Page 4 of The Christmas Stroll

Maggie closed her eyes and counted to three. Her mother had always been impossible, but this was different. Helen didn’t pull rank unless she was defending ground she herself knew was shaky.

“Lucy says vendors are getting conflicting information. The Flour Jar has two different Saturday parade setup times for Willow Street. Nobody seems to know who’s installing the harbor lighting, and the event is next weekend. That doesn’t sound like a mere difference of opinion - ”

“It’s being handled.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.” Helen’s voice softened slightly, but the firmness underneath didn’t move. “I know you’re very good at what you do, darling. You’ve built a wonderful career in Boston, and I’m proud of you. But this is Nantucket and it’s the Stroll and again, I have been doing this longer than you’ve been alive. I don’t need you to swoop in and fix things. Everything is under control.”

Maggie closed her eyes. That, right there, was the tell.

‘Everything is under control’ had never once, in the entire history of her mother, preceded a situation that was actually under control.

She pressed her free hand against her forehead. “I’m not trying to swoop in. I’m simply trying to understand what’s going on.”

“What’s going on is that Marianne Callahan is being unreasonable, and I’m letting her have her moment, and everything will be fine on the day.” Helen’s voice regained its brightness, the same determinedly cheerful tone she’d used at the start of the call. “Now, tell me about your event. How many guests tonight?”

“Four hundred.”

“Lovely. And the client’s happy?”

“Mom - ”

“I’m sure they’re thrilled. You always do such beautiful work.” The clink of the teacup again, and Maggie could picture her mother sitting in the house on Union Street, perfectly composed, perfectly certain she was right. “And now I should really let you get back to it. Give my love to Lucy when you talk to her next, won’t you? And be sure to tell her that everything is under control.”

The line promptly went dead.

Maggie stood there for another moment, device still in hand and let herself acknowledge what she’d known almost as soon as Lucy called.

Her mother was lying. Not maliciously, but comprehensively.

And the Christmas Stroll - the event that had shaped every Nantucket December of Maggie’s childhood - was mere days away from disaster.

She called Lucy back.

It barely rang. Her friend answered as though she had been sitting with the phone in her lap. Waiting.

“Well?”

“She says it’s just a slight miscommunication about the harbor walk lighting.”

Lucy exhaled, a long one. “Right. Okay. Then I’m going to tell you the un-slight version.” Her friend wasn’t chuckling this time. The warmth was still there, but the humor had gone thin over it. “Maggie, they haven’t spoken. For an entire week. Your mom and Marianne. Marianne isn’t taking Helen’s calls and Helen’s too proud to try anymore and Marianne’s running all her Stroll communication through third-parties. One of the volunteers; some poor girl who works at the fudge shop, told me all this yesterday.”

Maggie walked to a wall by the ballroom entrance doors, pressed her free hand flat against it, cold under her palm, and made herself listen.

“It seems there are two chains of command,” Lucy went on, “and neither of them knows what the other one’s said, and the instructions going out to the vendors are half from Helen, and half from Marianne-through-the-fudge-girl or whoever, and none of them are complete, because each of them assumes the other’s covering her half.” A pause. Maggie heard her friend set something down. “Like I said, The Flour Jar got two setup times. Eight and ten. Fifty years Tom says, and this is the first time anybody’s had to check.”

“And the lighting …”

“Ah. The harbor lighting is the good part.” Lucy’s voice went dry as sand. “The company that usually does the installation hasn’t had a confirmed yes from anybody. Not from Helen, or Marianne. Because Helen thinks Marianne cancelled in a huff over her fancy new LED display, and Marianne thinks Helen overrode the new display for the traditional one, and so neither of them placed any works order at all. So as of tonight, Maggie, with the Stroll less than a week away, the harbor walk has no lights at all. Not the old ones. Not the new ones. Nothing.” Lucy let that land. “I started out finding all this pretty funny, I’ll be honest with you. Two old dames in their seventies passing notes through other people; it’s got a certain charm. But it’s stopped being funny now.”

Maggie’s chest tightened. She thought about her mother sitting in her living-room armchair, teacup in hand, voice bright and certain. She thought about Marianne Callahan - the practical, sharp-witted diva who had co-run the Stroll for decades - refusing to speak to her oldest friend.

She thought about committee members showing up at vendor meetings looking miserable, indirectly delivering instructions they probably didn’t want to deliver.

And she thought about the Stroll itself. The lights, the crowds, the smell of cider and pine, Santa’s boat coming into harbor. The weekend that had marked every December of her life.

“This is not good at all,” Maggie said. “Thank you for telling me.”