A Knights Bridge Christmas

* * *

Vera Galeski, in her early sixties, was explaining to Clare the long-standing Knights Bridge tradition of singing carols in the village on Christmas Eve when Logan Farrell entered the library. Clare couldn’t believe her eyes. He made no move to take off his black wool overcoat, a sign he didn’t plan to stay long. He walked straight to her desk—again the brisk, efficient ER doctor more than the sensitive, loving grandson.

With raised eyebrows, Vera retreated to the children’s room in the front of the library.

“I can’t decorate Gran’s house by myself,” Logan said. “I get hives thinking about it.”

He didn’t look as if he were about to break out in anxiety-driven hives. Clare couldn’t hide her amusement. “Really, Dr. Farrell?”

“Logan. Please. All right, hives is an exaggeration, but it’s close. I don’t want to disappoint my grandmother. This move...” He paused, grimacing. “You help me decorate her house for Christmas, and the library can have first crack at her collection of books. Take what you want and I’ll get rid of the rest. She’s a pack rat. She could have valuable first editions.”

“And your grandmother has agreed to this arrangement?”

“She proposed it.”

Clare smiled. “Did you tell her about your hives?”

An unexpected smile played at the corners of his mouth. “She said, ‘Logan, you look as if you’re about to break out in hives.’” But he glanced at the library entrance, as if he was in a hurry and already had stayed longer than he’d meant to. He looked back at Clare, again the busy ER doctor. “You’ll do it?”

The odds she would discover a hidden treasure buried in Daisy Farrell’s house were slim to none, but the library did raise money from periodic book sales and could always use donations.

Logan shoved his hands in his overcoat pockets, an obvious attempt to hide his impatience. “I don’t see a downside,” he said.

You, Clare thought, but she tried to keep her reaction from entering itself into her expression. “I want to be sure I have the time. I’m still getting used to life in Knights Bridge, and I have a first-grader—”

“He can help. Kids love to decorate. I’ll buy him a present. What does he like?”

She folded her arms across her chest. “You like to get your way, don’t you?”

“I’m trying to help my grandmother.”

“You’re trying to fob off helping your grandmother onto me.”

“I said I’d help.”

“When?”

“I’m off this weekend.”

Clare lowered her arms to her sides. “You don’t have any plans to be in Knights Bridge on Christmas Eve, do you?”

“I don’t have plans for Christmas right now. Clare—Mrs. Morgan—”

“Clare is fine, and of course I’ll help decorate your grandmother’s house—as a favor to her. She doesn’t need to donate anything to the library.”

“Not going to be bribed, are you?”

“I have a feeling you and Mrs. Farrell are both good at getting people to do what you want them to do.”

“I’m an amateur compared to Gran.” He sighed in obvious relief. “Thank you.”

Clare expected him to bolt out of there now that he’d gotten his way, but he didn’t move. He eyed her, his knowing gaze somehow reminding her he was an emergency physician. “Gran’s mention of accidents at Christmas got to you,” he said finally.

“I don’t know why it did. I hope it didn’t make her feel awkward.”

“She’s lived a long life. She’s had her share of hardships and tragedies.” Logan left it at that and stood straight. “We can start on Saturday, then?”

Clare nodded. “I have the weekend off.”

“Good. It shouldn’t take long to decorate the place. Let’s meet at the house at nine. Will that suit you?”

“That works for me.”

“Good. I’ll see you then,” he added, already on his way toward the front door.

When the door thudded shut behind him, Clare sank into the chair at her desk and breathed.

What had she just done?

Nothing dramatic or insane, she told herself. She’d agreed to help decorate a house with an intense, good-looking, out-of-town ER doctor who wanted to please his grandmother. Any romantic implications were in her head—not that she was thinking along those lines, or, certainly, that he was.

“Seriously,” she told herself.

She was simply a means to an end for Logan Farrell.

* * *

It was dark when Clare left the library. She drove the short distance to Maggie and Brandon Sloan’s fixer-upper “gingerbread house” off South Main. Maggie was a local caterer with enough energy for ten people. Putting bits and pieces of their conversations together, Clare had concluded that Maggie and her carpenter husband, childhood sweethearts, had come through a rough patch in their marriage.

Maggie had on a chef’s apron covered in flour, some of it in her red curls. “It’s pandemonium in here,” she said cheerfully.

