“Um. Yes…?”
He sighed. “Come on, Rowan. Did you let people down? Sure. But was Grandma’s house your fault? Hell no. No one’s got that much control over fate.” He nudged her with his elbow. “You’ve so done your time for that one. Besides, if there’s one waynotto make up for leaving the coven high and dry—”
“It’s doing it again,” finished Rowan. “Literally, in this case.”
“Bingo. All we’re asking is you be our eighth.”
A swell of anxiety rose in her throat. “But I haven’t cast in years.”Intentionally.“And this is important. If I mess it up—”
He held up a hand. “We’ll never know it was you, because we were all involved, equally capable of fucking it up. Besides, once we put the spell out.” He waved a hand. “What happens, happens.”
She stared at him, both impressed and annoyed. “How did you end up so chill about everything? We were raised in the same house!”
A flicker of sympathy passed over her brother’s face. “But with different expectations.”
Her heart swelled with gratitude at his acknowledgment.
“So…?” he asked.
“So,” she said with a sigh, “it’s a lot harder to storm away when someone’s nice and understanding, instead of harsh and judgy.”
“Mom’s under a lot of pressure.”
“I’ll think about it.”
Stephan raised his arms. “She’s thinking about it! We’re on!”
“I just said I’d think about it!”
“Yeah, and you overthink things, which means when you lay out the facts, you’ll realize you’ll never know what would’ve happened if you tried. And you don’t like not knowing things, so…” Her mouth dropped at the infallible logic, and her brother grinned in triumph. “Now, go enjoy your Victorian cheese.”
Stephan waved her away, discarding his flannel overshirt and starting up the chain saw with a yank and a whir. As he resumed excavating a raven from a stump of Western red cedar, a gaggle of college girls came to a stop, not so subtly recording him on their phones. He hoisted the chain saw in a dramatic and unnecessary effort, flashing his muscles to his admirers.
“Oh, Stephan,” Rowan said with an affectionate eye roll.
Some things never changed.
9
The path to the main stage went past Santa’s carousel, and Rowan slowed to watch it complete a full turn. It was small, but the workmanship was as impressive as any, carved and painted to brilliant detail, festooned with gilt and lit up with bulbous lights. Like most things at the festival, it’d been made by the people of Elk Ridge.
Her grandfather had felled the wood they’d carved the animals from, and he’d carved Rudolph, who flew at the front of Santa’s team with a giddy teenage girl on his back.
There was only room for eleven riders, one on each reindeer and two with Santa in the sleigh, but it still enchanted Rowan’s adult eyes. Held aloft by candy cane pillars, the reindeer descended and ascended in a rippling formation against a black velvet backdrop fixed with tinkling spots, which created the illusion of a journey through a starry night.
Instead of the usual old man with a beard, a furry Sasquatch dressed in Santa’s reds sat in the driver’s seat. Santa-squatch hadbeen delighting visitors young and old for as long as she could remember, and in all those years, she’d never figured out who was in the costume.
Or whether it evenwasa costume. She squinted his way, allowing herself to spend a momentwondering,before moving on.
The carolers had assembled on the stage in an assortment of tartan period costumes. The feminine singers had their hands stuffed in heavy white fur muffs, while the masculine all wore tall stovepipe hats.
As Rowan claimed a spot toward the center of the audience, a woman’s high-pitched laugh caught her attention. That was when she noticed a familiar face in the crowd.
Standing only a few feet away was Gavin with the laughing woman at his side, the two of them standing so close that their bodies brushed with the sway of her amusement. The woman was tall and slender, wearing a solid white parka with a silver faux-fur collar and matching hat that slouched to frame her pale blond hair, which split to fall in strands over her high, defined cheekbones. Her makeup was impeccable, her hair was smooth as butter, and her pants were pressed free of wrinkles.
This woman was, in short, everything Rowan had been searching for at the airport, and her stomach soured as she was left aware of the small mat forming in the underside of her curls, the worn cuffs of her sweater, the pooch in her stomach.
Gavin’s companion reached out and adjusted his coat, sliding her hand down his chest when she was done. The intimacy of the gesture only intensified Rowan’s unwelcome feelings. She made to slip away to another part of the crowd, but before she could, Gavin caught sight of her.
