by Donna Ball
Paul took the briefcase that Geoffery carried and led the way toward the house. “Your books arrived earlier this week, and we have over thirty people scheduled to attend the reading tomorrow. I know it’s nothing like the crowds you’re used to,” he apologized, “but it’s quite a treat for our little community to have you here. We’ve put you in the Sunflower Room,” he went on, opening the front door and gesturing Geoffery inside. “It gets marvelous morning light.”
“Actually,” said Geoffery, glancing around disinterestedly, “I prefer to sleep in. You have blackout draperies, I presume?”
Paul looked momentarily nonplussed. “Well, of course. Whatever you prefer. Breakfast is from six to nine, but of course we’ll be happy to make you a bite whenever you request.”
“Good,” said Geoffery, still sounding less than interested.
“Dinner will be at seven thirty tonight,” Paul went on, “served family style, and afterwards caroling and hot chocolate in the gardens. They’re really quite spectacular—the carolers, I mean—but do bundle up to enjoy the show. Meantime, I hope you’ll join us for wassail and cheeses in the parlor as soon as you’re settled in.”
By this time they had reached the reception area, where Derrick was introducing Mrs. Hildebrand to the massage therapists. Park Sung and Kim Gi nodded enthusiastically as the older woman rattled off a confident string of Oriental words and Derrick’s eyes lit up.
“You speak Korean!” he exclaimed. Then, lowering his voice confidentially he added, “Could you possibly ask them to move their trailer from our parking lot?”
Mrs. Hildebrand accepted a cup of wassail from the tray offered by the persistently smiling Kim Gi and replied, “Nonsense. I don’t speak Korean. I thought they were Japanese.” She moved off toward her room.
Geoffery took a cup as well, bowed his head, and said, “Domo arigato.” To Paul he said, “Thank you, but I’m rather tired. I believe I’ll rest until dinner.”
Paul and Derrick barely had time to exchange a puzzled shrug before the next limo arrived. Bob and Sheila Matheson were not, as Paul had assumed, young honeymooners, but newlyweds who were slightly beyond middle age and on their second marriage for each. He was comfortably plump and bespectacled, she was obviously no stranger to the gym or to the wonders of Botox. Both seemed cheerful and easygoing, ready to throw themselves wholeheartedly into everything the weekend had to offer.
The Bartletts arrived before the Mathesons had even been properly checked in, a big, messy family whose glassy eyes and rumpled exterior testified to the past two weeks spent in close confines with people they obviously didn’t like—each other. Carl Bartlett was so subdued as to almost fade into the background while his wife, Leona, kept running her fingers through her hair and muttering about never being able to get the smell of that car out of her hair. The oldest girl, Pam, had a bizarre haircut that was shaved on one side and fell in a lank purple curtain on the other, while Kelly, the younger daughter, looked almost normal—except for the short shorts, tee shirt and ankle boots she wore in thirty-five degree weather. Both girls were attached to their phones via earphones through which tinny, atonal music could be heard, and their thumbs never stopped texting. They each wore sullen, self-absorbed expressions that appeared to preclude the possibility of their either acknowledging or responding to the spoken word. Twice Paul had to remove a cup of strongly alcoholic wassail from the teenage Pam’s hand and replace it with spiced cider, and he was mightily glad to see the Bartlett family settled in their suite.
Angela Phipps was a lovely blond-haired woman with faded denim eyes and a quiet grace that somehow seemed designed to complement the tired, automatic smile that continually flitted across her face. She wore a sensible London Fog and Burberry plaid scarf for traveling, and beneath it wool slacks and a pink cashmere sweater. By the time their limo arrived at five o’clock, it was almost twilight, and a light misting snow drifted through the air, catching the twinkling lights that decorated the house and surrounding bushes like dancing fireflies. Her husband Bryce, a good-looking, well-tailored man of distinguished bearing and a quiet expression, offered his hand to assist her from the car, but she just sat there, staring out at the snow.
Mick, with one of their cases under each arm and snow mist sheening his face and hair, paused to smile down at her. “Everything okay, Mrs. Phipps?”
