Page 29 of Merry Mended Hearts

Santa…

I wanted to continue denying the matchmaker claim. To deny that I’d heard anything at all. But the memories, the music I’d heard in the room with Grace, it resonated too deeply to do anything else.

I wanted to play off Junie’s speculation, too, to label her as paranoid or accuse her of making things up, but Grandpa had shared what it’d been like for his own father tomeetSanta Claus in person, to receive a gift like this from St. Nick himself.

I’d believed that for so long, I’d be a fool to ignore this part of things now.

“So what do we do?” I asked. “Send a letter to Santa? Tell him to stop messing with our lives?”

“Is that really what you want for Christmas?”

Her question hit like a hoof to the chest. “What does that mean?”

Her expression wilted into an apologetic grimace. “Seeing that necklace really got to you when I first brought it over. I can only imagine how you’re feeling having it pop up again out of nowhere. Especially when you thought it was tucked away at your cottage.”

“I’m fine,” I said, hoping she got the hint.

I knew where she was going next, and I needed her to stop. Now.

The radio wasnotthe reason the necklace appeared.

“I know you don’t want to talk about her, Boone, but you’ve been different since Amy died. What if the radio’s magic placed that necklace in this woman’s path for a reason? To bring the two of you together?”

Three years had passed. I’d been coping pretty well.

But as Junie mentioned this, the raw, aching emotion I’d battled every day built up like a blocked drain. It took everything in me to repress how much it hurt to have my wife and unborn daughter gone.

Why else did Junie think I sequestered myself at the cottage if not to forget? Yet, even there, I couldn’t escape my own memories.

My jaw clenched. “Don’t go there.”

Junie offered her hands in surrender. “All I’m saying is, it might not hurt to let yourself open up to someone again.”

“Not because some magical radio picked a match for me.”

“Boone—”

I swept a hand between us, fighting the bitter burning in the corners of my eyes. “No way, Junie. Thank you for your concern, but no. This isn’t the time to make hasty decisions, especially ones that could entangle your life with someone else’s just because you got swept away in an impulsive moment.

“We just have to wait until Christmas is over. Then our heads will be clear, and this will all go back to normal.”

“We?”

“What?”

“You said, ‘we.’”

“No, I didn’t.” I sounded too defensive, and I knew it.

Junie gave me a sympathetic, almost piteous smile. “Boone, Mason and I were both in the room when the radio started playing ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas.’ I don’t know about that couple, Lacie and Jared, but was someone else in the room with you when you heard the radio play?”

“I don’t see why that matters.”

I knew where she was going. I wasnotgoing to tell her that the woman who’d heard the radio play with me also happened to be the same woman whom Junie had given my room to, the same woman who’d been holding a distinctive necklace that just happened to belong to my dead wife.

Especially not when Junie had speculated as much earlier. I refused to confirm it.

That was not what this meant.

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