“Look,” Marcus said. “I still feel terrible about what happened earlier. With the girls.”
“Oh,” Molly said, waving her hand like a policeman directing traffic to a halt. Maybe she could just stop the conversation before it even began.
But Marcus was apparently unfamiliar with the basic signals of the road. “I mean it,” he said earnestly. “I don’t know what got into them. Why they’d ever say something like that.”
At the look of horror on Molly’s face, it finally seemed to sink in through Marcus’s skull that he might have said something wrong. “I mean,” he said, “not that the right guy wouldn’t be lucky to have you. I mean, anyone would. But you know that already,” he said, dropping his eyes to the remains of his pie.
At this, Molly’s own eyes grew wide. She most certainly did not know that, she thought.
“It’s just,” Marcus rambled on, desperate now to find a way to stop talking, “they should never have presumed to say that. I mean, I would never presume . . .” He looked up, his eyes practically begging for her to throw him some kind of lifeline.
His obvious distress finally jogged Molly out of her own crippling embarrassment. She shook her head in a way that she hoped looked nonchalant and carefree.
“Please,” she said, “don’t worry about it. I mean, I can understand where they were coming from. It was very sweet to get to spend time with—”
She hesitated for a moment, trying to choose between “them” and “you.”
“You,” she said, settling on the word she really meant. “It even made me think about what it would be like to be a little family, too.”
She shook her head, looking down at her own pie now. “I know that’s crazy,” she said. “All of us only just met. I think it was just that—”
“You were thinking that, too?” Marcus blurted out.
Molly looked up and met his pale blue eyes, feeling even more abashed to have just admitted that her own dreams as a grown woman were just as childish as the little girls’ had been.
But when she met Marcus’s eyes, something in them made her realize that he wasn’t surprised because she had been thinking the same thing as his girls. He was surprised that she had been thinking the same thing as him.
And before she could think of anything else to say, he pushed her plate aside and kissed her.
IRIS CARRIED HER CUP of hot mint tea with honey out of the kitchen and sat down at her usual spot, a rocking chair by the window in what now served as the inn’s dining room. She looked out the darkened front window at the first small traces of the light of dawn and sighed.
Ever since she was a girl, she’d loved waking up before sunrise. It wasn’t just that a sunrise was a whole different ball game than a sunset: the beautiful reawakening of hope as light flared up in the darkness, rather than the gorgeous final celebration of a day before it slipped into night. And it wasn’t just that so many fewer people ever saw a sunrise than a sunset.
Instead, it was those few quiet moments that the early morning hours gave her to herself. When she was a child, she had thought she needed them because otherwise the house was crowded with other kids, her brothers and sisters, her parents—even the occasional farm animal who had wandered or been smuggled in, across the strict division her mother was always trying to hold between the house and the barn.
But as she’d grown into a woman, she’d realized that she wasn’t just making an escape from company. She was looking to connect with something—sometimes herself, sometimes the Lord—to focus, even for a few minutes, on what really mattered, before the press of the day got into full swing.
And now that she was an older woman, without as many responsibilities and emergencies as she had once had in her life, she treasured it even more than she had as a child. It was one of the most selfish reasons she’d sold the property to Jeanne and Tim in the first place. She couldn’t seem to give the tradition up—sitting at this very window, watching and reflecting. Jeanne and Tim didn’t seem to mind her traipsing over here at all hours to enjoy the view.
In fact, one of the things she loved best about her stolen early-morning moments was the way they took her back to her childhood and collapsed the years between her life as a girl and the one she lived now. She stared out the same window she’d looked through her entire life, out onto the same fields and hills, and the same mountains beyond, the trees a bit bigger now than maybe they were once, but generally in the same places.
She loved the feeling it gave her, to be both young and wise at the same time, carrying the exuberance of her youth with her into her current life, and looking back on her younger days with a perspective that made them richer, because she still stood in the same place now, doing the same thing: sending up a little prayer as the morning began.
But as she settled into her chair this morning, ready to watch her regular morning show of sunlight beginning to creep into the world, she heard a footstep on the stairs.
She got up quickly and peered into the hall.
She was interrupted so rarely in her morning ritual, and she did it so much earlier than most people rose from bed, that her first thought was that something must be wrong with one of the guests.
But when she saw who had just stepped from the staircase into the lobby, she smiled. “Geoffrey,” she said, whispering so that she wouldn’t wake up Luke and the other young gentleman, who she’d found slumbering peacefully in the lounge when she came in from her cottage.
Geoffrey froze in his tracks.
But almost instantly, he turned his head, recognized Iris, and broke out into a grin that transformed his entire craggy face.
“Iris!” he whispered back. “I don’t think I could have said this sincerely if you’d been any other inhabitant of this establishment. But this is a pleasant surprise.”
“You’re up early,” Iris observed, coolly taking a sip of her tea.
Geoffrey sighed and leaned against her desk, parking his rolling suitcase quietly at his side.
“It’s an old habit I picked up from the time I was a boy,” he said. “I always liked to beat the sun out of bed. It gives you a little bit of time for yourself, no matter what else happens that day.”