She blinked, and the automatic smile stretched her lips and was gone. “Fine. Thank you for asking.” She placed her hand in her husband’s and climbed out of the car. “It’s all quite lovely, isn’t it? Just like a postcard.”
She started toward the steps, then glanced back at Mick, a small line of puzzlement between her eyes. “Excuse me. You look familiar. Have we met?”
His eyes twinkled. “I shouldn’t be a bit surprised, a lovely lady like you and myself, known to have an eye for such things. There’s a little club in Perth I used to frequent in the nineties. Did we tango?”
She laughed, and her husband, glancing down at her, looked surprised, then he smiled. She said, “No, I don’t think so.”
He smiled. “Then it’s my loss.” He gestured the two of them to precede him. “You’re in the room with the purple door. Your bags will be waiting for you there.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Phipps, welcome!” Paul hurried down the steps with an umbrella to shield against the mist. “Mind your step, now. You look chilled. Mick will light the fire in your room straight away, but in the meantime we have hot drinks and snacks waiting for you. Come in, come in.”
By the time the last arrivals crossed the threshold at six fifteen, the public rooms of the Hummingbird House were brilliant with lights and chatter as guests wandered from their rooms to gather around the fire, admiring the Christmas trees, sipping wassail and tasting the cheeses. It was, for the most part, an amenable group, although in an ideal world, Geoffery Allen Windsor would have joined them and the two sullen texting teenagers would have stayed in their rooms.
William and Adele Canon arrived on a breath of winter air, rosy-cheeked and laughing and clearly ready to enjoy their holiday. “What a darling place!” exclaimed Adele. “I love it, I just love it! But how on earth did you arrange for the snow?”
“We had to order it in July,” Derrick confided as he helped her off with her coat, and she burst into more laughter.
“You’re darling!” she declared. “Isn’t he darling, Will?”
Paul came forward. “Welcome, Mr. and Mrs. Canon! Come in by the fire and have something to drink.” He extended an arm to usher them forward. “Let me introduce you to our staff. You’ve met our man, Mick? If you need anything at all, he’s your fellow. And here we have Park Sung and Kim Gi, specialists in reflexology and Oriental massage. Of course the steam room and the hot tub are available twenty-four hours, but we do ask that you book your massage time the night before …”
“Hold on there, young fella!” William Canon had a genial manner and a booming voice that echoed even over the sound of music and voices. “All I want to know is where the first hole is!”
Paul hesitated. “The, uh …?”
“That’s what I came here for, isn’t it? To play golf?”
When Paul, completely nonplussed, just stared at him, the other man gave a big roaring laugh and slapped him on the shoulder so hard that Paul staggered. “Got you with that one, didn’t I, old boy?”
Paul smiled weakly, and Adele Canon gave her husband a look of affectionate exasperation. “Oh, Will, really. It’s never funny.”
From behind them a female voice, rich with disbelief, said, “Will? Adele?”
Sheila Matheson stood at the door to the parlor, a cup of wassail in her hand. Her husband came to stand beside her, and his smile faded when he saw the newcomers. “Adele,” he said flatly. “Will.”
It seemed to take a moment for Adele to find her voice. “Bob,” she said. Then she looked at his wife. “Sheila.”
For the longest time the two couples just stared at each other, and the tension that crackle
d between them was palpable. Derrick instinctively moved between them, trying to find a smile. “You two know each other?”
Will said, without expression, “You could say that. I was married to Sheila for twelve years.”
Bob Matheson said, “And I was married to Adele for twenty.”
Adele Canon did not take her eyes off the other woman. “I thought you were on your honeymoon.”
“We are,” replied Sheila. “I thought you were skiing in Maine.”
“We were,” answered Adele. “Now we’re here.”
The stare-down went on another beat. Paul rubbed his hands together nervously. “Well,” he began, forcing enthusiasm. “What a coincidence.”
“It certainly is,” replied Adele, still staring at the other woman. “You said you were going to cancel your reservation.”
