A Family Christmas. Carrie Alexander

smiled. “What goes around comes around.”

      Avoiding that, Rose found the pack of cigarettes hidden under her mother’s pillow and stuck them in her jacket pocket. “It’s the cigs or the oxygen,” she said, overriding Maxine’s complaints. She glanced around the room, which had changed little in twenty years. Same with the entire house. Black Jack’s boots were still parked under the bed and his fishing hat hung on the back door. She itched to get rid of them, but her mother refused that, too. Any sane person would have wanted to shed herself of reminders of a sorry life, but not Maxine.

      “Should I help you to the bathroom before I go?” Rose asked.

      “I suppose.”

      Rose gave Maxine her arm and escorted the woman to the adjoining bath. She was quite capable of getting there on her own, but Rose had learned it was easier to help out now than be called on in the middle of the night.

      After her mother was resettled in bed, Rose put a brisk tone in her voice. “All right, then. I’m leaving. Are you all set for the night?”

      Maxine fussed with the bedclothes. “Can’t think of anything I need. But I can always ring.”

      Rose stifled a groan. She had no telephone in her cottage, but there was an old farmhouse bell hanging at the front door, put there so arriving guests could ring for help when no one was in the office to check them in. Maxine seemed to take pleasure in rousing Rose at least once a night with the clanging.

      “It’s after midnight,” Rose said. “I need a good night’s sleep.” For a change.

      “So do I.” Maxine shifted in bed. “I can hardly get an hour’s sleep without waking up wheezing and coughing. But you don’t hear me complaining.”

      Yeah, right. Rose plumped the pillows, smoothed back her mother’s hair, once black as her daughter’s but now heavily laced with steel-gray, and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Night, Mom.”

      “Night, Rose.” Maxine patted her arm. “You’re a good daughter. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

      The praise was perfunctory. Yet it worked. Rose had been given so little praise in her life that even crumbs seemed worthwhile. Her chest tightened as she pulled away.

      She paused at the door, wanting to speak from her heart but not knowing how.

      And of course Maxine couldn’t leave well enough alone. “Your brothers never call,” she moaned. “And you could run away again at any time. What would I do then? I’m so afraid of being left on my own.”

      “That’s not going to happen, Mom. I’ve promised to stay. Now go to sleep.” Rose flicked off the light and hurried away before her mother saw the tears of frustration welling in her eyes.

      She dashed them away, swearing at herself as she left the house and grabbed her bike by the handlebars. When would she learn?

      She was the one who was on her own.

      “And I like it that way,” Rose said out loud to the whispering pines and the black rushing water.

      But for the first time in a long while, she wondered if she was lying to herself.

      THE NEXT DAY, Evan had no practice scheduled and was able to pick Lucy up from her sitter’s early. They decided to make a trip to the library, one of Lucy’s favorite places in Alouette. Not being a big reader himself, Evan worried that his daughter was spending too much time with books when she should be outdoors in the fresh air. But he couldn’t argue with the benefits, or the pleasure it gave her.

      The biggest bonus was that visiting with Tess Bucek always made Lucy happy.

      Tess was the librarian. She and Evan had dated for a short while, earlier that year. Although the relationship hadn’t progressed very far, he’d considered asking her to marry him simply because Lucy had been so hungry for Tess’s motherly touch.

      He’d backed off when he realized that making a wrong marriage would be worse for Lucy in the end. Tess was now a good friend, and happily engaged to a newcomer to Alouette, a writer named Connor Reed who lived in the keeper’s cottage of the Gull Rock lighthouse.

      Lucy ran ahead, pushing open the door to the rainbow-hued Victorian house that had been converted into a small library. Evan followed her through the entryway, thinking how good it was to see Lucy so enthusiastic.

      She raced into the library proper. He heard her voice, very bright. “Hi!”

      After a pause the answer came, and it wasn’t Tess. “’Lo.”

      A moment later, Tess chimed in, greeting Lucy with her usual perky cheer.

      Evan arrived, his senses already heightened. Wild Rose Robbin looked at him, smiled and then hurriedly looked away, tucking her lips inward as if to keep the smile from escaping. She edged a stack of books across the checkout desk, toward Tess.

      “You know Rose, right, Evan?” Tess was saying, looking from Lucy to Evan to Rose with a bright-eyed interest.

      Evan cleared his throat. “We’ve met.”

      “She showed me how to draw leafs in the woods,” Lucy said. She was staring up at Rose with an awe that approached reverence. One step closer and she’d be hanging off the woman’s sweater, begging for attention. Normally she was shy to the point of invisibility, especially around new people.

      “Have you practiced?” When she looked into Lucy’s face, Rose’s mouth curved into a smile that was as natural and pretty as a daisy dancing in the breeze.

      “I tried to.” Lucy put her hands on her hips, acting almost belligerent. She bobbed her head. “But my teacher said I was scribbling!”

      Evan blinked in surprise. This was a new Lucy. Or, rather, the Lucy his daughter had started out to be, before the loss of her mother.

      “I bet she wanted you to make a perfect leaf.” Rose held up one hand and drew a maple leaf in the air.

      “Uh-huh,” Lucy breathed. She raised her own hand in imitation.

      Rose shook her head. “Your teacher hasn’t really looked at the autumn leaves, then, has she?”

      “Nope. They’re all, like, curly and nibbled on and—and—” Lucy scrunched her hand into a fist.

      “So that’s how you should draw them,” Rose said. “Right?”

      Even while she processed the books, Tess hadn’t missed an inflection of the conversation. She threw a significant look at Evan.

      He shrugged, although the interaction was pretty amazing. Even with Tess, Lucy hadn’t come out of her shell so quickly.

      “How are you, Rose?” he asked.

      “Going to work.” She looked down at her books, a reflex to fill the awkward silence.

      He followed her gaze. She’d checked out a large tome of Audubon bird prints, a hardcover he couldn’t see the title of and two paperbacks that featured embracing couples with flowing hair and ample cleavage. Hard to tell which was the male and which was the female.

      Rose saw him looking and gathered up the books. “For my mother.”

      “I loved Passionate Impulse,” Tess said. Her eyes danced.

      Evan was sorry he’d noticed. “Uh, sure. Listen, Rose, I was thinking—”

      “I have to go,” she interrupted. She made for the doorway, ducking past him with her rumpled hair falling across her forehead into her face. “G’bye, Lucy.”

      Lucy followed the woman’s departure with beseeching eyes. “Bye.”

      “Go on, Lucy, find yourself a few books,” Evan said when the door had clanged shut and she still hadn’t moved. The children’s room was adjacent to the main area, a space filled with light, plants, craft projects and colorful decorations.