“Merry Christmas, Gavin.” Her path to the front door took her beneath the willow tree that stood silent vigil over the house, and as she passed its branches, her stocking cap snagged, tugging clear off her head.
“Your hat—” began Gavin, and then he cut himself off, narrowing his eyes.
Shit!It was past midnight, and though she couldn’t see to confirm, there was no doubt white had bloomed at her temples. She yanked the hat back down over her head.
“Do you—?” said Gavin.
“Ah, good night!” Rowan cut him off and whirled, making a break for the door. “See you around.” She left him standing, confused, in the driveway, as she slammed the front door shut in a jangle of bronze Yule bells.
Had he seen her hair? It’d been dark, and the white had only just started sprouting, easily explained away as a trick of the moonlight. Yes, that would do—should he ever ask, which he probably wouldn’t, because they were unlikely to be forced into each other’s company again.
The thought was less reassuring than she’d meant it to be.
With the long night finally behind her, she leaned against the door and simply took in the Midwinter house. Garlands of holly and evergreen and popcorn had been wound around exposed wooden beams, and dried orange sun wheels dangled from twine like a chandelier. A pine Yule log stuck with green and red candles sat as the centerpiece of the scarred dining table. Candles glowed in jars, bathing the room in diffused light, and it smelled of scalded sugar and milky cardamom bread cooling on the rack.
Rowan let herself pause and breathe it all in. She’d missed this. Terribly. Tears pricked her eyes as she finally pushed off the door and made for the bathroom before anyone else caught sight of her changing hair.
When she’d towel-dried her fresh dye job and slipped into her woofiest pajamas, she made a beeline to the rack of cooling buns and grabbed two. The first disappeared in a few bites as she admired this year’s orange pomander centerpiece—a dish with a ringof pinecones around a pile full of plump oranges, cloves decorating their rinds in intricate whorls.
“Rowan?”
Her father, Joe Midwinter, as he had taken her mother’s last name, appeared at the top of the stairs. He was dressed in the same red-and-black buffalo plaid robe he’d had for years. She rushed across the room, throwing her arms around him to breathe in his familiar odor of book dust and wood oil.
“Careful,” he said with a full-bellied chuckle. “Squeeze any harder, and I might pop. How’d your big night go?”
She shook her head against his chest, not wanting to go back over it. Not again. Not yet.
“That good, huh?” He hugged her tighter but left it there. Though he might not have known the details, he didn’t need to understand to offer comfort; he only held her in silence until she was ready to let go.
Rowan pulled back, taking a deep breath as her father gestured her over to the fireplace, where flames filled the room with the presence of roasting wood. The familiar, well-worn surface of a burgundy futon was ready for her, warmed by the fire. She tucked her feet into the cushions and snuggled beneath a macramé blanket her grandmother had made. It still held faint traces of Madeleine Midwinter’s sandalwood scent.
The memory was bitter with the knowledge that she hadn’t been home in her grandmother’s final months. Though the old woman’s decline had been slow, her death had happened cruelly fast, and Rowan hadn’t gotten to say good-bye.
“I hope I didn’t wake you,” she said.
“Nah,” said her dad. “I’d already planned to stay up and drive you. Imagine my surprise when you called and said you were in a sports car with Dennis McCreery’s son.”
Rowan chuckled. “Hard to believe it myself. It was pleasant for a little while…until he went full McCreery.”
“How much’d you bite off?”
Rowan winced. “Pretty much his entire head.”
The more time passed since the car ride, the less righteous she felt in her anger. Was it possible that what he’d said about her grandmother had been true?
“Dad,” she said, “do you happen to remember how late Grandma ended up being on the mortgage for the old house?”
“Oh gosh,” he said, scratching his cheek as he thought about it. “Mmm, very. Five months? Six?”
Her jaw dropped. Gavin had been telling the truth, and that meant her grandmother had lied. She felt even worse about how she’d behaved in the car and made a promise to herself that if she ran into him, she’d apologize. His face lingered in her mind’s eye until she consciously dismissed it, caught off guard by its persistence.
Together, they listened to the crackle of the fire as it licked and popped its way through the stack of wood. Hypnotized, Rowan simply watched it for a time, until the anxieties lodged like splinters in her fingernails would no longer stay down.
“Dad, do you know why Mom was so desperate for me to come home this year?”
Her father’s gaze remained fixed on the fire. “Well, she misses you. We all have.”
“Really? That’s it? It has nothing to do with the complete lack of snow?”