Sheila’s husband slipped his arm around her waist. “We changed our minds.” He looked at Will. “You said you were going to be in Palm Springs.”
“Changed our minds.”
“Well, for heaven’s sake,” exclaimed Sheila, moving forward. “Why in the world didn’t you say something? We could have driven down together!”
The two women embraced, laughing, and the two men shook hands heartily. “Will Canon, you old so-and-so, every time I see you, you look younger!”
“You keep promising me that round of golf, but somehow you never come through.”
“That’s because I’ve got better sense than to play with somebody who’s got nothing to do but work on his game. You skunk me every time.”
Adele said to Sheila, “Love your hair! Who did the highlights?”
And Sheila replied, “David Lee, he’s an absolute genius and charges for it too. Did you get the pictures I e-mailed you of Glenda and the baby?”
“No, I didn’t. When did you send them?”
“Never mind, I have them on my phone.”
While Sheila searched through her purse for her phone, Paul and Derrick looked from one to the other of them, baffled. “Well,” Paul said at last, a little weakly. “Isn’t this nice?”
Adele grinned. “This must seem odd. I sent Sheila the link to your website months ago, before we’d even made a reservation.”
“We thought it’d be fun to spend the holidays together,” Sheila went on, “but then we never could get our schedules straight.”
“But it turns out we did!” Adele said, beaming, and added to their hosts, “Sheila’s my younger sister.”
“And Will and I were business partners for twenty-five years,” added Bob, grinning.
“Until Pinnacle Records bought us out,” Will said. “I stayed on a few years as CEO, but it just wasn’t the same without my old bud.”
“We’re both too damn rich,” agreed Bob. “Takes all the fun out of working.”
“Just because we married the wrong person the first time around doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends,” said Sheila, thumbing through the pictures on her phone. “We just don’t get to see each other as much as we’d like.”
“Which is probably why we’re all still friends,” said Adele, laughing.
“Oh, wait, here they are!” Sheila held up the phone and everyone crowded around to see the pictures.
“Well,” Paul said, “Mr. and Mrs. Canon, you’re in the rose room. Your bags are already there if you’d like to freshen up. Dinner is in half an hour.”
“I’ll just go check on it,” Derrick said hurriedly.
“I’ll help,” Paul added. “Please enjoy the refreshments and, um … well, welcome to the Hummingbird House.”
But none of the four laughing people in the foyer even noticed when they were gone.
The snow shower lasted just long enough to add a fresh glisten to the gardens, which were spectacularly lit by pink, blue and white lights that twinkled from the trees and adorned the low shrubs. Flickering candle luminaries marched along the rock walls and lined the paths that meandered throughout the night garden. Outdoor heaters blew warm air across the upper patio, and a fire crackled and snapped in the stone fire pit at its center, sending orange and red cinders into the air which exploded against the night sky like miniature fireworks. It was here that everyone gathered, sipping hot chocolate spiked with Kahlua and rum and slathered with thick whipped cream, while silver-voiced carolers in Dickensonian costumes performed their concert in front of a cascading waterfall fountain where a perfectly animated, multicolored fiber-optic hummingbird fluttered its wings and dipped its head to drink. Wives leaned their heads contentedly against their husbands’ shoulders or wound their gloved fingers around a loved one’s arm. Mrs. Hildebrand, securely seated and bundled against the chill, sipped her chocolate and applauded by banging her cane on the stone floor, and even Geoffery Windsor, who had emerged from his room just as everyone was being seated for dinner, could be seen to smile in the glow of the firelight. The two mopey teenagers, whether by choice or command, did not attend the festivities, and no one, least of all their parents, seemed to mind.
Paul and Derrick, having made certain everyone had a full mug and was enjoying himself, stood toward the back, benignly gazing over the results of all their hard work. “There were a few close calls,” admitted Derrick beneath the cover of a beautifully rendered a cappella version of “The First Noel.” “But all in all, I’d say so far, so good.”
“I thought we were done for when Mrs. Hildebrand threw that Bartlett girl’s phone in the punch bowl,” Paul said with a barely repressed groan.
