A Knights Bridge Christmas

The house was as cold as a tomb—not the best image but it was in his head before he could stop it. Before he’d left town earlier in the week, he’d turned down the heat as far as he could without risking frozen pipes. Turning up the thermostat was the first order of business. While the heat kicked on, he unloaded the car.

A middle-aged man walked across the street from the common. “Hello, Logan. Randy Frost. I worked with your grandfather as a volunteer firefighter when he was chief. I just retired myself.”

“It’s good to see you, Randy,” Logan said.

“Wasn’t sure you’d remember me.”

“Your mother is Audrey Frost. She’s encouraging my grandmother to do yoga.”

“She and Daisy are tight. Kind of the way it is here. In most small towns, I expect. Need any help getting Daisy settled?”

“I think I got most everything, thanks.”

“Always feel free to ask for help. We’d all do anything for her.”

The implication, however unintended, was that her own family had neglected her. Logan felt an urge to defend himself with the usual protestations about the demands of his profession, but Randy Frost wouldn’t care and it was nineteen degrees out.

Randy didn’t look as if he cared about the cold temperature, either.

Logan thanked him for his offer to help. “Were you ice-skating?”

“Me? No. I stopped by to watch Dylan McCaffrey skate with my daughter. They’re getting married on Christmas Eve. He played professional hockey for a few years. Grew up in Los Angeles and ends up in the NHL. Go figure. You a hockey fan, Logan?”

“I’m a Bruins fan. I played hockey in high school but I was never any good at it.”

“We can’t be good at everything.” Randy motioned toward the mostly dark house. “Daisy’s got you decorating the place?”

Logan raised his eyebrows. “Your mother told you that, too?”

“She’s her own Knights Bridge All News Network, but no, Clare Morgan mentioned it the other day.”

“I see,” Logan said, although he didn’t.

“She lives in an apartment at the sawmill my wife and I run. It can be hard to be new in town, and everyone here loved her predecessor at the library, Phoebe O’Dunn. Phoebe’s engaged to Dylan’s business partner, Noah Kendrick. Southern California tech guy.”

Logan smiled. “I’m lost.”

Randy winked at him. “That’s because you’re not from around here. If you were, you’d follow right along. When do you plan to put the house on the market?”

“That’s up to my grandmother.”

“Right. Well, we know old houses around here. Let me know if you need to do any work on it before you put up the For Sale sign.”

“I will.”

Logan expected Randy Frost would turn around and walk back to the common, but he stood there. Scrutinizing the big-city doctor, Logan thought, feeling the older man’s distrust. Logan understood Randy’s wariness, shared by other people in town. To them, he was a busy physician from the city who hadn’t visited his grandparents as much as he’d have liked—maybe as much as he should have. Obviously he hadn’t visited as much as the people of Knights Bridge thought he should have.

“Good luck with decorating,” the older man said finally, about-facing and heading back across the street before Logan could answer.

Relieved that little encounter was over, he went inside. The house was heating up nicely. He put away his groceries in a cupboard above the sink that his grandmother had cleared out for him before her move. “You’re always welcome to stay here,” she’d told him. “As long as I have this place, it’s your home, too. You can toss out the rest of the stuff in these cabinets. I won’t be needing it.”

There’d been no self-pity in her tone, but that didn’t mean other people in town didn’t pity her—and blame Logan for her move into assisted living. His father, too. Logan understood that his grandmother could have decided to move and put on a positive face to spare her family, but he’d been looking for hints of doubt and hidden meaning and had seen none. She’d been adamant that whether to move was her decision to make, and she’d made it.

There wasn’t any arguing with Daisy Farrell once she’d made up her mind, and if the rest of Knights Bridge thought he was a lout, then Logan figured so be it. He didn’t owe them an explanation.

As he wandered through the first floor of the house, he noticed the places where the few possessions she’d taken to her new apartment had been. He could see her and his grandfather reading by the fireplace in the front room, watching the Red Sox in the family room, painting the woodwork in the hall. It was hard to imagine them apart, but after his grandfather’s death, his grandmother had taken Logan’s hand into hers and warned him not to feel sorry for her. “I’m thankful for the years your grandpa and I had together,” she’d said. “We were truly blessed.”

More stiff-upper-lip nonsense, maybe, Logan thought with a hiss of impatience. How was he supposed to know if she was leveling with him? What had she done when he’d returned to Boston after his grandfather’s funeral? Had she been at peace, filled with gratitude, on dark nights alone in this place?

But “alone” was relative, wasn’t it? Knights Bridge, not just this house, was Daisy Farrell’s home.

Or was that just a rationalization on his part?

Maybe he was a heartless SOB.

He smiled to himself, shaking off his melancholy. Time to get down to business. He texted Clare Morgan.

9 a.m. start still all right with you?

He tucked his phone into his jacket pocket and went out to the car for his boots. If he needed them, he wanted them warm. Shoving his feet into cold boots wasn’t on the top of his list of fun things to do.

When he got back inside, Clare had responded. I’ll be there. Can I bring anything?

He couldn’t think of what. Glue? Fresh greens? A nail gun? Tape? He had no idea what was involved in decorating a village house for the holidays. He settled on a vague response. We can decide what we need when you get here.

Sounds good. See you then.

He didn’t detect anything tentative in her response but wouldn’t be surprised if she regretted agreeing to help. He supposed he’d taken advantage of her newness in town. It was natural for her to want to make a good impression. Helping decorate beloved Daisy Farrell’s house would be a plus. But that hadn’t been his intent. Logan wasn’t quite sure how to describe his intent, but it probably had something to do with not wanting Clare to think he was a jerk who’d browbeaten a receptionist and forced his grandmother into assisted living.

Then there was Clare Morgan herself. He doubted she’d expected to run into anyone under seventy, except for staff, when she’d carried her box of books into the assisted-living facility. How could he have not noticed the curve of her hip and her unmistakable annoyance when she’d overheard him?

He noticed a library newsletter on a table by the fireplace. It included a note from the chairman of the board of trustees welcoming their new library director.

Logan sat on the couch and read.

Clare Morgan comes to Knights Bridge from the Boston Public Library, our nation’s oldest public library. It’s been her fondest dream to work in a small-town library, and with family roots in the lost towns of the Swift River Valley, she’s pleased to be in our small town. Please take the time to welcome her and her son, Owen, to Knights Bridge.

“Well, well,” Logan said aloud.

So, the fair-haired, book-toting small-town librarian knew something of the big city herself. He wondered how long it would take him to find out what had happened to her husband, then dismissed the thought. He could push people and rules to the limit when it suited him, but he wasn’t crossing that line. If Clare wanted him to know, she could tell him.

Whatever her background, Logan figured he could do worse for decorating help. It could be Randy Frost showing up at nine o’clock tomorrow instead of pretty Clare Morgan.

* * *

Fruit, carrot sticks, cheese and a glass of wine sufficed for dinner. Soon after, Logan, bored, went upstairs to the back bedroom where he used to stay as a boy. It had been his father’s room and he doubted it had changed since then. It had two twin beds with a matching dresser and bookshelves. He found a biography of Abraham Lincoln and crawled under the covers in one of the beds. He’d made it up when he’d stayed over earlier in the week. Until then, he’d never slept in this house alone. He remembered his grandfather chasing a bat that had swooped down the attic stairs, but that had been in the summer. Logan wouldn’t have to deal with bats tonight.

Nightmares, maybe.