Page 19 of The Christmas Stroll

“So,” she continued, and she looked at the shelves of little white towers as though seeing them for the first time. “How fast will these sell out this year you think - noon maybe?”

For a moment Lucy just looked at her - at the too-casual question, at the face-down phone, and the whole neat, decisive pivot.

“Pessimistic of you. Last year I was out by eleven.” Her friend smiled into the cider, and over the rim of it her eyes stayed on Maggie a beat longer than the ornaments could possibly have warranted. “But I’ll set one aside for you if you like.”

“Thank you, I would like.”

“Anytime.” Lucy drank, eyes dancing with mirth now. “That’s what friends are for.”

Chapter 14

The Sullivan family kitchen had become a default Stroll command center, though Helen would never have called it that, because Helen would never have admitted there was anything to command.

The following morning, Maggie sat at the wooden table with her laptop open to the volunteer schedule and a fresh printed decoration roster fanned out beside her coffee.

The whole room smelled of that morning’s cinnamon toast, and the balsam wreath Helen had rehung on the pantry door because the one on the front door was, in her opinion, hanging a full inch too low.

Bing Crosby went on singing somewhere behind her, turned down for once, because her mother had since gone upstairs to make phone calls she described as personal and which Maggie strongly suspected were to the flower committee.

Which was, for Maggie’s current purposes, perfect.

She ran her finger down the roster to the last unassigned line and tapped it twice. The bandstand wreath. The big fresh one, four feet across, that went up every year on the town square bandstand where Santa took his photographs, and which required a ladder, two strong volunteers, and agreement between two women that who had not spoken in ten days.

The trick was in the framing. Maggie had learned this running rooms full of people who all believed they were the most important person present, which was to say she had learned it from her mother without ever intending to.

To Helen, the wreath would be presented as a decision Marianne had graciously deferred - Marianne stepping back, yielding the square to tradition, which was catnip.

To Marianne, the same wreath would arrive as a plan Helen had already reviewed and approved, signed off, done, no further discussion required. Which spared Marianne the indignity of appearing to need Helen’s opinion at all.

Two truths, neither of them complete. Maggie typed both versions into two separate notes and did not let herself think too hard about the fact that she was getting pretty good at this.

The back door rattled and then boots came stamping on the mat outside, three hard knocks of snow off leather, and Will let himself into the mudroom. Cold air rolled in ahead of him, and the smell of the morning, woodsmoke and salt and the clean bite of a day that had frozen hard overnight.

“Your mother’s front wreath is crooked,” he said, unwinding his scarf. “I fixed it. Don’t tell her I noticed.”

“She’ll notice you fixed it.”

“She’ll assume it fixed itself out of fear.” He filled the doorway between the mudroom and the kitchen, dark hair damp at the temples where the snow had melted, and looked at the spread on the table with frank appreciation. “You’ve been busy.”

“Like I said in my message, I’ve been assembling a kind of peace treaty neither party knows they’re signing.” Maggie kept her voice down and tipped her head toward the stairs, where Helen’s phone voice carried faintly through the floorboards, bright and declarative. “The bandstand wreath. Last thing on the board. We really need it up by tomorrow and we definitely need it up without a summit.”

Will moved to the table, near enough now that she could smell the woodsmoke coming off his flannel jacket.

Maggie slid one of the two printed notes across to him. “Your mother’s been told it’s already handled, approved. Signed, sealed. She merely has to confirm the volunteers.”

He picked it up and read it, and one corner of his mouth went up.“’Per approval,’” he read. “You’ve put neither of their names anywhere near the request, Sullivan.”

“People don’t respond to requests, Will. They respond to faits accomplis.”

“Not my mother ...” He folded the note once and tucked it into the inside pocket of his coat, patting it. “So Helen thinks Marianne’s already in agreement?”

“Graciously.” Maggie winked, then looked up at him. “Don’t correct her now.”

“I have never once in my life corrected my mother and lived. I’m not starting today.”

He straightened off the doorframe and rewound his scarf, and for a second, standing there in her family’s warm kitchen with the note in his pocket and the snow melting into the mat behind him, he looked so entirely at home that something in her chest once again did that thing Maggie chose to ignore.

“Gimme twenty minutes. I’ll text when it’s done.”