Sweet Laurel Falls

“We can add that to the schedule,” Maura assured her.

They talked about other traditions, leaving Jack to simmer in his frustration. He had known he would eventually have to see his father. He just hadn’t expected it to be twelve hours after he arrived in town.

Dermot must have remembered the vast rift between him and his father. To Jack’s relief, he had seated Harry in an area of the restaurant that angled away from them, out of sight of their booth. At least he wouldn’t have to come face-to-face with the man. Even so, any culinary anticipation for the cafe’s much-vaunted French toast had turned to ashes in his gut.

A bleached-blond college-age kid with the slouchy dress and manner of a ski bum brought their food over a few moments later, three plates brimming with golden French toast with little crackly pieces of sugar-coated fried dough and sliced almonds on top.

“Hey, Sage, Maura. Stranger Dude. Dermot’s tied up in the kitchen for a while,” he explained. “He asked me to take care of you. So if you need anything else, give me a shout-out.”

“Thanks, Logan.”

“How’s school?” Sage asked.

“Good. I think I made the dean’s list. I had a killer final in statistics, but I think I aced it. You?”

“Pretty good. Not dean’s-list good, but I was happy with it. Did you have Professor Lee for stats? I’ve got him next semester.”

“He’s brutal, man.”

“Hey, I might need a ride back to Boulder after the break. When are you taking off?”

“Haven’t thought that far in advance. My first class isn’t until ten-thirty the Monday school starts, so I might get in a few runs as soon as the lifts open before I head back.”

“I’ll text you after New Year’s to figure things out.”

“Okay. Like I said, if you need anything, let me know.”

The conversation between the young people gave Jack a chance to regain his perspective. It wasn’t Maura’s fault Harry ate breakfast at the café. He had sensed something off in her reaction when he’d made the suggestion to eat here the night before and should have pursued it.

Besides, he was an adult. He could certainly spend a few minutes in the same restaurant with the man he despised. Yes, it had been petty of her to set him up like that, but if he were going to hold a grudge, he had bigger grievances against her. As far as he could see, there was no reason to let Harry ruin a perfectly delicious breakfast.

“So we talked about cross-country skiing and sleigh rides and Christmas Eve candlelight skis. What else do I need to see in Hope’s Crossing while I’m here?” he asked Sage.

She launched into a long list of her favorite things to do in town. By the time she finished, even he was thinking maybe Hope’s Crossing wasn’t the purgatory he remembered.

“Sounds like you two have plenty to keep you busy until school starts up again,” Maura said. She had only eaten about four or five bites of her French toast and one nibble of the crispy bacon that accompanied it.

Sage suddenly looked stricken, as if she had only just remembered that her mother might have expected to spend some of the holiday break with her. “We could do a lot of this together, the three of us.”

There was no “three of us.” Just two people who had once loved each other and the child they had created together.

“No, this will be good,” Maura assured her with a smile that only looked slightly forced. “You know how busy I’m going to be up until Christmas Eve and then the week after with all the holiday returns. This way I won’t have to worry about you being bored while I’m stuck at the store.”

She checked her watch and set down her napkin. “Speaking of busy, I probably need to run. Mornings are hectic in December. It seems like everyone in town decides to take a coffee break at the same time and fit in a little shopping too.”

The purpose of suggesting they meet for breakfast had been to come to some sort of agreement on how their tangled relationship would proceed from here. He wasn’t sure they had accomplished that particular goal, but they seemed to have reached an accord of some sort, Harry’s unexpected presence notwithstanding.

“Do you need some extra help with the rush?” Sage asked.

“You don’t need to come in,” Maura assured her. “You should spend the day with your, er…with Jack while you have a chance.”

“Well, yeah, I want to. But to tell you the truth, I haven’t had a chance to do any Christmas shopping yet, and I could use a little extra money. I hate to dip into my college fund for presents if I don’t have to.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Jack assured her. “I’ve got plenty of work to catch up on. Maybe we could always meet this evening.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Sage asked.

