by Dani Collins
The paper was located under the menu book. Kristen consulted the recipe her mother had texted, adding the items to Wendy’s list.
The next hour went by quickly as they ate, cleaned up, served, cleaned up, then waved all the guests away on their day of skiing. A family then trailed down with their luggage and Wendy showed Kristen how to check them out before they went upstairs and cleaned up after them, then freshened the other rooms.
“Don’t worry about vacuuming into every nook and cranny. We have a housekeeper who comes out weekly to help us stay on top of the deep cleaning.”
“I wondered how you managed all of this by yourself,” Kristen said, mentally counting the four rooms along with the half dozen cabins.
“Usually Ted’s only on the cat two days a week. This is the first year where we’ve been sold out nearly every day right through the winter. It’s exciting, but we’re not sure if this is a fluke or our new normal. I’ve been trying to find time to sit down and run numbers, figure out if we could hire someone full-time to help run the business.”
“I heard this small business growth hack recently—budget as if you’re already paying for a new employee. Put their wages into a separate account for six months to a year before you actually hire them. Then you not only see if you can afford the added expense, but you’ve also built up a buffer of contingency funds.”
“What a great idea. I’m embarrassed that I’m making you chambermaid when you’re probably more qualified than I am to run this place.”
“Oh, heck, when you call yourself manager, you’re actually calling yourself qualified to be whoever called in sick on any given day. I was putting out traffic cones four days ago.” She shrugged. “And I don’t mind the odd jobs that come up. I prefer to stay busy and keep it interesting.”
They finished up the rooms and Wendy showed her how she went through all the common areas of the chalet, straightening and making note of repairs Ted might have to address.
“I usually sit down and check email before I head out to the cabins, but we’re ahead of schedule. Do you mind if we press on? Then I’ll know we’re on top of everything when I head into town.”
“Let’s get ’er done.”
They suited up in boots and jackets and braved the chop of the icy wind to visit the adorable A-frames. They were completely unrecognizable as the utilitarian camp houses they had once been. The shiplap had been painted a clean off-white, the beams a dark forest green that matched the countertops in the galley kitchens.
There was no television. Guests had to watch the flames in their cheery pot-belly wood stoves or the snow falling beyond the windows. The sofa held colorful throws that matched the cushions on the rocking chair and the mat by the door read, ‘Hi, I’m mat.’
The main floor was partitioned into a kitchen area, a lounge with a pullout sofa, a bathroom that also held a small washer-dryer, and a bedroom with a queen bed. A loft overlooked the kitchen and held two single beds.
“Six people stay in each of these?” Kristen asked.
“Seven if the baby still fits in a playpen. People don’t usually bring little ones in winter, though.”
“You can’t take a baby skiing, can you?”
“No. But in the summer we get lots of family reunions. They take their kids fishing and play horseshoes and croquet. I’ve seen some fancy, all-terrain strollers get pushed around the hiking trails.”
Kristen almost asked Wendy if she was looking forward to doing that herself.
“Can you swim in the lake?” she asked.
“It’s really cold. Which doesn’t stop most kids including Sarah.”
Wendy washed the dishes while Kristen ran the small, cordless vacuum from the closet. Then Wendy showed her the list of items each refrigerator ought to have, how to account for the items used, and where to check the dates on the cheese and other perishables.
They restocked the fruit, juice, wine and beer, dark chocolate, jars of antipasto, and boxes of crackers. Wendy left a small bag of her homemade mixture of caramel popcorn with nuts with a card that said it was compliments of her and Ted.
“Do you go crazy for those shows about tiny houses? I do. I would live in a mini-cottage like this if I could. It feels like this is how the elves live at the North Pole.” Kristen left fresh linens and toiletries in the bathroom. “Of course, you do live here, you lucky duck.”
“I am lucky,” Wendy agreed.
