Authors: Mariah Stewart
“That’s what happens when you’re a successful widower with no steady girl. Every woman in town wants to be on your short list.”
“What short list? Who has time for a list?” Dan
snorted and handed Clay the silver bowl and the wreath. “Assuming you’re here to help, you can take these into the library. You know the way?”
Clay nodded. “I used to do my homework in there just about every afternoon.”
“Oh, right. I remember. You and Lucy used to walk home from school together, but you never seemed to make it past the inn.”
“What can I say? There were always freshly baked cookies here.”
“The cook we had back then really doted on us kids. She baked just about every day.”
“Lucy and I would stop in the kitchen and grab a snack, then we’d go into the library and spread our books out on that old table.” Clay paused. “You still have that old table in there?”
“Go on back and see for yourself. I think my mom might still be working in there. Tell her to let me know what else she needs.”
“Will do.” Clay headed for the library. He went through the big double doors that separated the lobby in the back of the building from the big reception hall in the front. Once in the hall, he went through the first door on his right.
He found Grace fussing over something on the mantel. She looked up when Clay came in.
“What do you think?” she asked. “The red plaid bows or the gold?”
Clay scratched his head. He really didn’t think too much about bows, but pretended to give it considerable thought to please Grace.
“I think maybe the plaid ones,” he told her.
“I think you may be right.” She tossed the gold
bows onto the table and tied the plaid ribbons around the brass candlesticks.
“Dan said you wanted this wreath hung over the mantel.” He sat the bowl of pinecones on the table. “Shall I take down that painting and hang this in its place?”
“That would be most helpful, Clay. Thank you.” Grace stepped back to give him room.
“Where would you like the painting?” he asked after he made the exchange.
Grace paused, then pointed to a closet. “We’ll put it in there for now.”
Clay opened the door and stood the painting up against the side wall of the closet.
“What else can I do for you?” he asked as he closed the closet door.
“You could help me find a few more hours in this day.” Grace sighed and leaned against the side of the table, her arms folded across her chest, her face weary. “I’ve been working since early this morning and we still have miles to go before we’re finished.”
“Why don’t you tell me what else you want done in here, then go grab yourself a cup of tea and a chair and sit and put your feet up for a few minutes,” Clay suggested.
“That’s a lovely idea. Are you sure you wouldn’t mind …?”
“Just tell me what you need, then go relax for a while.”
“Well, there’s a tree out there on the porch that needs to be brought in and put in that stand.” Grace pointed to the red-and-green tree stand in one corner.
“Where would you like the tree?”
“I think in the alcove there near the window.” She studied the space, then nodded. “I usually put it over there in the corner, but I think this year we’ll try something new.”
“Your wish, my command,” he said. “And after I have the tree in place?”
“Well, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, there are some strings of lights in one of those boxes near the window. You could put those on the tree. There’s more of that plaid ribbon on the table that you could use as garland.” She held up a spool of the plaid. “Oh, and there are also some ornaments in the boxes near the door, but I’ll be back before you get to them. I’ll only be a moment.”
“Take as much time as you want, Miz Grace. I can handle the tree, the lights, and the ornaments.”
“You’re a dear. Could we get you some coffee or a glass of wine?”
“Coffee would be fine, but no hurry.”
“I’ll send someone in with it,” Grace promised as she left the room.
Alone in this room where he’d spent so much time as a child, Clay walked around the table to the first chair from the wall, the one that faced the windows. The one he always used to sit in when they did homework. He pulled the chair away from the table and sat for a moment just looking around the room, trying to see it as he’d seen it then. Back then, the room with its two walls of bookcases that reached to the ceiling had been cavernous, and the table had seemed enormous.
Funny how the room—and the table—had become so much smaller over the years.
He pushed away from the table and leaned over until his face was almost parallel to it, and smiled when he found that the initials he’d scratched into the wood when he was nine—CTM, for “Clayton Thomas Madison”—were still there. He found it strangely satisfying to know that for all the years that had come and gone, this little bit of him had remained.
