“Our toy ornaments are kid-proof,” Molly said as the woman headed toward the back of the store. The older couple brought a basket of items to the counter for Jo to ring up.
“Have a Merry Christmas,” Jo said as the couple left with their purchases.
The door bells were still jingling when Molly tapped Jo’s shoulder and pointed to a number on her notepad, circled three times. “Would you look at that? Better than I thought.”
Jo’s heart leaped at the number. They had never had a thousand-dollar day, let alone two thousand.
“Are you sure?”
Molly nodded. “I’m telling you, it was a stroke of brilliance to start selling entire decorated trees.”
“Wow ...” They could pay their rent on the shop for the next three months and still have money left for groceries and gas, rent and heat.
“I might just up and quit my job on the mountain.” In the past two weeks, Joanne had been working nights at the ski resort, cleaning floors and bathrooms in the off-hours after the resort closed. Though she didn’t mind the work, the job made her miss Ava’s bedtime, which broke her heart.
“Go for it. If things keep up, I’ll have enough to take a full course load next semester. I’ll be Meredith Grey before you know it.”
“Isn’t she a doctor?” Jo asked.
“Whatever.” Molly pumped her fists in slow motion, dancing behind the counter to “Jingle Bell Rock.”
“Next year, this time, you’ll be coming to Boston to visit me in my new life.”
“A very short visit. I hate to be away from Woodstock at Christmas,” Jo said.
“But you’d come to see me, your BFF.”
It was true. In their tight-knit family, she and Molly had been best friends since their mothers threw them into the same playpen in diaper days. Molly’s desire to leave Woodstock was a thorn in Jo’s side. Almost finished getting her nursing license, Molly was eager to get out of Woodstock and put down roots in a place where one job would pay the rent.
Jo was sometimes amazed at what opposites they were, since she couldn’t imagine living anywhere but here. Of course, as a single parent, she needed to live near her family, and you couldn’t get much closer than the apartment across the lane from your parents’ house. The setup in the old carriage house was good for child care and easy on the budget—not so good for actually moving on with life. She never thought that when she turned twenty-five, her mum would still be doing her laundry. Correction—her laundry and her kid’s, too.
“You work hard all day,” her mother always said. “I’m happy to help out where I can.” When it came to Ava, Mum and Dad were great. But sometimes Jo felt like her best wasn’t good enough. Could you ever spend enough time with your kid?
“Hello?” Molly snapped her fingers in front of Jo’s face. “Penny for your thoughts.”
“I was just thinking of how much Ava and I will miss you when you’re down in Boston next year, drinking wicked strong candy cane cosmos.”
“What? You think I’m a party animal?” Molly snatched a fuzzy mouse with a Santa cap from the bin and launched it at her cousin.
Laughing, Jo caught the little mouse and was about to wing it back when the elegant woman appeared amid the lit trees.
“Need some help?” Molly asked.
The woman reached into her Coach bag and removed a slender card case. “It’s so hard to choose. I think we’re probably just better off taking the whole tree—the one with the Matchbox cars on it. We’re renting the Cascade House for the next few months, and it could use some decorating. Do you know it?”
“Sure.” Jo shrugged. Everyone in these parts knew the Cascade House. Built as a millionaire’s mansion in the early 1900s, it had been turned into a bed-and-breakfast by the Seidel family. “But don’t Teddy and Laura have their own tree?”
She waved the question off. “You can never have enough Christmas, right? The sign says you make deliveries?”
“Sure thing.” Jo took the woman’s credit card, which read Clarice Diamond, and tallied up her purchases. The total was another substantial sale, which increased even more when Ms. Diamond said she would toss in another hundred dollars to have the tree delivered tonight. Clarice Diamond said the lodge they were renting was dark and dreary, and it would help brighten the place up.
“I have to ask my brother Dave,” Jo said. “If he’s around, I’m sure he’ll do it.”