Iris smiled. “I find that’s true myself,” she said.
“I suspect you do,” Geoffrey said, looking at her with the same close look she’d noticed several other times during his visit, the one that made her feel as if he was taking in her characteristics in order to be able to describe her later as some kind of a specimen.
She looked out the window, where the very first gold and pink of dawn were just beginning to spill over the horizon. “And look,” she said. “There it is.”
“Yes,” Geoffrey said, his voice almost gentle. “There it is.”
For a long moment, both of them simply stared out the window, side by side, watching the light of day break into the world.
Then Geoffrey shifted, still watching the dawn. “You know what else I’ve always loved about it?” he said, without even looking over to see Iris shake her head. “It’s always the same, anywhere you are in the world. But always different, too.”
“It’s always different even if you watch it from the same place every day,” Iris said.
This time, Geoffrey did glance away from the sunset so that he could meet her eyes. “That’s what you’ve done, isn’t it?” he asked.
Iris nodded. “You can learn a lot in just one place, too,” she said.
“Well, I’m not sure everyone does,” Geoffrey said. Then he smiled. “But I’m willing to believe you have.”
Iris smiled back as Geoffrey reached down to pull something from his bag.
“Am I all set with the room?” he asked. “Do you need anything else from me?”
Iris flipped open the house version of the guest register, double-checked the column by Geoffrey’s name, and nodded.
“All set,” she said. “Thank you for staying with us.”
“It’s been a pleasure,” Geoffrey sa
id. “A wonderful surprise.”
Iris beamed. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to stay for breakfast?” she asked.
Geoffrey shook his head. “It’s not a matter of what I’d like, at this point,” he said. “It’s a matter of where they expect me, and keeping my promises. The interstate opened this morning shortly after midnight. I need to get back on the road.”
He bent over again, rummaging in one of his bags, and Iris expected him to straighten up again, hands free, to make his final exit.
But instead of taking his first strides out the door, he laid something on the richly varnished counter of the front desk.
“This is for you,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.
Iris picked up the package, which looked like a book, wrapped in paper.
“What’s this?” she asked, surprised.
The book wasn’t wrapped in decorative paper, but in what looked to be a page of an English newspaper, printed on pink paper, rather than the standard American gray.
“It’s a little gift for you,” Geoffrey said.
“For me?” Iris said, her voice rising in surprise so that she shot a worried look at the lounge, worried that she’d been loud enough to wake the sleeping men.
Geoffrey nodded, clearly pleased at her reaction. “I just thought it was a little something you might enjoy. It’s a book on travel. In case you ever decide you’d like to see the sun rise on some distant shore. I thought it might give you some ideas.”
“Well, thank you,” Iris said, falling back on her manners in the midst of her pleasant confusion. “I’m afraid I don’t have anything for you.”
“Oh, no,” Geoffrey said. “This place has already been a gift. And so have you,” he said.
As he smiled at her, Iris looked down at the wrapped book in her hands, surprised by how shy she felt.
As she did, he took the opportunity to head for the door. But before he went out, he turned back.
“Merry Christmas!” he said.
“Merry Christmas,” Iris whispered back as he went out into the early morning light.
As soon as she saw his car nose down the drive, away from the inn, Iris tore that paper off.
Inside was a beautifully illustrated travel guide, describing picturesque but out-of-the-way destinations on every continent.
How in the world had he managed to have such a perfect gift for her on hand? There was no way he’d been able to go out shopping in the midst of the blizzard. Iris flipped through the first pages until she came to a scrawl of handwriting.
Iris, it read, in handwriting that was almost as confident, and crabby, as Geoffrey himself. If you ever decide to travel to any of these places, or anywhere else, please consider letting me know. I’d be very glad to meet you again, anywhere in the world. Geoffrey.
It wasn’t until she read his signature, still feeling a little thrill at the words they’d been signed to, that she realized his name was mirrored somewhere else on the page: just below the title.
With a sudden shock of recognition, she slammed the book shut to get a better look at the cover.
There was Geoffrey’s name again, in one-inch letters, standing at the foot of the mountain that decorated the cover. But Geoffrey Peterson, the book’s author, had a different last name than the one Geoffrey had used to check in.
That’s when she saw the type that ran across the top of the book, just above its title: “New York Times Bestselling Author.”
JARED’S EYES WIDENED AS he took his first bite of breakfast, glancing around the table at Audrey, Hannah, and Hannah’s parents, who were all seated in a little alcove by the window in the dining area.
“What is this?” he asked when that bite was finished, looking down at his plate of pancakes as if they might have suddenly been transformed into something completely different.
“Nothing fancy,” Audrey told him, rubbing his shoulder. “Chocolate chip pancakes.”
“A traditional Christmas-morning meal,” Hannah’s father joked. “Dating back to the time of the English kings.”
Jared shook his head. “I don’t know if it’s fancy or not,” he said. “But they taste like someone just snuck into heaven and stole them.”
“You like them, huh?” Audrey said, glancing over her own plate with an appraising eye.
