They got to closing time with no indication of either.
Chapter 10
Miriam
At eight, they finally closed the farm to customers—hours past when they should have—and fell onto the couches in the great room. Miriam was past due to decide if she was going home with Tara, or staying here, and even more past due talking to Tara about it.
Charleston, electric with possibility, was ready and waiting. In the opposite direction, she had a half-empty inn full of ghosts she couldn’t exorcise and missing its most important resident. What magnet kept drawing her to say yes to Carrigan’s? Nostalgia? An opportunity to know her extended family? People who had always seen the real her—and liked that person?
Or, she thought, looking over at where Noelle had pushed up the sleeves of her hoodie and crossed her booted feet, was it simpler than that? Now that she knew that somewhere in the world, there was a handsome woman who gave her butterflies, who took her seriously and saw her, could she go back to her old life? She could hear Cass in her head, telling her that real things were always harder but that a real life was always better lived.
Before Miriam could get up the courage to pull Tara aside, Cole tromped down the stairs, declaring that there was absolutely no day like today to go Christmas caroling and see the town, and everyone was coming.
So Noelle, Miriam, Tara, and Hannah found themselves bundled up to their eyeballs against freezing gusts of wind, exhausted to the point of delirium, singing through their scarves to the residents of Advent. Along the way, they picked up Elijah, who left Jason at home with the twins, and put on a Christmas bow tie to join them. They knocked on doors hung with wreaths and mistletoe, on houses so covered in Christmas lights that Miriam wondered if you could see the tiny village from space.
Tara, who was good at everything she did—because she never did anything she wasn’t good at—sung beautifully. Cole sung enthusiastically and better than he had any right to, a result of a decade in an Episcopal choir. Hannah and Miriam made up lyrics to carols they knew only peripherally. Elijah could not sing on key at all, but he knew all the words, and he could project. Noelle hummed loudly.
They did not sound good, as a group.
It felt magical. Miriam was the most present she’d been, in the moment, in her body, in maybe all her life, and she wanted to keep that feeling. She wanted to stay here, in her little Christmasland next to this strange, tiny, festive town, with these people who brought her back to herself. It would be a huge risk, and it was impractical and illogical and maybe a terrible idea, and she wanted it.
This was where she belonged.
As they walked through town, they were joined, impromptu, by people happy for any opportunity for something to do on a Friday night. Miriam could not have imagined that any of the Carrigan’s team were ready to laugh, especially not to laugh until they cried and the tears froze in their eyelashes, but they were and they did. It was, she realized, the first time she and Tara had laughed together in months.
I should be streaming, she thought before shaking her head. This moment wasn’t for the Bloomers, it was for her. The real her, no masks. When they all decided that caroling was not worth losing fingers to frostbite, they descended on Ernie’s, the tiny dive bar / music venue / dinner hangout on Main Street.
Advent’s Main Street was full of renovated historic facades, rows of clapboard stores with white trim in a rainbow of colors. Ernie’s was a long skinny room with a stage at the back and a wall of local moonshine. The wood-paneled walls were bursting at the seams with punch-drunk carolers yelling over each other to order French fries, beer, and anything that might warm them up. Miriam snapped pictures and texted them to her Old Ladies, who loved a dimly lit party full of alcohol and carbs.
Cole swooped on a big corner booth, so the five of them smooshed into it. Miriam was, ironically, pressed up against both Tara and Noelle. Elijah took one look at the booth and shook his head. “No way am I smooshing these newly ironed slacks into that mess!” he shouted over the din. “Someone’s starting a Scrabble game, you know where to find me.”
Noelle reached her arms out to him. “Don’t abandon me, my love!”
“You know I can’t resist the siren call of a Scrabble board.” He held up his hands, feigning helplessness.
“Leave them with some dignity,” she told him.
He rearranged his bow tie and folded his jacket over his arm. “I can’t make any promises.”
Noelle turned back to the table and said, deadly seriously, “Never let him scam you into a game of Scrabble.”
“This is a scene fromRent!” Hannah called as the noise crescendoed.
“VIVA LA—!” Cole and Noelle began, in unison, before collapsing into giggles.
A young Black woman with box braids and an impeccable red lip, wearing an apron and carrying an order pad, walked up, eyeing them warily.
“Are your friends okay?” she asked Hannah. Hannah made a “so-so” gesture while Miriam fought back tears as she tried to stop giggling. “Wait”—she squinted at Miriam through cat-eye glasses—“you look just like Cass.”
Miriam came up short.
“I do,” she said. “I’m Miriam Blum, I’m—”
“Ooooh, you’re the long-lost Miriam. Cass talked about you a lot.”
She stuck her pad in her apron and held out her hand. “I’m Ernie. This is my place.”
Miriam shook it. “Your place is incredible. Thank you for accommodating this last-minute deluge of ridiculous singing people.”