Page 5 of Triple Tidings
I was going into surgery.
I took an extra shift.
I was going into a meeting.
Excuse after excuse, all of which seemed important at the time, but painfully feeble as a whole. By the time I pulled into my driveway, a terrible new truth was settling upon me: it had been almost a year since I bothered to answer one of Bram’s calls.
It wasn’t just the unreturned voicemails, either. I’d missed Christmas for three years in a row. I’d skipped weddings, family reunions, birthday parties, and vacations. The reasons I had to refuse these invitations felt justified, but as I sat in my car outside the big, fancy house I purchased just for myself, trying to think of a single instance when I’d done the opposite—put workafterfamily—the regret I felt was crushing.
Until the day I die, I’ll be grateful I realized before it was too late. I’m a physician, I know firsthand how quickly lives can change for the worse, how easy it would be to lose someone and never get the chance to repair your relationship.
So, before I even opened the door to go inside, I texted my brother, congratulating him on the baby and asking if I could come to meet her over Christmas.
When I’d last visited my hometown, about a year and a half ago, it was for our parents’ fiftieth anniversary. All in all, it was an eventful weekend, but the most memorable part had nothing to do with the party or my family at all.
It was the bed and breakfast. Or, more specifically, the woman who ran it.
Lacey.
She was younger than me, and so pretty I couldn’t help but notice, with curly blonde hair, freckles dotting her nose, andwide brown eyes that creased at the corners when she smiled. At the time, I’d suspected she might be a little interested and had made a point to stop by the front desk unnecessarily on more than one occasion over the course of my stay, searching for reasons to talk to her.
Then, late on the night before I flew home, something fairly incredible occurred: I managed to get her into my bed.
The sex was incredible, but it was more than that. I liked her. Quite a bit, actually.
It’s entirely possible she moved on and is no longer working there, but when it came time to book my trip home for the holidays, I found myself paying for a room at The Chestnut Bed and Breakfast anyway.
As I’ve seen far too often in my professional life, second chances aren’t all that easy to come by, and it seems nothing short of miraculous that I received two in the space of about twelve hours.
The first was when I arrived last night, only to find Lacey Lovette standing exactly in the place where I first saw her.
The second was when I entered Bram’s house not long ago and was met with a hug from the brother who had every right to be furious with me.
Returning here, to my hometown, with this new realization and self-awareness, feels different than it ever has before. It’s like I’ve turned on the lights after fumbling around in the dark and have no choice but to clearly see all the areas of my life that I’ve been neglecting.
It’s time to make a change, a big one, but I’m ready for it.
“She looks a lot like Leni,” I observe, staring down at the three-month-old in my arms, who does indeed look quite a bit like her much older half sister. Clara glares up at me through narrowed, brownish-green eyes, obviously still highly suspicious of the stranger who appeared in her house this morning.
From the living room floor, my new sister-in-law, Sophie, mutters contemptuously under her breath as she uses her big toe to hold a ribbon in place on the gift she’s wrapping.
“Yeah,” my brother agrees, obviously trying not to laugh. “She never lets Soph forget it either.” Standing across the kitchen island from me, spatula in hand and a griddle of pancakes before him, Bram grins.
I have to say, for a man who has just become a new parent for the first time in twenty-four years, my brother looks surprisingly well rested. The last time I stepped foot in this home, he was a single, successful architect. The place was spotless and decorated with lots of elegant, minimalist furniture, selected so as not to distract from the careful design of the underlying structure.
Now, he has a young wife, a baby, and is about to go back to work after a full three months of paternity leave. It’s throwing me off that even with the added household clutter, explosion of holiday decorations, and spit-up stain on his shoulder, my notoriously uptight brother seems to be happier and more relaxed than I’ve ever seen him.
My mind drifts, yet again, to the manager of The Chestnut Bed and Breakfast.
“She offered to go with us to the store the other day, and I thought she was just being nice, you know? Helpful?” Sophie recounts, glaring up at me. “Do you know what she did?”
“Eh…” I glance at Bram, then back to his wife. “No?”
My sister-in-law scoffs, apparently not at all perturbed by my reticence. “When we got there, she wanted to hold the baby.Okay, fine.Whatever. Hold away. But then, every little old lady we passed commented onhow cuteClara was, and how much she looks like Leni, and she just smiled and thanked them! That hoe-bag just wants all the glory, with none of the poopy diapers.”
If Bram is at all bothered by his wife calling his second daughter a “hoe-bag,” he doesn’t let on. Still smiling, he adds a second pancake to the plate beside him and pushes it over the countertop toward me.
I feel a pinch of regret at the reminder of Lacey back at the inn. She was nowhere to be seen when I came downstairs this morning, preparing to head over here. If I were to guess, based on the mouthwatering scent filling the lobby, she was busy preparing a breakfast I wouldn’t be there to eat.
