The White Christmas Inn

by Colleen Wright

  Should they order the thousand-thread-count sheets, or the fifteen hundred?

  Nothing but the best.

  They were smart about it, of course. Tim had found a couple of teenagers from the local farms to hand-cut shake for a few weeks from wood on their property, which was significantly cheaper than buying it from a commercial supplier. And Jeanne had managed to bond with an Egyptian grandmother in the fabric district in New York, who helped her find wholesale prices that meant their high-grade sheets cost them less than the ones found on sale in most department stores.

  But five years after they’d opened, just when they’d started to earn a meager profit, the Starlight Lodge had opened practically in their backyard: two hundred luxury hotel rooms just fifteen miles away, with ski in–ski out access to the lodge’s private mountain, a ballroom, two swimming pools, and a water park for the kids.

  Neither of them had worried about it much at the time, other than to make jokes about the idea of anyone having a “private mountain.” They’d been delighted when they opened the inn to be so close to skiing nearby. And they’d been sure that the lovingly crafted, bespoke experience they offered at Evergreen Inn was so different from the behemoth up the road that they wouldn’t even compete for the same guests.

  But over the next few years, as they’d watched their stream of guests dwindle to a trickle, Tim had started to question the choices Jeanne made about the inn, again and again.

  “Does everything we serve really have to be farm-raised?” he’d ask. “What if we just got those little LED candles, instead of burning so many real ones?”

  Every little detail around the place, every beautiful little detail, now seemed like an occasion for a fight. Some days Jeanne really believed their troubles must all be her fault, because of her spendthrift habits, despite the fact that she made budget after budget, and stayed up nights trying to find even more ways to squeeze a little more change from them. Some days she only saw red, feeling abandoned and alone, as if Tim had come all the way up here with her only to give up on their dream the second things turned tough.

  But however either of them felt, nothing seemed to stop the slow bleed of their meager savings. Two years ago, they’d taken out a loan, in hopes that a few upgrades and some savvy advertising could turn the tide. But despite their best efforts, their bookings had only shrunk. Everyone was too busy driving down the road to the Starlight Lodge.

  This year they’d struggled all season to pay off their current bills, and only barely managed to stay current with their loan. And the last time they’d looked at the books together, they’d come to an excruciating decision: they simply couldn’t afford to keep the place open after this Christmas. They couldn’t live on hope any longer. At the end of this season, they’d shutter the place, then try to sell it for enough to cover their debts, and go back to the city to beg for the jobs they’d hoped to leave behind forever.

  She wouldn’t have looked at the books at all this morning if she hadn’t wanted to get the last set of the month’s bills sent off before the end of the year. Writing the checks, and entering debit after debit in their ledger, had left Jeanne with a hollow feeling in her heart, as if each draft she wrote against their account somehow came from inside her.

  Tim knew exactly what she was talking about when she’d told him she’d just been dealing with the books. So why would he choose a time like this to make a crack like that?

  Jeanne stared at him, frosting bag in her hand, trying to read his face, but he just circled around the counter to give Cassie a good scratch.

  “Hey,” he said over his shoulder, as the dog squirmed with happiness, “I got that broken door on the garden shed fixed this morning.”

  “The garden shed?” Jeanne repeated.

  Tim nodded. “I thought it was just hanging up on the lip of the threshold,” he said, “so I planed that down, but then I realized the whole thing was hung crooked on the hinges. Lucky I did, because I was about to try planing the door to make it fit, and if I’d done that, I’d have had a gap about an inch wide once I fixed the hinges.”

  He glanced up at her briefly, then scratched Cassie’s big white-and-caramel mane.

  As usual, Jeanne thought, Tim was all about the task, and not much else. “I told you about the garden shed this summer,” Jeanne said. It had driven her nuts the entire season. When she wanted to get the door open, it wouldn’t open, and when she wanted to get it shut, it wouldn’t shut.

  “I know,” Tim said, annoyance creeping into his voice. “I didn’t forget.”

