“Bring it.”
Sylvie plugged in the lights and illuminated our handiwork. My jaw dropped open.
The front porch of the lodge looked like something out of a fairy tale, with trees of varying sizes twinkling in the darkness. Through the windows, I could see more lights glowing in the main hall where we’d positioned the larger trees.
It was officially a winter wonderland at Northwood Lodge.
Somehow, this simple, quaint, modest display felt more magical to me than any Bancroft party I’d ever attended. Some of those had cost upward of five hundred thousand dollars. There was something authentic about it, something that couldn’t be bought or manufactured.
“What do you think?” Sylvie asked, standing beside me as we surveyed our work.
“It’s incredible,” I said. “You were right about the balancing thing. I have no idea how you do it, but it works.”
She beamed at the compliment, her face glowing in the light from the trees. “It’s all about understanding what each treewants to be. You can’t force it into some predetermined vision. You have to work with what you’ve got.”
I found myself wondering if she was still talking about trees or if there was a deeper meaning buried in her words. Either way, looking at her in that moment, something shifted inside my chest.
“Come on, I’ll feed you dinner,” she said. “I’m starving.”
“Shit, I passed starving hours ago,” I said.
She led me into the quiet kitchen, which felt like stepping into the heart of the lodge. It was clearly a working kitchen, not the showpiece kind my family was used to but the kind where real meals got made for real people. Cast iron pans hung from hooks, well-worn wooden cutting boards leaned against the backsplash, and the whole space smelled faintly of cinnamon and something savory that made my stomach growl audibly.
“Sit,” Sylvie commanded, gesturing toward a small table tucked into a corner by the window. “I’ll heat something up.”
I watched as she pulled containers from the refrigerator, moving around the kitchen with the kind of easy familiarity that spoke of countless hours spent in this exact space. She heated up what looked like some kind of casserole and sliced thick pieces of bread, all while humming softly under her breath. I had a feeling she was used to eating alone hours after dinner had been served.
There was something deeply satisfying about watching her take care of me like this. Not in the way I was used to being taken care of—not by hired staff or servers who were paid to anticipate my needs—but in the way someone cared for a person they actually gave a damn about.
When she set a steaming plate in front of me, my mouth watered. Whatever it was, it smelled incredible.
“Stacy’s famous chicken and rice casserole,” she said, settling into the chair across from me with her own plate. “She alwaysmakes extra, thank God, because I completely forgot about dinner.”
The first bite was amazing, comfort food at its finest. The kind of meal that made you understand why people talked about their grandmother’s cooking with such reverence.
“This is incredible,” I said around another mouthful.
Sylvie smiled, looking pleased by my reaction. “Don’t tell Stacy I said this, but she’s actually a better cook than my mom. Mom’s great at a lot of things, but she tends to get distracted in the kitchen. Last week she burned mac and cheese from a box.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “How do you burn boxed mac and cheese?”
“Very easily, apparently. She got caught up in a phone call with someone from the knitting circle and forgot she had the stove on. The whole kitchen smelled like burnt pasta.”
We ate in comfortable silence for a few minutes, both of us too hungry to maintain much conversation. But as the worst of my hunger subsided, curiosity got the better of me.
“Do you work like this every day?” I asked, gesturing vaguely to encompass the long hours of physical labor we’d just put in.
She nodded without hesitation. “Yeah, sometimes more. There’s always something that needs doing around here. Trees to cut, guests to help, maintenance issues to fix, events to plan. It’s not a nine-to-five kind of job.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of it?”
She considered the question seriously, twirling her fork through the rice on her plate. “No. I love it. It’s who I am. I honestly don’t know what I would do without it. It’s my life. It would kill me to lose this place. I think I would go crazy with nothing to do.”
I winced and shoved another bite of food in my mouth to keep from having to say anything. I did not want to be the one that took away her purpose.
CHAPTER 23
SYLVIE