She wasn’t exaggerating. Aidan, Tyler and Owen had transformed the living room into a pirate island.

“Brandon’s brother is engaged to an actual pirate expert,” Maggie said. “She’s a good sport about the boys’ idea of pirates. They just finished a treasure hunt, so your timing is perfect. All’s well. No fights, no stitches.” She didn’t sound as if either would be out of the ordinary, or bother her, within reason.

Owen was flushed with excitement, enjoying his new friends. As he put on his jacket, he and the two Sloan boys made plans on their own for a future get-together, as if their mothers weren’t standing there.

Maggie took the opportunity to lean in to Clare. “I heard you’re helping decorate the Farrell house.”

“News travels fast in this town.”

“Audrey Frost told her granddaughter, Olivia, who told me, one of her best friends. Daisy’s a peach. It’ll be great to see her house decorated one last time. I can’t imagine her not living there. I’m sure she’d love to have it stay in the family, but no interest there. It happens. People have their own lives.”

“How many children does she have?”

“Just the son. Two grandchildren—a grandson and a granddaughter in Boston.”

“I met Logan today,” Clare said, keeping her voice neutral.

“That’s what I hear. ER doctor in Boston. I’m surprised he helped Daisy move, but he’s probably anxious to get her house on the market—not for the money, I don’t mean that. Just to be done with it. I’ve run into him a few times when he’s visited his grandparents. He strikes me as very efficient, the sort you want in an emergency if not for a heart-to-heart chat.”

“Not strong on bedside manner?”

“You’ve met him,” Maggie said knowingly. “What do you think?”

Clare considered a moment. “I think he’s the sort of man who knows how to get what he wants.”

“Daisy knows how to get what she wants, too. Trust me, if she hadn’t wanted to make this move, she’d still be living around the corner. But I think her fall scared even her, and she hates to be a bother.” Maggie peeled off her apron and tossed it onto the back of a chair. “If you need any help with decorating, you know where to find me.”

Clare thanked her and left with Owen. She turned her attention to his day, but as they drove out to their small apartment in a converted nineteenth-century sawmill, she thought of the faded photograph of Daisy Farrell’s house decorated for Christmas so long ago. For whatever reason, she’d latched onto the candle in the window. That, for sure, Clare thought, she and Logan could manage.

Two

“Bah,” said Scrooge, “Humbug.”

—Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

LOGAN ARRIVED AT his apartment in a high-rise in Boston’s Copley Square in time to get ready to meet friends for dinner. He pulled off his overcoat and headed into his bedroom. A quick change of clothes, and he’d be off to a hip, expensive restaurant. It wouldn’t be a late night. He had to be at the hospital early. But as he pulled off his clothes, he felt dusty and tired, not from hauling boxes—from the emotions of the day.

Not like him, he thought.

He’d run the Boston Marathon. He’d survived the long hours and hard work to become a physician specializing in emergency medicine. Physical and mental fatigue he knew how to manage. Emotional fatigue...

He shook off the thought of it and forced himself not to give in to the mess of emotions that had been swirling around in his head since he’d arrived in Knights Bridge last night. He put on fresh clothes and headed out, walking over to Newbury Street and the trendy restaurant where his friends already had a table.

“How is sleepy Knights Bridge?” Paul, another ER doctor, asked when Logan joined him and his wife, Josie, a pediatrician.

Logan couldn’t help but think of his grandmother spending her first night in her new apartment. Was she lonely? Disoriented? Immersing herself in memories of her home on the town common?

“Logan?” Paul shook his head. “That sleepy, huh? You’re zoned out.”

“Sorry. Long day.”

“How’s your grandmother?” Josie asked.

“Settling in. She’s putting on a brave face, but it can’t be easy moving into a new place after all this time.”

“But she’s thought about it,” Paul said. “She’s known this day could come.”

“Not one for denial, you Farrells,” Josie added with a smile.

“That’s true. Gran’s one of those people you think will always be around. She’s in her eighties, and I know better—I know there are more days behind her than ahead...” Logan didn’t allow himself to go far down that road. “I like to think she’s genuinely excited about her move into assisted living.”

“It needed to be done,” Paul said.

Josie rolled her eyes. “Mr. Sensitivity.”

“What? It’s true, isn’t it, Logan?”

“We could have arranged for her to stay at home. She needs assistance. She knows that. She says moving into assisted living allows her to be independent and still get the help she needs at this season in her life.”

