Winter Solstice (Winter #4)(59)

“What’s going on in here?”

Jennifer turns to see Mitzi walk into the kitchen with Allegra in her wake. Jennifer offers Allegra a smile. If you marry Bart, she thinks, this will be your family too!

“Nothing,” Jennifer says. “I was just helping Isabelle clean up.”

Isabelle sniffs as only an indignant French woman can and runs the water in the sink. Jennifer refills her wineglass at the fridge. Mitzi shifts her gaze between Isabelle and Jennifer, but they are the model of obedient daughters-in-law. There will be no family squabbles.





AVA


So much for being her own fulfilled, independent person!

She misses Potter more than she ever dreamed possible. He’s in Palo Alto, staying at the Westin; the hotel is less than a mile from the bungalow where Trish, Harrison, and PJ live. He arrived on Wednesday afternoon. The plan was that Potter would take PJ out for pizza because Trish had a meeting. But when Potter arrived at the house, PJ refused to go with Potter unless Harrison came as well.

“So it was like an alternate version of Heather Has Two Mommies called PJ Has Two Daddies. I’m sure everyone at Patxi’s thought we were gay.”

“What do you care?” Ava asks.

“I don’t,” Potter says. “But I do care that I seem to have been replaced by a thirty-year-old Brit. Did you know that Harrison is only thirty?”

“That’s not so young,” Ava says. “I’m thirty-two.”

“Harrison is very fond of you, by the way,” Potter says. “He made a point at dinner to ask about ‘our friend Ava.’”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him Ava was my friend and he’d better stay away from her,” Potter says.

“How was PJ?” Ava asks. “Did he behave?”

“He was terrific,” Potter says morosely. “He told us about school, he ate his pizza, he put his napkin in his lap, he was polite with the server.”

“Wonderful!” Ava says.

“But I think it was because Harrison was there,” Potter says. “I really messed up, letting Trish take him so far away.”

Ava steels herself for the announcement that Potter is moving to California. “It is far away,” she says. “I miss you.”

“Not half as much as I miss you,” Potter says.


On Thursday, Ava tries to throw herself into the Thanksgiving spirit. Potter is with his family and Ava is with hers, and who knows how much longer her family will remain intact? Mitzi has let it be known that this will be the final Thanksgiving at the inn, and they all realize but do not outwardly acknowledge that it will be their last Thanksgiving with Kelley.

If Ava lets herself think about it, she’ll dissolve. She planned to spend hours of quality time with Kelley, but his condition has deteriorated so rapidly—even since Halloween—that all he does is sleep and listen to Danielle Steel novels on his phone. Ava offered to buy the same novel down at Mitchell’s Book Corner and read it aloud, but Kelley said he enjoys the narrator’s voice. He finds it soothing.

He seems very attached to his hospice nurses, Lara and Jocelyn; they are the only ones other than Mitzi who feed him, give him his medicine, and get him in and out of his wheelchair.

There are a few moments on Thanksgiving that make Ave especially upset.


1. In the morning she goes over to visit her best friend, Shelby, and Shelby’s husband, Zack, and their baby, Xavier, who is now a toddler. Shelby announces that she is pregnant again, with a girl, and Zack, who has a penchant for arcane knowledge, informs Ava that a family of a boy followed by a girl is known as the king’s choice. There is the son to carry on the family name, and the daughter to marry off and create a dynasty. Ava congratulates Shelby and Zack on getting the king’s choice, but secretly she feels left behind. She and Shelby are the same age, but Shelby is married, with a child and a baby on the way. When will Ava’s life start moving in that direction? She’s happy in New York, but she has nothing permanent.

2. She loves Margaret and Drake, but she sees them all the time in New York. She loves Paddy and Jennifer and Kevin and Isabelle and Bart, but she saw everybody three weeks earlier. She wonders why she didn’t go to California with Potter.

3. Bart has started dating Allegra Pancik—in a big way. Allegra comes over to the inn at three o’clock, and she and Bart are joined at the hip. Or, rather, the lips. All they do is kiss! This could have been true when they were in New York at Margaret’s retirement party, but Ava didn’t notice because she was with Potter. Now that she is missing Potter so badly, she can’t even look at Bart and Allegra. She wants to tell them to keep their hands off each other while they’re in public—but she will, no doubt, sound like a lonely, bitter old maid.

4. Mitzi assigns Ava the sweet potatoes. Ava despises sweet potatoes. She wants to replace them with a roasted butternut squash dish, but Mitzi shoots that idea down.



After dinner Ava gets a FaceTime call from Potter. She takes the call in her old room, which is buffered from the noise of the living room.

“Hi,” she says.

“You’re so beautiful,” Potter says.

“Are you with PJ?” she asks.

“No,” Potter says. “Why?”

“Since you’re FaceTiming, I thought maybe you’d have PJ there too.”