“It’s too early to drink alcohol,” said Wanda Crocker, who had nowhere else to go for the holidays. “I’ll have some sweet tea.”
“I’ll get it,” Nan said.
“No, no,” Eric scolded, emerging from the kitchen. “You are a guest tonight.”
Nan lived with her folks in the trailer park on the outskirts of town. Talk was her parents drank their holiday dinner. I didn’t know them well enough to say. But their daughter was a fine young woman.
“I’ll help,” Alec said.
Love filled my chest. Our family was growing, expanding the walls of my heart. “We can all pitch in. We’re all family here.”
Amy squeezed Trey’s arm, making the enormous rock in her engagement ring flash. “Officially, soon.”
“Oak Hill is a home again,” Phee said, feeding a cracker to her dog. “The way it was meant to be.”
I looked at Ash, lying on the rug in front of the fireplace, with DJ and Robbie. Maybe he was finally the man he was meant to be, too.
His new job took him away a lot. Which was fine. I’d always been independent. But now when he came home, he was reallythere, in ways he hadn’t been before. I couldn’t ask for more.
Robbie knocked down the tower of blocks, and DJ patiently built them up again. The twins had started kindergarten this fall, in separate classes. It seemed to me the boy was coming into his own, out from the shadow of his sister.
“Have you guys set a wedding date yet?” Jo asked.
“We thought... in the spring.” Trey glanced at his grandfather, sitting by the fire. “We don’t want to wait too long.”
“Do you have a venue?” Meg asked.
Amy shook her head. “Not yet.”
“Wherever Amy wants,” Trey said.
Phee sniffed. “You’re very agreeable.”
Trey winked at her. “Because she’s always right,” he said before he went off to talk to his grandfather, their heads close together, their profiles lit by the fire. Discussing the wedding? Or the opening of the new farmers’ market?
“You could have the wedding here,” Jo said. “At Oak Hill.”
Amy’s eyes shone. “You wouldn’t mind the fuss?”
“Well...”
“There is no fuss,” Eric said. “It is no trouble at all. We will make a special menu, yeah?”
“Hey.” Alec came back from the kitchen, waving a glass of sweet tea in one hand and his phone in the other. “Beth’s song is on Spotify!”
“No surprise,” Jo said. “It’s a Christmas song, right? It’s playing everywhere.”
“Not ‘Leave a Candle in Your Window.’ The new one!”
“‘For Better or Worse’?” Meg asked.
Amy was scrolling on her phone. “It’s on iTunes, too.” She tapped. The singer’s voice, pure and powerful, filled the room.
“Oh my God,” Nan said. “Is that Carrie Underwood?”
Beth nodded. “She’s so nice. Dewey thought... She wants to record ‘Shadowland,’ too.” Dewey Stratton, some executive with her record label. “I might go up to Nashville. To do background vocals.”
“I’m so proud of you!” Jo exclaimed.