The last time he’d sat in that chair, at that table, he and Lucy were studying together for exams, and he’d had a really hard time keeping his mind on his notes. Every time he looked up, there she sat, dressed in a tee and cutoff, ripped jeans that were so popular that year, her curly, pale auburn hair piled on top of her head. When she looked up and smiled, his heart beat nearly out of his chest and scared the bejesus out of him because the feelings he was starting to have for her seemed, well,
wrong
. Lucy was his
best friend
. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking about what it would be like to kiss her now, but the fact that when they were thirteen, they’d practiced kissing—on each other—in this very room wasn’t lost on him. It still annoyed him to think that Lucy had wanted to practice on
him
so she’d know what to do if the object of her affection at the time wanted to kiss her at Sherry Marshall’s birthday party.
Clay got up from the table, walked to the window, and looked out. The shrubs that had barely touched the window ledges back then were almost to the top of the window frame, and he was sure they’d been pruned many times over the years to keep them from taking over the entire front of the inn. When he and Lucy were kids, there’d been bird feeders outside the
windows. When they were in fourth grade, the two of them moved the feeders closer to the other side of the front door and replaced them with a hummingbird feeder. They’d made hummingbird food from water and sugar and filled the little plastic disk and watched, but that first day, no tiny birds had arrived. By the next afternoon, however, their feeder had been discovered, and over the summer and into early fall Clay and Lucy spent so much time watching the hummingbirds that they could recognize one from another, and had gone so far as to name them.
They’d started out by giving them names that began with
H
.
“Harry,” Clay said aloud, remembering. “Hortense. Horatio. Helene. Higgins. Hester. Hilary. Hank …”
Before the summer was over, there’d been more birds than
H
names, and they’d started over with the
A
s.
“Agatha. Amadeus. Archimedes …”
Damn, but they’d had fun when they were kids, hadn’t they?
“What happened, LuLu?” Clay heard himself say, then looked over his shoulder to see if anyone else had walked in and maybe heard him, too.
Didn’t his father always say that you couldn’t change the past, so it was a waste of time to dwell on it?
He didn’t have to dwell on it, but there was no harm in acknowledging it, he reasoned. His friendship with Lucy had been a big part of his childhood, and there was no getting around that. They’d done just about everything together growing up, and much of it right here in this room. They made science projects
and wrote book reports, excitedly sharing their newest favorite books with each other. They quizzed each other before tests and shared notes they took in class. They played music here, purloined albums Lucy had lifted from Daniel’s room. As nine-year-olds, they’d learned all the words to every song on Springsteen’s
Born in the U.S.A
. album. Later that year, they took turns singing all the parts of “We Are the World.”
They learned how to dance by practicing with each other.
Lucy had really aced dancing, he recalled. She was petite and light on her feet, whereas he was always too tall for his age to be anything but awkward. She never seemed to mind, though, and by the time their first junior high dance rolled around, they were ready.
His eyes narrowed as he remembered how he’d felt when Kevin McMillan had asked Lucy to dance, how something hot and fierce had risen in his chest and his hands had fisted all on their own. He hadn’t had enough experience back then to recognize that first brush with jealousy, and had convinced himself that he was only annoyed because Kevin was such a jerk and, as such, had no business asking Lucy to dance.
Not for the first time, Clay wished he understood what had caused the rift between them. He’d spent hours thinking about it, back then, but had never come close to knowing.
One of these days, he promised himself, he was going to find out. In the meantime, there was a Christmas tree that needed to be set up.
Clay set the stand in the alcove where Grace had indicated and went through the big front door to the
porch, where he found a Scotch pine leaning against the wall. He brought it inside and wrestled it into the tree stand in the alcove, then stepped back to see if it was straight.
“A little to the left maybe,” Dan noted as he joined Clay and handed over a cup of black coffee. “You still take it black?”
Clay nodded. “Sometimes. Thanks.” He took a sip, then set the cup and saucer on the table. “You’re right. It’s leaning toward the left.”
“Let’s see if we can fix that.”
