Page 11 of The Christmas Stroll

“None taken. I just run a café, Sullivan. I’m not a diplomat. I did not train for this.” He shifted his weight against the paneling, folded his arms and the flannel pulled at his broad shoulders. “And you’re right. They can’t. I thought it funny at first. But it’s stopped being funny now.”

“Lucy said the same thing. Practically word for word.”

“Lucy’s always been a smart woman.” He tilted his head at her and the corner of his mouth pulled sideways, and Maggie remembered that too, that exact expression, from a dock and a snowball fight another winter she was not going to think about right now. “You remember that year the tuba player fell in the harbor?”

“Of course. My mother kept the carolers singing.” She heard her own voice go soft before she could catch it. “So no one else would notice.”

“And mine went in after the guy with a boat hook. In her good cashmere.” Will shook his head, and the fondness in it caught her sideways. “Fifty years, Maggie. I watched those two run this thing my whole life. I’ve watched them fight about everything under the sun - ribbons, Santa, whether a swan is even a Christmas symbol - ”

“Oh my gosh, the swans …” Maggie breathed, remembering too.

“ - but at the end of every single argument, the Stroll still happened and it was perfect, and the two of them stood on the wharf at the end of the night with their arms around each other like they hadn’t nearly murdered each other in November.” He looked down the corridor toward the front doors, where the last of the departing committee members had gone out into the cold, and something went serious under the ease. “I don’t know what happened this year. Genuinely. I’ve asked. Mom won’t say. She just gets that look and then promptly reroutes the carriage line.”

“Helen won’t say either.” Maggie turned the schedules over in her hands. “She just insists it’s a difference of opinion. And keeps saying that everything’s under control.”

“Mine says growth requires adaptation.”

“Oh, that’s worse.”

“So much worse.” His mouth curved into a smile.

They stood there a moment in the candlelight and the pine, and Maggie was aware - in a way she did not entirely want to examine - of how easy it was.

There was no reintroduction to get through. No awkward catching up. Will had said hey across a crowded room like it had been a week since they saw each other last, and now they were standing in a hallway basically finishing each other’s memories.

It should have felt strange but it didn’t feel strange at all and that - coupled with Will Callahan’s mischievous smile - was making Maggie’s pulse do something inconvenient.

She cleared her throat.

“So here’s where we are,” she said, and felt herself settle into that better, into the shape of a problem that had edges she could hold. “Two women who love this island and this event more than almost anything, won’t speak to each other and won’t say why. And a beloved Nantucket tradition that’s fast going down the tubes, unless somebody turns it around.”

“That’s about the size of it, yes.”

“And it seems you and I were about the only two people in that room not taking sides.”

Will looked at her for a moment and nodded. The white lights out on the hollies threw a faint glow through the tall window and touched the side of his face.

“I honestly wasn’t planning on getting drafted into a diplomatic crisis,” he said. “But I’m not going to stand on the wharf next weekend and watch this whole thing fall apart because of two famously stubborn women.” He unfolded his arms and put out a hand, plain and easy, the way you shake on a thing you mean. “Let’s team up?”

Maggie looked at the hand. She looked at him. Then she shifted the schedules to her left arm and took it. And there it was again, that spark off the dry warm air, that jolt she had not given anyone permission to reach in a very long time. She let go a beat later than she meant to.

Then Maggie tucked the two conflicting schedules under her arm, lifted her chin, and asked Will the only question that mattered.

“Where do we start?”

Chapter 8

The following morning had come in cold and bright, the kind of December light that made every surface on Main Street look freshly rinsed.

Maggie walked its length with her phone in one hand, a folded spreadsheet in the other and a pen tucked behind her ear where it had been since a quarter past eight.

“Federal Street caroling,” she mumbled, turning the spreadsheet so Will could see it without slowing down. “Two shifts. Same station. Same hour. Both signed up in good faith, both told they were the only ones.”

Overnight, the town had put on the rest of its holiday finery. Pine garland now looped across the candy-cane-striped awnings of the storefronts, swagging from post to post and the string lights that had been dark all week now glowed a warm amber even in daylight, catching in the crust of fresh snow along the shop windowsills so that each ledge seemed lined in low gold.

From an open door down the block, came the smell of mulled wine, orange and clove and something deeper under it, and somewhere off toward Federal, a market stall bell jingled once and went quiet.

She had no time to enjoy any of it though, which was, Maggie thought, the great curse of doing this stuff for a living.