Page 21 of The Christmas Stroll

“That’s what George said. Settled and sealed. Finally.” Evelyn licked sugar off her thumb, entirely at ease, and picked her tote back up onto her shoulder. “I won’t stay, I’ve the church greens to see to and Doris will do it wrong if I’m not there to breathe on her. Enjoy the cookies. They’re actually better tomorrow.” She let herself back out into the cold with the same easy motion she’d used coming in, and the door clicked, the anise smell hanging in the hall after her.

Helen came the rest of the way down the stairs. She did not look at Maggie. Instead, she looked at the plate of cookies on the hall table for a long moment and when she finally spoke, her voice had gone level and courteous and cold enough to frost the windows.

A breath. “I would have appreciated, Margaret, being consulted. Rather than managed. Again.”

“Mom, it wasn’t - ” Maggie started, heard her own voice reach for a reasonable register and find it thin. “It was the only way to get the job done without the two of you in a room together. You wanted the wreath up. Marianne wanted it up. We all needed it up. I just - ”

Helen picked up the plate of pfeffernüsse. She did not raise her voice. She did not slam anything. She simply lifted the plate off the hall table, turned and carried it into the kitchen, the swinging door sighing shut behind her, and that was worse than shouting.

Because Maggie had grown up on Helen’s legendary silences and knew exactly how much they cost.

Four streets over, Will was halfway through Winterstreet Cafe’s lunchtime service when his phone lit up by the coffeemaker. He read it and said something his late father would not have approved of.

The message was from Helen not Maggie, forwarded through the fudge-shop girl through God only knew how many hands:

Kindly inform the relevant party that my agreement regarding the bandstand wreath is withdrawn, in light of the underhanded manner in which it was obtained.

Later, once the cafe closed at four, Will delivered the news to Maggie in person. This time, she met him in the hallway of her mother’s house, and read his face before he’d said a word.

“Back to square one?” she stated.

He winced. “I’m sorry, Sullivan. I think we’ve made it worse.”

Maggie crossed to the kitchen door and pushed it open, where Helen was now at the counter arranging Evelyn’s cookies onto a proper plate, one by one, as though the arrangement were the most pressing matter on the island.

“Mom.” She tried to keep her voice even, while inwardly she was exasperated. “What the heck is going on with you two? This isn’t about the wreath. It was never about the wreath. It’s not about LED lights either, or the carriage route, or the carolers on the bank steps. Two people don’t blow up a fifty-year friendship over lightbulbs. So I’m asking you plainly. What actually happened between you and Marianne?”

Helen set a cookie down. Her jaw tightened at the corner, the muscle showing.

“What happened,” Helen said, “is that Marianne Callahan has decided, after five decades, that she no longer requires my input on anything. That’s what happened. She is stubborn and high-handed and impossible, and she will not be told.”

“That’s not an answer, that’s a symptom. What set it off?”

“Margaret ...”

“You can tell me. Whatever it is, I’m on your side, but I can’t fix a thing I can’t see - ”

“I know my own mind,” Helen snapped, and the words came out hard and final, and she turned from the counter and walked past Maggie without another word, into the sitting room off the hall. Then drew the door shut behind her. The latch caught with a soft click, but that click was the loudest thing Maggie had heard all week.

She moved to follow her, but Will stepped forward before she could.

He didn’t say anything. He just reached past her to the row of hooks by the front door, lifted Maggie’s coat off the middle one, and held it out.

There was something in his face this time that was neither pity nor amusement, but a kind of understanding that made Maggie’s throat tighten.

“Come on,” he said. “Leave her be.”

She took the coat. Will steered her, one hand not quite touching the small of her back, toward the front door. He opened it and the cold December evening air came in and bit their cheeks.

Outside, the street had gone dark and the harbor lights had come up beyond the rooftops, amber and white against the black water. Somewhere down the hill a single strand of somebody’s window lights blinked once and steadied. The salt air was clean and sharp.

“Let’s walk,” Will said.

Maggie pulled the front door shut behind her, careful and quiet, and looked back at the candle-lit windows of her childhood home and then again at the harbor, and let out a breath that fogged white in front of her.

“Fine,” she said, jaw tight. “Let’s walk.”

Chapter 16