  Jeanne felt her own annoyance build in response. Tim’s skills as a builder and handyman were one of the things that had let them open the place to begin with—and stay open this long. But these days it seemed like every time she needed him, he was out in the barn or the yard, feeding some farm animal or working on some project. Making repairs to a place that they weren’t able to keep.

  “But why do it today?” Jeanne asked. “Two days before Christmas?”

  “I was trying to get some other things done this summer,” Tim said, the irritation in his voice unmistakable now. “Like build that grapevine arbor you thought none of our guests could live without.”

  “That was a special request,” Jeanne said. “For a wedding.”

  “Would you rather I hadn’t done it at all?” Tim asked, standing.

  “It just seems like a waste of time,” Jeanne said. “To fix the garden shed when we won’t even be here by the summer.”

  Tears sprang to her eyes as she said it. She could remember a time when Tim couldn’t stand the sight of tears in her eyes, but now his face just turned dark.

  He stalked toward the door that led from the kitchen to the yard, where he stopped and whistled for Cassie. The big dog got to her feet, gave Jeanne a questioning look, but then trotted after him.

  Jeanne wiped at the tears in her eyes, realized she’d accidentally swiped stray frosting on her face, then grabbed a paper towel to rub the frosting away.

  Maybe it doesn’t even matter if we can’t save this place, she thought. Her dream had never been about high thread counts or farm-raised beef. It had been about her and Tim. But even though they supposedly ran this place together, she felt lonelier than she’d ever been.

  For a long time, she’d blamed their troubles on the financial stress. But even if Tim discovered a million dollars hidden away in some forgotten corner of the barn, would that really solve everything?

  It had been so long since she’d felt connected with him that she wasn’t sure.

  And she didn’t even want to think about what it might be like if they didn’t have this place to work on together, and wound up back in the city, doing work neither of them wanted to be doing.

  Jeanne tossed the paper towel in the trash, took a deep breath, and picked up her bag of frosting to begin the next cookie.

  But as she did, a small set of wind chimes on the opposite side of the kitchen began to jingle: a clever warning system that Tim had rigged up years ago to alert her that guests had just come in the front door, without them ringing a buzzer that would disturb the other guests.

  There was a good chance it was the wedding party, Jeanne calculated, who were supposed to begin arriving around now.

  And if it was, she needed to go give Iris a hand. It was Iris who they’d bought the farm from, years ago. She loved still being a part of the place, and Jeanne and Tim loved having her around. But she wasn’t really great with details under the best of circumstances, and the more guests she had to deal with at a time, the more likely things were to go awry.

  Jeanne and Tim usually found her occasional mix-ups amusing, like the time she’d handed over an entire wedding party’s worth of welcome treats to the first family who arrived, whose thrilled elementary-age children had immediately decimated the bonbons that had been individually wrapped for each guest. Jeanne had managed to bake up several batches of brownies in time to provide treats for the remaining guests, who wound up oohing and aahing o
ver the fact that their baked treats were still warm when they arrived.

  Still, Jeanne wanted to avoid any similar surprises with this wedding party. They weren’t just special because they might be the last wedding Evergreen Inn was able to host. They were special because they’d been with Evergreen since the beginning.

  Jeanne drew a deep breath, untied her apron, and hung it on a nearby hook.

  Then she walked through the door that led from the kitchen to the reception area in the front hall, and gave her brightest smile to the two women standing at the desk.

  “Welcome to Evergreen Inn,” she said.

  THE INSTANT HANNAH SAW Jeanne, the hard knot of nerves that had been building in her stomach all the way up from Boston began to ease.

  She darted around the counter and Jeanne stopped beside it as they embraced in a warm hug.

  “Oh my gosh,” Hannah said. “I’m so glad to see you.”

  Then she stepped back and looked around. “I didn’t think this place could be any more beautiful than it is in the summer,” she said. “But look at what you do for Christmas! It’s amazing.”

