The White Christmas Inn

by Colleen Wright

  “Well, this can’t be as bad as the Arctic Circle,” Iris said, with a laugh.

  The old man fixed his penetrating gaze on her. “You’re quite sure of that, are you?” he asked.

  Iris raised her eyebrows, unfazed by his British reserve. “Since neither of us has been there,” she said, “I’m not sure either of us can be sure.”

  “What makes you think I haven’t been?” the old man said, with a twist of his lip that could have either been a hint of contempt or a grin. On his grizzled features, it was almost impossible to tell.

  “I’m sorry,” Jeanne said to the man. “I don’t believe we have a reservation for you tonight.”

  “I’m painfully aware of that,” the man said. “It would be hard to confuse this establishment with the Starlight Lodge, where I do in fact have a reservation for this evening. But since the Vermont police have now officially closed the roads for the duration of the night, I find myself at your mercy. I realize every hovel in the area is likely fully booked at this point, but I am forced to inquire: Do you perhaps have a room for the night?”

  Jeanne’s eyes narrowed slightly at the patronizing tone in his voice, but Iris broke out into a wide, welcoming smile.

  “Absolutely!” she said. “You came at just the right time. You’ll have the last room in the place. Which is also my favorite,” she added confidingly as she flipped open their reservation book.

  “Your favorite?” the man said. “And why is that?”

  “It’s the room I grew up in,” Iris told him. “Your name?”

  “Godwin,” the man said, laying his own credit card down on the counter beside Bob’s. “Geoffrey Godwin. Are you the owner of this establishment?”

  Iris shook her head. “I sold this farm over a decade ago to Jeanne and Tim. But they kept me on to help out around the place. It was my one stipulation.”

  For the first time since Godwin had arrived, his face thawed into something approximating a smile. “It sounds like you drive a hard bargain,” he said.

  As Iris collected the cards to run them, Jeanne turned to the rack of keys on the wall behind her, selected two pairs, and laid one on the counter before Bob and Eileen, and one before Godwin.

  “You’ll both be on the second floor,” she said. “Just take the stairs up. You can’t miss it.”

  Godwin collected his key, but as Bob and Eileen gave their effusive thanks and started up the stairs, he made a beeline for the brownies.

  “And what are these?” he asked Molly with an arch air.

  Molly was slightly insulted, both that he had apparently mistaken her for a waitress, and that he thought that, if she was a waitress, she would ever curl up in an armchair, munching on a brownie while on duty.

  But something about his air was so commanding and regal that she didn’t quite dare to talk back to him.

  “Salted brownies,” she said in a servicey tone, then felt a wave of annoyance at herself.

  She’d never seen anyone pick up a brownie the way Godwin did. He gazed down at it for a long second, as if it were a creature he wanted to make sure was no longer breathing. Then he narrowed his eyes, reached for the fudgy square, sniffed it, and raised it to his thin lips with the precision of a lab technician.

  But after his first bite, his expression relaxed. “Not bad,” he said, and took another.

  As he did, the front door banged open again. This time, two girls came barreling into the room, one about eight, one about five, both with dark hair and identical puffy jackets, one blue and one orange. They were also both screeching at the tops of their lungs.

  “It’s cold!” the older one said, hopping about sixty times a minute. “Cold! Cold! Cold!”

  The little one’s emissions weren’t even that cogent. She just let out what seemed like an unending, high-pitched whine, as if she were a tower that gave off a warning signal when the temperature dropped below a certain threshold.

  At the sound of the voices, Cassie came bursting through the kitchen door, her tail wagging a mile a minute.

  “A puppy!” the littlest girl cried, in an ecstasy of excitement.

  “That’s not a puppy,” the older girl said, trying to defend herself from Cassie’s exuberant licking while also petting the soft hair on the top of her big head. “It’s a dog.”

  “Just another quiet day here in the country,” Iris said. “Cassie, come here.”

  With enormous reluctance, Cassie broke free from the two girls and bounded over to Iris, who grabbed her collar, holding the big dog firmly behind the desk.

