The Man Under The Mistletoe

“And don’t try to put a positive spin on it,” Francie went on. “Even you can’t do that. Dad was so devastated by Jay’s death that he didn’t want to live. I mean, think about it. What does that say about you and me, his daughters? Didn’t it occur to him that I’d need him to walk me down the aisle one day? Or that you’d have babies who’d need a grandfa—” She stopped abruptly, looking horrified, then spread her arms in apology. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think…”

Rosie snatched the dress off the hook and carried it out into the shop, needing to escape the words, knowing she couldn’t.

The store smelled of a spicy-sweet carnation-and-vanilla potpourri and she breathed in a whiff of it to reestablish her equilibrium. This is me, she told herself firmly. Beautiful things, steady little business, cheerful, grateful clients. Not the grim confusion my life has been for the past two years.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, hanging the dress on a rack behind the counter as Francie joined her. “Women have miscarriages every day and don’t expect other people to apologize every time a baby is mentioned. Now. Yes, it bothers me about Dad. He didn’t have much time for us, but he adored our brother and there’s nothing we can do about that now that they’re both gone. So…try to have a little more sympathy for Mom. She played second fiddle to Jay, too. If you worry about Dad not caring enough to stay with us, imagine how she must feel.”

Rosie reached to the shelves behind her for a hatbox.

“I feel sorry for Chase, too,” Francie said, “living out here in the boonies with his grandmother and his aunts.” She held the box steady while Rosie placed the hat into the tissue. Their eight-year-old nephew had already suffered more than his share of tragedy. His mother had run off with a group of musicians, and his father had died in a grizzly accident.

“Yeah, well, he’s a brave little boy.” Rosie put the lid on the box. “You want to take the dress and hat home, or do you want me to keep it for you?” The wedding was only a week away, but Francie’s room in the family home still looked like a fourteen-year-old’s.

“Keep it, please.”

Rosie put the hatbox back on the shelf and slapped a label on it that read, Francie. “I worry about Chase, too,” she said. “Fortunately, he has Jay’s sunny nature.”

“Did you find somebody to help you watch the shop so you can take care of him while Mom’s in California with Aunt Ginger and Aunt Sukie?”

Rosie nodded. “It’s all handled. I’ll move from the guest house into the house while Mom’s gone, and Sara will help me with the store if I need her.” Sara Ross, a friend since high school, could be depended upon to step in whenever Rosie needed anything. “Now. What else do we need? Slip? Stockings?”

“Rosie?”

“Yeah.”

“I have something else to tell you.”

Rosie detected something worrisome in Francie’s tone. For all her sister’s pugnacious need to quarrel with their mother, she’d never argued much with Rosie. They’d been too busy commiserating with each other to fight.

“Francie,” she said firmly, reaching into the storage under the counter to pull out a box of stockings, “you’re going to be married in a week. It’s no time to talk about death or miscarriage or—”

“I wasn’t going to.” Francie put a hand on Rosie’s. Then she drew a breath, raised her eyes to heaven and blurted, “I asked Matt to give me away.”

If anything could have made this day harder on Rosie’s nerves than it already had been, the mention of her ex-husband was it. Especially as part of her sister’s wedding party. Rosie was the maid of honor.

“I didn’t ask him to take pictures,” Francie continued. “I’m sure he’d do a better job than the photographer we hired, but I just want him to walk me down the aisle.” Her fingernails were digging into Rosie’s palm. “Please tell me you don’t hate me. Please tell me you won’t chicken out on me because Matt’s coming. Please.”

Francie was near tears. She had a theatrical turn to her nature and could call them up at will, but Rosie knew these were genuine. Francie had loved Matt from the day Rosie had brought him home to meet the family. With no father to give her away, she no doubt thought it logical to ask Matt. Their mother had offered to give her away as was often done in fatherless weddings, but despite her rejection of tradition in many aspects of her life, Francie had always been halfhearted about the idea.

Rosie smacked Francie’s hand with the box of stockings. “I won’t walk out, but I do hate you. When’s he coming?”

“Friday. He’s…” She avoided Rosie’s eyes and added quickly, “He’s staying with us.”