  Her attention was drawn by a small nativity set up on one side of the check-in desk: the shepherds and wise men, along with the baby and his parents, all done in beautifully cut crystal.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said.

  “Oh, I can’t take credit for that,” Jeanne said.

  “It’s my grandmother’s,” Iris piped up. “She brought it all the way up to Vermont with her, when the family first came here from New York. Wrapped it up in flour sacks, and then sat on it the whole way so that nobody would actually mistake it for flour and toss it somewhere.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Hannah said. Then she looked around, taking in all the Christmas details: the twinkle lights that dangled near the ceiling level, the swags of fresh juniper, the velvet ribbons affixed to the stairs leading up to the guest rooms.

  “It’s not just for Christmas,” Jeanne said, giving Hannah a squeeze around the waist. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we have an important wedding happening here this weekend. For one of our very favorite guests.”

  Hannah wrapped Jeanne in another hug. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said.

  From behind the counter, Iris looked up at Jeanne. “More than half this place is reserved in the name of the Green family,” Iris said. “Did you have any particular plan about who goes where?”

  “Yep, yep,” Jeanne said, slipping behind the counter to look at the reservations book.

  As Hannah peered over the counter, she felt the companionable bump of her best friend stepping up beside her.

  “I’m Audrey,” Audrey told Iris and Jeanne, with one of her irresistible grins. “Nice to meet you.”

  “My maid of honor,” Hannah explained, as both women took turns shaking Audrey’s hand.

  Then she looked at Audrey. “Sorry,” she said. “I should have introduced you.”

  Audrey grinned. “You’ve had one or two other things on your mind,” she said.

  “You all ready for the big day, dear?” Iris asked.

  Hannah took a deep breath.

  “Absolutely,” Audrey answered for her. “This is going to be the best wedding of this holiday season. We’re running the show with military precision.”

  Iris raised one eyebrow. “I’ve never heard of a wedding that went quite . . . that way,” she commented.

  But Hannah looked at Audrey gratefully. “I thought such a small wedding would keep things simple,” she said.

  “No wedding is simple,” Audrey said. “That’s the first rule of weddings.”

  At this, Iris gave a vigorous nod.

  “What’s the second rule?” Jeanne asked, raising her eyebrows in amusement.

  Before Audrey could enlighten them, her chin lifted and her eyes narrowed as if she’d just picked up some signal only she could hear.

  In the silence that followed, the rest of them caught the sound of it, too—the faint, insistent ring of a cell phone, coming from somewhere in Audrey’s vicinity.

  Audrey began to dig in her pocket as she backed toward the front door they’d just come through. “Excuse me,” she said. “I need to take this.”

  “Her husband’s in the marines,” Hannah explained, as the door thunked shut behind Audrey. “He’s got a few days’ leave for the holidays.”

  “And she’s here without him?” Iris said, obviously shocked.

  “He’s on his way here,” Hannah said. “I never thought he was going to be able to make our wedding. We were going to try to live-stream him in from Afghanistan. Audrey had made him promise that he’d FaceTime every dance with her.”

  “But now he’ll actually be here,” Iris said, beaming with so much joy you might have thought it was her own husband.

  Hannah beamed back. In the midst of all the details and anxiety of planning a wedding, it was good to see other people’s joy at her good news. It was a huge blessing that the timing had worked out for Jared to join them, all the way from the other side of the world. Maybe she should spend more time thinking about that than whether the flowers were blue or white, or whatever else she’d been worrying about. Even in those rare moments when she thought everything was finally in order, she was still a bundle of nerves.

  “The garland over the door is so beautiful,” Hannah told Jeanne. “I’ve never seen you make one so pretty.”

  “And you’ve seen a lot of them,” Jeanne said, with a slight smile.

  “I guess I have,” Hannah said. She and her family had been some of Jeanne and Tim’s first guests, the summer they opened, when Hannah was just twelve. And in the years since then, Evergreen Inn had been at the heart of the Green family traditions: summer vacations and a handful of the winter holidays and ski trips. So when it had come time to plan her wedding, Hannah had known exactly where she wanted to hold it.

