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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.
Three (#ulink_2743f0fc-c4a4-5d38-af67-7d5fb0405251)
“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?”
