A Knights Bridge Christmas

Three

“The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”

—Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“WE NEED A bigger house, Mom,” Owen announced over breakfast. He was still in his pajamas, seated across from Clare at the small table that had come with their apartment.

“You have your own room,” she said. She was still in her nightgown and bathrobe, enjoying the lazy winter morning.

Her son raised his gaze to her. “But you don’t have a room.”

“That’s why there’s a sofa bed. The living room turns into my bedroom.”

He looked dubious. He pointed his cereal spoon at her. “And I can hear the brook at night.”

“Even with the windows shut?”

“Uh-huh. It keeps me awake.”

“Some people find water soothing. The brook will probably freeze before long, and you won’t hear anything but the occasional trickle, if that.”

“There are bears and foxes in the woods. Aidan and Tyler said so.”

Probably true, Clare thought. “I saw three deer last night after you went to bed,” she said.

Her son’s face lit up. “Deer!”

“You’ll see them soon, too. Now let’s finish our breakfast and get dressed. We have a big day ahead of us.”

He dug his spoon into his cereal. “I want to go ice-skating.”

“I have something I need to do this morning. You can help me. Maybe we can go skating this afternoon.”

“Aidan and Tyler said I could go with them and their dad.”

“I want to be with you when you go out on this rink for the first time. It’s not like the indoor rinks you know. Maybe we can go later.”

“You said that last time.”

“Did I? All right. We’ll talk about it on the way into town. Hurry up.”

There were times when Owen so reminded her of his father. Like now, she thought. He had the Morgan scowl, and somehow it made her notice his Morgan chin more, too. He finished his cereal, needed a reminder to take his bowl to the sink and then was off into the sole bedroom. Their apartment was charming and worked well for the two of them, but it was small—even compared to their apartment in the city.

But she loved the atmosphere of the renovated nineteenth-century sawmill, still with its original dam on a rambling, rock-strewn stream. Once she was settled in to her job and had a better feel for the town, she would buy a house in Knights Bridge. Right now, thinking about such a major change—planting real roots here—made her heart race. Her sawmill apartment was fine at least through the winter.

Owen came out of his bedroom chattering about ice-skating. There’d be no talking him out of it, Clare knew. The boy had the bit in his teeth and wouldn’t let go. She had to find a way to make it happen that would satisfy him but reassure her. She hadn’t told him about the secondhand skates yet. She couldn’t place her finger on why skating made her nervous—perhaps because she couldn’t skate worth a hoot herself.

Randy Frost greeted them as he walked down from Frost Millworks, located in a modern building above the original sawmill. The small mill provided high-quality custom millwork for construction and renovations throughout the Northeast, focusing on older buildings. Clare didn’t know much about millwork, but she knew if anyone needed to duplicate a vintage window, this was the place to come. That had already happened with an 1830 Knights Bridge home during her short time in town.

“Louise has some extra greenery if you could use it for the library and Daisy’s house,” Randy said. “I’ve got it in the truck if you’re interested.”

Louise was Randy’s wife, who ran the mill with him. “That would be great,” Clare said, not sure how he’d found out about Daisy’s house. “I’m on my way to town now.”

“The good doctor will be there?”

She nodded without comment. Randy chatted with Owen as they walked up to the parking lot. He grabbed live evergreen boughs from the bed of the truck and put them into her trunk. Clare smiled. “They smell heavenly, don’t they?”

That obviously hadn’t occurred to him. She thanked him, and he wished her luck with the decorating. Once in the car, Owen immediately resumed pressing his case for ice-skating. To add to the cards on his side, when they arrived on South Main, Aidan and Tyler Sloan were skipping up the sidewalk with their father, all three carrying ice skates. The boys eagerly invited Owen to join them.

“I have a pair of skates for him in the trunk, but he’s never used them,” Clare explained. “I haven’t checked them out yet.”

But Logan Farrell came out of the house. “I can take a look at them and make sure they’re in decent shape. What do you think, Clare? Would that be all right with you?”

She nodded, trying to ignore the tightness in her stomach as she popped the trunk to her car.

