The Man Under The Mistletoe. Muriel Jensen

school, could be depended upon to step in whenever Rosie needed anything. “Now. What else do we need? Slip? Stockings?”

      “Rosie?”

      “Yeah.”

      “I have something else to tell you.”

      Rosie detected something worrisome in Francie’s tone. For all her sister’s pugnacious need to quarrel with their mother, she’d never argued much with Rosie. They’d been too busy commiserating with each other to fight.

      “Francie,” she said firmly, reaching into the storage under the counter to pull out a box of stockings, “you’re going to be married in a week. It’s no time to talk about death or miscarriage or—”

      “I wasn’t going to.” Francie put a hand on Rosie’s. Then she drew a breath, raised her eyes to heaven and blurted, “I asked Matt to give me away.”

      If anything could have made this day harder on Rosie’s nerves than it already had been, the mention of her ex-husband was it. Especially as part of her sister’s wedding party. Rosie was the maid of honor.

      “I didn’t ask him to take pictures,” Francie continued. “I’m sure he’d do a better job than the photographer we hired, but I just want him to walk me down the aisle.” Her fingernails were digging into Rosie’s palm. “Please tell me you don’t hate me. Please tell me you won’t chicken out on me because Matt’s coming. Please.”

      Francie was near tears. She had a theatrical turn to her nature and could call them up at will, but Rosie knew these were genuine. Francie had loved Matt from the day Rosie had brought him home to meet the family. With no father to give her away, she no doubt thought it logical to ask Matt. Their mother had offered to give her away as was often done in fatherless weddings, but despite her rejection of tradition in many aspects of her life, Francie had always been halfhearted about the idea.

      Rosie smacked Francie’s hand with the box of stockings. “I won’t walk out, but I do hate you. When’s he coming?”

      “Friday. He’s…” She avoided Rosie’s eyes and added quickly, “He’s staying with us.”

      Oh, good. There was nothing Rosie wanted less than to have the man who’d walked out on her in the darkest period of her life move right back in, even for a couple of days.

      “He asked me if I’d asked you first. I told him I had and that you said it was okay.” Francie related the lie with no apparent evidence of guilt.

      Rosie nodded. “I’m going to hurt you, Francie, before I kill you. He’d better be on his way home before I move into the house to stay with Chase.”

      Francie reached across the counter and hugged Rosie fiercely. “I’m sure he will be. He’s going to China, you know.”

      Rosie was more puzzled than interested. “China?”

      “He has a contract for a pictorial book. I guess he’s giving up newspaper work for a while. He says he wants to travel.” Francie glanced at the door. “I’ve got to go before Mom drives off.” She hesitated one more moment to look into Rosie’s eyes. “You’re sure you’re okay with this?”

      How could she ever be okay with it? But she was the big sister. She had to be okay.

      “Of course,” she replied.

      “Good. You going to be home for dinner tonight? Afterward, I’m making birdseed bags for the wedding.”

      “I’ll be there.”

      “Okay. See you then. Thanks, Rosie.”

      Rosie stepped out into the sunshine to wave her mother and sister off as though the afternoon had been fun, rather than an exercise in anger management. All attempts to spend time together ended that way. She could hardly wait for dinner.

      Her mother waved dutifully, the martyred little smile on her face; it was first cousin to the long-suffering sigh.

      Rosie watched the dark blue Mercedes drive away and had the same thought that crossed her mind every day. She should move away, get her life together, find out who she was when she wasn’t connected to the high-strung eccentrics who made up her life.

      But that would leave Chase without an ally now that Francie would be out of the house, and though her mother loved Chase, Rosie knew from experience that that didn’t necessarily mean she could help him develop into a well-rounded individual.

      Rosie also hated the thought of leaving Maple Hill. Her father had been born here and inherited her grandfather’s construction company. Though he’d worked for his own company in Boston for many years, the family had spent summers and the Christmas holidays at Bloombury Landing, their family home on the lake. In Maple Hill, in the foothills of the Berkshires, winter, and Christmas, particularly, were spectacular.

      Maple Hill dated back to colonial days, and its main street still looked as though a minuteman with a musket might appear at any moment. Most of the buildings built around the town square dated back to that time, or had been rebuilt in keeping with that era’s architecture. It was a lively little center of commerce in a picture-perfect setting.

      Rosie loved it here. She loved the town’s rich history, the press of tourists in the summer, the red and gold leaves of fall, the pristine snow in the winter. Add to that the warmth and comfort of old friendships, and it was a wonderful place to be.

      She felt she belonged here. Her reasons were complicated, but primarily, she thought it was because her dreams had been born here. They had died here, too, yet somehow, strangely, that had only strengthened her bond. Right now she existed somewhere between hope and devastation, unable to believe in a future here, but also unable to give up on it.

      And—she even hated to admit this to herself—she couldn’t quite dispel the feeling that her mother clung to her. Not physically, of course, not with any apparent emotional dependency, but sometimes Rosie heard something in her voice, saw something in her eyes that recalled a long-ago past when things had been different.

      Every time it happened, Rosie would chase the memory only to come to a dead end. Then she would tell herself she’d been imagining things, that she and her mother had never been that close. But that look in her mother’s eyes said things Rosie felt, rather than remembered, and she couldn’t quite dismiss it.

      So she had to stay. At least for a while. At least until Gillian Howe of the Runway Boutique got serious about adding wedding dresses to her shop in Springfield just a few miles across the Connecticut River and bought Rosie out.

      Then, with money in hand to plan the future, Rosie could think about whether it would be worth it to leave the place where she really wanted to be, to find the woman she really was.

      “YO! MATT!”

      The frantic sound of a woman’s voice was followed by loud rapping on the darkroom door.

      “We’re developing!” Shorty shouted as he washed the contact sheet. “Don’t come in, Jenny!”

      Matt DeMarco looked over Shorty’s shoulder as the faces of children at a local science fair began to materialize into the neat little squares of the contact sheet that represented every frame on the roll of film. He was fairly sure the Sacramento Sentinel was the only newspaper in the West that still developed film in a darkroom. Shorty and technology didn’t get along.

      “I need Matt!” Jenny shouted.

      “Control yourself, woman!” Shorty hung the contact sheet by a clothespin to an overhead line. He pointed a pen to one particular shot, as usual picking out the best one on the roll. It wasn’t showy or necessarily dramatic, but a ten-year-old boy’s excitement in his science experiment shone from a pair of dark blue eyes. “That’s it, Matt. Discovery. Pride. How do you always manage to find the definitive face?”

      “I don’t find it, Shorty. I just shoot what’s there.”

      “Come, now. When you have a fifty-thousand-dollar advance in your pocket,