The White Christmas Inn

by Colleen Wright

  “I think you must have a magic table out there in the kitchen, Jeanne,” Hannah’s father called down the table, as Jeanne brought out another round of one of the handmade sodas she’d produced for the meal: seltzer with a cranberry-and-pine syrup. “Like in the fairy tales, one that makes a new meal every time you wish. I pawed through your fridge the other day, looking for another grilled cheese sandwich, and I could swear there wasn’t a darn thing there. I don’t know how you did it.”

  “The only magic in that kitchen is Jeanne,” Tim said, setting down a fresh basket of rolls and handing the empty one to Luke, who was already carrying a tray full of dirty dishes to the kitchen, pinch-hitting as a waiter for the evening.

  As the other guests first took their places, Hannah had realized, to her surprise, that she had been keeping an eye out to see where Luke wound up. Iris was at the table, along with everyone else, and for a while there was a seat beside her, until Godwin, the grouchy Brit, took it.

  When she finally did see Luke, though, he was marching in and out of the kitchen, refreshing bowls of mashed potatoes and refilling water glasses.

  “Can I bring you anything at all, ma’am?” he asked at one point, stopping by her seat.

  Hannah thought for a moment, trying to come up with the craziest request she could. “Pheasant under glass?” she finally said.

  Luke had grinned at her. “Be careful what you wish for,” he said. “Jeanne might actually have that out there somewhere.”

  But when the tables had been cleared of the remains of dinner and the serving dishes, Jeanne, Tim, and Luke all filed back out of the kitchen, each carrying two pies, one in each hand. And after serving slices all around, Jeanne and Tim pulled up their own chairs at the head of the table.

  But Luke wandered down the table to where Hannah was sitting.

  “How about some company for dessert?” he asked.

  Hannah, who had been watching him out of the corner of her eye, started to scoot her own seat over as far as she could to make room for another chair. But Audrey, who had been sitting next to her, with Jared on the other side, began to poke at Jared’s shoulder.

  “Scoot back,” she said.

  Baffled but game, Jared scooted his chair back from the table, and Audrey plopped herself happily down in his lap.

  “There’s an empty seat,” she said, nodding at the chair she’d just vacated. “What are you waiting for?”

  Hannah shook her head, trying to suppress a smile as Luke sat down and set his own piece of pie on the table. Thankfully, Hannah’s mother was deeply embroiled in a conversation with Frank and Eileen, apparently plotting a Caribbean vacation they all planned to take next winter, so she didn’t seem to notice as Luke settled in.

  At the first bite of pie, Luke closed his eyes in apparent ecstasy, took a deep breath, and opened them again before taking another forkful. “This is out of this world,” he said. “I swear, I used to sit in that kitchen watching her work for hours, and I still don’t know how she does it.”

  “I’m glad they let you sit down for dessert,” Hannah said.

  “What do you mean, dessert?” Luke said. “This is the first time I’ve eaten all night. It’s dinner. When I have my third piece, that’ll be dessert,” he said. “The second one will just be seconds.”

  Hannah laughed.

  Beside her, her mother turned, startled. She took a long look at Luke and then slowly, deliberately, turned back to her own conversation, as if trying not to do anything to disturb the situation.

  “How’d you like dinner?” Luke asked.

  “It was wonderful,” Hannah said. And she realized, as she said it, that she meant it, even though it had been very different from the rehearsal dinner she’d expected to have.

  “Yeah?” Luke said, almost surprised.

  She nodded.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “I thought it might not be an easy night.”

  “It’s better than I thought,” Hannah said. As she said it, she realized that could mean two things: better than the awful night she thought she might have after the breakup, or better than the rehearsal dinner she thought she’d have had if she and Trevor were still together. She would never have guessed that anything could be better than the perfect dinner she had planned, especially not if Trevor wasn’t there. But somehow this night still felt good.

  “Hannah,” Luke said. “I feel like I need to tell you something.”

