I wasn’t ready to let it go. Not yet.
I clutched my notebook tighter, the paper crinkling under my fingers, and whispered a prayer. “God help us. We’re going to make this Christmas Eve festival legendary. The kind they talk about for years.”
This is my promise. I’ll do all I can—with all the help I can get. I’m not giving in that easily.
But even as I said it, doubt crept in, cold and quiet, wrapping around my heart.
What if legendary wasn’t enough?
Would it ever be?
I wasn’t ready to let it go. Not yet.
Chapter 12 - Letters from the Past
Max
I hadn’t meant to spend half the afternoon cooped up inside the old office. Not when the ranch was short-handed, and every pair of hands, especially mine, counted outside.
But with Mr. Hollings’s visit still rattling around my head like loose change in a tin can, and the upcoming festival deadline inching closer by the hour, I desperately needed to track down some of the old financial records. Maybe something—anything—I could unearth to help our case, to show Hollings, to buy us just a little more time.
The old office in the south wing hadn’t been touched in years, locked away like a forgotten memory. The air inside feltstagnant, heavy with the faint scent of dust and a ghost of pine cleaner.
Files were shoved haphazardly into warped, creaking cabinets, their contents overflowing, papers yellowed and brittle at the edges. I muttered under my breath, the sound rough, as I pried open a particularly stuck drawer, fighting against time and stubborn wood.
I was halfway through sorting a stack of brittle, barely legible invoices when my fingers brushed against something unexpected: a worn, leather-bound journal, wedged tightly behind a row of thick ledgers. When I pulled it free, dislodging a puff of dust, a single, faded envelope fluttered out, drifting silently to the floor.
I bent and picked it up. The handwriting on the front stopped me cold.
For Dad.
Return address: Caroline Henderson.
My thumb brushed over the name. Ella’s mother. The daughter who’d walked away from this ranch years ago, leaving behind a trail of hurt and silence.
My instincts told me to put the letter back, to tuck it away and pretend I hadn’t seen it. But something deeper, a quiet ache in my own chest—if it had survived this long hidden in a book, maybe it had been waiting to be read. Maybe it needed to be.
I unfolded the paper.
I don’t expect forgiveness, but I needed you to know that I never stopped loving Starcrest. I think about the ranch every December. The smell of pine, the frost on the fence rails. I miss the quiet mornings.
I miss you, even if I’ll never admit it out loud. I’m sorry I left the way I did. I was young and angry, and I thought love had to come without conditions. But now that I have Ella, I understand why you tried to protect me. I hope one day she’ll understand too.
The letter didn’t say everything, but it said enough. Enough to tug at something in my chest I hadn’t let myself feel in a long time.
Caroline had never really let go.
I folded the paper slowly, my hands suddenly unsteady, the weight of the letter heavier than I expected. Ella needed to read this, I knew that deep in my gut. But the timing—after everything we’d just faced, after yesterday’s brutal deadline—I wasn’t sure how she’d take it. Would it be a comfort, or just another wound?
I slid the letter into my back pocket and left the office, stepping out into the cold just as Sarah pulled up in her flour-dusted station wagon. She climbed out holding a bakery box and a brown paper sack.
“Thought I’d drop these off,” she called. “Cinnamon rolls for the crew. And a pecan pie for you, if you play your cards right.”
I blinked. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know.” She gave me a knowing look. “But sometimes kindness is as necessary as coffee. Or duct tape.”
A genuine, though still lopsided, smile touched my lips. “You always show up at just the right time, Sarah.”