She scanned the checklist Kristen had been following, nodded, and they shrugged on their jackets, closed up the cabin and crossed to the next one. Paths were cut between the cabins, snow piled to waist height. They hurried across and out of the cold, efficiently working together to tidy up the next one.
“Sarah said last night that you were only supposed to be here for one winter,” Kristen said as she collected the dishes and brought them to where Wendy was filling the sink.
“That’s true. It was that growth thing, again. Ted’s parents wanted to try living down south for the winter, but weren’t sure if they would like it, or if Ted could afford someone permanently. I was given a contract for the ski season to try it out, which was a great fit for me. I’d been bumming around for ages, first across Europe, then here.”
“That sounds fun. Where in Europe?”
“Everywhere. I look back now and think I was trying to find home. I don’t have any family and took jobs in as many different countries as possible, mostly cooking or cleaning. After a few years, I realized I hadn’t seen much of my own country so I came back and started doing the same thing here, taking work wherever I found it.”
Kristen was struck by Wendy saying that she didn’t have family, but didn’t want to draw attention to something that might be painful.
“One of the reasons I went into hotel management was for the travel opportunities,” Kristen said. “I worked in London for a few months and had a really good assistant manager position in Spain for half a year, but I was homesick the whole time. I came back stateside and now I’m only ten hours from my parents. Two hours from my brother, so I see him and his kids a lot. Our parents usually come to his place so I don’t often go ‘home,’ but knowing that I can makes all the difference.”
“Where is home?” Wendy asked curiously.
“Dillon.”
“That’s not far from here.”
“Three hours? Less as the crow flies,” Kristen agreed, prickling as she wondered if Finn was there yet. So close. “What made you decide to put down roots here?” she asked, refusing to dwell on him.
“I wasn’t sure if I wanted to, to be honest. My itchy feet were a big reason it took Ted and me a long time to be more than friends.”
Wendy moved with economy, drying dishes and setting them on shelves with practiced efficiency, clearly having done this a thousand times.
“He worked away so much during his first marriage, he made it clear very early that he doesn’t have any interest in travel. I didn’t blame him, especially because he has Sarah, but I wasn’t sure I could stay in one place for long. I kept my feelings to myself, but that whole first winter I kept thinking, this guy is so great. Why isn’t he married?”
Kristen glanced up from restocking the fridge. “Then you stayed?”
“His summer help fell through. Summer is so much fun here. Sarah and I would go berry picking. We all went fishing and hiking. For the first time, I wasn’t looking for my next job. I was just enjoying myself. I thought I could do this the rest of my life, but when summer was winding down, Ted didn’t ask me if I wanted to stay another winter. I was pretty hurt.”
Kristen paused in straightening the throw on the back of the sofa, thinking that was better than false promises of a shared future.
“What happened?” she asked Wendy.
“For starters, I figured out I was in love with him,” Wendy said ruefully. She wiped down the counters. “I hadn’t realized how hopeful I was that he would ask me to stay until he didn’t. But I didn’t know how to tell him how I felt. He was my bos
s.”
“That is tricky.”
“I tried to make new plans, but nothing appealed. I was miserable. Then, the day my contract finished, he finally told me that he’d been waiting until I was no longer his employee so he could ask me on a date. He didn’t want to be my boss when he told me he had romantic feelings for me.”
“Oh.” Kristen melted inside. “That’s too cute.”
“I know.” Wendy smiled, but her lips wobbled, betraying that it had been a really emotional time for her. “Then he said he would offer me a contract for the winter even if I wasn’t interested in dating, but he thought I should know that’s how he felt about me. Then I admitted I felt that way, too. And we went on our first date.”
“I might cry,” Kristen warned, feeling misty. “What a genuinely nice guy.”
“I know.”
“Sarah was happy?”
“So happy. She’d been throwing us together for ages, which was another reason I hadn’t said anything about how I felt. What if we didn’t work as a couple? She might have been really hurt.”