  She felt a little flash of fear at the serious way he’d said it, and the look on his face when her eyes met his. What could he possibly have to tell her? Did he have a girlfriend he hadn’t mentioned yet? And why, she thought, with faint annoyance, would that be the first thing that popped into her mind to worry about?

  But instead of asking any of this, she just said simply, “What?”

  “I’ve never met anyone else like you,” Luke said quickly, like he wasn’t sure he could get the words out. “My whole life. You’re a really special girl. I hope you know that.”

  “Thank you,” Hannah said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “And you deserve someone special. Someone really special,” he added, “who knows what he’s got in you.”

  Hannah felt a twinge at this, thinking back on Trevor. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have given so much to a man who never really loved her back?

  But Luke wasn’t finished. “You should come see me sometime, out in the wilderness,” he said. “I think you’d like it. It’s a lot like this place is, actually.”

  “I always liked it here,” Hannah said.

  “I mean, I know now may not be a good time. For a couple of reasons,” he said with a wry smile. “I try not to take people on wilderness adventures when there’s three feet of snow on the ground, in general.”

  “I don’t know,” Hannah said. “You did pretty well with me yesterday.”

  “Still,” Luke said. “Maybe not optimal. But just when you feel like it, sometime. You want to get away for the weekend, see something new.” She met his eyes, which looked into hers, full of meaning. “Maybe in the summer. Or the spring,” he added.

  “That sounds . . .” Hannah began, but before she could finish, something down at the other end of the table caught her attention.

  Jeanne and Tim were both rising and collecting the dishes of the guests around them. When Jeanne’s eyes met Luke’s, she gave him a meaningful nod.

  “Duty calls,” Luke said.

  Hannah flashed him a little smile as he picked up his own plate, and hers.

  As he walked away, Audrey leaned in.

  “Did he just ask you out?” she said. “That sounded like he was asking you out.”

  “I don’t know,” Hannah said.

  “Would you be happy if he did?” Audrey asked.

  Hannah shrugged, and after a moment, Jared pulled Audrey back over to talk with him.

  But as the party broke up around her, Hannah stayed still at the center of it. Would she be happy to go on a date with Luke? What would it even be like? And how could she even be thinking about Luke and not Trevor, on tonight of all nights? Hannah shoved the thought from her mind.

  “NO, DADDY!” BAILEY SAID as Marcus reached down, trying to steady the giant plate of chocolate walnut brown sugar cookies that the girls had foraged from the kitchen before going up for the night. “I can do it!”

  “Just because you can doesn’t always mean you should, dear,” Iris said, as they went by.

  Bailey snatched the plate back and the cookies reeled crazily, but now well out of reach of Marcus, who was coming up the stairs behind Bailey with Molly trailing a step behind.

  Addison, going up the stairs side by side with Bailey, glanced at the unsteady stack of cookies, and without turning a hair, planted her palm smack in the middle of the top one, stabilizing the whole tower of sweets, without eliciting a single peep of protest from Bailey.

  When they got to Molly’s room, the two girls carried the plate im
mediately over to the fireplace opposite the foot of Molly’s bed, where Bailey set it down on the cold brick just beyond the grate itself.

  “Not there,” Addison said. “He might step on it.”

  In answer, Bailey dragged over a small antique table from its station beside a nearby chair, and plunked the cookies down on it.

  “There,” she said. “Now Santa will definitely come.”

  “Okay, girls,” Marcus said. “Time to get ready for bed.”

  As the girls turned for Molly’s office and their pair of daybeds, Marcus started to follow, but this time Addison looked back with a protest. “We can put our pajamas on ourselves,” she said. “We’ll tell you when we’re ready.”

  “Okay,” Marcus said, somewhat surprised as his girls disappeared into the other room and pulled the door shut behind themselves.

  He looked ruefully down at the plate of cookies. “I’ve tried to get it through their heads that the snacks we leave out are a present we leave for Santa, because he brings us such nice gifts,” he said. “But as far as I can tell, the girls seem to see the cookies more as bait.”

