his brows as he headed for the door. “Or was it still snowing in Vermont in May?”
“You never know,” Iris said.
“It’s stacked full,” Jeanne added proudly as Godwin came over. “We’re not even done unloading. We’ve got everything from fresh rosemary to Vermont’s finest small-batch cheddar.”
For the first time, Godwin looked impressed. He peered out the door, then looked back.
“It’s an actual sleigh,” he said, with an air of wonder. “Straight off a Christmas card.”
Almost merrily, Jeanne nodded.
“I’ve heard of farm to table,” Godwin said, admiration in his voice. “But sleigh to table . . . that’s something new.”
MOLLY TOOK A DEEP breath, her eyes still closed, enjoying the first moments after waking and the last taste of sleep, the warmth of her comforter, and the faint kiss of winter sun pouring through the attic windows onto her face.
She opened her eyes and allowed herself to be dazzled by the crystal icicles hanging from the nearest window, and the deep blue of the morning sky, now completely clear. It was hard to believe this was the same sky that had brought the huge storm the night before.
Maybe the world was always giving us lessons, she mused, in how quickly things could change. Storms came up with no warning, but they also disappeared without a trace.
Maybe, she thought, after this last tough year, losing her mother, the new year could be like this new morning, a clear sky full of possibility.
As these thoughts slid through her mind, she also felt the unmistakable undercurrent of a story swimming just below the surface of her thoughts, leaving ripples on the surface.
But in the dawn light, she was full of confidence that she knew how to catch a story, even a skittish one. If she just got to her desk, with pencil in hand, they could never resist coming o
ut of hiding for long.
Suddenly eager to be up and at it, she threw her covers back, turned over, and found herself looking into a pair of small, delighted faces.
Both girls, Addison and Bailey, were standing beside her bed, watching her.
God only knew how long they’d been there.
And they weren’t in their pajamas anymore, but had dressed themselves. Relatively well, it turned out, except perhaps for the red knee socks Bailey had chosen to complement her pink skirt.
“Well, good morning,” Molly said.
“You’re awake!” Bailey said, climbing right into the bed with her, almost immediately followed by her sister.
“Bailey wanted to play,” Addison said, in the tone of one old matron exchanging opinions with another. “But I told her she had to wait till you woke up.”
Molly had a quick mental flash of what it might have been like if Bailey had tried to play with her before she woke up. “That’s good,” she said.
“What were you dreaming about?” Bailey asked, running her hands over the soft nap of the velvet coverlet.
“You know,” Molly said, “I don’t remember.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Addison asked.
Molly shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “Not right now.”
“Why not?” Bailey said, with some of the same tone of outrage Molly sometimes felt herself on the topic. “You’re so pretty!”
“And nice,” Addison said in a corrective tone, with a look shot toward Bailey.
Molly glanced at the clock. It was early, but not too early for the girls to go wake Marcus, if he wasn’t already up.
She could feel the story still, flitting this way and that in her mind. She couldn’t tell just what it was yet, but she knew it was there. That was more than she’d felt for weeks, and she didn’t have any intention of letting the moment slip away.
“You know what, girls?” she said. “I usually write in the mornings. So I think I’m going to need to take a bit of time to write.”
“Oh! Writing!” Bailey said, her voice rising to a squeal and her hands clapping almost involuntarily, as if someone had mentioned going to a circus, or eating ice cream.
“We never saw a writer write before,” Addison said. “Can we watch you?”
“You know, I’ve never had anyone watch me write before,” Molly said, trying to find a gentle way into a refusal.
“That’s all right,” Addison said. “We don’t mind.”
“It’s just that—” Molly tried again.
“We can be quiet!” Bailey announced. “SO QUIET!” she added, at the top of her lungs.
“Shh!” Addison said. Then she turned to Molly, her eyes wide and serious, to offer her own bargain. “We can help,” she said. “If you have trouble.”
“Well, that’s very nice,” Molly said. “But—”
“ ‘Have you ever gone for a walk in the woods?’ ” Bailey asked.
Molly looked at her, startled by this new turn in the conversation.
“ ‘Eveline hadn’t,’ ” Bailey went on. “ ‘All her life, she’d lived in sight of the forest. But until the day the moon turned blue, she never went in.’ ”
Now it was Molly’s eyes that widened, in astonishment, as she realized that Bailey was reciting Molly’s own book to her, from memory.
“ ‘Why did you come to the forest?’ ” Addison asked, skipping ahead in the story quite a bit.
“ ‘I don’t know!’ ” Bailey answered with glee, still reciting the text Molly had written years ago.
“ ‘Who’s the biggest bear in the forest?’ ” Addison asked in what was clearly a favorite game of theirs.
“ ‘Me! Me! Me!’ ” Bailey bellowed, hopping up and down on the bed with so much vigor that the old antique vibrated from the force.
“That is . . . amazing,” Molly said.
“See?” Addison asked.
She slid down from the bed and surveyed the room, hands on her hips.
“Okay,” she said, looking over her shoulder. “Where should we go to write?”
