Page 61 of Merry Mended Hearts

She cradled the mug in her hands. I did the same, cupping my hand around the warm porcelain.

“Nothing that I was looking forward to,” she said.

The relief in my chest sang. It became more like a gorilla beating its chest.

“I am going to miss seeing my sister’s new baby, though,” she went on. “I haven’t seen my sister in a few years, not since before she had her. I didn’t know they were planning on coming home when I made this trip.”

“That’s too bad,” I said. “I haven’t seen my brother for a while, either.”

I’d mentioned Randy during our sleigh ride, too, but I wondered if I needed to give her more.

“The real estate brother?”

Guess not. Looks like she had a great memory.

I took another bite of fish. “He travels a lot for his job, stays until the fix and flips are done, and then heads to the next project. He’s never in one place long enough for me to visit.”

Not that I’d been inclined to do so since Amy had died.

That thought gave me pause. Junie had pestered me, insisting I shouldn’t shut myself away and shut everyone I loved out of my life in the process. I’d denied that I had. I hadn’t wanted to accept that she was right?—

But was she?

“Do you miss him?” Grace asked.

“Sometimes,” I said, though the word didn’t seem like enough. A pang of homesickness for my brother, for the friendship we’d once had, pealed through. My mouth went dry. “Yeah, do I do, I guess.”

I reached for my mug of cocoa and brought it to my lips. The hot chocolate seeped over my tongue, burning all the way down.

“I miss my sister, too,” Grace said. “I called her when I found out they were coming, before I rescheduled my flight. She told me she was okay if I stayed here, but from the sound of her voice, I knew she really wanted me home celebrating Christmas with my family instead of being here alone in the mountains. She probably didn’t realize it until I was already gone or something.”

“But you wanted to be here alone in the mountains?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I do.”

“Because the view is gorgeous?” I restated one of the reasons she’d given me during the sleigh ride.

Grace fought a smile, and it made me want to know what she was thinking.

“Yes,” she said.

“Where it’s completely solitary, and where Santa Claus himself is rumored to have stopped by a hundred years ago?”

Her brow furrowed, puzzling my statement for several moments. I couldn’t figure out the meaning behind that expression. She knew Harper’s Inn claimed to be America’s North Pole.

“Yes,” she said.

“Then what’s the problem?” Why did she still seem unsettled?

She released a sigh and placed her mug on the table. “I feel like—I don’t know. Like I’m letting my family down somehow by not being there for them.”

“You got kids wanting to spend Christmas with you?” I asked.

She hadn’t mentioned being married before or being a single mom, but that was another reason that would make sense for this pressure she seemed to be putting on herself.

“No, I’ve never been married.”

Was it bad that I felt emboldened by this knowledge? I sat up a little straighter and leaned toward her across the table.

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