  The eyes of everyone in the lobby of the inn turned toward the door, waiting for the girls’ parents to materialize.

  After what seemed like several minutes, during which both girls began to vigorously plead for Cassie’s freedom, a man emerged from the storm, wrangling a large black backpack, a pair of turquoise suitcases adorned with unicorns, and a large stuffed tiger.

  As he struggled with the door, which was being blown on its hinges by the wind, Molly jumped up to catch it.

  “Thanks,” he said gratefully.

  Molly held the door against the wind, but didn’t close it, waiting for the girls’ mother to join them. After a moment, the man looked back.

  “Oh,” he said, a slight wince crossing his face. “No. It’s just us.”

  “Daddy!” the older girl called, as Godwin hastily retreated up the stairs. In Molly’s absence, the older girl had apparently discovered the brownies and helped herself. “Do you want a brownie?”

  “Addison,” the man said, his voice exasperated but firm. “Come here. Bailey. Addison.”

  Obediently, the two girls gathered at his side, composing themselves with angelic expressions that gave no hint of the chaos they had unleashed on the inn just moments before.

  “And who might you be?” Iris asked, eyebrows raised.

  “I’m Marcus Andrews,” the man said, glancing from Jeanne to Iris with a warm if frazzled smile. “I’m afraid you’ve already met Bailey and Addison.”

  “Hello,” the girls chorused.

  Their father sighed. “We were on our way to the Starlight,” he said. “But the roads have been closed. Is there any chance you have room for us? We have no place else to go.”

  Iris looked at Jeanne. Jeanne bit her lip. “I just gave away my last room,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Marcus glanced back at the storm beyond the windows. “You don’t have anything at all?” he asked. “It’s actually illegal now for us to be out on these roads.”

  Jeanne shook her head. “If it were just you,” she said, “I’d be glad to have you sleep on the couch in the lounge. But with the girls, I just don’t think—”

  “Daddy,” Bailey said, pulling on his sleeve. “Did you bring Dodo from the car?”

  “I brought Prince,” Marcus said, pointing to the stuffed tiger. “Why don’t you hold on to him?”

  “Is it cold in the car?” Bailey asked.

  “It wasn’t cold when we were in the car, was it?” Marcus said reasonably.

  “It gets cold when you turn the car off,” Addison said, with an older sister’s imperious wisdom.

  “Is Dodo cold?” Addison said, her voice rising in childish agony as she drew out the last word.

  “Honey,” Marcus said, “Daddy’s working on something else now.” He looked back at Jeanne. “We would take literally anything at this point,” he said. “Please.”

  Molly looked at the swirling snow beyond the uneven glass of the windows, thinking of the journey Marcus would have simply to get out to the car and back now, let alone find another place to stay. Then her mind flashed on the antique daybeds in her room.

  “You know what?” she said, stepping forward. “I have room. The girls could stay with me.”

  “I KNEW IT,” HANNAH’S father said, his hands gripping both sides of one of the antique wooden chairs in her room so hard that Hannah was afraid he’d snap the delicate wood to matchsticks. “I always knew he wasn’t good enough for
you.”

  Hannah took a deep breath, trying to steady herself.

  “You know when I knew?” her father said, warming to his theme. “Do you remember that barbecue we had, Stacy? Where he made such a big deal of how he wanted to stay after to help out? After you girls went inside, he didn’t lift another finger. He just stood there and let me scrape down that whole grill myself.”

  “Honey,” Hannah’s mother said sensibly. “Maybe he didn’t know how to scrape down a grill.”

  “What kind of man doesn’t know how to clean a grill?” Hannah’s father asked. “Hannah knows how to clean a grill.”

  “That’s true,” Hannah’s mother allowed.

  “And she knows how to change a tire. Does Trevor know how to change a tire?” Hannah’s father demanded, looking at Hannah.

