Star Light, Star Bright

That was the problem with having married a lawyer, she thought, kicking off her soaked shoes and walking on the icy floors to the old farmhouse kitchen. Not only had she spent her marriage in a lifestyle well above what she was accustomed to, but her divorce settlement had been minuscule. It was her fault—she’d wanted to end her relationship with her philandering husband as quickly and neatly as possible, and land values in Crescent Cove had skyrocketed. The monetary value of the old farmhouse was impressive to any judge. The only problem was, she had no intention of selling the place, and it was the only thing she’d come away with from the failed marriage, while Jeffrey had kept the house, the car and most of their joint property.

She could always try to get a real job, but assistant professors of English literature were not in high demand, even with a number of colleges and universities nearby. And somehow the very thought of academia sent chills down her spine, colder than the Vermont winters. She wasn’t in the mood for politics, students, or the Dead White Guys that made up most college curricula. The full professors got the fun stuff—the assistants were left with the same old crap. If she had to teach Charles Dickens one more time she would scream. Well, maybe not if she was teaching A Christmas Carol. But then, she’d always been a total sucker for Christmas.

No, she liked what she was doing just fine. Even loved it. She’d always loved to bake, and providing pies and breads and other goods to the local businesses kept her busy and brought her some peace of mind. Sister Krissie’s Bar and Grill, Mort’s Diner, even BK’s Grocery provided enough standing orders that she stayed reasonably solvent.

The smell of the farmhouse welcomed her like an old friend. The place had been empty for years—Jeffrey’s parents had acquired it as an investment and then forgotten all about it. Why they couldn’t have bought her own family’s house when finances had forced its sale was another question. Instead, the über -wealthy Jacksons had bought it and bulldozed it to make room for another tennis court, wiping out generations of love and memories. Typical of the new breed of summer people, she thought. Wipe out memories and traditions in favor of ostentation. The Jacksons had only been the first of the professional invaders. Their company, Worldcomp, made so much money that no one could figure out what they were doing in a quiet little seasonal community like Crescent Cove.

Except to tear down her family’s home, she thought grumpily. And bring Brody Jackson into her life, someone she could have well done without.

She put the candle down on the scrubbed kitchen table and set to work. It didn’t take her long to get a new fire going, and the heat began spreading through the kitchen. She lit the candle, and the scent was amazing. It smelled like cinnamon, and delicious enough to make her stomach rumble. She closed off most of the place in the winter—surviving nicely on the first floor with a bedroom, a bathroom and the parlor along with the huge old kitchen. In the summer she threw open the upstairs and invited everyone to visit, but the winters were hers, and she welcomed that season’s approach with a sense of relief.

While the room was heating, she quickly put on some warmer clothes—jeans and a sweater and thick wool socks. She didn’t bother with her indulgent silk long johns—those she kept for subzero weather. Today was comfortably in the upper twenties, according to her outside thermometer. A nice, brisk afternoon.

Five trips later, everything was in from the back of the car. One suitcase of her own, and four more that she’d borrowed from her mother. The first one was filled with Christmas presents from Marshall Fields. The other three were packed with family Christmas ornaments that her mother had finally decided to hand over.

Angie could never understand why her mother had held on to them for so long. Her academic parents had downsized when Angie had married, moving into a small apartment that overlooked Lake Michigan, and from then on they’d only had a tabletop tree, with no room for many of Angie’s favorite ornaments or the Christmas tree house, an ornate tree stand made by her father’s great-uncle Otto early in the last century. For some reason her parents had preferred to keep things in storage rather than let her have them, which was unusual, because her parents tended to dote on their only child.

Her marriage had ended Christmas Eve, and she’d spent the next few weeks huddled in a hotel room, not in the mood to celebrate a damn thing. By the next Christmas she’d been divorced for nine months and living in the farmhouse in Crescent Cove, and Jeffrey’s new wife had just given birth. To Angie’s surprise her mother had called, offering to ship the Christmas decorations east to her, but she’d politely declined, planning to spend the holiday alone in her farmhouse with nary a decoration or a Christmas carol to keep her company.

Big mistake, she’d realized. Fortunately, her old friend Patsy and her husband were living in town, and they’d dragged her out of her morose isolation and into the warmth of their large family holiday that had included Patsy’s mother and her new husband, Patsy’s father and his new wife, Ethan’s father and his new wife, and Ethan’s mother, newly widowed, plus five brothers and sisters and their spouses, countless children and even the ninety-year-old matriarch of the family, known to all as Aunt Ginny.

It had been impossible to stay depressed in such chaos. Impossible not to feel the faint, tentative rebirth of the Christmas spirit. And now that another year had passed, she was once more ready to celebrate the holidays with a vengeance.

She’d been half tempted to go right out and find the perfect tree the moment she’d come home from Chicago. A great many people in Crescent Cove put up their trees the day after Thanksgiving and took them down the day after Christmas. Since Angie had every intention of leaving her tree up until Twelfth Night, she decided it might not be smart to cut one so early, and besides, her mother was shipping the Christmas tree house stand to her. Time enough to find a tree when that arrived.

But she wasn’t going to wait any longer to get the smell of pine in her house. She needed to make an outdoor wreath, an Advent wreath, a kissing ball and anything else she could think of, anything to start the season off properly.

She grabbed the clippers from the jumbled junk drawer, put on her felt-lined Sorrels, her down jacket, her turtle fur hat and her leather work gloves and headed out into the gathering New England dusk.

She knew just where she was going. The trees down by the edge of the lake were thick and cluttered—she could easily trim a boatload of branches off them and it would only help them flourish.

Tucking the clippers in one pocket and her flashlight in another, she headed down the freshly plowed road, toward the lake, with the vast, comforting silence of the Vermont winter all around her.

