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The woman folded her lips. “Why don’t you check back in next week?”
There was something doubtful about her tone, as though she wasn’t sure Veronica would ever be up to seeing another visitor again. The back of Maya’s neck was slick with nervous sweat. She couldn’t pester this woman any longer; she was clearly there to keep people like Veronica safe. Defeated, she turned back and returned to Phoebe’s car, where she sat in the fading light and considered what to do next. Felicity had said there was always dinner at the bed and breakfast for those who wanted it. “We don’t like to think of ourselves as an only-breakfast place,” she’d explained. “Everyone needs a warm meal before bed.”
Maya parked in the back lot of the bed and breakfast and walked slowly through the snow. The Victorian house looked mystical beneath the dark sky and shimmering stars; even the Christmas tree in the window didn’t look half bad to her cynical, anti-Christmas mind. When she entered, she was struck with the smell of pork chops and potatoes, and her stomach groaned.
“Someone’s hungry!” Felicity called.
Maya laughed and walked to the doorway of the kitchen. A fondness for Felicity flowed through her. “Can I help you with anything?”
“No, darling,” Felicity said. “I’m nearly finished. Why don’t you go to the living room with the others? There’s red wine and crackers.”
Maya followed the sounds of voices to the living room, where she found six other bed and breakfast guests: two couples in their fifties and sixties, a man in his thirties traveling by himself, and another woman in her late thirties or early forties, who explained she was on a road trip across the east coast.
“By yourself?” Maya asked, sitting down tentatively beside her and crossing her ankles.
“I don’t know any other way to travel,” the woman said. She reached for the bottle of wine on the coffee table and tilted it toward Maya, who nodded. She then poured Maya a glass and passed it over. “I’m Winnie, by the way.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Winnie. I’m Maya.”
“And you’re traveling alone, too.”
Maya’s cheeks were flushed with the woman’s attention. After so many days alone in that hotel room on Fifth Avenue, Maya felt as though she’d lost all sense of social propriety. “I’m here in Hollygrove to meet my aunt for the first time,” she explained. “She wants to leave me her inheritance, apparently. But I have to perform some tasks first.”
Winnie’s eyes sparkled. The two married couples perked up, as did the thirty-something man.
“Tasks?” The thirty-something guy said. “What kind of tasks?”
Maya sipped her wine and tried to laugh at herself and her situation. “She wants me to plan the Hollygrove Christmas Festival. But I have only one week to pull it off!”
One of the older men slapped his knee. “Are you some kind of event planner? That’s what our daughter does for a living.” His wife nodded beside him, pleased.
“I’m not,” Maya said. “I’m a food critic. Well, I was. I recently lost my job atFood & Drinkmagazine.”
“I just love their recipes,” one of the older wives reported.
“Wait a minute,” Winnie said, snapping her fingers. “I think I recognize you! I adored your reviews. I used to tell my ex-boyfriend that reading your work was almost as good as dining out at the restaurants myself.”
Maya had heard this before. Her cheeks burned, and she took another long sip of wine. “I appreciate that,” she finally managed to say. “I couldn’t believe I was allowed to write about something I loved so much. And then, all at once, it was like my career was stolen from me. I’ve tried to make it work with a private blog, but monetizing it has been tricky. I’m a bit at a loss.”
“It’s happening all across the world,” the thirty-something guy said. “So many of my friends are having to change careers or go back to school. It’s frustrating.”
“What do you do?” Maya asked, wanting to throw the group’s attention elsewhere.
The thirty-something waved his hand. “I’m only thirty-four,” he began, “but I’ve already changed careers a few times. At twenty-one, I went to clown school.”
“Clown school!” Winnie and Maya burst out in unison.
He laughed. “I wanted to be an actor, but a producer told me I wasn’t good-looking enough to make it in television or film. So I tried out for clown school, which is a whole lot more pretentious than it sounds. There’s a grand tradition of clowning in France. But unfortunately, I was kicked out.”
“You were kicked out of clown school?” One of the older women looked at him as though he was a peculiar kind of beetle.
“So I went to school for accounting,” the younger man went on. “Which was lucrative for a while, but I also no longer felt excited about anything in the world. At twenty-seven, I felt like I wanted to retire. Soon. But that was seven years ago!”
“You’re not accounting anymore?” Maya asked.
“I’m working on a screenplay,” the young man said. “And accounting on the side.”
“What brings you to Hollygrove?” an older man asked.