Within minutes they were covering the tree, with Dave on his way over. Clarice Diamond leaned against the display window, a slim cell phone pressed to her ear, while her son danced in the aisles, a car ornament in each hand. Ava manned the sticky-tape dispenser at the base of the tree they were wrapping, singing carols as she assisted.
“O come, o come, amen you well ...” crooned Ava, her little legs huddled beneath the knit skirt of her dress.
My little bundle of Christmas cheer, Jo thought. Often she had to resist the temptation to drop everything and gather her daughter up in her arms. Ava was petite for her age, but she had gotten to the point where she did not want to be babied in public, and Jo tried to respect that.
Clarice joined them by the wrapped tree, sliding her phone into her purse. “Thank you so much for doing this so quickly. My husband will be so relieved to see Jason happy again.” She looked around to see if other customers were listening. “He’s Sid Diamond, you know.”
Molly rose. “The real estate guy who’s trying to trump Trump? The one who owns half of Boston?”
“Such a crazy reputation.” Mrs. Diamond’s eyes warmed a bit when she smiled. “We’ll be here for the season while my husband makes one of his famous deals. He’s looking at the base of Cannon Mountain.”
“Mmm. Well, if you’re going to be around, come back next week,” Molly said. “I hear Santa might be stopping by.”
Ava’s mouth dropped open. “Really?”
Molly shrugged. “Just something I heard.”
“We’ll be sure to check that out,” Clarice said. “And I hear that one of you is somewhat famous, too. My girlfriend said one of the young ladies running this shop was engaged to Shane Demerit.”
Awkwardness filled the pine-scented air, and suddenly Jo’s palms were damp. Jo felt Ava’s eyes on her, wide and eager.
“The famous skier?” the woman prodded, as if they needed reminding.
“Ay-yuh, that would be me.” Jo raised her hand, but her smile was gone, the good mood drained from her. “I’m Joanne Truman.”
“Clarice Diamond.” She extended her hand. “It’s so nice to meet you. Looking at you now, I remember seeing your photo back in the day. I was a huge fan of Shane’s.” She pressed a palm to her chest, biting back a smile. “Actually, I have to admit it. I had a crush on him. I saw him at a competition and though I didn’t know him at all, he had such a presence. When I heard that he died, I was in shock for days. Such a devastating loss to the ski world.”
And to the people who loved him, Jo wanted to say, as grief, cold and familiar, settled over her shoulders. In the five years since Shane’s death, the pain had eased. But the scars still throbbed, especially at this time of year when symbols of the holiday she loved threatened to remind her of that dark season when Shane had died.
“I’ve always been haunted by Shane’s story.” Clarice locked her sharp blue eyes on Jo. “I guess it was his bad boy reputation that intrigued the world. What made him do it?”
Jo had nothing to say. She had learned that she didn’t owe the public any explanation as far as Shane was concerned. She stepped back from the woman and let her eyes drop to the floor, where her daughter perched, bright and curious. Ava was her inspiration for pushing on. Ava was the light of her life, the beautiful aftermath of her darkest days.
“Can you believe that was five years ago?” Molly said as she applied another piece of tape to the tree. “Time does march on. And look at Ava, here. Five years old now.”
Ava frowned up at them, her eyes masked by hair. “Do you need any more tape?�
�
“I think that’s it, kiddo,” Molly said.
“Oh ... she’s yours?” Clarice looked from Ava to Joanne and back again. “This is his daughter? Oh, wow ...” She pressed her palm to her chest again, as if her heart couldn’t take the drama.
Jo reached down to Ava, pulling her to her feet. “Why don’t you put the tape away?” she asked.
“But I want to hear about Daddy.”
“Listen to your mum,” Molly said in her stern aunt voice, and Jo was grateful when Ava marched off.
“It’s all such a sad story,” Clarice said. “My heart goes out to you.”
Jo stared at the woman, wondering how such a thing of beauty could be so vacant. She wanted to point out that Ava had never met her father. She wanted to tell Clarice that they didn’t need her pity.
But she kept her mouth clamped shut and went back to the register, grateful that another customer was ready to be rung up.