  Hannah just stared back at him. Trevor had no idea how to change a tire, a fact which had become evident after they’d blown one on the way to a friend’s house in Cape Cod, and she’d had to figure out how to get the jack to work on the sandy shoulder, where it kept sinking in instead of lifting the car so she could remove the blasted tire. Trevor had tried to encourage her, but he couldn’t have been described as “helpful.”

  That was so much the dynamic of their relationship, she realized. She had never really grown out of the role of nurse she had when they’d first met. Of course, as they’d dated, she’d watched his health and been there with him through the times when his condition landed him back in the hospital again. But it was more than that. No matter how long they were together, she was always the one taking care of things. Taking care of him. Now her mind ran back over the dozens of times in their relationship that she’d had to swoop in to save the day: not just changing the car’s tire, but hunting down medicine in the middle of the night when Trevor had let his run out, or sweet-talking a local cop into letting them off without a ticket when Trevor decided to do a tightrope walk along the railing of a bridge.

  Should I have known then? she wondered now. Because she hadn’t. She had to admit that she had liked the feeling of being needed. But maybe there had been all kinds of signs she’d missed.

  “Not knowing how to change a tire hardly disqualifies a young man from matrimony,” Hannah’s mother said.

  Hannah looked at her mother gratefully. Her father had gone into full battle mode as soon as she had told them the news that Trevor had called the wedding off, but her mother still seemed reasonably calm.

  “You know how I knew?” Hannah’s mother said. Hannah’s heart sank. “It was when you called him and told him you’d just been rejected by the nursing school at Duke, when you’d worked so hard to get in there, and he asked you if you wanted him to come over. I never could believe he asked you that. He should have been on his way the instant he heard the news.”

  “You know what else he did?” Hannah’s father began.

  “Yes,” Hannah burst out. “I know a thousand other things that Trevor did, and a thousand other things that Trevor didn’t do. But do you want to know when I knew?”

  Both her parents looked at her, wide-eyed and waiting.

  “I knew when Trevor told me this afternoon,” Hannah said. “Before that, I had no idea. Not a clue. So if this was all so obvious to both of you, I’m not sure why you didn’t bother to tell me.”

  She sat down on the bed and crossed her arms, doing her best to stay mad, because that at least felt better than crying, which is what she had been doing before her parents arrived.

  But it was no use. Even with her arms crossed and her chin lifted, the tears still rolled down her cheeks.

  “Oh, honey,” her mother said. She sank down beside Hannah on the bed, and let Hannah’s head drop onto her shoulder, just as she had done when Hannah was a child. “I’m so sorry. We shouldn’t even be mentioning Trevor’s name. Nothing matters but you right now.”

  “That’s right,” Hannah’s father said, visibly relieved at the excuse to flip into a mode of accomplishing things instead of having to feel them. “We should be thinking about what to do. You talked with Jeanne downstairs? We’ll have to see what we can get back on the deposit we made.”

  “You can’t get the deposit back, honey,” Hannah’s mother said. “That’s the point of the deposit. It protects businesses from things like . . . this,” she said.

  “Oh,” Hannah’s father said. “Jeanne’s an old friend. I can’t imagine her keeping our money when she hasn’t—”

  “She’s not the one who didn’t keep her end of the deal,” Hannah said, her voice cracking. “They must have spent everything already, making sure they had all they needed for this weekend. And with this storm, it’s not even like there’s a chance she could sell it to anyone else.”

  “We’ll talk about all those details later, Bob,” Stacy said, with a warning glance to her husband, who sat down with a dissatisfied sigh in a nearby rocker.

  “But what about you, honey?” her mother asked Hannah. “What can we do for you?”

  At the kindness in her mother’s voice, the tears began to flow freely down Hannah’s face. Part of her just wanted to go back to being a child, whose problems could all be solved by her mother’s kiss, even as she knew she could never be a child again. Another part of her still did feel like a child, in a way that made her ashamed, as if she was just a kid who still didn’t understand anything, even though she was old enough now to get married.

