Page 15 of The Christmas Stroll

Maggie had sent her mother a breezy and offhand text that morning while she and Will did the rounds,: The Harbor House; have coffee with me there at two pm? Dying to judge the renovation.

Helen adored being the first to judge anything. She had said yes inside four minutes.

Will had sent Marianne something nearly identical, framed as a logistics debrief - quick coffee at the hotel, run through the last of the merchant questions, easier somewhere other than with the cafe with its constant interruptions.

“I feel,” he said now, drifting with Maggie toward the far end of the lobby toward the bar, “like I’ve just set my own house on fire and then told everybody to gather round for the warmth.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“You keep saying that too.”

“Because it will be.” Maggie straightened her jacket, tucked a strand of hair behind the ear the pen usually lived on, and squared her shoulders. “They’ve always loved this place. And they love each other. They’ve just temporarily forgotten it, and all we have to do is put them in the same beautiful room with no schedule to fight over, and let nature do the rest. Besides, nobody stays angry in front of a crackling fire.”

“You’ve clearly forgotten my mother, who is a crackling fire. And yours is her kindling.”

As if on cue, Helen herself sailed into the lobby in a camel coat with a red silk scarf knotted just so at her throat, and she looked pleased. Maggie could read her mother across any distance, and she read pleasure now, the lift of the chin that meant Helen felt she had been invited somewhere that recognized her worth.

She paused just inside the entrance door to take the space in; the fire, the ribbon on the stair rail, the domes of pastry, and Maggie saw her approve of all of it in a single sweep.

Logan duly came out from behind the desk to greet her, and Maggie saw her mother offering her cheek to be admired more than kissed. Logan was saying something about the holiday decor that made her touch the ribbon on the rail and nod. Then Helen’s gaze went to the fire and she immediately began to move toward it.

The door opened again. Marianne came in out of the cold in a deep burgundy wool coat with a leather handbag over one arm. She too was dressed up, and she too paused inside the door to assess the space with the frank appraising eye of a woman who missed nothing and forgave less.

Logan turned back to the lobby to greet the new arrival and Maggie saw the exact moment the poor guy truly understood the full shape of his afternoon. He cleared his throat. He said something warm and correct. He did not, Maggie noticed, look toward Helen by the fire, which took a kind of professional courage she respected.

For one long, suspended second, it might have held.

Helen was near the hearth. Marianne was still by the door. There were velvet chairs and warmth and a whole beautiful festively decorated room between them, and it was entirely possible that this could work, that two women who had so much history together might simply -

Until Marianne quickly turned from Logan toward the fire.

And Helen, freshly warmed and pleased, turned back toward the entrance.

They saw each other at the same instant.

Both of them stopped short. Not slowed their movements - but actually stopped, mid-step.

The fire crackled. And into the warm orange-scented hush of The Harbor House Hotel lobby, fell a silence so complete that Maggie could hear her own pulse in her ears.

Then both women turned, at precisely the same moment, with the same terrible grace, to find their errant children.

Chapter 11

Helen’s gaze swept the space and landed on Maggie at the far end by the bar, and she watched her mother’s whole face rearrange itself, the pleasure draining out of it and something colder and more certain taking its place.

Marianne’s found Will standing beside Maggie with an expectant expression, and his mother’s face did pretty much the same thing.

Helen’s chin lifted a full inch, the way it lifted before she said something that could not be unsaid and Maggie winced. She who routinely arranged four hundred people around a marble staircase and never lost her nerve, felt the whole beautiful room tilt very slightly beneath her, the way last week’s table eleven centerpiece had tilted, one waterlogged stem away from bringing the entire arrangement down.

“Will,” Maggie murmured, without moving her lips very much.

“Yep,” he replied jadedly.

“I may have … miscalculated.”

“Yep.”

Helen came across the room the way a ship comes into a harbor it intends to blockade, camel coat unbuttoned, silk scarf perfectly in place. She stopped in front of her daughter and did not so much as glance either at Will or back toward the lobby and the figure in burgundy.