  “They might not be that far wrong on that,” Molly said.

  Marcus smiled.

  “You do realize,” Molly said, “that if you leave those cookies here in my room, they will definitely be gone by morning.”

  “You’d be doing me a favor,” Marcus said. “If they wake up and there are still cookies on the plate, that’s a dead giveaway. Especially when the cookies are this good,” he added. “Not even Santa could pass them up, even if he’s eaten hundreds of others.”

  “The girls still believe in Santa?” Molly said.

  “Officially, they do,” Marcus said. “Although I sometimes wonder if Addison has already wised up, and calculated she can ask for more outrageous things from Santa than she’d dare from her dad. What makes me suspicious is that she doesn’t seem suspicious. It’s Bailey who’s been asking all the relevant questions this year.”

  He sighed.

  “Probably I should have told them both by now,” he said. “I just haven’t had anyone to talk with about it. I hope I haven’t already scarred them both for life.”

  Molly shook her head. “I highly doubt it,” she said. “In fact, I suspect just the opposite.”

  “Well, you haven’t known us very long,” Marcus said with a smile.

  “Long enough to at least know that,” Molly said. “You tell them whenever you think is best. They’re good girls. They’ll handle it.”

  “Daddy!” Bailey cried, flinging open the door. “We’re ready.”

  “Are those your pajamas?” Marcus asked, incredulity in his voice. Bailey was wearing a red flannel top, with a gigantic skirt made from seemingly infinite layers of tulle, complete with glittered stars.

  “It’s Christmas,” Bailey said, in a tone that implied all normal rules of life were void as a result of the holiday.

  “But don’t you want to wear your skirt tomorrow?” Marcus asked.

  Bailey nodded vigorously. “And tonight,” she said.

  Defeated by this logic, Marcus headed for the little office.

  With a sigh, Molly sank down in the chair beside her unlit fireplace, watching him disappear into the office with a faint sense of wistfulness. There was something that felt right about the fact that his little family should all be together on Christmas Eve. But she already felt a tug of nostalgia for the night before, when she’d been the one the girls asked to read. And spending time with the girls in that warm little room, she realized, had been more pleasant than sitting alone in hers.

  Suddenly, Addison appeared in the doorway, waving her hand frantically as if she were trying to flag down a passing ship.

  “Hey, honey,” Molly said. “Is everything okay?”

  In answer, Addison just kept waving, this time with an increasingly vexed expression on her face. “You have to come, too,” she said.

  “Kiddo,” Molly said, starting in to explain that the holidays were a time for family. “It’s Christmas Eve—”

  “Not without you!” Addison said.

  Behind her, Marcus’s big frame appeared in the doorway.

  “They won’t even let me read a book to them unless you’re here,” he said. “Do you mind?”

  “Mind” was not at all the word for it, Molly thought, as she crossed her room toward the office. What she felt was grateful.

  And when she entered the room and saw the delighted grins on the faces of both the girls, she felt a sudden rush of happy tears in her throat.

  “You read to us!” Bailey said from her bed, waving a book around. “You’re better than Daddy.”

  Molly looked at Marcus, to make sure it was all right, with a slight grimace at Bailey’s criticism. But Marcus just laughed it off. “Kids,” he said. “They’re tough critics.”

  Then he sat down at the foot of Addison’s bed, while Addison climbed in and snuggled under the covers.

  “Here!” Bailey said, handing the book to Molly, who took a cue from Marcus and sat down beside her. As if it was the most natural thing in the world, Bailey ducked under Molly’s arm and leaned against her, picking absently at the blanket, a little pouf of her tulle skirt poking out under the edge.

  The story was an old Christmas classic, a beautifully illustrated version of “ ’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” and when Molly finished, Bailey seemed to have fallen completely asleep, her head on Molly’s lap.

  But Addison was alert, not willing to let any possibility pass her by.

  “Now Daddy,” she said, handing her father the book she had been reserving in her own hands.