“But you’re actually awesome together?” Kristen grinned, already knowing the answer.
“So awesome.”
“And no more itchy feet?”
“None. I found where I’m supposed to be. I love it here.”
Kristen sighed wistfully. She’d been feeling restless lately. Not itchy feet precisely, but a need for that. The place she was supposed to be. A place she could love.
She hadn’t fully envisioned where that place was or what it looked like, but she’d been aware for a while that her current job was just a job, the town a nice town, but not ‘home.’ She had friends, but not a community.
“So this isn’t the North Pole. It’s Happily Ever After,” Kristen said in a musing tone.
“It certainly is for me.” Wendy glowed with a joy that made Kristen’s heart swell in happiness for her and hope for herself.
“Maybe the magic of Mistletoe Chalet will have me stumbling into my own version,” Kristen mused.
“Be careful what you wish for, especially at Christmas,” Wendy warned with a point of her finger. “It might come true.”
*
When they returned to the chalet, they ate lunch and Wendy showed Kristen how to check in the new guests if they arrived before she got back from town. She returned a few emails, then left Kristen with some prep work in the kitchen, but said it wasn’t urgent.
“Honestly, if you and Sarah can get this place looking like Christmas before Christmas arrives, I will be so grateful. I can’t believe it’s the seventeenth and the tree is only now going up.”
“Fewer needles to sweep?” Kristen offered as the bright side.
“There is that, I suppose,” Wendy agreed as they walked into the lounge.
A robust and fragrant balsam fir stood naked in the corner, neatly trimmed into a classic cone. Sarah was fending off Bonzo who wanted to know what she was doing beneath the lowest branches, trying to follow her as she put the skirt into place.
“Go to your mat, you doofus,” she laughed. “You’re not helping.”
Kristen chuckled and called the dog over to his place by the fire.
“Seeing as you have everything under control here,” Wendy said with great humor, “I’ll get going.”
“Okay, see you later,” Sarah said as she stood, flushed and still laughing with exasperation. “Thanks,” she added to Kristen as Wendy left through the kitchen.
“Cute shirt,” Kristen said as Sarah dug into a box labeled ‘tree lights.’ Her top was a candy-cane-striped turtleneck with a picture of a book cover on it. It read ‘Self-Elf Guide for the Holidays.’
“Grandma gave it to me last year.” Sarah turned around to show the back. It was a picture of the back of the book and read:
Make Merry
No Snooping
Exercise is for January
“Good advice,” Kristen said. “And speaking of advice…?”
Sarah touched her lips, then set down the lights and crept into the kitchen. Moments later, she came skipping back. “Okay, the car is gone.”
“Then, spill,” Kristen demanded, picking up the lights. “I’ve been dying of curiosity. What are you planning?”
Sarah swallowed and tucked her chin.
“I want to give Dad and Wendy a wedding.”
Chapter Four
“They’re already married, aren’t they?” Kristen paused in plugging lights into the power bar to ensure they worked.
“Yes, but it was just the two of them at the courthouse in town.” Sarah brought a chair over, then took the string and began tucking it into the uppermost tree boughs.
“No family or friends at all?”
“No, it was a spur of the moment thing and kind of for me. I wound up with this rash on my hands that wouldn’t go away. Wendy took me to the doctor, but because she wasn’t my mom and didn’t have custody and it wasn’t life-threatening or contagious, they didn’t want to treat me without my dad being there. They did and I’m totally fine.”
She showed Kristen her palms, which were a healthy pale pink, then took the next string of lights.
“I went to school the next day and Dad was going to go sign some papers at the doctor’s office so it wouldn’t happen again. Then he said, ‘Or we could get married and you could be Sarah’s stepmom.’ Wendy said yes and they talked about setting a date. But it’s not easy to get all the family together. It would take months to plan and what if I had to go to the doctor before then? He still had to go sign the papers. Also, Wendy said a wedding would be expensive and they just wanted to be married. So they went into town and did it that day.”