Brandon Sloan, a strong, competent-looking man, eyed her as if he could tell what she was thinking. “I’ll stick close to Owen.”

“He’s only skated a few times and always indoors.”

“Nothing like your first time skating outdoors. It’s not a lake or a pond. Even if the ice cracks, nothing will happen.”

“He’s excited,” Clare said. “It’s easy to get ahead of yourself when you’re excited. He needs to pay attention to the other skaters.”

“I won’t let him get bowled over,” Brandon said, cuffing Owen on the shoulder. “Right, kiddo?”

Owen giggled. “What’s bowled over?”

“Flattened.” Brandon grinned at Clare, matter-of-fact. “Helps to be clear with kids.”

She appreciated his nonchalance but couldn’t shake her concern. “There’s also hypothermia—”

Logan eased in next to her. “It’s not that cold today. He’ll work up a head of steam.”

“It’ll be fine,” Brandon added. “Relax, okay?”

Clare breathed, tried to smile. “Thank you.”

Logan grabbed the skates and took Owen onto the porch to try them on and make sure they were okay.

Aidan and Tyler were clearly getting restless. “Two more minutes,” their father told them, turning back to Clare. “Dylan McCaffrey will be out on the ice this morning. He was a professional hockey player. He’s had stitches a few times, but he still has all his teeth.”

“Hockey players wear helmets and play in indoor rinks with walls.”

Brandon rested back on his heels. “You’re getting yourself spooled up, aren’t you, Clare?”

“I am. Sorry.” She gave a small laugh. “Owen’s had so much new to deal with—with the move. New home, new school, new friends. And six isn’t five. He’s getting more independent. I don’t want to suffocate him but he’s still so young.”

“She’s in mama-bear mode,” Logan said, walking down the porch steps with Owen trotting happily next to him, ice skates in hand.

“Got it,” Brandon said with a grin.

“The skates are fine,” Logan added.

Clare knelt in front of her son. “Now, Owen, you can go skating with your friends, but you have to listen to Brandon. Understand?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Aidan and Tyler have more experience skating than you do. That’s okay. You don’t have to keep up with them. You’ll learn. Be patient with yourself.”

Logan adjusted Owen’s hat. “Best way to learn to skate better is to get out on the ice and go for it. Have fun.”

Owen smiled up at him. “Thanks, Logan.”

Already he was Logan, not Dr. Farrell? Clare kept her mouth shut as Brandon collected the three boys and headed across South Main to the common. She breathed deeply, her mind racing with possibilities of what could happen. Hurt feelings, the two more experienced boys running off and leaving Owen because he couldn’t keep up, kids teasing him because he was the inexperienced skater—the new kid in town who didn’t know anything.

Hypothermia. Stitches. Concussion. Broken bones.

“Clare.”

She dragged herself out of her thoughts and gave another small laugh to cover for herself. “Mind wandering. Thank you for helping with the skates.”

“Not a problem.”

She remembered the boughs from the Frosts and returned to her trunk. “I don’t know what we’ll do with them, but they smell nice, don’t they?”

“Sure do,” Logan said, grabbing most of them.

She gathered the rest and followed him inside through the front door and down a center hall to a cozy kitchen with white-painted cabinets. They set the evergreens on the table.

He brushed off his arms. “I think I got spruce needles down my neck.”

Clare laughed. “Me, too. At least we’re not allergic. I mean—I assume you’re not if you carried...”

“I’m not allergic.”

She glanced around the kitchen, its cabinets and countertops worn but serviceable. The gas stove looked fairly new—within the past decade, anyway. Windows by the table and over the sink looked out on the backyard, covered in light snow. She imagined it in spring, with flowers, green grass and shade trees.

Logan stood next to her at a window. “Gran gave up keeping bird feeders. She had a bad fall hanging a feeder a few years ago. She doesn’t give up easily, but she didn’t want birds counting on her if she couldn’t get out there in the snow.”

“She’ll enjoy the bird feeders at Rivendell, then.”

“I’m sure she will. She’ll have Grace Webster to instruct her.”

