“I can’t keep her girlfriends straight,” Sloane said.
“No, no, this isn’t a girlfriend,” Nina said. “I told you. A friend only.Just like Adele, always taking care of people down on their luck.”
“Oh?” Manish said.
“Yes, this one’s a musician like you all, though Nashville-style, you know? Guitars and moody lyrics, I believe.” Nina laughed. “Her name’s unusual too.” She folded her arms against the icy air as the car came to a stop. “Something like Leighton or Crighton…No, that’s not it…”
Snickerdoodle leaned heavily against Charlotte, and she found she didn’t mind. His weight was nice—grounding—and her hand smoothed over his head as she watched Sloane hurry around to the car’s driver’s side and open the door. A woman stepped out, and she and Sloane hugged. They were nearly the same height, but didn’t look much alike beyond that. Adele’s skin was a shade darker, and she wore her hair in braids, while Sloane’s was all natural curls. Adele had glasses on and wore a navy peacoat unbuttoned over a collared shirt and jeans with brown boots.
A flurry of Berry hugs started again, such a cacophony of laughing and questions that, at first, Charlotte didn’t notice the second woman who had stepped out of the car’s passenger seat. Long dark hair, a red-and-white plaid coat, a leather satchel across her body. She stood oddly, with one booted foot half-propped on the inside of her other ankle. Charlotte narrowed her eyes, her heart stuttering to a near stop.
Only one person she knew had ever stood like that.
And that person was staring straight at her, eyes wide, mouth open in a tiny pink circle.
“Brighton!” Nina announced in triumph as she released Adeleand pointed at the woman over the car’s hood. “That’s it—that’s your name.”
Adele’s friend shook her head, her throat moving in a hard swallow. Then she laughed. “It…it is. How are you, Ms. Berry?”
“Oh my goodness, call me Nina.”
Charlotte stood frozen, her fingers curling into Snickerdoodle’s fur, staring as Nina pulled the woman into her arms. Charlotte blinked, waiting for the scene to change, to wake up, anything.
But no. A pair of dark eyes met hers over Nina’s shoulder. Eyes she hadn’t seen in five years and never, ever wanted to see again.
Chapter 4
Adele maneuvered their rental caronto a snowy lane nestled in the mountains, revealing her childhood home, and Brighton had never seen anything so beautiful.
Well, aside from her own home on Lake Michigan, icy waves and frosty sand in the backyard instead of grass, her playground as a kid, and Christmas lights on every possible surface of her sage-green house. Every year, her parents’ goal was to make their exterior decorations as over-the-top as possible, fullNational Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation–style. The holiday wasn’t the holiday without a call from the power company.
Brighton smiled to herself, letting her mind drift over the memories, aching to hear her mom yelling at her dad from the back porch, warning him to try to avoid falling into the bushes this year. Lola had always loved decorating, and she’d even climbed a ladder the year she turned seventeen to help secure icicle lights to the eaves.
Brighton cleared her throat, blinked Winter River, Colorado, back into focus, and checked her phone again.
No notifications.
Her parents had been in France for three days now, and she’d only talked to her mother once. She felt slightly ridiculous, like a little kid missing her mother even though she was nearly thirty years old, but it was Christmas, and shedidmiss her mother.
“What do you think?” Adele asked as she honked the horn.
Brighton looked up as the house loomed closer, all warm and glowing, the twilit clouds pink and orange and swirling across the Rockies behind it.
It was idyllic.
It was perfect.
It wasn’t her home.
“It’s lovely,” she said, which was true. She did her best to swallow the lump in her throat, but she couldn’t help the emotions swirling in her chest. Still, Adele had invited her here, and she was determined to be grateful.
She leaned forward, squinting through the slightly fogged windshield at all the people standing in the Berry family driveway. “Is your mom having a party?”
Adele laughed. “Not yet, god help us. That’s my sister and her music group. I didn’t tell you she was bringing the whole crew?”
Brighton shook her head, craning her neck to see better. She saw Adele’s mom and a man in an olive-green bomber jacket, a person with short pink hair who wore a bright-yellow scarf, and a third person in a dark peacoat and a black beanie hat, a huge dog leaning against her legs. Brighton knew Adele’s younger sister was a musician, some classically trained type who lived and worked in New York City.
“What does your sister play again?” she asked.