“You sound like a brochure for the place,” Paul said. “Martini?”

Logan smiled, pushing past his melancholy. “That sounds perfect.”

But his mind drifted to Clare Morgan, the new Knights Bridge librarian, with her pale blond hair, blue eyes, freckles and shapely body beneath her winter layers. He’d observed a distinct back-and-forth in her between a spine of steel and a heart of gold. She’d pegged him straight off as an SOB. Not that he hadn’t contributed to her opinion, but he suspected there was more to it than his impatient exchange with the receptionist—for which he’d apologized, again, before leaving his grandmother. The receptionist had taken his impatience in stride. He suspected she’d seen a lot in her work, but that didn’t excuse his rudeness.

He tuned back in to the conversation with his friends. He ended up enjoying the evening—the martini, Paul’s irreverence and Josie’s sense of humor helped—but when he walked home, he noticed the festive lights and decorations celebrating the season and realized he hadn’t paid attention until now. He’d yet to put up a tree in his apartment. He doubted he would bother. What was the point? He didn’t entertain there, and he had no woman in his life. He remembered going out to the old Farrell farm on the outskirts of Knights Bridge as a boy with his grandfather. They’d go out into the fields and cut a Christmas tree. His own life had been in suburban Boston, not in Knights Bridge. He’d loved his grandfather, but when he’d died two years ago, Logan had realized how little he knew about Tom Farrell’s life. His father had left Knights Bridge for college and life as a lawyer in the Boston suburbs. No one had been more surprised than Logan when his parents had decided to retire to the Farrell farm—just not right away. They were presently on a Christmas Market cruise in Europe.

Logan stood in his living room and looked out at the city lights. When his phone rang, he was surprised to see it was his father. “Is it snowing?” he asked when Logan picked up.

“Not at the moment.”

“We have just enough snow here to keep things festive.”

“It’s six hours later there. What are you doing up?”

“I’m somewhere between East Coast and Austrian time. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help your grandmother move. I called at eight. She said she was about to tuck herself into bed. She seems content.”

“I think so.” They chatted for a few minutes about the move. Logan remembered the photograph his grandmother had pinpointed in the album. “Do you know if the Christmas of 1945 has any particular meaning for Gran?”

“It was the end of the war. Her father survived. He served in the Atlantic in the navy. He died when I was twelve, but he never talked about his war years—I’m not sure he would have with me, since I was just a kid. He and my grandmother lived with us. She died a couple of years after he did. The war...”

“A long time ago,” Logan said.

“For us. For Mom, it must feel like the blink of an eye.”

Logan stepped back from the window and its familiar view. “The local librarian is going to help me decorate the house.”

“Good, because one thing we Farrell men have in common—Pop, you and me—is not having an eye for decorating. You’ll need the help.”

“Do you ever wish you’d become a firefighter?”

“Many times. Pop was proud when I decided to go into the law—Mom, too. They said they understood I needed to be in Boston, but I’m sure they secretly wished I’d opened up a practice in Knights Bridge.” He chuckled. “Well, in Mom’s case, not so secretly, but she got over it.”

“No regrets?”

His father was silent a moment. “Not when I see you and your sister, no. You’ve taken on a demanding career. The burnout rate for emergency physicians is pretty high. Take time to have a life, son. The work is good, but it will always be there. My pop used to tell me that. I wish I’d done a better job of listening.”

Logan shifted the subject to his parents’ cruise, but it was obvious his father was fading. After they disconnected, Logan took a shower, which he wouldn’t have time for in the morning, his head swimming with memories. His grandfather’s funeral, the church overflowing with well-wishers, Gran stoic but ever so sad. She was doing fine health wise, but given her advanced age, anything could happen anytime. She knew it, too. But she would tell him every day mattered, regardless of one’s age.

By the time he collapsed into bed, he was happy that he had three twelve-hour shifts before his return to Knights Bridge.

* * *

Friday arrived faster than Logan had anticipated. He’d left clothes and toiletries at his grandmother’s house and only stopped at his apartment long enough to grab a pair of winter boots. He didn’t know why he’d need boots to visit his grandmother and decorate her house, but it seemed like a good idea to have them for a December weekend in Knights Bridge. He hadn’t checked the forecast. For all he knew, they could be in for a blizzard.

