Aside from Cass, the Matthewses were the people who had loved Miriam the longest, and best, of anyone in her life. Mrs. Matthews was the cook at the inn, and Mr. Matthews handled general maintenance for all of Christmasland. Now in their sixties, they had been born in Advent and gotten jobs at Carrigan’s as teenagers. They’d fallen in love and stayed, caring for Miri and Hannah alongside their son Levi and their younger twins, Esther and Joshua.
Miriam’s parents hadn’t been parents but jailers. Hannah’s were documentary filmmakers who traveled the world, homeschooling her from far-flung locations until she convinced them, her sophomore year of high school, to let her live full-time at Carrigan’s. The Matthewses always had room for all of them.
Miriam found Mr. Matthews sitting on a tall stool at the kitchen island, drinking a cup of tea and watching his wife roll out cookie dough. The blue delft tile was the same as it had been all her life, a crack in one corner of the island where she’d dropped a heavy pot when she was twelve. Behind Mrs. Matthews was the pantry door where she’d marked Miriam’s height every holiday, and past that was the mudroom where Miriam and Hannah had taken off snow boots a thousand times.
When Mrs. Matthews looked up and saw Miriam, she dropped her rolling pin to the counter with a clatter, and Mr. Matthews turned around. In a moment, they had surrounded her in a hug.
She thought she would have to walk on tiptoes to avoid being decimated by memories of her father’s abuse, with tiny trauma landmines scattered about, still active after so many years. There hadn’t been any, yet, although she wasn’t letting her guard down. What she hadn’t expected was how much more deeply she could breathe here, seeing these beloved faces.
“Finally,” Mrs. Matthews said, putting her hands on Miriam’s cheeks and looking into her eyes. “You owe us a sit-down.” Miriam nodded solemnly. She owed them more than that.
“Soon. I promise. I’m not going anywhere,” she told them.
Part of her wished that were true, that she wasn’t leaving in a week, that she had all the time in the world here.
Footnotes
1He was a Ukrainian baker.
2This part was mostly true.
3She remained very close to her family all her life. While they thought she was eccentric, they were proud of her for building her own business.
Chapter 3
Noelle
Noelle Northwood woke up the morning of Cass’s funeral to a pit of dread in her stomach and a crying hangover. It wasn’t as bad as the drinking hangovers she used to get, but it wasn’t great. She wasn’t ready to go to a second funeral for a second mother. Burying one in a lifetime had been plenty.
From the time she’d lost her parents to the day she’d shown up on Cass’s doorstep, she’d been adrift. Then Carrigan’s had opened its doors and heart to her. Noelle felt she and the farm belonged to each other. The trees were her salvation, and Cass had given them to her.
She wasn’t ready for this funeral, but she never would be, so she got dressed. She freshly buzzed her undercut and put on her carefully constructed Dealing with Funeral Visitors outfit, black slacks with a black button-down, the sleeves worn long to hide her tattoos, in deference to the Orthodox side of the Rosensteins. Her tie and suspenders were black matte with embossed black stripes. It was a look Cass would have approved of.
On her way out the door, she patted the head of the elephant statue that sat next to her fireplace. Like much of the art at Carrigan’s, it was inexplicably decoupaged and covered in glitter, of unknown provenance, and decidedly odd. Noelle loved it very much.
In the kitchen she started laying out pastries and little quiches Mrs. Matthews must have spent all night baking. When Noelle found carafes of hot cocoa waiting on the kitchen island, she wondered how late Mr. Matthews had dragged his wife to bed. Today they would all three be walking the tightrope of having been family but not relations. Mrs. Matthews was handling it by making sure everyone was fed. Mr. Matthews was, Noelle suspected, handling it by fixing things that didn’t need fixing, and trying to make his wife rest. She would have to check on them both. Along with Cass they were the chosen parents of her heart. She needed to make sure they weren’t left adrift this week.
The door to the kitchen swung open. A tiny woman who looked exactly like a very young Cass walked in, barefoot, wearing a puke-green reindeer sweater and leggings with a T-shirt wrapped around her head like a pineapple.
The woman blinked at her. Noelle blinked back, her mind racing. Who was this elf?
She must be a Rosenstein cousin Noelle hadn’t met yet. She was far too beautiful, far too early on this particular morning, for Noelle’s comfort.
Noelle saw the woman do a surreptitious perusal of her body, her eyes lighting in interest. She felt a little fizzle in her stomach. She would have absolutely sworn five minutes ago that the morning of Cass’s funeral was the last time and place on Earth she would ever feel a spark of interest in a woman, but that was before this elven person had walked into the kitchen.
“Is there coffee—” the elf asked, her voice still fuzzy with sleep.
At the same time, Noelle said, “I’m sorry, this is rude, but what on Earth are you wearing?”
The elf huffed out a little sound that could have been a laugh. “I’d just come back from a trip when I got the call about Cass, I left my house in a hurry. None of my clothes are even clean, much less suitable for sitting shiva,” she explained. “I took the sweater from my best friend. It used to light up, so I guess small blessings?”
“Very small. Hot cocoa?” Noelle offered, as the woman settled warily on a stool, looking behind her like she was bracing for something unpleasant.
The elf raised her eyebrows and scowled. “Is there…espresso…in the hot cocoa? Because otherwise, definitely no.” With her face scrunched up, she looked like a grumpy cat meme. Noelle found it oddly charming.
“There isn’t currently, but I think I can make it happen.” Noelle flipped a kitchen towel over her shoulder. Espresso, she could do. Espresso was mindless, and let her turn her back on the strange, interesting woman interrupting her grief.
“You’re my new favorite person,” the elf said happily, before laying her head on top of her folded arms. God, she was cute. Noelle told her brain to pipe down. This was a Rosenstein, here to mourn. She didn’t even know the woman’s name. She should be hospitable, and not a creeper, even if the elf had looked at her with stark interest.