Later, when Ava was settled in with her grandmother, and the customers had cleared out, Jo’s anger resurged at the thought of Clarice Diamond’s dramatic scene.
“That woman really pissed me off,” she muttered to her cousin.
“Still seething over Princess Diamond? She’s just a pretty face.”
“A pretty face in my face.” Jo brushed glitter from the counter. “In my daughter’s face. You’d think that a woman with a child of her own would be more sensitive to a kid who never got to meet her notorious father. It made me wonder if it’s right having Ava here. With me working ninety jobs, I thought it would be a good way for the two of us to spend more time together, but now I’m not so sure ...”
“It’s fine,” Molly reassured her. “Ava likes to hear about her father. You can’t keep the truth from her forever.”
“I’m just trying to protect her.” Jo sprayed glass cleaner on the counter and wiped down the sides. “I never thought I’d have celebrity mongers in here, sniffing around my daughter. Gushing sympathy.”
“The woman dropped a lot of sympathy here. A few hundred bucks’ worth.”
“Still ...” The whole thing left a bad taste in Jo’s mouth. “How do you tell a five-year-old the difference between famous and notorious?” she asked.
“You don’t.” Molly zipped the cash and receipts into a bag and went to the front door. “You say, ‘Bet you didn’t know your dad was so famous, did you, pumpkin?’ And you leave it at that.” She locked the front door. “It’s late. We’d better get going, ’cause we’re back open at nine tomorrow.”
“Give Ava extra hugs and kisses for me,” Jo said, wishing she was headed home, too. “And her Boo Bear is in the dryer.” Ava never slept without it.
“Relax, Mama Bear. I’ve done this plenty of times before.” Molly would walk Ava home from Jo’s parents’ house to the apartment in the carriage house that Molly, Jo, and Ava shared.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, cuz,” Jo said as she started turning off light displays around the store. She went to the display window—the only lights they left on after closing—and paused by the Woodstock snow globe. Ava had reminded her to replace the window sample with a globe from the stockroom after the Diamonds had purchased it.
She turned the smooth globe upside down and watched as snowflakes danced over the town, landing on the mountains and the rooftops. Let Molly have her wanderlust; Jo loved this town. It was here in the circle of the White Mountains that she’d fallen in love, had her heart broken, then been given a brand-new life with the birth of her daughter.
On this Thanksgiving weekend, she was grateful for many things ... her daughter, her family, her New England home. Thank God towns like Woodstock were still able to exist and prosper. Thank you, God. She turned the sign to CLOSED and followed her cousin out the back door to a real-life snow dance.
Chapter 2
The old window rattled as Sam slammed it shut and stripped off his sweater. Up on Dare Mountain, the falling snow would penetrate like slivers of glass, and the wind would freeze to the bone. It was crazy to go up on the mountain on a wicked cold night like this, but in the past few years, crazy had become the new normal for Sam Norwood.
Stripped down to his jeans, he turned and caught his reflection in the mirror over the dresser. A freakin’ horror show. The old colonial furniture had served him fine when he grew up in this room, but since he’d returned from Afghanistan, it was all another reminder of days long past, childhood plans and alliances that had been shattered and torn. He grabbed a pillow from the bed and propped it up against the mirror to block the ugly truth.
He pulled the titanium shell over the tender area of his shoulder, pausing to massage the scars, braids of skin that twisted like maps of the chambers of hell. He didn’t need the mirror to know the patterns of the wounds, the discolored skin that ran up one side of his neck, the distorted area where his ear had once been.
And to think, he and Cack really believed they were going to make it through in one piece. Cackalacky was the platoon’s nickname for Floyd Miller, a North Carolina boy. “If something gits ya, ya gotta hope you git damaged just enough to send you home still walking and talking,” Cack used to say. That was what Cack had wanted more than anything ... to get home.