The drive west was uneventful, with reasonable traffic and no snow or the dreaded “wintry mix.” By the time he wound his way into Knights Bridge, the stars were out. Every house and business on the common was lit up for the holidays—except his grandmother’s house. He didn’t know why he hadn’t noticed before that it wasn’t decorated. He’d been preoccupied with the practicalities of her move, he supposed.

A few people—both adults and children—were skating on the rink on the south end of the common, their graceful and not-so-graceful moves silhouetted under portable lights. He’d gone skating with his grandfather a few times, never his parents or his grandmother. He couldn’t remember the last time he and his old grandpa had hit the ice together, but Tom Farrell had skated until his last two years of life. Bundled up, Daisy would sit on a bench on the rink and watch him, her own skating days having ended in her early seventies.

“Eighty and out skating, Grandpa,” Logan said aloud as he pulled into the driveway next to the house. “Not bad.”

The house was as cold as a tomb—not the best image but it was in his head before he could stop it. Before he’d left town earlier in the week, he’d turned down the heat as far as he could without risking frozen pipes. Turning up the thermostat was the first order of business. While the heat kicked on, he unloaded the car.

A middle-aged man walked across the street from the common. “Hello, Logan. Randy Frost. I worked with your grandfather as a volunteer firefighter when he was chief. I just retired myself.”

“It’s good to see you, Randy,” Logan said.

“Wasn’t sure you’d remember me.”

“Your mother is Audrey Frost. She’s encouraging my grandmother to do yoga.”

“She and Daisy are tight. Kind of the way it is here. In most small towns, I expect. Need any help getting Daisy settled?”

“I think I got most everything, thanks.”

“Always feel free to ask for help. We’d all do anything for her.”

The implication, however unintended, was that her own family had neglected her. Logan felt an urge to defend himself with the usual protestations about the demands of his profession, but Randy Frost wouldn’t care and it was nineteen degrees out.

Randy didn’t look as if he cared about the cold temperature, either.

Logan thanked him for his offer to help. “Were you ice-skating?”

“Me? No. I stopped by to watch Dylan McCaffrey skate with my daughter. They’re getting married on Christmas Eve. He played professional hockey for a few years. Grew up in Los Angeles and ends up in the NHL. Go figure. You a hockey fan, Logan?”

“I’m a Bruins fan. I played hockey in high school but I was never any good at it.”

“We can’t be good at everything.” Randy motioned toward the mostly dark house. “Daisy’s got you decorating the place?”

Logan raised his eyebrows. “Your mother told you that, too?”

“She’s her own Knights Bridge All News Network, but no, Clare Morgan mentioned it the other day.”

“I see,” Logan said, although he didn’t.

“She lives in an apartment at the sawmill my wife and I run. It can be hard to be new in town, and everyone here loved her predecessor at the library, Phoebe O’Dunn. Phoebe’s engaged to Dylan’s business partner, Noah Kendrick. Southern California tech guy.”

Logan smiled. “I’m lost.”

Randy winked at him. “That’s because you’re not from around here. If you were, you’d follow right along. When do you plan to put the house on the market?”

“That’s up to my grandmother.”

“Right. Well, we know old houses around here. Let me know if you need to do any work on it before you put up the For Sale sign.”

“I will.”

Logan expected Randy Frost would turn around and walk back to the common, but he stood there. Scrutinizing the big-city doctor, Logan thought, feeling the older man’s distrust. Logan understood Randy’s wariness, shared by other people in town. To them, he was a busy physician from the city who hadn’t visited his grandparents as much as he’d have liked—maybe as much as he should have. Obviously he hadn’t visited as much as the people of Knights Bridge thought he should have.

“Good luck with decorating,” the older man said finally, about-facing and heading back across the street before Logan could answer.

Relieved that little encounter was over, he went inside. The house was heating up nicely. He put away his groceries in a cupboard above the sink that his grandmother had cleared out for him before her move. “You’re always welcome to stay here,” she’d told him. “As long as I have this place, it’s your home, too. You can toss out the rest of the stuff in these cabinets. I won’t be needing it.”

There’d been no self-pity in her tone, but that didn’t mean other people in town didn’t pity her—and blame Logan for her move into assisted living. His father, too. Logan understood that his grandmother could have decided to move and put on a positive face to spare her family, but he’d been looking for hints of doubt and hidden meaning and had seen none. She’d been adamant that whether to move was her decision to make, and she’d made it.