“I thought the whole room was going to stand up and applaud,” said Derrick. “I almost did, myself.” He sipped his chocolate and added, “To be fair, she didn’t so much throw it as drop it.”
The incident to which they referred had occurred as Paul was ushering everyone to dinner. The two girls, still dressed in their rumpled traveling clothes and with eyes and thumbs still glued to their phones, reluctantly shuffled toward the door. Their father said something about putting away their phones during the dinner hour, and their mother, who had had several cups of wassail and a glass of wine, waved a dismissing hand. “Oh, please darling, let sleeping dogs lie. We’ll all be much happier that way.”
Carl Bartlett frowned. “It’s rude.”
His wife moved ahead of him toward the dining room without giving any appearance of having heard. He tried again. “Pammie, Kelly, we’ve talked about this. Phones down during dinner.”
To which Pamela only rolled her eyes and Kelly, the youngest one, didn’t even reply. It was about that time that Mrs. Hildebrand came abreast of the girls and, with a deft backward movement of her cane that caught the cord of Pamela’s earbuds, jerked them out of her ears and the phone out of her hand, sending the phone sailing into the bowl of wassail punch on the table. Pamela shrieked. Mrs. Hildebrand smiled. Everyone else, stunned, simply stared.
“You did that on purpose!” Pamela cried, outraged. She fished the phone out of the bowl with her fingers and cried, “It’s ruined, it’s ruined!” while Paul rushed to mop up with a napkin the wassail that was dripping on the floor. She whirled on her father. “Did you see that? She did it on purpose!”
To which Carl Phipps replied mildly, “No, actually, I didn’t see a thing.” And he, too, moved toward the dining room.
Pamela turned back to Mrs. Hildebrand, her eyes furious and her color high. “You can’t do that! You can’t just destroy other people’s private property! There are laws! You’ll see! You can’t do this!”
The older woman smiled and patted Pamela on the arm. “Of course I can, my dear. I’m old and I’m rich. I can do just about whatever I want.”
She looked then at Kelly, who quickly jerked the earbuds out of her ears and stuffed her phone in her pocket, then hurried to join her parents in the dining room. Mrs. Hildebrand followed at a more leisurely pace, an expression of intense satisfaction on her face.
“I’ve heard that placing a cell phone in a bowl of rice will dry it out,” volunteered Derrick now, as the carolers segued into “It
Came Upon a Midnight Clear.”
“Yes,” agreed Paul, who knew perfectly well there was a five-pound bag of rice in a canister in the pantry. “We must remember to ask Purline where she keeps the rice in the morning.”
“We have a new policy, by the way,” said Derrick.
“No children under twenty-one?”
“Right.”
“Can you believe the Mathesons and the Canons?” murmured Paul in a moment, repressing a shudder. “For a moment I was certain we were in for the War of the Roses.”
“It does look as though one of us might have uncovered the fact that they were related,” admitted Derrick, mildly disturbed. “Or at least former business partners.”
“We’ll definitely have to be more careful in the future,” agreed Paul.
“Of course, all is well that ends well.”
They listened to the remainder of the carol in contented silence.
“That Geoffery Allen Windsor is an odd duck,” observed Paul when the carolers launched into the upbeat tempo of “Sleigh Ride” that suggested they were nearing the end of the concert.
Derrick shrugged. “All writers are.”
Paul slanted him a mildly offended look. “I’m a writer.”
“So you are.” Without further clarification, he went on, “At least everything worked out with the massage therapists. Mrs. Hildebrand said her massage was better than anything she’s had in San Francisco or New York, and has booked a reflexology treatment for the morning.”
“They do seem very eager to please,” Paul agreed, “although the language barrier is a problem. I just wish we could have gotten them to come into the kitchen and eat something. I don’t like to think of them going hungry when we have all this food just a few steps away.”
“It’s probably a religious thing,” Derrick said, although he, too, looked worried. “Maybe they’re vegetarians.”
“We have plenty of salad.”
“We should take them some,” decided Derrick. “Do you suppose they’ll be warm enough in that contraption of theirs? We’ll take blankets too.”