Oh, good. There was nothing Rosie wanted less than to have the man who’d walked out on her in the darkest period of her life move right back in, even for a couple of days.

“He asked me if I’d asked you first. I told him I had and that you said it was okay.” Francie related the lie with no apparent evidence of guilt.

Rosie nodded. “I’m going to hurt you, Francie, before I kill you. He’d better be on his way home before I move into the house to stay with Chase.”

Francie reached across the counter and hugged Rosie fiercely. “I’m sure he will be. He’s going to China, you know.”

Rosie was more puzzled than interested. “China?”

“He has a contract for a pictorial book. I guess he’s giving up newspaper work for a while. He says he wants to travel.” Francie glanced at the door. “I’ve got to go before Mom drives off.” She hesitated one more moment to look into Rosie’s eyes. “You’re sure you’re okay with this?”

How could she ever be okay with it? But she was the big sister. She had to be okay.

“Of course,” she replied.

“Good. You going to be home for dinner tonight? Afterward, I’m making birdseed bags for the wedding.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Okay. See you then. Thanks, Rosie.”

Rosie stepped out into the sunshine to wave her mother and sister off as though the afternoon had been fun, rather than an exercise in anger management. All attempts to spend time together ended that way. She could hardly wait for dinner.

Her mother waved dutifully, the martyred little smile on her face; it was first cousin to the long-suffering sigh.

Rosie watched the dark blue Mercedes drive away and had the same thought that crossed her mind every day. She should move away, get her life together, find out who she was when she wasn’t connected to the high-strung eccentrics who made up her life.

But that would leave Chase without an ally now that Francie would be out of the house, and though her mother loved Chase, Rosie knew from experience that that didn’t necessarily mean she could help him develop into a well-rounded individual.

Rosie also hated the thought of leaving Maple Hill. Her father had been born here and inherited her grandfather’s construction company. Though he’d worked for his own company in Boston for many years, the family had spent summers and the Christmas holidays at Bloombury Landing, their family home on the lake. In Maple Hill, in the foothills of the Berkshires, winter, and Christmas, particularly, were spectacular.

Maple Hill dated back to colonial days, and its main street still looked as though a minuteman with a musket might appear at any moment. Most of the buildings built around the town square dated back to that time, or had been rebuilt in keeping with that era’s architecture. It was a lively little center of commerce in a picture-perfect setting.

Rosie loved it here. She loved the town’s rich history, the press of tourists in the summer, the red and gold leaves of fall, the pristine snow in the winter. Add to that the warmth and comfort of old friendships, and it was a wonderful place to be.

She felt she belonged here. Her reasons were complicated, but primarily, she thought it was because her dreams had been born here. They had died here, too, yet somehow, strangely, that had only strengthened her bond. Right now she existed somewhere between hope and devastation, unable to believe in a future here, but also unable to give up on it.

And—she even hated to admit this to herself—she couldn’t quite dispel the feeling that her mother clung to her. Not physically, of course, not with any apparent emotional dependency, but sometimes Rosie heard something in her voice, saw something in her eyes that recalled a long-ago past when things had been different.

Every time it happened, Rosie would chase the memory only to come to a dead end. Then she would tell herself she’d been imagining things, that she and her mother had never been that close. But that look in her mother’s eyes said things Rosie felt, rather than remembered, and she couldn’t quite dismiss it.

So she had to stay. At least for a while. At least until Gillian Howe of the Runway Boutique got serious about adding wedding dresses to her shop in Springfield just a few miles across the Connecticut River and bought Rosie out.

Then, with money in hand to plan the future, Rosie could think about whether it would be worth it to leave the place where she really wanted to be, to find the woman she really was.

“YO! MATT!”

The frantic sound of a woman’s voice was followed by loud rapping on the darkroom door.

“We’re developing!” Shorty shouted as he washed the contact sheet. “Don’t come in, Jenny!”

Matt DeMarco looked over Shorty’s shoulder as the faces of children at a local science fair began to materialize into the neat little squares of the contact sheet that represented every frame on the roll of film. He was fairly sure the Sacramento Sentinel was the only newspaper in the West that still developed film in a darkroom. Shorty and technology didn’t get along.

“I need Matt!” Jenny shouted.