“I understand that Grace is the Knights Bridge resident bird expert.”

“That’s what I hear.” He nodded to the evergreens on the table. “Any plans for what to do with them?”

“I figure ideas will emerge as we get into the decorating. I assume we’re only decorating outside. No point decorating inside if no one will be here.”

“I did tell Gran I’d light a candle on Christmas Eve. I suppose I could delegate it, or drive straight back to Boston.”

“Have you ever spent Christmas in Knights Bridge?”

“When my sister and I were kids. Grandpa would take us out on the tractor on the Farrell farm to cut a Christmas tree.”

“You must have great memories.”

“I’d give anything to cut a tree with him now. I don’t care if I’m in my thirties.”

“I gather from everything I’ve heard about him that your grandfather was something. I can see for myself your grandmother still is. Shall we get started?”

His eyes steadied on her. “What about your grandparents, Clare?”

“All four are still with us. My paternal grandparents retired to South Carolina and love it, and my maternal grandparents live in Amherst with my parents. We have roots in the area. My family on my mother’s side settled in Enfield early in the nineteenth century.”

“One of the Quabbin towns.”

“I always thought I’d be a small-town librarian, but I ended up in Boston.”

“Because of your husband?”

“In part. I liked my job, too. And I like Boston.”

Logan leaned against the counter, his arms crossed on his chest. “But it came time to leave and make a fresh start.”

“Yes.”

“Not just for Owen’s sake—for your own, too?”

It didn’t sound like a question. It sounded as if he already knew the answer. Clare nodded. “Owen didn’t need a fresh start. He was happy in Boston, but I thought the move would be good for both of us.” She grabbed a pair of heavy-duty scissors out of a pottery container on the counter. “Why don’t I trim some of the dead stuff off the evergreens while you check the front porch for a good spot for them?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

His gaze lingered on her for a few more seconds. It was obvious he knew she’d deliberately changed the subject. She couldn’t tell if he also knew he’d gone too far in asking about her reason for leaving Boston.

Did Logan Farrell ever worry about going too far with anything?

He headed down the hall without another word. Decorating his grandmother’s house for Christmas couldn’t be his idea of an exciting Saturday. He could have hired out the job, Clare thought, but he was here, doing it—if with her help.

She heard a screech and jumped, immediately thinking of Owen, but then realized it was a car hitting its brakes. But before she could relax she thought, why? Why was a car hitting its brakes hard on South Main? Had Owen slipped away from his friends to come find her?

She shook her head. “Stop. Just stop.”

She realized Logan had come back down the hall and was standing in the doorway. “You all right?”

She smiled. “Just crazy.”

“Ah. Crazy I can understand.”

“I’ve been...” She snipped a browned twig off a bough. “I’ve been a little hyped up since we moved. Life’s different here. We don’t know a lot of people. Owen’s making friends but I worry. A mother’s prerogative, right?”

“Within reason,” Logan said.

“A straight answer. I try not to let worrying get out of hand. I don’t want Owen to be fearful because of me, or to decide not to do things because he doesn’t want to upset me. It’s a balancing act.”

“He’s moving from being a toddler under constant supervision to branching out a bit more.”

“Owen’s still under supervision.”

“But he’s six, not two.”

“Or sixteen,” Clare added with a smile. “I know what you’re getting at. I had a dozen different scenarios flash before me as Owen went off with the Sloan boys.”

“Did any of them end with happy, flushed faces and hot chocolate?”

She laughed, snipping another dead twig. “That’s a perfect image.”

“Gran’s probably got cocoa in a cupboard.”

“A plan for the day is developing.”

“And,” he said, entering the kitchen, “I found a good spot for your evergreens.”

He grabbed a knife and helped Clare trim the boughs. Once finished, they took them out to the porch and arranged them on the rail, tacking them down with string he’d found in a kitchen drawer.

“Not bad,” Logan said, appraising their initial handiwork. “It’s a start.”

“We can do more once we find out what all is available to us.”

“Gran says she stores Christmas decorations in the attic. Are you game?”

