Page 25 of Mistletoe Sky
From the intensity that brewed in her heart, she sensed it wouldn’t be so simple.
“I can’t believe you’re putting me in your commercial,” Marius was saying, looser, now that he’d had a glass and a half of wine. “Tell me. Did I inspire you when I picked you up in the buggy on that first day?”
Willa cackled. “I don’t want anything to go to your head. I told you. I panicked and had to tell Hannah and the others the first thing that came to my head.”
Marius pointed at his temple. “But the first thing that came to your head was this face. Admit it!”
Willa stuck out her tongue, as though she were a teenager again, as though she and Marius had managed to go back through time. Her heart shifted.Nothing ever happened between Marius and me, she reminded herself, forcing her smile to soften.I’m swimming down a tunnel of nostalgia, and it’s dangerous.
But when Marius asked her to go for a walk after dinner, before he dropped both her and her bike off at Rosemary Cottage, she couldn’t refuse.
Off they went down the dark and twisting roads, their hands shoved in their pockets, their conversation still burning. Willa had the sensation that they could talk all night and not run out of anything to say. Had she felt like this about Marius as a teenager? She wasn’t sure. She suspected that they hadn’t been so creative or so engaging back then, that their attraction had been purely physical: teenage hormones and all that.
Before either of them knew what they were doing, they found themselves in front of Caraway Fudge Shoppe. Willa hurried to the glass window and tried to see as much as she could inside. Again, there was no fudge, no proof that anyone had been there. Her heart ached. Soon, Marius joined her at the glass. His hand was on her shoulder, as though he wanted to steady her.
But just as Marius began to speak, they heard a smattering of piano keys and the vibrant call of a trumpet. Marius and Willa whirled around and bounced across the street to peer into the window opposite the fudge shop, where a five-piece jazz band played on a little stage. About twenty people were watching, bobbing their heads and drinking wine. It looked like something out of the 1920s. Willa’s heart raced.
“What is this?” she asked Marius.
“It’s a bed-and-breakfast owned by a French guy,” Marius said. “But I don’t know anything about this.” He meant the music, the joy. Willa guessed that Marius didn’t often go out, as he was needed bright and early in the horse barn. Maybe there was a whole life he hadn’t been allowed to live, simply because he was too responsible.
But Willa continued to peer in, fascinated, grateful to think about something that wasn’t the fudge shop behind her. It took a moment for her to put all the pieces of the jazz club together. When she did, she nearly fell to her knees.
It wasn’t just anyone playing the piano.
The woman at the piano was old, at least in her eighties, with bright white hair and still-wiry arms. She bounded all over those keys as though the spirit of jazz moved through her.
Impossibly, it was Grandma Mary.
Willa gasped and threw her hand over her mouth. She hadn’t seen Grandma Mary since she was eighteen, yet here she was, filled with joie de vivre, playing like her life depended on it. Next to the piano was a saxophonist, performing a solo, bending at the knees, and crying out. Directly in front of the saxophonist, clapping wildly, was a woman who looked exactly like Willa, with bright red hair and all.
It was Willa’s sister. It was Amelie.
Chapter Thirteen
Willa
October 2006
It was a Saturday and the day of Amelie and Willa’s eighteenth birthday. After a monthlong discussion, the girls had decided on a party at the house where they’d been raised. They had invited every person from school, friends from the mainland, plus their parents’ friends—people who’d helped raise them, who’d been there through so many of their milestones, who’d celebrated everything that Willa and Amelie were.
Willa was up before everyone, baking cookies in the kitchen and listening for sounds from her father or sister. With each step of the baking process, she felt calmer and more like herself. Since the end of summer, she’d felt raggedy and strange, waiting with increasing agitation for her mother to return home. But things had fallen into a sort of rhythm since then. The four Caraways managed the fudge shop, with their mother spending her nights upstairs, while Willa, Amelie, and their father returned home. Sometimes it was hard for Willa to rememberthat it had ever been any other way, that they’d ever been a really happy, normal Mackinac family.
Suddenly, the scream of the hinges on the front door sounded from the foyer. Willa stopped stirring her batter and stared at the hallway, waiting. Maybe her father had snuck out to surprise her with something for breakfast. Maybe Amelie had gone out for a walk.
But the person who appeared before Willa was her mother, carrying a bouquet, her hair in gorgeous ringlets, her smile a curious bow. Willa couldn’t help it. She flung herself across the kitchen and into her mother’s arms.
Her mother hadn’t been home since she’d left. It was remarkable to see her there, to smell her familiar smell. Willa shook with laughter and tears.
“What are you doing here?” Willa asked.
“It’s my twins’ birthday,” her mother said gently, her hand on Willa’s cheek. “I wanted to be here when you both woke up. But I should have known you’d be up before even me.”
Willa blushed and went to the coffee maker to pour her mother a cup. Her mother removed her jacket, hat, and gloves and sat at the kitchen table, where the morning light glowed on her hair and skin. Willa bit her tongue to keep from asking her mother if she was going to come back for good. She didn’t want to taint the morning with a painful conversation.
Not long after that, Amelie woke up and performed the same ritual as Willa, throwing herself into their mother’s arms. “Mom! I dreamed you’d be here when I woke up, and here you are.” Their mother’s eyes glinted with tears.
When their father came downstairs, he didn’t look surprised to see his estranged wife, as though they’d both talked about it and come to this decision. He poured coffee and sat beside her, saying, “It’s hard to believe it’s been eighteen years, huh?”