After several tries, they were both satisfied that the tree was as straight as it was going to be.
“Nice of you to help out Mom,” Dan told him. “She’s running herself ragged, trying to achieve perfection for the tour.”
“Judging by the way the lobby looks, I’d say she’s well on her way to succeeding.” Clay opened a box and started to unwind the lights. “How many more rooms is she going to do?”
Dan shrugged. “I’m trying to talk her into limiting the tour area to the two lobbies, this room, and the sitting room across the way. I don’t see any reason to do anything else.”
“I saw some trees going into the dining room,” Clay noted.
“I’ll do those later. Otherwise the dining room is almost done, thanks to your mother and a few of her friends who pitched in yesterday and again this morning to do centerpieces and the mantel. Tomorrow it’s only going to be open to guests who have bought tickets to the tea that follows the tour.” Dan watched Clay struggle to untangle the lights for a moment,
and was looking about to give him a hand when his cell phone rang. He answered it, listened, then said, “All right. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Dan dropped his phone into his pocket. “Diana needs to be picked up from her sleepover at a girlfriend’s. How ’bout I give you a hand with those lights?”
“I’ve got it.” Clay held up the bundle of wires and searched for an end. “I’m good at this. Really. Go get your daughter.”
“If you insist.”
“I do,” Clay said without looking up. Normally he
was
good at untangling things. He stared at the jumble, then placed it all on the table, where he proceeded to unknot the tiny white lights, one at a time. When he was finished, he draped the strands on the tree, then stood back to admire his work.
“Nice,” he said aloud.
Grace had said something about using the plaid ribbon as garland, but he didn’t have a clue about that, so he passed directly on to the ornaments. He was just sorting through the boxes when Grace returned.
“I feel much refreshed,” she told him. “Thanks so much for giving me a little time off.”
“Don’t mention it.” Clay glanced up from the box he’d just opened.
“My, but you certainly accomplished a lot in a short period of time.” Grace went right to the tree. “The lights are lovely. You did a great job.” She walked around the three exposed sides. “I like the way you draped them. Very nice.”
“I didn’t understand the ribbon-thingy, so I put that aside.”
“We can save that until the decorations are on the tree.” Grace came closer to see what he’d uncovered. “Oh, I love these ornaments.”
She reached around him to pick up a blue-green glass ball. “Dan and I bought this in Maine one year. It was the first time the two of us went on a vacation together—just the two of us—since Ford was born. We’d left Daniel in charge of Lucy and Ford—he was home from college—and I was a nervous wreck the whole time that something was going to happen.” She held the ball up to the light. “But apparently nothing did. That was one of those times when my instincts proved unreliable.”
“How long ago was that?” Clay unpacked a few more glass balls and handed them to Grace, who hung them on the tree.
“Oh, dear, let’s see … well, it was the year that Ford started junior high. The year between Lucy’s freshman and sophomore years at the high school.” She searched in a box for some ornament hooks, and paused for a moment, a gold glass ball in her hand, her gaze fixed outside the window. She sighed loudly. “Of course, I was so happy that everything had gone well in our absence, and yet …”
“And yet?” Something in her voice drew his attention. Clay stopped unwrapping and turned to her. She was still staring out the window.
She shook her head as if to shake off whatever it had been that had bothered her. “Oh, it was nothing, I suppose. In retrospect, I have to think I’d misunderstood what I’d been feeling.”
“What had you been feeling?” Clay had heard the stories about Grace having some kind of sixth sense,
some kind of “sight,” though no one seemed quite sure exactly what it was that she could sense or see. He’d never had the opportunity to ask her directly, though, and his curiosity got the best of him.
“Just that something was happening here that had been very bad.” Her voice dropped to a near whisper, and her hand clenched around the glass ball she was holding. “But obviously I was wrong, and everything was fine when we got back. Still, I never can seem to think back on that summer without having that same feeling of dread that I’d felt as we’d driven away, that same sense of panic and fear and pain …” She shook her head as if shaking off a bad dream, and her hand tightened around the glass ball she’d been holding until it cracked.