“Were you disappointed you missed being there?”
“A little. I mean, it was super funny to come home and Dad was like, ‘Wendy is your stepmom now.’ I was so happy about that part. I love her to death. I didn’t really care about not being a bridesmaid. I mean, Dad asked me afterward if I was mad about that and said if he could only afford either a fancy dress for his wedding or a new ski jacket, which one would I pick. I said the new ski jacket, because I could wear it every day, even to school.”
“Very practical,” Kristen said, handing her the end of the third string so Sarah could attach it to the one she was holding. “What made you decide to plan a wedding for them now, then?”
“Well, I’m not the only one who is super practical. I think I learned it from Wendy. She never wants to spend money on herself. We were shopping on the sale racks a couple weeks ago and she found this really pretty white dress. It’s like a long sweater with a—is it called a cow neck?”
“Cowl,” Kristen said, biting back her smile of amusement.
“I thought ‘cow’ sounded weird,” Sarah said with a chuckle. “So it has one of those and it was super soft. She tried it on and it fit her perfectly. I said buy it since it was on sale, and she could wear it on Christmas Day. She was like, ‘Mmm, no…’” Sarah put an imaginary dress back on a rack and rolled her eyes. “She left it there! I was like, Nooo.”
Kristen chuckled and reached her arm behind the tree to take the lights as Sarah came off the chair and the tree became too fat for her to manage by herself.
“I want to shop with you,” Kristen said. “I talk myself out of buying things all the time and regret it later when I need a decent outfit for something. Did you buy it for her?”
“I couldn’t afford it,” Sarah said with a wince. “But as soon as we were at the other end of the mall, I said I had to go to the bathroom. I ran back and gave the lady ten dollars. I said my dad would come back to pay the rest. Then I told him it was the perfect Christmas gift for Wendy and he went and got it the next time he was in town. I’m hiding it in my room.”
“Sneaky!”
“I know.” Sarah grinned with pride.
“Were you already planning the wedding at that point?”
“No. Not until I looked at it again. Then I got thinking about how Grandma was so disapp
ointed she missed their wedding and that, for once, we’re all going to be here for Christmas. Wendy has a dress, so I just need to organize everything else.” Her eyes widened. “Then I looked up what ‘everything else’ is and now I’m not sure if I can make it happen. What do you think?”
“I think it’s a wonderful idea. Weddings don’t have to be over the top. An intimate family wedding is actually very manageable, especially at the last minute. Is that what you were doing last night? Figuring out everything you need to do?”
“Making a list, yes. I’ll get my notebook from my room.”
While Sarah ran to her room, Kristen got the last of the lights into place and turned them on. The tiny white bulbs glowed like a hundred stars between the needles of the boughs.
She was used to decorating a tree in the lobby, but they were usually artificial trees with lights hardwired into the branches. The one at her current job had come out of the basement already decorated and only needed a touch here and there to freshen it up.
Her mother and sister-in-law always had the tree decorated by the time she got to their homes for Christmas and she never bothered putting one in her apartment because she usually had plans to visit family elsewhere.
“This is the first tree I’ve decorated since I was a kid,” she told Sarah as the girl reappeared at the top of the stairs. “It feels like a lot of responsibility.”
Sarah chuckled. “Well, I’ve made all the mistakes you can make and Dad and Wendy have never been mad.”
“What kind of mistakes?”
“Put a dead string on,” Sarah said, counting on her fingers. “Broke one of Grandma’s special ornaments, but I was little and didn’t mean to. I forgot to water the tree and all the needles fell off. That’s usually my job. Sometimes I forget the order to decorate and try to put the lights on last. That never works out well. Also when I was little, I put all the decorations on the bottom of the tree, ’cause I didn’t think to get a chair. And two years ago, I decorated cookies to hang on the tree then put them away with all the ornaments. That was really disgusting last year when we opened the boxes.”