  “I’m just so glad you were able to take us on such short notice,” she told Jeanne.

  It had come as a total surprise when her boyfriend Trevor had proposed to her that summer, and an even bigger one when he’d insisted, with his usual irresistible energy, that they should get married before the New Year.

  She’d been with Trevor since nursing school, when she’d met him as a patient on one of her very first rotations. He showed a special interest in her life, always chatting with her as she made her rounds. At first, she’d thought it was just because they were so much closer in age than the other people on the ward. Most of the other nurses were older. And most of the other patients struggling with diabetes like Trevor was were older, too. So she was surprised when Trevor asked for her number as he was leaving, and even more surprised when he called a day later.

  But that was six years ago now. She hadn’t exactly been waiting for him to propose that whole time—they’d been too busy becoming adults, getting jobs, and having adventures. And if there was one thing Trevor loved, it was being spontaneous and having adventures. She could understand that. He’d been struggling with health issues related to his diabetes since he was a kid. Some of them were potentially deadly. It only made sense that he would want to live every minute to the hilt. And because he came from a family with a lot more money than Hannah’s, he could afford to. It drove Hannah crazy sometimes, but it also kept life full of surprises. She loved that companionship, and the excitement of never quite knowing what would come next.

  In fact, that’s pretty much how he’d proposed, a few months ago, on a trip to Portland, Maine, for a friend’s wedding. He’d spotted a ring he liked in a jewelry store on the boardwalk, and proposed over lobster rolls the very same day. The whole experience was a complete romantic whirlwind.

  “I was sure you’d be booked by the time I called,” Hannah said. “But I couldn’t imagine getting married anywhere else.”

  “I’m glad we could take you,” Jeanne said, but something in her smile looked strange to Hannah.

  Just as Hannah was wondering if she
’d said something wrong, the front door behind her opened.

  She glanced back, expecting to see Audrey stomping her feet against the cold outside, but instead a tall man, around her age, stood in the entryway, shaking the snow out of his blond curls onto the shoulders of his black-and-red-check coat. He looked like an ad for a high-end outerwear company. But he also looked oddly familiar.

  “Luke!” Iris exclaimed. “I told you to take a scarf!”

  Luke shook his head. “I think I’ll live, Grandma,” he said.

  “Luke?” Hannah said. A host of jumbled memories of the skinny, smart-mouthed kid who she’d spent hours with during her adolescent years, wandering through the sunlit woods around the inn, or tramping through the snow, hunting for firewood or holly branches, suddenly collided with the full-grown man in front of her.

  “You remember Luke,” Iris said, in the tone of a grandmother who couldn’t quite believe that not everyone in the world found her grandson as unforgettable as she did.

  Hannah took a closer look at the young man in front of her. Even over a decade later, the resemblance was so strong that she could still catch glimpses of the boy she’d known in the features and gestures of this stranger.

  Especially when he smiled, as he did now, with a quizzical raise of an eyebrow.

  “Have we met?” he asked, his tone amused and unmistakably flirtatious.

  “You remember Hannah, Luke,” Iris said. “It’s little Hannah.”

  Now it was Luke’s turn to double take. His get-to-know-you grin was quickly replaced by a dawning recognition.

  “Wait,” he said. “Hannah . . . Green?”

  Hannah nodded.

  Suddenly, she found herself in the grip of an enormous bear hug that lifted her off her feet and replanted her, after a brief twirl, about a yard from where she’d originally stood.

  “Hannah Green!” he said. “What in the world? I thought I was just going to get to see Grandma on this visit. You look— I didn’t know you’d be here, too.”

  “You’re here for Christmas?” Hannah asked.

  Luke shook his head. “I’m on my way to Burlington,” he said. “To have Christmas with my folks. I just stopped in this morning to see Grandma along the way.”