“Bagel? Muffin? Croissant? I have about fifteen freshly baked carbohydrates available for consumption.” She pointed to a serving platter covered in choices. “Or, if I know Mrs. Matthews, there will be challah French toast in the dining room soon.”
“Are they from Rosenstein’s?” the woman asked, perking up. Cass’s family had made their money and reputation in a bakery that was now famous for traditional Jewish baked goods. Noelle had learned fast that all the extended family tree was fiercely loyal about their pastries.
She pretended affront. “Would they be anything else?”
“I will have a muffin now and also some French toast later,” the woman announced, as if she were deciding something of grave import. Noelle handed her the cup of hot cocoa containing two perfectly pulled shots of espresso, and an orange cranberry muffin.
The elf sighed happily. Noelle’s stomach flipped.
Then Hannah walked in.
“Oh! I’m so glad you’re both here. My first best friend and my forever best friend.” Hannah draped an arm over the elf’s shoulder. “Noelle, this is my cousin Miriam. Miri, this is Noelle, the farm’s manager, my number one best ever person.”
The flip in Noelle’s stomach turned to a dive.
The elf was Miriam Blum. Miriam—the woman who had abandoned Carrigan’s and broken Cass’s and Hannah’s hearts—was in their kitchen, looking beautiful and vulnerable and devastated, making Noelle want to wrap her up in a blanket. She’d thought this day couldn’t suck more.
“I have to go deal with the cousins, Miri,” Hannah said, already walking back out the door, “but please don’t feel you need to talk to them before coffee. I’ll leave you in Noelle’s very capable hands.”
Noelle could read Hannah’s face, and it said, “Please take care of her right now, I have too much else to deal with.”
Hannah was an Organizer. She’d been running the Christmasland Inn for years, taking care of Cass as her health declined, and organizing all the Christmas Festival events. She was an unstoppable force with a clipboard and color-coded spreadsheets. If Hannah was delegating, it was because she was desperate for an assist.
For Hannah, the best friend she’d ever had, Noelle would continue to be pleasant to this woman. But Noelle had seen how the residents of Carrigan’s pined quietly but inexorably after Miriam, continuing to speak of her glowingly all these years after Miriam abandoned them, and she wasn’t interested in getting close to her. She had enough heartbreak for a lifetime, without chasing more.
“What are you doing awake?” she asked, her voice colder than it had been. She couldn’t believe she’d been flirting with Miriam Blum. “Didn’t you come in late last night?”
Miriam took a long drink before she said anything, not seeming to react to Noelle’s change in tone. Noelle waited, resting an elbow on the counter, popping a mini quiche into her mouth.
“I heard my mom is here,” Miriam finally managed.
This did not answer the question of why Miriam was awake, but it did bring up several more questions.
“You knew she was coming, right?” Noelle didn’t know all, or even most, of the story of Miriam’s mysterious long absence, but she knew something had happened with her father. Ziva, Miriam’s mother, was Hannah’s dad’s sister. She sometimes came to family events, though rarely with her husband, whom Cass and the extended Rosensteins all hated.
“One is never prepared for Ziva,” Miriam said, draining half of her gross chocolate coffee in one gulp. When she pulled the T-shirt off her head, a cascade of curls fell out. They were mesmerizing.
Noelle tried to avoid thinking about how soft Miriam’s hair would be to touch. “Your dad isn’t here. Your mom said he’s not coming,” she said, taking a guess at what Miriam was so wound up about.
Miriam’s entire body deflated into the stool. So Noelle had been right. What the hell had her father done to make her hold herself like prey hoping to go unnoticed by a predator at the hint of him?
Never mind. This woman was not her problem.
As if she’d been summoned, Ziva’s voice filtered into the kitchen. Miriam sighed, pushing off the stool, her shoulders slumped. Noelle followed her out to the dining room, curious against her better judgment.
Ziva Rosenstein-Blum swept into the nearly empty dining room in her athleisure clothes. Her hair was up in a high ponytail, perfectly straightened. Her yoga pants were designer. Her eyebrows were newly microbladed.
“Miriam,” Ziva said without preamble, “I stopped to get you a dress for the funeral, so you don’t have to rip up one of Hannah’s.”
Noelle noticed that Ziva and Miriam did not touch, and that neither mentioned Mr. Blum. She’d met him a couple of times, but he never deigned to notice her. He mocked Cass’s tendency to collect lost souls (never in front of Noelle, whom he considered The Help, but to Hannah, who told Noelle everything), calling Carrigan’s the Island of Misfit Toys. He spent all of his short visits looking itchy, as if the entire Adirondacks were an ill-tailored suit.
Mr. and Mrs. Matthews appeared from their apartments off the kitchen to embrace Ziva stiffly. Complicated though their relationship seemed to be with the Blums, it stretched back before Noelle had been born, a hundred thousand memories tying them together.
But she wouldn’t let Ziva, or Miriam, who had been gone for a decade, make her feel like an interloper. Everyone else might be happy to welcome the prodigal daughter back into the fold, but she had no happy memories of Miriam and no reason to make space for her. This place was hers. Ziva and Miriam would leave after the seven days of shiva while Noelle and Hannah would stay and try to get through their first Christmas without Cass, and everything would be…well, not normal, not ever again. But at least there wouldn’t be beautiful careless women in ugly sweaters asking her for cups of coffee.
Throughout the day, Rosensteins from around the country trickled in, along with families who had spent Christmas at Carrigan’s for years, sometimes generations. Cass Carrigan had been an eccentric aunt to uncounted lost souls in need of no-nonsense love.
She was buried in the closest Jewish cemetery in the middle of the drizzly afternoon. The crowd of mourners shuttled out in the big Carrigan’s van, and back again, clothes torn in grief.