“We have two options,” Jared said. “Either we can stay here forever, or we can kidnap the chef before we go. I don’t care which. You choose, honey.”
Audrey shook her head and kissed him.
“How about option three?” she said. “I’ll see about getting the recipe.”
As Hannah took another bite of her own pancakes, she felt a touch on her shoulder.
“Dear?” Iris said, leaning close and speaking low. “Would you come with me?”
Gratefully, Hannah put her fork down and stood.
The quick, worried glances of everybody at the table only reminded her why she was glad to have any excuse to escape for a moment. Her mother and father, Audrey and Jared—they might all be having the time of their life right now, in a snug inn, feasting on Christmas breakfast, if it weren’t for her. But none of them could forget the reason that had brought them all there originally, or the fact that today was supposed to have been Hannah’s wedding day.
At the same time, nobody could bring themselves to bring it up, at least not at the breakfast table, in front of everyone. And watching them tiptoe around it, each taking surreptitious glances at her, someone checking her face after almost every comment or joke, was driving her crazy.
They all just wanted her to be all right, but none of them seemed to have any idea what that meant, and neither did Hannah. She didn’t know if she ought to be enjoying herself as much as she could, because the place was beautiful and the food was good, and because Trevor shouldn’t have the power to ruin a good day. On the other hand, maybe she should be way more upset than she actually felt at the moment, getting all her emotions out, because there certainly must be a lot of them in there somewhere when you’re left at the altar by your fiancé.
Trying to figure out how she should act in front of everyone just made it harder for her to figure out how she actually felt. Which this morning, actually, was tired, deeply tired, as if she’d run a years’-long race and was only just now able to sit down for the first time. She was also surprised that she didn’t feel more of the other things she’d been afraid she might feel—fear of the future, shame over the breakup.
And she didn’t miss Trevor. That was the thing that surprised her most. In the moments after she talked with him, it had felt like her whole world was breaking apart, since she had believed she was building it with him at the center. If someone had asked her then, she would have said that the worst part of the breakup would be the loneliness and the loss of not having him around.
But now, days later, she didn’t miss him. She’d been angry at him, and exasperated with him, and even felt sorry for him. But she hadn’t missed him.
And she didn’t know how to feel about that, either.
So Iris’s whispered request came as a relief.
“Everything okay, honey?” her mom asked as Hannah turned to follow Iris.
“Sure,” Hannah said, giving her mother a smile that she hoped would ease her worries. “I’ll be right back.”
It wasn’t until she was following Iris through the dining area that her relief began to turn to curiosity as she started to wonder why Iris had plucked her away from her breakfast.
But before her curiosity had formed into a question, she followed Iris around the corner to the lobby by the front desk and found the answer: Trevor.
He was standing just inside the door of the inn, surrounded by foul-weather gear and snowshoes, grinning.
At first Hannah felt the same rush of familiarity and pleasure she always did when she saw Trevor. But this time, right behind it was a wall of anger. It roared up to the surface of her mind and was stopped only by her profound confusion of what he was doing there at all.
But when Trevor saw her, he didn’t hesitate. “Baby,” he said, rushing forward and crumpling her against his chilly foul-weather jacket. “I’m so glad you’re here. I was afraid I lost my chance.”
“Your chance?” Hannah repeated.
But Trevor wasn’t looking at her anymore. Instead, he was scanning his surroundings.
“It’s nicer than I remembered,” he said. “I have to say, I wasn’t crazy about getting married here. Where is everybody? Your dad still here? Your mom?”
Hannah nodded.
Trevor kissed her. “Well, we need to tell them.”
Hannah clung to him for a minute, comforted by the familiarity of his arms and his kiss. But then she struggled free and stepped back.
“Tell them what?” she asked.
“Tell them to get ready,” he said. “I’m going to marry you today.” He grinned at her as if he’d just delivered the most amazing Christmas present in the world.
Hannah felt something huge shift inside her, as if all the pieces of her life that she’d spent the last few days letting go of were straining to stand back up and fit together again. She felt a sudden rush of wild hope that everything could go back to the way she’d always dreamed it would be.
As she stared at Trevor, she heard a footstep behind her.
She turned, hoping someone had followed her out of the dining area—Audrey, her mother, even her dad, to help her figure out what in the world she should say next.
But it was Luke, coming out of the lounge, carrying a big backpack over his shoulders and keys in his hand.
“Hannah,” he said, his face lighting up in a big smile. “I wanted to catch you before I went.”
Then he recognized Trevor. When he did, his entire expression changed. Hannah saw a flash of deep dislike before Luke smoothed his features flat. “Trevor,” he said.
Trevor looked at Luke in confusion. “I’m sorry, man,” he said. “Have we met?”
Luke gave a brusque nod. “Few summers ago,” he said. “You might not remember.”
“Oh, sure!” Trevor said, sticking his hand out with a smile Hannah knew meant he was covering up the fact that he still had no recollection of Luke whatsoever. “Good to see you again.”
The White Christmas Inn Page 20