A Town Called Christmas. Carrie Alexander

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      She gripped his shoulders. “You’re really here! You made it home for Christmas.”

      “A promise is a promise, Merrylegs.” Nicky tilted his head back. He bumped their noses. “Don’t cry.”

      “I’m not.” She hadn’t expected to be so sentimental, but Shannon and Mom were watching with red-rimmed eyes and watery smiles. In the background, Nicky’s sons bounced off the couch with excitement.

      “Where were you?” he asked.

      “Mom sent me out for provisions.”

      Grace York dabbed the corners of her eyes with her apron, then retrieved the bags of groceries Meredith had dropped when she’d greeted Nicky. “My goodness. What’s this? Goat cheese? Capers? What are we going to do with capers? I hope you didn’t forget the marshmallows.”

      Shannon, Nicky’s wife, had joined the siblings’ embrace. She leaned her cheek against her husband’s. “Skip and Georgie have their hearts set on church window cookies.”

      Meredith unwound herself. She rubbed her eyes. “Of course I remembered the marshmallows, Mom.”

      “Roquefort and goat cheese,” Grace clucked as she rummaged through the groceries.

      “I thought I’d make something different for tonight—hors d’oeuvres.”

      “Hors d’oeuvres. Fancy! Who are we trying to impress?”

      Meredith flushed.

      “She’s got city taste now, Grammadear.” Charlie York, the clan patriarch who’d remained fully involved in all activities since his retirement, stepped into the foyer with his sleepy granddaughter draped over his shoulder. At nine months old, Kathlyn Grace was the newest and much-adored addition to the family. “Don’t fuss at the girl.”

      Meredith rolled her eyes as she slipped out of her coat and hung it on one of the wall hooks. She was thirty-six. Her hand went to her waist—her disappearing waist—as she bent to knock the snow off her boots. Certainly no longer a girl.

      “Where’s your friend?” she asked Nicky. Without considering why, she chose to keep her meeting with Michael Kavanaugh to herself for a while longer.

      “At the Cheer. I’m going now to pick him up.” Nick nuzzled his wife’s ear. “Want to come along, honey?”

      Shannon glowed. Seeing their happiness brought both thankfulness and a pang of longing to Meredith’s heart. For more than a decade, she’d been satisfied with her thriving career as a human resources director for a large financial services firm, the high-rise condo she’d bought on Chicago’s Gold Coast and her lengthy live-in relationship with Greg Conway, a financial analyst she’d met at work. Then, suddenly in the past year, everything had changed.

      “Hurry back,” Grace said. The slender, silver-haired homemaker was as active as her husband, involved in many church and community activities, in addition to her regular book club meetings and t’ai chi classes. “Dinner’s in the oven.”

      “It’s your favorite,” Shannon said as she and Nicky put on their coats and boots. “Pot roast and mashed potatoes.”

      He moaned. “I can’t wait. I’ve been dreaming about Mom’s cooking.”

      Shannon paused while wrapping a scarf around her dark brown hair. “What about mine?”

      He grinned wolfishly as she preceded him out the door. “You’re in the other dreams.”

      Meredith gave Nicky another hug before he left, then stood in the farmhouse doorway, watching the couple drive down the long, dark driveway, until her mother complained that she was letting in the cold air.

      I want that. Merry shut the door and absentmindedly straightened the jumble of the kids’ snow boots, hats and insulated mittens. There, Mom, I admitted it. I wish I was married.

      She’d lived with Greg for nearly seven years and had sworn up and down that a marriage certificate wasn’t important to her. That had seemed honest, at the time. What she hadn’t understood was how much the present situation would turn her previous perceptions topsy-turvy.

      But would she marry Greg now, if he came back to her on bended knee? Definitely not. That ship had sailed. Only her mother still clung to the hope that there’d be a last-second wedding to save the day.

      “Auntie Merry, Auntie Merry!” Skip and Georgie, her rambunctious nephews, burst into the foyer. “Grammadear said you’d help us make the church window cookies.”

      “Not tonight, I’m afraid. I have the hors d’oeuvres to do.”

      Georgie tilted his face upward. He was six years old, blond and freckled like his older brother. “What’s ‘oardurves’?”

      She ruffled his hair. “Nibbly bits before dinner. Dolled up veggies and bread.”

      “Like crackers spread with Cheez Whiz,” Skip said with authority. He was three years older than his brother and terribly sure of himself. With his father away on a sea tour, then on shore duty for the past six months, Skip had become serious about his role as man of the family. “And olives.”

      “Can I eat them?” Skip asked.

      “You can try one,” Merry agreed. The anchovy-and-pepper mix she’d planned for the bruschetta was sure to be too spicy for the boys. What had she been thinking? Her family was accustomed to plain home cooking, not the five-star cuisine she’d discovered in Chicago’s best restaurants. They’d be baffled by amuse bouche and dumbstruck by dim sum. Her parents shared their insulated community’s general distrust of visitors with sophisticated ways and a taste for change.

      But I’m not a visitor. Meredith herded the boys to the kitchen. I’m here to stay.

      When heart troubles had prompted her father’s retirement at the same time her relationship with Greg was cracking like an overboiled egg, she’d returned to take over the family business. Thus far, every improvement she’d wanted to implement had been a struggle for control. Her parents had run the York Tree Farm since their wedding forty years ago, with Charlie overseeing the Christmas tree operation and Grace managing Evergreen, the seasonal gift and sandwich shop that served the cut-your-own-tree customers who began showing up in November.

      Meredith glanced into the family room, where her father jiggled the baby on his knee while she goggled at the sparkling ornaments and blinking lights of the Christmas tree. In the kitchen, her mother hummed a carol to herself while seasoning a pot of frozen green beans.

      They’ll learn to adjust. Meredith smoothed the drape of her oversize cable-knit sweater. So will I.

      After the elation of Nicky’s return, her mood had turned into melancholy. Although surrounded by family, there were times that she felt very alone.

      TWENTY MINUTES LATER, the pot roast was out of the oven and the hors d’oeuvres well underway. Meredith heard the stomping of boots in the foyer. She hastily pulled a pan of bread slices from beneath the broiler. “It’s called bruschetta, Mom.”

      Grace flapped a pot holder at the СКАЧАТЬ