As she said it, a quiet knock sounded at the door.
“It’s Daddy,” Bailey stage-whispered. “Don’t answer.”
“Who is it?” Molly called.
Bailey clutched at her arm as if she were about to be fed to the giant bear in her story. “Don’t tell him we’re here!” she wailed.
“It’s Marcus,” Marcus called. “Bailey? Are you okay?”
Immediately, Bailey burrowed under the covers.
“Come on in,” Molly said, doing a quick check of her flannel pajamas to make sure she was decent.
Marcus stepped into the room, somehow already shaved and dressed, and looking for all the world like a model in an advertisement for the perfect country Christmas: denim shirt, gray wool sweater, neat jeans.
“I’ve come to collect the inmates,” he said with a smile. “I hope they haven’t been too much trouble this morning.”
“Not at all,” Molly said. “We just woke up.”
“Molly just woke up,” Addison amended.
“Where’s Bailey?” Marcus asked genuinely, his eyes darting around the room in search of his second daughter.
“I don’t know!” Molly said, with a meaningful glance at the wriggling lump under her velvet coverlet.
“Oh no,” Marcus said. “Do you think she wandered out in the snow? Should we all go out looking for her?”
The lump under Molly’s blankets squirmed with delight and anticipation, but Addison was on a mission and had no intention of being derailed.
“Daddy,” she said. “Molly needs to write. We’re going to help her. You can go.”
“Oh, I can, can I?” Marcus said. He raised his eyebrows and looked at Molly.
“Is there any truth to this tale?” he asked.
“Well,” Molly confessed. “I do usually work first thing in the morning.”
“But not, I suspect, with a pair of young assistants?” Marcus said.
Molly shook her head.
“Okay, girls,” Marcus said, clapping his hands. “Round up! We’re interrupting the prime creative moments of one of our country’s best writers.”
“She needs help!” Bailey piped up from under the blanket.
Molly glanced toward her, thinking wryly that Bailey had no idea how right she was. “It’s okay,” she said. “Really . . .”
But Marcus was implacable. He flicked the blanket back to reveal Bailey, momentarily frozen in shock at being discovered, and immediately pounced on her, lifting her lightly up onto his shoulder, where she struggled as ferociously as if he were abducting her.
“No!” she cried. “I want to stay!”
“They have waffles downstairs,” Marcus said.
At this, Addison came to attention like a trained hound on the trail of prey. Even Bailey stopped squirming, hanging on to her father’s neck so she could look seriously into his eyes.
“What kind of waffles?” she said.
“Does it matter?” Marcus said. “Aren’t all waffles delicious?”
When Bailey’s expression started to turn dark again, he relented.
“They are orange-and-lemon waffles,” he said. “With powdered sugar or maple syrup.”
“And butter?” Addison demanded.
“I believe I saw some butter down there, yes,” Marcus said.
The girls weren’t the only ones transfixed by the description of the menu. Even Molly could feel her mouth watering.
“We can take Molly,” Bailey said peremptorily.
“Yes!” Addison said, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
Molly glanced between them gratefully, touched that the girls would want to spend time with her, and already trying to decide between maple syrup and powdered sugar on her waffles. If the other food she’d had at the inn was anything to measure by, they were probably some of the best waffles known to humankind.
“No,” Marcus said, his tone so firm it a
lmost sounded angry.
Involuntarily, Molly raised her eyebrows, startled, and looked at him.
Marcus’s expression seemed untroubled, but it was also so flat that all traces of his joking earlier had vanished.
“I mean it, girls,” he said, reaching his hand out for Addison’s. “Come on.”
Both of the girls seemed to get the message that he was serious, and they both fell right into line. Addison marched across the room and claimed the hand he offered, while Bailey slid down from his neck and took up her station on his other side, fitting her tiny hand into his as well.
Marcus shook his head as he looked back to Molly. “Thanks for taking care of them,” he said. “We’ll be out of your hair now.”
Molly felt a pang of disappointment as the door closed behind them, and the sting of something else.
Why hadn’t he wanted to have breakfast with her? Did he think that was just a little too much? Was he trying to make it clear that she wasn’t welcome to join them in everything, just because she’d opened her room up for the evening?
But he’d seemed so friendly and open the night before. Had she said or done something when they talked that made him uneasy?
And where were all these questions coming from, she finally wondered. It hadn’t even been a full day since she’d met them. Why should she care whether they wanted to have breakfast with her or not?
She’d come here to write, and that’s what she’d do, she decided.
But when she sat down at her desk, the presence of the story that she’d felt so clearly when she first woke up had vanished.
She tried sitting quietly, to give it a chance to rise up again from the depths of her imagination.
She shuffled the sketches on her desk, then shuffled them again.
But no story emerged from the depths of her imagination.
She tried sketching abstract shapes, and then the open window, with the snowy hills beyond it.
And then she began sketching something in earnest, with a little thrill of anticipation, curious to see what would be revealed when she was done.
But when she finished, she hadn’t created any new character.
The White Christmas Inn Page 12
