Somehow, Cindy Kessler had made it through Thanksgiving dinner, smiling and talking with family and the few guests they had at Snowberry Lodge this year. She’d held it together during the preparation and baking, the proclamations of gratitude and easy laughter, the dinner and dessert.
Now, wiping a dishtowel over a just-washed roasting pan, she knew it was time to share the very bad news with her sister.
But Cindy just wasn’t quite ready to ruin MJ’s holiday.
Instead, she absently looked around the sprawling country kitchen, loving this warm, beating heart of Snowberry Lodge. With the scent of cinnamon, roasted turkey, and sweet sage still in the air and the delicate flavor of apple tarts lingering on her tongue, she felt comfortable and secure, and had no desire to take that same feeling away from her dear sister.
They’d both toddled across this wide-planked floor as children. They’d sat at the farmhouse table that their grandfather had made from pine trees that grew on this property. They learned how to cook and bake from their grandmother’s wisdom.
Well, MJ had learned how to cook and bake. Cindy had learned how to run a homey, welcoming, and profitable hospitality business.
Regardless of what they’d learned, every inch of Snowberry Lodge washome.
Yes, Cindy lived a few miles away in a townhouse now, but she spent the better part of every day here and frequently stayed overnight when the roads were impassible or the work demanded it.
Her sisterdidlive here, in the owner’s suite off the kitchen. And their father, along with MJ’s daughter and grandson, lived at the edge of the property in a mountain home where three generations of Starlings had grown up.
The fact was, Cindy couldn’t imagine their family living, working, or gathering anywhere else. And neither could her sister and dearest friend, Mary Jane, known only as MJ since the day she was born.
Right now, MJ stood in front of a long copper sink, humming and wonderfully oblivious to the little bomb about to detonate in her beloved kingdom of cooking.
Not yet.Not yet.
As she dried, Cindy’s gaze moved to the frosted windows tucked between creamy beadboard cabinets, catching the glimmer of fat snowflakes falling on the pine trees and cabin rooftops.
In the fading evening glow, she could see the rugged terrain of the Wasatch Range in the background, the glorious mountain peaks shrouded in fog.
“Bet some lifts open early this year with this nice powder dump,” MJ said, jutting her chin toward the view as she followed Cindy’s gaze. “I predict opening day next week instead of early December. And that means an amazing ski season.”
Cindy agreed with a nod, looking down at the roasting pan she’d dried four times.
Amazing for who? The Grand Hyatt? All the glitzy new short-term rentals in the mountains, canyons, and all around Park City?
But for Snowberry Lodge? Not so amazing.
Since they were nearing the end of November, Cindy had made the mistake of digging deep into the books she kept as manager of this family-owned business. With their “high season” about to kick off, she hoped their December reservations were not quite as bad as she thought.
They weren’t bad—they were worse. That sure took the “thanks” out of Thanksgiving.
It had been a while since they could proudly proclaim “no vacancy” in the eight guest suites in this main lodge or the six cabins that dotted the property. Somehow, they got by.
The ski shop generated decent income through sales and rentals to guests and locals, but this once thriving mountain retreat was…not thriving.
She had to face the truth that she and MJ had hung onto Snowberry Lodge by the skin of their teeth these past few years. And that skin was wearing thin and about to bleed.
“That was an awful heavy sigh for Thanksgiving.” MJ eyed her over a large pot she held under the faucet. “Too many apple tarts or are you fretting about something I can talk you out of? ’Cause I will, you know.”
She’d certainly try. Her sister had never met a problem she couldn’t conquer with an attitude so positive it defied logic.
The fact was, Cindy was a doer, and her older sister was a dreamer. For their whole lives—fifty-nine years for Cindy and sixty-two for MJ—that combination had worked pretty well. But the thing they might have to “do” now could destroy MJ’s dreams.
And there was just no good way around it.
“Is there such a thing as too much of anything your daughter bakes?” Cindy asked with a laugh, aching to avoid the conversation and keep things light. “There’s a reason she gets a line out the door at Sugarfall.”
The compliment brought a glimmer of pride to MJ’s sky-blue eyes. She brushed back some hair that had escaped a messy bun, the light catching a few silver threads in the rich auburn.
Cindy expected a comment about her daughter’s bakery, but MJ narrowed her gaze to something sharp and questioning. “What is it?” she asked.