Bitterness stung the back of Sam’s tongue as he slammed the drawers of the old dresser closed. That was the perverse irony, the sick joke of the universe—Cack had a family to return to and he went home in a body bag, while here was Sam sleeping in his old bedroom, with nobody who would really miss him, save for his ma, who’d made a life of her own.
Why was the person who had the least to lose always the survivor? Last man standing.
Not even thirty years old and he’d already outlived his two best friends. He’d joined the army to start a new chapter in his life. He’d been running from home, running from guilt, running from Shane’s ghost. But in trying to escape the tragedy that had happened up on Dare Mountain, he’d run straight into a fiery pit of more agony, the kind that wakes you up bawling in the middle of the night.
One thing he’d finally learned: There was no escape.
It was time to point his head into the wind and let fate finish knocking the crap out of him.
Sam opened the closet door and dug into a bin of winter gear. Gloves. Hat. Insulated socks. It was all there the way he’d left it four years ago. Even a face mask. That would work.
He stuffed the gear into the big pockets of his jacket and turned toward the door. The wall there was bright with posters of the U.S. Olympic ski team, and his gut tightened at the memory of the dreams and plans that he and Shane had hatched in this room. The two of them thought they were going to ski with Bode Miller. They were going to be champions, Woodstock’s first heroes.
A couple of idiots.
He flicked the light switch, thinking that it had ended that fast for Shane. One stupid decision on Dare Mountain and Shane was gone, leaving dozens of people to pick up the pieces and ask why as they reeled in pain. Missing him.
The house was tired and quiet around him. His mother had all but moved out, spending most of her time with Ted Provost, the groundskeeper down at the golf course. She probably should’ve sold this place while he was gone, given his stuff away to charity. One more way to erase the past.
Out in the shed, Sam found his ski gear, dusty, but the boots still fit and the bindings worked. He dumped the stuff into the back of the truck and headed out to the mountain.
Time to face the beast.
He hadn’t planned on coming home. Four years ago when he left for Afghanistan, he figured he’d seen the last of these mountains. But yesterday, on his way home from the airport, he saw the rock cliffs rising on the horizon and knew he would have to do it.
Time to face the mountain.
Dare Mountain was the setting for his nightmares, the place where he watched Shane disappear over a rocky ledge. It was also the setting for the Humvee nightmares, which didn’t make sense, since the hills of Afghanistan were carved from entirely diffe
rent landscape.
But no one ever said dreams made sense.
On a clear day, from the top of the mountain, you could see four states and Canada, but most of the people in Woodstock never got that view. They kept their eyes on the road, on their kids ... on the pasta they were cooking for dinner or the fence they were painting. Normal people living normal lives. As a kid, Sam had always wanted more. He wanted to be up on top of a mountain, looking to the future.
Now that he’d spent time in the craggy brown mountains of Afghanistan, he’d learned that tomorrow isn’t on the next hilltop or valley; your future comes from the landscape within. That’s how he knew he was on shaky ground.
When you were dead inside, the terrain of tomorrow looked flat and dusty. Very bleak.
Chapter 3
Swabbing the mop in time with Glenn Miller’s version of “Sleigh Ride,” Jo made short work of cleaning the ladies’ room in the main lodge at the bottom of the mountain. Last Christmas she’d helped Les Benedict, the manager of the lodge, choose a few Christmas CDs after he’d read an article that said tips usually tripled when customers were jollied up by Christmas carols.
“Music calms the heart,” she’d told him. “People want to be generous and share goodwill. It makes us all feel good. We just need a little cajoling.”
Now as she backed out of the ladies’ room, she swayed in time to the swing band’s rousing climax of the song.
“I like a person who puts her heart in her work,” Les said from behind her.
“With a selection of music like that, who can resist?” Jo swiped the hair from her forehead with the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
“You helped me pick those songs, Jo, and for that I’m very grateful.”
“It was a great idea you had. Sure makes my work here go faster.”
“That’s what I’m meaning to talk to you about.” Les tugged at the zipper toggle of his down vest. “What’s this I hear ’bout you quitting on me?”
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