In the great room, Miriam sat stiffly as if she might shatter. Miriam’s friend Cole lounged on a settee, though Noelle still wasn’t clear on why he was there. She’d asked him if he had a job to get back to and he’d changed the subject. Hannah was leaning against the fireplace, and Noelle fretted that her friend’s legs were close to giving out. Noelle rose, wrapping an arm around Hannah’s shoulders to lead her into a corner.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “What can I do?”
Hannah shook her head. “You can’t help. I was just wishing Levi Blue were here.”
“That’s the worst thing you, or anyone, has ever said to me,” Noelle replied.
Hannah laid her head on Noelle’s shoulder, and Noelle patted her hair like a child. Levi, the Matthewses’ eldest son and Hannah’s evil ex, was Noelle’s least favorite human being on Earth. He should be here, he’d grown up here, but Noelle was grateful he wasn’t. She could protect Hannah from a lot of things, but if Levi were here, he would break her heart again, and Noelle would be powerless to stop it.
“Breathe,” Noelle whispered. “What would Cass tell you?”
“Cass would tell me there were too many fucking people in her house, and to stop letting them eat all her deviled eggs,” Hannah whispered back.
“Well I can’t fix Cass being gone or heal the damage that is Levi, but I can fix one problem. Let’s go get some deviled eggs,” Noelle said, grateful to have a plan of action instead of floundering around feeling useless and sad, “and then, fortified, we will rejoin the madding crowd.”
“An egg-quisition plan!” Hannah announced, her voice brave if wobbly.
Noelle walked behind Hannah, shielding her from being intercepted by relatives. She would get Hannah fed and keep her from collapsing. That was a thing she could do.
Guests from years past who hadn’t made it to the funeral wandered in over the next few days. Each carried food and memories. They told story after story, giving Noelle back pieces of her heart. The cousin Cass had taken on joyrides on long summer nights, the friend’s business she’d quietly financed, the one-woman show she’d run for a week in Paris before she got bored. Nine decades of eccentric, joyful, idiosyncratic life.
Noelle had needed this. When her parents died, she’d been alone, and all she’d been able to do was get up in the morning, stay sober, and go back to bed. This process was good. She watched Miriam and Hannah say Kaddish, a minyan around them, and felt for the first time a tiny hope that someday, maybe, she wouldn’t be drowning in this grief.
But she kept her own stories of Cass hoarded like pearls. In some ways, she’d been just another of Cass’s collected souls; in others, she’d known a Cass no one else saw. The grouchy, misanthropic introvert as well as the cutting wit and the larger-than-life performer. The Cass who snuck downstairs in a silk caftan in the middle of the night to steal snacks from Mrs. Matthews’s refrigerator while smoking a forbidden cigarette out the back door of the kitchen. The Cass who refused to talk about money for farm expenses because it was “simply too boring, and anyway, that’s why I pay you!” The Cass who hid out for months in the off-season, refusing to speak even to her or the Matthewses because she needed to “rejuvenate.”
That Cass was hers. She’d been a real pain in the ass, and Noelle treasured that secret truth.
Shiva marched on. They ate casseroles, cried, and gave themselves space. Hannah kept the guests busy with the help of Cole, whose presence was still a mystery, but who proved surprisingly useful. Miriam spent time with the Matthewses. Noelle walked past her telling an animated story that involved an island off the Washington coast, a sledgehammer, and a bottle of epoxy. Mr. Matthews had his head thrown back in laughter, and Noelle grimaced. What the hell did Miriamdothat was more important than being here? Miriam caught her eye and smiled, a flush on her cheeks, and Noelle turned away. She spent a lot of time with her trees after that.
When the week ended, Cole went back to Charleston, the family all left, and only the Carrigan’s crew stayed—except for Miriam, who was scheduled to fly out of the city the next day.
But before she could leave for the airport, Cass’s lawyer arrived. Mr. Elijah Green, Esquire, was a tall, thin Black man with a short afro and frameless glasses. He was one of Noelle’s favorite people in all of upstate New York, or maybe the world. He was dryly hilarious, endlessly welcoming, and the driving force behind whatever queer community she’d managed to find in these mountains. She pounced on him, and he squeezed her tightly.
“How is Jason? How are the twins? Is your mom feeling better?” Noelle was ecstatic to see her friend—and also talk to someone she hadn’t spent the week with.
“Jason is currently negotiating a truce between the twins because one wants to have a twin Halloween costume, and the other does not. My mom’s hip is healing really well, probably because my sister is on her every day to do her exercises.”
“She’s killing me at Words with Friends, with all her spare time,” Noelle said, and Elijah laughed before adjusting the sleeves of his argyle sweater carefully. All his movements were precise and measured. Noelle knew him as her rad gay friend who always had a gathering going, the guy who made pub quiz and karaoke and book club happen, but she’d never seen him lawyer before. He cleared his throat.
“I’m so sorry to have missed the funeral—” he began.
“If you had missed your grandmother’s ninetieth birthday for her funeral,” Hannah said, “Cass would never have forgiven you.”
He nodded. “I realize this is absolutely not an ideal, or even reasonable, time to talk about Cass’s will, but I needed you three in the same room. I wasn’t sure if Miriam was staying past the seven days, or I would have waited. My mom sent a casserole,” he added, as if by way of apology. “I put it in the fridge.”
All of this seemed ominous. Why did they need to talk about the will? For years, Cass had said she was leaving Carrigan’s Christmasland to Noelle and Hannah, to continue to run it as they’d been doing. Maybe Cass had left Miriam something as well, some small remembrance?
Hannah ushered them from the great room into the library and waited for everyone to settle.
“We need to discuss the property and business of Carrigan’s Christmasland. Up until last year, her will had, for some time, reflected that she wished to leave the business and land in equal parts to her niece Hannah Rosenstein and her general manager, Noelle Northwood.”
The hackles on the back of Noelle’s neck rose. All her muscles tensed.
“However, recently Cass amended her will to split the aforementioned assets in four equal parts, leaving the third and fourth portions to her niece Miriam Blum and Levi Matthews. It’s my understanding from my last conversation with her that she had not made any of you aware of these changes. Is that true?”
“I’m sorry,” Miriam squeaked, “she did what?!”
Noelle was half out of her chair, her face slack. She looked to Hannah for some idea how to respond. Hannah’s entire body seemed to have frozen into a cartoon version of shock, eyes as wide as plates, hands half raised to her mouth. Noelle scrubbed her face, pulled the ends of her hair straight up, sat down and crossed and uncrossed her arms, stood back up, and leaned against the back of the chair. None of it helped.