A little too silent. There were still the occasional bears around, and fisher cats were downright nasty, so she began humming, then started singing. Loudly. “Good King Wenceslas” was an excellent song for tromping through the snow, and she’d always had a good strong voice. Patsy had talked her into joining the church choir for the Christmas season, and Angie had rediscovered the joy of singing. And on this deserted spit of land she could sing as loud as she wanted and no one was around to hear.

The edge of the lake was covered with a rime of ice, but beyond the crusty sheet it lay dark and cold and mysterious. She’d skirted the opulent Jackson compound, moving past the snow-covered tennis court that had once been her front porch, and ended up by the lake, where their rickety dock had jutted out into the water. She hadn’t been down here since last spring—she did her best to avoid the flatlanders who spent their summers on Black’s Point, particularly the robber baron Jacksons, who’d only been coming to Crescent Cove for the past twenty years. Rank newcomers compared with most of the summer population, whose grandparents and great-grandparents had settled in the cottages along the shore more than eighty years ago.

But things were changing, and she had to accept it. In the 1930s, Crescent Cove had been the summer colony of Ivy League professors, a few ministers and the occasional grudgingly accepted lawyer. Now the academics could no longer support the taxes and upkeep on second homes, and the very wealthy had moved in, buying up land and houses, and in the Jacksons’ case, tearing down existing buildings to make more room for their extravagant and totally inappropriate taste.

She shook her head and began cutting branches, letting them fall into a neat pile on the snow, as she switched songs to “Silver Bells.” She was so intent on what she was doing, so lost in her glorious solitude on the deserted tip of Black’s Point, that she didn’t hear anyone approaching.

“You’re trespassing.”

She let out a shriek, the clippers went flying, and she spun around in the snow, her heart pounding. “You scared me!” she said, breathless, too rattled to be polite.

“You’re trespassing,” he said again, patiently. She couldn’t see him clearly in the gathering darkness, only a general outline. It was no one she recognized, and she knew most of the caretakers in town. He was tall, lean, young and not a local. There was something vaguely familiar about him, something about his voice, but she couldn’t quite pin it down.

“I’m the only one living out on the point during the winter, and no one’s going to mind if I take a few branches to make some Christmas decorations.”

“You’ll be sorry.”

“Is that a threat?” A wiser woman would have been nervous, but her instincts told her that she wasn’t really in any kind of danger. Then again, those infallible instincts had told her Jeffrey was her soul mate, and look how that had turned out.

“Not a threat,” the man said in a calm voice. “You’re cutting cat spruce. You put that up in your house and it’ll smell like a litter box.”

“Damn,” she said, staring down at the pile at her feet. She’d forgotten about cat spruce, and it was too cold to notice the pungent smell. She glanced up at the stranger again. She couldn’t see his face, and pulling out her flashlight and blinding him with it wasn’t very polite. She knew that voice, somewhere far in the back of her memory, and it was driving her crazy.

“Listen,” she said. “I don’t know who you are or what business it is of yours, but I really don’t think the Jacksons will mind if I pilfer some evergreen branches from the land that used to belong to my family. They may be greedy robber barons, but a little thing like this isn’t going to matter to them—they won’t even be aware that I’ve done it. Most of them haven’t been up here for several years, so they’re unlikely to notice. By summer everything will have grown back, and no harm done. Except—” she looked around her “—I lost my clippers when you startled me.”

“Greedy robber barons? That’s a new one.” His laugh was without humor. “And believe me, they’ll know.”

She did believe him. Because it finally hit her who he was. She didn’t need to see his face—she was only surprised she hadn’t realized right off.

“You’re Brody Jackson,” she said flatly.

“Yes.” He didn’t bother asking her who she was—it probably wasn’t worth his attention, but she persevered anyway.

“I’m Angie McKenna. I live in the old Martin farm down the road. You probably don’t remember me, but we used to hang out together when we were kids. A century and a half ago.”

“Did we?” His voice was noncommittal. He’d forgotten her, of course. Why should he remember? Brody Jackson had been the golden boy all his life—beautiful, smart, athletic and charming, adored by all the girls, both summer and year-rounders, admired by the boys. For all that she’d been his next-door neighbor, after the first summer they hadn’t had anything to do with each other. She was just one of a gaggle of girls at the Crescent Cove Harbor Club, and while she’d always been acutely aware of him, it was little wonder she’d passed beneath his radar. Except for two occasions, and she wasn’t going to think about that.

“What are you doing here? I didn’t realize your place was winterized.”

“I can manage,” he said. “And why are you here? Where’s Jeffrey? I thought the two of you were America’s sweethearts.” His voice was faintly ironic—something new. And then she realized with a start that he knew exactly who she was.

“We’re divorced. I’ve been living here for a couple of years.”

“Another illusion shattered,” he said. “I suppose I would have known that if we’d used the house in the past couple of years.”

“I…”

“I’m not really in the mood to catch up on old times,” he said. “You better go home.”

The flat, weary tone in his voice made that clear, though it told her little else. Except that he didn’t sound like the golden boy he once had been.

But she wasn’t about to argue. She bent to scoop up the branches, cat spruce and all. “I’ll just clean these up.”

“Leave them.”

No way she could argue with that, either. All she could do was aim for a dignified retreat. “Well, I’m, er, sorry I bothered you.”

He said nothing, and she shrugged. She wasn’t quite sure how to end the conversation. See you around was a possibility, but he’d probably come back with not if I see you first.

“Goodbye, then,” she said. “Merry Christmas.”

“Isn’t it a little early for that?”

“It’s never too early for Christmas,” Angie said. “Sorry I bothered you.”