The Mills & Boon Christmas Wishes Collection. Maisey Yates

hung up and I took a sip of my coffee, feeling it work its magic through my bloodstream. I checked my sent emails, and found I had sent all of the confirmation emails to Tim, and there was also one from Amory CC-ing me about the fireworks, which had been booked and were silent for the sake of the animals. Was it a technical glitch? Or was he making excuses to call me?

      ***

      I stepped out of the front door and headed in the direction of the chalets, but froze in shock as Mom’s red hatchback turned into the driveway. We’d agreed she’d visit and we’d go to the maze, but I hadn’t thought she’d actually turn up. I thought she’d renege, or make up some flimsy excuse.

      Watching her exit the car, she looked every bit her age today, and I knew this visit was costing her. She held the driver’s door for a moment, and looked in the direction of the woods. Hanging her head low, she shut it with a bang, and made her way to me.

      “Mom, you came,” I said, going toward her and enveloping her in a hug.

      She gave me a wobbly smile and nodded.

      “Are you sure about this?” Now it was time to confront the past, I wasn’t sure it was such a good idea. She was so thin, so fragile. I didn’t want to lose her again after the progress we’d made.

      With a shuddery breath she said, “I’m sure, Clio. Let me show you my maze, my downfall.”

      I grabbed my coat and gloves, and gave Mom another wooly scarf.

      We headed toward the woods, heads bent against the sheeting winds. It was a long trek, and probably one of the reasons I’d never found the maze as a child. I’d been scared of the woods, and wouldn’t have ventured too far in for fear I’d get lost. Micah had preferred running up the mountains, and that had been that.

      “Did you design the maze?” I asked, knowing how much Mom had always loved gardening.

      She nodded as we trudged through copses of trees, thrust into shadows.

      “It was supposed to be the greatest thing ever,” she said wistfully. “This feat of topiary. My parents had been friends with the owners of the lodge for as long as I could remember, and Morty had always been kind – letting me follow him around the gardens. Come summer we were out together every day, planting, and planning. He treated me like an adult, and not the child I was when I first played here. He completely understood my love of horticulture, and tried to guide me, went out of his way to teach me what he knew. So when we came across this clearing I had the most spectacular idea…” She tailed off as we got deeper into the woods.

      “Building a maze?” I asked. Morty, I knew, had been the previous owner of the lodge, but knowing he’d shared Mom’s love of gardening was something new.

      Mom nodded. “Not just any maze: a maze that would be a work of art, and almost impossible to navigate. Dead ends, and false laneways. I designed it and we planted it. It took years for it to mature, of course. Morty pretty much left me to my own devices, not really believing I could accomplish it, I think. But I was determined. Years passed and, when I was a teenager, they hired me for real, and I worked the grounds here. It was my dream job, just like it’s Isla’s. I loved plunging my hands into the fertile soil, helping plants thrive.” She lapsed into silence and I reached over to take her hand. I hoped she’d see the gesture as a show of support. I knew how hard this was for her, reliving the past, going back to a time that obviously tormented her still.

      After a good twenty-minute hike we suddenly came upon it. I would have missed it if Mom hadn’t paused and stared at it, her eyes filling with tears. The area was so overgrown it almost looked like every other part of the woods, except for one tiny difference – the clearing it was sitting in once you got past the outer bank of forestry.

      “Why did I have to be so hellbent on making it impossible to navigate? I ask myself that every day.”

      “What happened, Mom?”

      Her hands fell to her sides, and she closed her eyes and craned her neck to the sky. “I still feel her, after all these years I still feel her here.” She tapped her heart.

      “Who?”

      “Tabitha. Little Tabby cat, we called her.”

      “Was she your daughter?” I held my breath, thinking of the black and white grainy pictures, the baby who grew into a toddler. The rocking horse on the front porch.

      “No, no, of course not! Is that what you thought?” She looked at me incredulously.

      I bit my lip, and shrugged.

      “No, Tabby was their daughter. But she was my shadow, just like I’d been Morty’s all those years ago. She followed me everywhere like a little pup. I should have known when she went missing where she’d be, but I just didn’t think.”

      I grappled with the details but didn’t dare interrupt. Mom needed to tell this story at her own pace, so instead I let her talk, let her words wash over me and hoped that through the telling she’d find a way to move forward.

      “The lodge was jumping that summer. They needed it too.” Her voice sounded almost dreamlike as she recounted her memories. “It had been hard going and they nearly lost Cedarwood so many times before that. But finally, families were swimming and sunbathing by the lake, some were playing croquet on the green lawns, the scent of roses heavy in the air, laughter punctuating the day. Guests were arriving by the carload, and Morty and his wife were checking them in and showing them to suites or chalets.”

      I could envisage Cedarwood as it would have been back then, a bright summer’s day, people dotting the landscape. The heady feeling of a long hot summer spent with family and friends, and no schedule.

      “I remember feeling this sudden sense of dread, even though the sun was shining, the guests were singing, dancing, parading in swimsuits… I couldn’t say why, but something just felt off. When Morty realized Tabby wasn’t in the kitchen where he’d left her he asked me to find her because it was time for her dance lesson.” Mom took a deep breath before pressing on. “So I searched in the usual places, that same feeling of unease creeping over me. When I couldn’t find her, I told Morty, and he got the strangest look on his face – fear. His wife, too, was almost frantic. Tabitha was too young to be wandering off alone; she couldn’t swim, for one thing. We must have checked the lake a dozen times. Before long the guests were searching alongside us. They recognized the distress on our faces.”

      I gulped, my heart hammering in my chest at Mom’s recall. In my heart I knew something terrible had happened to Tabitha, but I hoped I was wrong. I waited for Mom to continue.

      “Then it hit me,” she said, her eyes a little wild. “The maze. We’d been at the maze that morning. She’d toddled after me as I hid the scavenger-hunt prizes in its hedgerows. She’d been desperate to know what the little gift boxes contained…” Shaking herself, Mom carried on. “…So I broke into a run, trying all the while to calm myself down. She’d only been missing a few hours, so even if she was lost in the maze she would be safe.” Mom took a shuddery breath, tears running in rivulets down her face. “I dashed in, screaming her name, getting lost myself because I was so frantic to find her. I hoisted myself up, and tried to balance on top of the hedges so I could look over the top, and I saw a flash of blue. Her blue dress. I scaled over the side and made my way through the laneways. She was OK, I could see her – she was wearing her little cornflower-blue pinafore, the same one from that morning. I expected to feel relief, but still I had that overwhelming sense of dread.”

      Mom paused and I wished I could offer her some comfort.

      “I got to her.” Her voice sounded strangled, “At first it was like she’d fallen asleep, but when I got closer… her tiny neck was at an unnatural angle, and her eyes were open, unblinking. She was dead and it was all my fault. She must have tried to climb up to get out when she reached a dead end, only to fall and break her neck. If I had thought of searching the maze hours earlier we would have found her alive. If I hadn’t designed the thing to be so goddamn difficult she might have found her way out. But she was gone. When