“I believe it’s four and a half, but we Donnelly men are high achievers.”
She met his eyes and grinned. He gazed steadily back, bracing himself against the tenderness stealing through his heart.
Over the past days, he’d come to realize that the attraction he’d experienced for her at the garage sale wasn’t random at all. It had turned into a pattern. A habit. Every time he saw her, it magnified in strength. Each day, he grew more certain of his feelings.
That’s not to say that this thing between them didn’t surprise him, because it did. It was like finding a treasure he’d never thought to hunt for, and didn’t think he deserved, lying right in his path.
Maddie chewed idly on a fingernail as she considered the cars.
She was funny, sweet, and unselfish, and he had no idea how she’d react if he were to ask her out. No idea.
Maddie might think of him as nothing more than a friend. If he put her in a position where she was forced to let him down gently, not only would he be crushed, but he’d feel like an idiot. He’d then have to live beside her here in Merryweather for years with the knowledge of her gentle rejection between them.
On December nineteenth, Maddie pulled the pages her grandmother had sent her from their envelope. She scooted a chair up to the kitchen table in her apartment and smoothed the pages flat alongside the brooch, the bag it had come in, and a napkin mounded with potato chips.
Using the family tree her aunt Susan had compiled, Maddie was finally able to locate the name of her grandmother’s great-grandmother. Ruth Holister Fulbright Azlin. She was the one with the four initials. She had four initials because she had indeed been married twice. It looked as though her first husband had died six years after their marriage when Ruth was only twenty-two.Twenty-two. Holy cow.
Working slowly, she matched name after name to the initials. With each mystery solved, a fresh dose of satisfaction gusted through her. She studied each woman’s birthplace, her age at the time of her marriage, the number of her children, the length of her life.
She had the sense that history was rushing forward into the present. These women, whose blood still flowed in her veins, whose legacy she’d inherited, had sewn their initials into the fabric of this bag with their very own hands.
Her grandmother had been right. All of them were direct ancestors of Maddie’s except the very first set of initials, LD. The second set of initials belonged to Sarah Gooding Everard, who’dbeen born in England and died in America. However, Sarah’s mother’s initials weren’t LD.
The stack of paper contained a photocopy of a photograph that had been taken of Sarah around the end of the Civil War, when she’d been sixty. She looked out from the photograph with a secret kind of a smile, surrounded by her large family.
A few of Sarah’s letters had also been photocopied. They were hard to read, but with patience, Maddie was able to decipher them. One of the letters, written shortly after Sarah’s marriage, referenced a woman who’d apparently employed her in England as a companion. Lady Densbury.
LD.
“Well, what do you know?” Maddie whispered. She sat back in her chair with a huff of surprise. It seemed that their family brooch had begun life in the possession of a British aristocrat.
Maddie slid a fingertip wonderingly over the surface of the brooch’s amethyst. “You have an excellent pedigree.”
She intended to take far better care of the brooch than her mom had. After Christmas, she’d have it professionally cleaned and appraised. Then she’d hire someone to hand-embroider her mom’s initials and wedding year into the delicate fabric of the bag.
The silver contours of the brooch gleamed beneath the light of the chandelier.
Maddie didn’t actually believe that the brooch contained magic, in large part because she didn’t believe that magic existed. The only higher power she believed in was God.
Yet, it couldn’t be denied that this brooch, with its overlapping hearts, was a powerful symbol of her birthright. The prior caretakers of this piece of jewelry had loved greatly and been loved greatly. They’d all enjoyed long marriages. Not because of magic. Because they’d been generous, loyal, sacrificial, and committed to their relationships.
She wanted to believe that she could experience the same thing her ancestors had. For the same reasons.
At this point, though, her marriage prospects, and thus the brooch’s future, were extraordinarily uncertain.
She was a twenty-seven-year-old woman who, in four days time, would be taking her mother to the Mission:Christmas party as her significant other.
On December twenty-first, Maddie and Leo met to purchase nonperishable groceries for Kim’s Christmas Eve and Christmas Day meals. As had become their habit, Leo pushed the cart. Maddie consulted her list and tried not to peer at Leo when he wasn’t looking.
At this point, here’s what she knew for sure about the status of her relationship with Leo: they’d grown closer because they saw each other often and communicated with each other every single day.
Here’s what she didn’t know: whether she could expect their newfound closeness to continue after Mission:Christmas wrapped. And whether he harbored an iota of romantic interest in her.
There were moments—fleeting moments—when he’d gaze at her with pensive softness. Those moments tempted her to think that maybe hehadcome to feel something for her. But then the moment would pass and that notion would seem farfetched.
What she’d told Britt at Sweet Art continued to weigh on her mind.“Leo and Charlie are Olivia’s guys.”
Then Britt’s arguments would counter.“Leo is perfectly free to date anyone he wants now. And so are you.”