  Marcus gave Molly a look across the room, as if to ask, Do you mind?

  Molly smiled in response. There was just about nothing, she was realizing, that she would mind less: him, and the kids, and the low, quiet rumble of his voice as he started to read. She knew the story he was reading as well, about a Christmas tree light that had always wanted to be free of its string, and wander the sky like a star. But it was hard to keep track of the story, because she kept getting lost in the sound of Marcus’s voice, the soft light in the room, and a story she was starting to write on her own, almost without meaning to: that this might be the beginning of a much longer story, a story where their accidental meeting was just the beginning of a lifetime of days and nights like these, with the four of them together, almost like a family.

  As Marcus read on, so did her story. The seasons changed, winter to spring, spring to summer. She saw the girls splashing happily in a summer lake, watched the leaves turn from green to gold and red, saw them getting bigger, and more confident. In no time at all, Bailey had learned how to read for herself. But no matter how the time and place shifted, they were all still together, and Marcus always had the same gentle, questioning glance and quick smile. She even imagined them returning to the inn in years to come, remembering this year as they settled in around new fires and new feasts.

  When Marcus finally finished the book, Addison was still wakeful enough to offer a small protest. “Another one,” she said sleepily. “It’s Christmas!”

  “That’s why you want to get a lot of good sleep tonight,” Marcus said patiently. “So you’ll have lots of energy to open your presents and play with them tomorrow morning.”

  This rejoinder, along with her own sleepiness, seemed to set Addison happily off on the road to dreamland. But the end of the story, or Marcus and Addison’s exchange, had woken Bailey out of her own slumber.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” Molly said, shifting Bailey so that her head rested on her pillow, instead of Molly’s leg, and trying to tuck the tulle skirt down a bit so it wouldn’t be a perfect nightmare of wrinkles in the morning.

  “I have a wish,” Bailey murmured.

  “A wish, huh?” Molly said, glancing over at Marcus, who winked at her. “What’s your wish?”

  “I wish that you and Daddy get married,” Bailey said. “So we can be together all the time.”

&nbs
p; Bailey’s wish was so close to her own that when Molly heard it said aloud at first she froze, with the eerie feeling that somehow the little girl had been able to read her thoughts.

  Then Marcus’s voice broke in, still measured, but now filled with alarm. “That’s not going to happen, girls,” he said definitively. “Molly is just our friend.”

  Stung, Molly stood up quickly, then leaned over clumsily to give Bailey a kiss good night.

  “Me too, me too!” Addison said.

  Unable to look at Marcus, Molly engaged in an awkward dance with him, trying to reach Addison with her own good-night kiss.

  Once she’d delivered it, she fled the office.

  Back in the dim quiet of her own room, she stood for a minute, her heart pounding. All her instincts told her to flee this room as well. But it was her own room, after all. And where would she go? With the place still snowed in, there was no place in the house where she would be safe from running into Marcus.

  Better to stand and face him now, she thought, and turned around just as he followed her out the door.

  “Hey,” he said. He winced as she finally met his eyes, then glanced away about as quickly as he could. “Wow. I’m so sorry about that. They have very . . . vivid imaginations.”

  Molly shook her head. “It’s a compliment, really,” she said. “It’s sweet.”

  Marcus breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Thanks for understanding,” he said, already heading for the door. “Uh, good night.”

  Then he stepped into the hall and pulled the door shut behind himself, leaving her alone.

  “THE CHEF! THE CHEF!” someone called from the kitchen door as Jeanne stood at the counter, wrapping up a tray full of the remains of the parsnip-and-sweet-potato mash.

  When she turned around, the older couple who had taken refuge with them the day before, Frank and Eileen, came through the door, followed closely by Bob and Stacy, Hannah’s parents.

  Frank was applauding loudly, joined by Bob. “Bravo!” Frank called. “Bravo!”

  Tim, who had been scraping plates at the wash sink, looked over his shoulder curiously.