Clare nodded. “Sure.”

“You’re not thinking about what could go wrong in the attic of an old house, are you?”

“Are you suggesting I catastrophize, Dr. Farrell?”

“Sorry. I was out of line.”

“I guess you couldn’t be an ER doctor if you worried too much about other people’s feelings. You have to stay focused on what you’re doing.”

“It helps, but there’s no excuse for being an inconsiderate idiot.”

“Maybe, but I’d rather have a doctor with no bedside manner who’s good at medicine than a doctor with great bedside manner who’s not as good at medicine.”

“You can have both in the same person.”

“That’s the best-case scenario, of course.” Clare stopped herself before her mind could drift into the past. A Boston emergency department, rushing doctors and nurses and the worst news she could imagine. Aware of Logan’s scrutiny, she pulled open the front door. “I love old attics. Shall we?”

“After you.”

* * *

Logan led the way up to the second floor and then up steep, narrow stairs to a full attic under insulated eaves and heavy beams. Clare had expected an overstuffed jumble of dusty furniture and old trunks, but the attic, although jam-packed, was tidy, with cardboard and plastic boxes neatly stacked and labeled, two large trunks, four ladder-back chairs, a mahogany desk and several old bed frames.

Logan ran his fingers over the back of one of the chairs. “Grandpa was careful about fire hazards, and Gran’s told us for years she’s got the place in a ‘dying condition.’ Her words.”

“Practical,” Clare said. “She seems very organized.”

He smiled. “That’s Gran. Most of her books won’t be up here.”

“Logan, I don’t need her books—”

“She wants you to have them.” He squeezed between a stack of boxes. “She and my grandfather downsized their Christmas decorating once they hit their late seventies, and she did just the basics after he died. I doubt she’s opened most of the boxes with decorations in ages.”

Clare left him to search through the stacks of boxes and went to a window overlooking the common. She immediately picked out Owen on the ice, skating tentatively with Brandon Sloan. The rink was filling up, but the irrational surge of worry she’d experienced earlier had dissipated.

“Found them,” Logan said. He stood in a dark corner, in front of boxes stacked to his shoulders. “Looks like there are four boxes. We won’t need all of them.”

“But it could be fun to go through them, don’t you think? Maybe something will inspire our decorating.”

His eyes lit up, maybe more than he would be willing to admit. He handed her the top box—obviously the smallest and lightest—but she insisted he add a second one. She headed downstairs, navigating the steep steps one-by-one, aware of Logan close behind her.

They set the boxes on the floor in the upstairs hall. He stood straight. “I don’t have the attention span to dig through boxes and do all the decorating at once. What do you say we get this stuff into the kitchen and then take a walk?”

“Please don’t feel obligated to entertain me. I can stay at this while you take a walk.”

He grinned. “You don’t mind a little tedium?”

“Define ‘a little.’”

“Ha. Breaks are good. They keep you sharp, and we’ve been breathing attic dust. Time for some fresh air.”

Clare wasn’t accustomed to such a take-charge personality, but she didn’t have to deal with him forever. Logan Farrell would be back in Boston and his life there soon enough. He’d make the occasional visit to his grandmother and do his part to get her house sold as soon as possible. Clare didn’t think her assessment of him was unkind and premature so much as realistic. He was a busy physician used to a faster pace than what Knights Bridge had to offer. An hour into their decorating project, and he was already bored.

“Just because I don’t get bored easily doesn’t mean I’m boring,” she said, more to herself than to him. She wasn’t even sure he’d heard her, but he paused, frowning at her. She waved a hand. “But that could be true for anyone.”

“What does tolerating tedium have to do with being boring?” He seemed truly mystified. “Never mind. We can wait to take a break.”

“I can tolerate tedium. That means I can go on for hours and hours without a break.”

“I deserved that,” he said, without any hint of remorse. “I’m not going to leave you here to work by yourself while I wander off. That would seal my reputation in town.”

“And your reputation would be—”

“Hotshot Boston doctor who neglects his grandmother.”

“So, not the best reputation.”

