Page 19 of A South Hill Christmas Keepsake
“You mean, become your co-conspirator in Christmas sleuthing?” Nate teased.
“Exactly. Because if Birdie gets involved, this thing will be national news by Thursday.”
Nate smiled, slow and sure. “I was hoping you’d ask.”
That old flutter stirred in her chest again—light, stubborn, impossible to ignore. She blamed the cocoa. Definitely the cocoa.
“Where do we start?” he asked.
“I’ll talk to Aunt Winnie,” she said. “She might recognize the couple in the photos. They look old. Likereallyold.”
“The photos could have faded over the years. Heat. Moisture. All that. Hard to say.”
“Either way, I’d love to return it to the family. Especially at Christmas.”
“I’m in,” he said easily.
His agreeableness caught her off guard. “Tomorrow morning I’ve got to help at the Chamber with stuffing Santa’s Secret Race gift bags.”
“I’ve been dying to know what that is this year,” he said. “Are you entering?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“I always do,” he said proudly. “Last year it was a cocoa chug with oven mitts. A fourteen-year-old beat me. Kid’s a legend.”
“What did he win?”
He gave her a mock look of offense. “Does it matter? An‘I Survived the Cocoa Chug’shirt and a year’s supply of marshmallows. Which just so happens is four jumbo bags.”
“That’d last me a decade.”
His laugh came low and easy. “I’ll skip the race this year to help you with the gift bags, and afterward, coffee is on me. We’ll figure out this mystery together.”
That caught her by surprise.
He moved backward, hands in his pockets, smile lingering like an afterthought. “Glad you came home, Hannah Leigh.” Then he turned and walked away.
By the time she found her voice to sayme too, he was already gone.
It was late, and this trip had caught her off guard right and left. She’d worked so hard to avoid Nate after the movie only to have to face him out here in the dark alone. She might have been better off just letting things be amicable at the theater.
Doubting myself won’t get me anywhere, and Nate doesn’t deserve this much thought. He was a childhood crush. It’s the past, and I’ll be gone before I get to know the grown-up Nate anyway.
She made a dash for her truck, the heater groaning to life. Headlights tunneled through the night, the road unspooling before her like a dream she half-remembered. South Hill at its winter best—quiet, familiar, tender around the edges.
When she reached Aunt Winnie’s, frost silvered every surface, making the holiday lights along the porch shimmer brighter. She’d always loved how her father used to drive them through town to admire the decorations. They’d been gone almost eight years now, and the ache never fully left. Especially not at Christmas.
On the porch steps, the air scented with wood smoke. Inside, the comforting aroma of Aunt Winnie’s beef stew welcomed her home. A note on the kitchen counter read,Help yourself, sweetheart.
She served herself a bowl of it and sat at the kitchen table. Through the bay window, the tall pines stood like guardians, branches dusted in white. The sight tugged a smile from her.
She cradled the bowl in her hands, savoring the stew’s warmth as her mind wandered back to the locket. She pictured it lying on the table—the way the faint light would catch on itsworn edge, gold softened to bronze from years underground. In her mind, the clasp opened easily now, revealing two black-and-white portraits smiling out, faces preserved in miniature, waiting for someone to remember them.
Maybe the locket hadn’t been a token of romance after all. Maybe it was a family’s heirloom, a keepsake waiting for the right hands to hold it again.
She imagined her own grandparents’ faces in its place and the ache of how much she’d give for even that small connection to her roots.
The locket didn’t seem lost anymore, but patient, as if waiting for the right moment, and the right heart, to tell its story.
