Winter Solstice (Winter #4)(52)

“You’re perfect,” Kelley says, though his words are unintelligible.

“You’re going to meet her on Thursday,” Bart says. “She’s coming for Thanksgiving.”

Kelley thinks, Thursday is Thanksgiving?

He reaches out for Bart’s hand and tries to squeeze. This is torture! Kelley is here, he’s listening, he’s present, he has things to say, blessings to bestow, but he isn’t having any luck communicating. Or maybe he is. He can’t tell.

Bart seems to understand. “I love you, too, Dad,” he says.

As Bart stands to leave the room, Kelley thinks eagerly about Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving means Mitzi’s corn pudding and her fiesta cranberry sauce. He will have a bite of each, he thinks, and he drifts off to sleep.





EDDIE


The Christys are caught in a stalemate. Raja wants to make an offer on the Medouie Creek Road house in Wauwinet—and Masha wants the inn. Eddie checks in with Raja once a week to see if there has been any movement one way or the other.

“No,” Raja says. “She’s not backing down.”

“Well, neither are you,” Eddie says. “Right?”

“Right,” Raja says. “I tell Masha again and again: We know nothing about the hospitality business. And I don’t want to know anything about it. The point of buying a second home is having a sanctuary. A place to relax. But Masha is dead set on it. She’s like Jack with his squeaky giraffe. You can’t get that giraffe away from him when he’s in a certain frame of mind.”

Eddie has long joked that the two most useful backgrounds for a real estate broker are psychology and elementary education. Eddie has basically taken on the role of Raja’s therapist. He would like to see Raja get his way—and not only because Eddie’s commission will be bigger. Eddie wants Raja to win on behalf of all the henpecked husbands in the world. He realizes that the only reason Masha hasn’t steamrolled Raja is because the inn isn’t technically on the market yet.

But Mitzi has asked Eddie to put it on right after Thanksgiving. She says it will be ready to show—all but the master suite, where Kelley is living—on Christmas Stroll weekend.

The situation with the Christys is so confounding that Eddie is relieved things on his own home front are, for the most part, cheerful. Allegra is exclusively dating Bart Quinn now, and the relationship has completely transformed her. She is always in a good mood, always sweet and solicitous. She offers to help with the laundry and keep the cottage neat and tidy. She smiles, she hums to herself, she sings off-key in the shower.

Eddie says, “It’s like she’s had a personality transplant.”

Grace says, “She’s in love.”

Grace has also been in a good mood recently. Eddie told her he saw her biking when he was driving the Christys out to Wauwinet, and she said, “Yes, that was me. I’ve been either biking or walking every day. Trying to lose these last ten pounds.”

Eddie says, “Well, I think you look great.” And she does! Her skin has a healthy glow; she’s trim and fit, and it seems like she’s been sleeping better at night. She also went to RJ Miller and had the gray taken out of her part. Eddie didn’t notice this per se, but he did see the charge come in on the credit card—two hundred sixty dollars!—and when he asked Grace what it was for, she pointed to her hair and said, “Isn’t it obvious?” And Eddie was so chagrined he hadn’t noticed that he decided not to give her any grief about the expense.

Grace stays even-keeled when Allegra announces that she’s eating Thanksgiving at the Winter Street Inn with the Quinns, and she even remains sanguine when Hope calls from Bucknell to say that she isn’t coming home for Thanksgiving either. Instead she’s going to one of her pledge sisters’ houses in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, because it’s closer to school and Hope needs to get back to campus Saturday; her jazz ensemble has been invited to play at a local coffeehouse.

“Wait a minute,” Eddie says. “Neither of them will be home?”

“They’re growing up,” Grace says.

“What are we going to do?” Eddie asks. “Eat by ourselves?” The idea seems small and sad, especially considering they don’t have a proper dining room. When Eddie considers how little space they have, he thinks it’s no wonder the girls want to celebrate elsewhere. Eddie needs to sell the Christys a house, take his commission, and buy his family a decent-size place to live.

Grace shrugs. “We can either eat with Glenn and Barbie—”

“They’re going to Napa,” Eddie says, but even if they were staying on Nantucket, Eddie wouldn’t want to eat with them. He has to see them every day at the office. He could use a break.

“Okay, then, we’ll go out,” Grace says. “I’ll make a reservation at American Seasons.”

“American Seasons?” Eddie says. It’s a romantic restaurant and the food is dynamite, but… it’s not cheap.

“Yes,” Grace says, leaving no further room for discussion.


It’s only that night as Eddie is trying to fall asleep instead of obsessing about money ($260 for a haircut and color, Thanksgiving dinner at American Seasons, which will necessarily include champagne and nice wine, and Hope’s second-semester bill at Bucknell), the Christys, the Winter Street Inn, the ways his life would be easier if he could manage to sell the Wauwinet house to the Christys and the inn to someone else, that Eddie wonders about Grace’s new exercise routine and her newly colored hair and, most puzzlingly, her easy acceptance of the news that neither twin will be home for Thanksgiving, historically the most sacred of Pancik family holidays.