He angled her a look. “You don’t seem surprised or dismayed by my description of my reputation.”

“Is it what you think your reputation is or what you know it is?”

“You tell me,” he said.

“I’m new in town. I didn’t know you existed until the other day.”

“When you caught me being rude to a receptionist.”

“I guess you can rest your case, then,” Clare said with a smile.

“I am a jerk.” He grabbed a box and leaned toward her. “But I don’t neglect my grandmother.”

Clare laughed, but she couldn’t say whether he was half-serious or not serious at all. He trotted down the stairs with no apparent loss of energy after their trip to the attic. It wasn’t that he couldn’t go on for hours, she realized. He just didn’t want to—not when it came to decorating an old house for Christmas versus handling medical emergencies.

She followed him down to the kitchen, where he set his box on the table. She put hers next to it. She peered at the contents of his open box, noting carefully packed gold, red and orange ornaments. Buried under a plastic bag of mostly broken ornaments—suitable for what, she didn’t know—was a small tin box, intriguingly labeled Christmas 1945.

Clare lifted out the box and set it on the table. “The label’s not in the same handwriting as the other boxes,” she said.

Logan took a quick look. “That’s my grandfather’s writing.”

“It doesn’t look as if it’s been opened for years—maybe since 1945. What was special about that particular Christmas, do you know?”

“No idea. My grandparents were both still teenagers then.” Logan didn’t sound that interested. “Coat, hat, gloves and a walk?”

A here-and-now sort, Clare decided. She bundled up and joined him on the front porch. He wore a winter-weight leather jacket but hadn’t bothered with a hat or gloves. He’d get cold, but he was a doctor—presumably he knew the signs of hypothermia and frostbite and would get warm before either took hold.

Then again, he could take her hand and get warm that way, which he did as they walked up South Main toward the library. “It’s colder out than I thought,” he said with a smile. “Your hand is nice and warm.” He winked. “We can get little Knights Bridge talking.”

“Blow any stereotypes of their new library director?”

“I imagine you’ve done that on your own already, without warming the hand of Daisy Farrell’s city-doctor grandson.” He eased his hand from hers. “I have my own stereotypes to fight.”

“But you don’t care, do you?”

He shrugged. “Not really. Sometimes I find myself fitting the stereotype of the rude, impatient, busy urban ER doctor. Do you find yourself fitting the stereotype of the introverted, nose-in-a-book, afraid-of-life librarian?”

“Is that what the stereotype is?” Clare smiled. “I do love to read. I like time to myself, but I have to deal with people all the time in my job. Afraid of life? Well, life happens whether or not we’re afraid, doesn’t it?”

“Is that how you ended up widowed?”

“In a way. In another way, I ended up widowed because death happened. Stephen, my husband, was in a solo car accident. He lost control of his car on black ice. A hundred different ways he could have walked away that night, but none of them happened. One of the couple of ways he could have died happened.”

“He died at the scene?”

She shook her head. “No, he died in the hospital emergency room.”

Logan was silent a moment. “I’m sorry. That must have been awful.”

“It was. I didn’t get to say goodbye before he died. I was working at the library, my last week on the job before staying home ahead of Owen’s birth. I didn’t get to the ER in time. But that’s more than you need to know.” She stopped on the sidewalk, looking across South Main at the snow-covered common, hearing the laughter and chatter of the ice-skaters. “I don’t want to spoil your fun weekend in Knights Bridge.”

“That’s not possible.”

She raised her eyebrows at him. “Trying to charm me, Dr. Farrell?”

“Is it working?”

“It might be.” She glanced around them at the small-town winter scene. “Can you picture your grandparents walking hand in hand on South Main as a young couple?”

“I can,” he said.

They went as far as the library before turning back. They carried down the rest of the Christmas boxes and opened one, discovering strings of indoor and outdoor lights—including a string of small outdoor white lights.

“They can’t be more than ten years old,” Logan said.

Clare lifted out a strand. “They’re perfect for our evergreen boughs.”

“Come on.” He slung an arm casually over her shoulders. “Let’s see what we can do.”