  “Are you hungry, pumpkin?” her father asked. “I can go get you something to eat or drink. I bet Jeanne’s got something amazing down there in the kitchen.”

  Hannah knew exactly what Jeanne had in the kitchen. She’d spent hours on the phone with Jeanne in the past few months, planning every aspect of the menu down to the contents of the treat baskets that were supposed to be given to each guest on arrival, and the sweets that would be waiting for them on the entryway buffet as they came to check in.

  Now the thought of salted brownies and Vermont grilled cheese on fresh sourdough bread just made her stomach twist.

  Was this how it was going to be from now on? she wondered. Had Trevor ruined not just her wedding, but all her favorite things?

  Until now, the pain of Trevor’s call, and the press of the immediate details and embarrassments of the canceled wedding had been the only thing on her mind. But suddenly she got a glimpse of her whole life stretching out ahead of her. With none of the plans she and Trevor had made, it was a wide, blank canvas. And with the pain she felt in her heart right now, that was terrifying.

  But both her parents were still looking at her, waiting for her to tell them whether she thought having a sandwich might help.

  “You know what?” she said. “I think I just need to be alone.”

  Her mother and her father exchanged glances.

  “Honey,” her mother said. “I don’t really think that’s a good idea right now.”

  But the thought of spending any more time with her parents, with the wedding dress still hanging up on the mirror over the back of her closet door, was unbearable.

  Unsteadily, Hannah stood up.

  “I just need to get a breath of fresh air,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

  And before either of them could say anything, she walked out of the room, ran down the stairs, and darted past the front desk, through the front door.

  LUKE, WALKING INTO THE lobby from the kitchen, where he’d just dropped off a stack of firewood for the giant old cooking fireplace, caught sight of Hannah just as the door closed behind her.

  “Hannah?” he called, although with the sound of the wind and the door closed between them, there was no reason to believe she could hear him.

  He turned to his grandmother, behind the desk, with a quizzical expression.

  “Where was she going?” he asked. “Did the groom just get here?”

  Iris’s eyes widened. “You didn’t hear?” she asked.

  “Hear what?” Luke said.

  Iris dropped her voice, and glanced from side to side, as if t
he sleepy Vermont farmhouse were actually a breeding ground for international spies.

  “He’s not coming,” she said.

  “Because of the storm?” Luke said, with a hint of disgust. “I mean, I know it’s bad, but all he needs to do is get some chains on his tires and . . .”

  “It’s not the storm,” Iris said. “It’s the whole wedding. He called it off.”

  Luke gazed at her for a long moment, as if the program that had been playing had just frozen for a minute, and he was waiting for it to come back on and make sense again.

  When nothing changed, his expression darkened.

  “Hannah’s wedding,” he said. “That moron called off Hannah’s wedding?”

  “He’s actually a very bright young man,” Iris said. “He graduated college at the top of his class.”

  “How do you know that?” Luke demanded.

  “He told me,” Iris said.

  “Of course he did,” Luke said. He shook his head. “I never liked that guy.”

  “You know him?” Iris asked, surprised.

  “I met him,” Luke said. “A few years ago, remember?”

  “Ah!” Iris nodded. “When you came up to pick up that beautiful old sideboard that Jeanne didn’t want anymore, and take it down to your mother.”

  “That’s right,” Luke said darkly. “I’ll never forget it. I was just about to take off, when his car breaks down in front of my truck. And the lawn is too wet to drive something that big through, especially loaded down like that.

  “And then when I asked him to move his car so I could get out of there,” Luke went on, “it wouldn’t budge. So I spent all afternoon trying to figure out what was wrong with it. Turns out, he hadn’t added oil in thirty thousand miles.”

  Iris winced. “It’s amazing that car lasted that long,” she said.

  “I know,” Luke said. “They should probably advertise it. But that took my whole afternoon. I had to unload that thing at my mom’s place in the dark, around midnight. And the worst part was that when he finally did call a tow truck, he stood there looking at me like he’d just done me a huge favor, and was waiting for me to congratulate him.”