Room at the Inn for Christmas (Second Chance at Star Inn)(2)

Amanda reached for the front doorknob without really seeing it. As she swung wide the mansion door, the scent of evergreen and cinnamon was the first thing she noticed. It drew her eyes up from her phone. She saw the magnificent oak registration desk and the towering Christmas tree flanking it on the left, blazing with lights. Memories broke over her like waves, until she thought they might send her to her knees.

Her phone slipped back into her purse as she went on a journey back in time.

“It’s Christmas at Star Inn.” She breathed the words into the huge entry that rose two full stories. Closing the door to keep out the cold, she stood and soaked in every familiar detail.

She was ten when Dad and Mom finally allowed her to run the beautiful golden-oak registration desk. To Amanda’s left was a majestic Christmas tree. As always, it reached the railing on the second floor. With a pang, she remembered as a child going out to the tree farm every year with her father and picking the biggest, bushiest tree they could find. It glittered with white lights and was hung until every inch of the tree was covered in ribbons and ornaments in the best Victorian over-ornate style. What a celebration they had made of decorating for Christmas every year, and they’d always started with this tree in the front entrance. A bright star glowed at the top. From her earliest memory, it had been Amanda’s job to perch it up there. She’d stood on the second floor and reached the treetop easily. Mom and Dad had used the star theme every chance they got.

Amanda let all the old memories soak into her soul. Family and guests, precious ornaments and delicious food. Love—she remembered how much she’d loved the Star Inn all year-round, but especially at Christmas.

The stairway was on her right and more richly scented fresh greenery adorned the banister in a fat garland that draped along the stair railing all the way up, then followed it along the second-floor balcony. From up there, guests could step out of their rooms, gaze down on the foyer and enjoy the decorations and lights. It was especially beautiful at Christmas, but the front entrance to the Star Inn was always lovely.

The desk was unattended—as was often the case. It gave her a bit of time to look around. The beauty of this room eased into her bones and loosened the tension in her shoulders and neck.

Tension so familiar and constant she didn’t know she had it until it was gone.

Besides the tree and lights, the entrance sported a collection of Christmas décor that’d been gathered over four lifetimes. How many families had roots that deep? There was Victorian furniture, ornaments and figurines.

Four lifetimes. The number of generations of Stars, her family name, who had owned and operated the Star Inn. Four if you counted her, and maybe she didn’t count.

Ignoring the twinge of hurt, salted with grief for her father, she let her gaze trace the lush boughs lining the banister on the elegant stairway that led to the second floor. The pine swag was adorned with bright red ribbons shaped into bows as big as dinner plates, with the long crimson ends trailing down, and shining red balls in clusters of three that looked like overgrown holly berries. She recognized poinsettia leaves and evergreen branches from blue spruce trees, Douglas firs, holly plants, bittersweet, winter berries, boxwood, cedar and the cones from what looked like a ponderosa pine; she knew there were a lot of them around town. She’d helped Mom and Dad gather the cones and adorn the stair railing when she was a kid.

The wide variety of different trees and other plants made the garland look and smell doubly rich. For a treacherous moment she wished she’d been here to help put up the Christmas decorations. It had been a lovely family ritual full of memories and laughter and occasionally a few poignant tears. Who had done it this year? It sure hadn’t been a member of her family, because she was the only one left. And the old Victorian mansion was no longer her home. Dad had made that very clear years ago when she’d moved away.

She’d made her choice.

As she unbuttoned her coat and shrugged out of it, she faced the truth—that she had to come back. And she wished like crazy it hadn’t been at Christmastime.

Dad.

She’d come home to his funeral, but Dad had his own arrangements all in order and paid for, right down to the songs they sang at his funeral and the layout of the memorial bulletins. And he’d made sure she knew it. He’d reduced her part of laying her father to rest to that of an observer. Which gave her nothing to distract her from grief.

Amanda had driven in and out the same day, hurting too much to do more than shake a few hands at the graveside and a few more at the church luncheon afterward. It had been all she could do, to attend that luncheon. It was too rude to consider skipping it. But seeing her hometown and old family friends and knowing she didn’t belong here had deepened her pain to near torment.

She’d very deliberately taken streets into and out of town that didn’t pass the Star Inn.

Most likely everyone in town thought she was an unfeeling, ungrateful, unloving child. It was better than if they knew the truth, that she was devastated beyond any ability to survive well-meaning neighbors.

She hung her coat on the hooks to the side of the front entrance that had been there for three generations. She tucked her gloves into one pocket and her scarf into the other. A habit that stretched back to childhood.

Everything about this place spoke to her of a great family tradition that had faded its way down to one lonely woman. Her.

She had no one here in Heywood. No one anywhere. Every square inch of this house broke her heart. Because from top to bottom it was Dad and Mom, both gone now forever.