There wasn’t any arguing with Daisy Farrell once she’d made up her mind, and if the rest of Knights Bridge thought he was a lout, then Logan figured so be it. He didn’t owe them an explanation.

As he wandered through the first floor of the house, he noticed the places where the few possessions she’d taken to her new apartment had been. He could see her and his grandfather reading by the fireplace in the front room, watching the Red Sox in the family room, painting the woodwork in the hall. It was hard to imagine them apart, but after his grandfather’s death, his grandmother had taken Logan’s hand into hers and warned him not to feel sorry for her. “I’m thankful for the years your grandpa and I had together,” she’d said. “We were truly blessed.”

More stiff-upper-lip nonsense, maybe, Logan thought with a hiss of impatience. How was he supposed to know if she was leveling with him? What had she done when he’d returned to Boston after his grandfather’s funeral? Had she been at peace, filled with gratitude, on dark nights alone in this place?

But “alone” was relative, wasn’t it? Knights Bridge, not just this house, was Daisy Farrell’s home.

Or was that just a rationalization on his part?

Maybe he was a heartless SOB.

He smiled to himself, shaking off his melancholy. Time to get down to business. He texted Clare Morgan.

9 a.m. start still all right with you?

He tucked his phone into his jacket pocket and went out to the car for his boots. If he needed them, he wanted them warm. Shoving his feet into cold boots wasn’t on the top of his list of fun things to do.

When he got back inside, Clare had responded. I’ll be there. Can I bring anything?

He couldn’t think of what. Glue? Fresh greens? A nail gun? Tape? He had no idea what was involved in decorating a village house for the holidays. He settled on a vague response. We can decide what we need when you get here.

Sounds good. See you then.

He didn’t detect anything tentative in her response but wouldn’t be surprised if she regretted agreeing to help. He supposed he’d taken advantage of her newness in town. It was natural for her to want to make a good impression. Helping decorate beloved Daisy Farrell’s house would be a plus. But that hadn’t been his intent. Logan wasn’t quite sure how to describe his intent, but it probably had something to do with not wanting Clare to think he was a jerk who’d browbeaten a receptionist and forced his grandmother into assisted living.

Then there was Clare Morgan herself. He doubted she’d expected to run into anyone under seventy, except for staff, when she’d carried her box of books into the assisted-living facility. How could he have not noticed the curve of her hip and her unmistakable annoyance when she’d overheard him?

He noticed a library newsletter on a table by the fireplace. It included a note from the chairman of the board of trustees welcoming their new library director.

Logan sat on the couch and read.

Clare Morgan comes to Knights Bridge from the Boston Public Library, our nation’s oldest public library. It’s been her fondest dream to work in a small-town library, and with family roots in the lost towns of the Swift River Valley, she’s pleased to be in our small town. Please take the time to welcome her and her son, Owen, to Knights Bridge.

“Well, well,” Logan said aloud.

So, the fair-haired, book-toting small-town librarian knew something of the big city herself. He wondered how long it would take him to find out what had happened to her husband, then dismissed the thought. He could push people and rules to the limit when it suited him, but he wasn’t crossing that line. If Clare wanted him to know, she could tell him.

Whatever her background, Logan figured he could do worse for decorating help. It could be Randy Frost showing up at nine o’clock tomorrow instead of pretty Clare Morgan.

* * *

Fruit, carrot sticks, cheese and a glass of wine sufficed for dinner. Soon after, Logan, bored, went upstairs to the back bedroom where he used to stay as a boy. It had been his father’s room and he doubted it had changed since then. It had two twin beds with a matching dresser and bookshelves. He found a biography of Abraham Lincoln and crawled under the covers in one of the beds. He’d made it up when he’d stayed over earlier in the week. Until then, he’d never slept in this house alone. He remembered his grandfather chasing a bat that had swooped down the attic stairs, but that had been in the summer. Logan wouldn’t have to deal with bats tonight.

Nightmares, maybe.

The pipes dinged and pinged with a rush of heat. Wind rattled the windows. A cat yowled in the backyard. Kids—teenagers, he thought—laughed and shouted at each other in the distance, presumably as the skating rink shut down for the night.

As an emergency physician, Logan had developed the skill for falling asleep anytime, anywhere, but he knew he had his work cut out for him tonight.