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“This place never changes,” Charlotte said as she unraveled her scarf from her neck.
“Did you want it to?” Louise asked.
“Never!” Charlotte said with a laugh. How could she explain the truth to her mother? Whenever she was anxious, petering on the brink of insanity in the city, she always closed her eyes and imagined herself to be eight years old, seated in front of the Christmas tree at the Cherry Inn. She imagined time hadn’t had its way with her and scooped her into the modern age.
“Good,” Louise said with a smile. “We don’t want you to change, either.”
Charlotte followed Louise past the front desk and into the living room. Just like every other Christmas, her Grandma and Grandpa had stopped accepting guests for the week before and after Christmas and cleared the suites for only their children and grandchildren. The Christmas tree was overwhelmingly thick, its branches reaching out half-way across the living room, and beneath it were piles of beautifully wrapped presents. Although Charlotte was now twenty years old, she allowed herself a moment of childlike wonder. She closed her eyes and inhaled the smells of cinnamon, pine, and crumbling wood in the fire.
Grandpa Hank and Grandma Dee emerged from the kitchen with platters of Christmas cookies.
“Come now! Eat up! Let me do my grandmotherly duty,” Grandma Dee said, drawing a platter toward Charlotte.
Charlotte laughed and took a cut-out of a star. “You spoil us, Grandma.”
“What else is a grandmother for?” Grandma Dee asked, flitting around the living room to deliver more cookies.
Charlotte glanced at the clock on the wall, her heard thudding. There wasn’t much time. “I brought something for you to see,” she told her grandparents, turning to find her suitcase, which Rudy had leaned against the wall behind her.
“Presents aren’t till Christmas Day,” Grandpa scolded her. “You know that.”
Charlotte laughed as she removed a thick folder from the inside of her suitcase. “This isn’t anything yet. Just some drawings.”
“That’s right! Your mother said you were taking some art classes,” Grandma Dee said. “You were always so talented, Char.”
Charlotte beamed as she opened the folder on the dining room table and began to filter through the illustrations she’d made, all of which she’d painted with a mix of watercolors, oil pastels, and oil paints. The paintings displayed the mountains in upstate New York, a beautiful princess, a handsome hero, and finally, a castle that resembled the Cherry Inn. When she glanced up, she found her Grandpa and Grandma spellbound, gazing down at the illustrations with disbelief.
“It’s our story, Dee,” Grandpa breathed. “Look at that.”
“They’re just examples of how I visualize the book,” Charlotte went on hurriedly. “Obviously, I have a lot of work to do. But I’m already talking to a publisher about writing and illustrating my own book. We’re thinking of calling itA Fairy Tale Christmas.”
Grandpa Hank’s eyes glistened with tears. He draped his arm over Grandma’s shoulders and blinked at Charlotte with disbelief.
“Of course, you’ll be credited as co-writers,” Charlotte went on. “I’ve added many embellishments to the story, so there will still be surprises when you read it.”
“We’re not co-writers,” Grandma Dee scolded her.
“That’s the silliest thing I ever heard,” Charlotte said. “You and Grandpa told the story of how you settled into the Cherry Inn every year.”
“Every year!” Rudy agreed, taking another Christmas cookie.
“That was just a silly story your grandfather made up,” Grandma Dee said, her cheeks blotchy as she smiled.
“It wasn’t silly,” Rudy and Charlotte shot back in unison.
“We loved it,” Rudy assured them. “And Charlotte’s pushing that story into the world. More people need to know about it.”
Grandma and Grandpa took a long moment to go through all of the illustrations and to compliment the delicacy of the pine trees, the heaps of snow, and the gorgeous fine lines of the “castle” of the Cherry Inn. Even the hero and princess of the story resembled Grandma and Grandpa back when they’d first purchased the Cherry Inn— a time Charlotte had romanticized over the years. She’d never imagined she’d find her handsome hero, too.
“When is this book coming out?” Grandpa Hank whispered.
“Everything moves so slowly in the publishing world,” Charlotte admitted. “If not next Christmas, then the one after that. It depends on how much time I have to illustrate this year.”
She wouldn’t have as much time as she’d planned for, she knew. But Charlotte couldn’t complain about that. She shivered with optimism.
There was a knock at the door. Louise looked flustered. “I thought everyone was already here!” She walked across the living room, and Charlotte followed behind her, leaving her illustrations spread across the table.
At the door was the handsomest man in all of Manhattan— Peter O’Shean. With his dark hair and dark eyes, his black pea coat, his slick suit jacket, and his black pointy shoes, he looked as though he’d stepped out of the pages ofGQ Magazine. One thing he’d told her early on in his relationship with Charlotte was,“If you don’t take yourself seriously, how are you going to expect everyone else to?”This was part of the reason Charlotte had pushed herself to start illustrating.