“Not at all.” The two of them didn’t need to spend twenty-four hours a day together. It was probably better to take their interactions in small doses while he was still adjusting to the idea of even having a daughter.

Besides, he didn’t want Maura to think he planned to monopolize every moment with Sage while he was in Hope’s Crossing.

“In that case,” Maura said, her features a little more relaxed, “I would love to have you work at the store today. We’ve been slammed the last few days, and I’m sure Ruth could use help restocking.”

With that settled, they returned to their breakfast. He was happy to see Maura eat a few more bites and finish off the citrus slices that came with it. When breakfast was over, they wrangled for a moment over the bill, but he solved the issue by taking his credit card and the ticket to the cash register, leaving her to glower after him.

“I’ll walk you over to the store,” he said to the two of them after signing the credit card receipt handed him by the snowboarding academic. “The only place I could find to park was in that alley behind your store.”

“Parking is our big problem downtown, as you have probably figured out. The Downtown Merchants’ Alliance is talking about building a big parking structure a block to the west, if we can do it in an aesthetically pleasing way that fits in with the rest of the town.”

After leaving the café, they walked up half a block to the light so they could cross the street. As he looked up the length of Main Street, he was struck again by the charm of the town, with electrified reproductions of historic gas lamps lining the street and brick-paved sidewalks instead of concrete. The town leaders seemed to have gone to a great deal of trouble to manage the growth in that pleasing way Maura was talking about that stayed true to its character, with none of the jumble of styles so many communities adopted by default.

Beneath the wooden sign reading Dog-Eared Books & Brew, he held the door open for the two women and stepped inside the welcoming warmth to say goodbye to Sage.

“What time do you think you’ll be free for dinner?”

“I don’t know. Can you give me a second, though, before we figure out details? I’ve had to pee since before Logan brought our breakfast, and I’m not sure I can wait even five more minutes.”

“Uh, sure.”

She gave him a grateful smile and hurried to the back of the store, leaving him to watch with bemusement at her abrupt exit.

Maura gave a short laugh. “That’s Sage for you. Sorry about that. When she was a little girl, I always had to remind her to take a minute and visit the bathroom. She tended to hold it until the very last second, because she didn’t want to bother wasting time with such inconsequential things when she could be creating a masterpiece skyscraper out of blocks or redesigning her Barbie house to make better use of the available space.”

He could almost picture her, dark curls flying, green eyes earnest, that chin they shared set with determination. A hard kernel of regret seemed to be lodged somewhere in his chest. He had missed so much. Everything. Ballet recitals and bedtime stories and soccer games.

This whole thing was so surreal. He had always told himself he didn’t want or need a family. His own childhood had been so tumultuous, marked by his mother’s mental chaos and Harry’s increasing impatience and frustration and his subsequent cold distance. In his mind, family was turmoil and pain.

Jack had always just figured that since he didn’t have the desire—or the necessary skills—to be a father, he was better off just avoiding that eventuality altogether. That had been one of the things that had drawn him to Kari, her insistence that her career mattered too much for her to derail it with a side trip on the Mommy Track.

Mere months into their marriage, she’d done a rapid about-face and started buying baby magazines and comparing crib specifications. Even before that, he’d known their marriage had been a mistake. She hated his travel and his long hours, she couldn’t stand his friends, she started drinking more than she ever had when they were dating.

Bringing a child into the middle of something that was already so shaky would have been a disaster. They started counseling, but when he found out she had stopped taking her birth control pills despite his entreaties that they at least give the counseling a chance to work, he had started sleeping on the sofa in his office.

She filed for divorce two weeks later and ended up married to another attorney in her office a month after the decree came down.

Yeah, he had always figured he and kids wouldn’t be a good mix. But these little glimpses into Sage’s childhood filled him with poignant regret.

Nothing he could do about that now. He realized that Maura was watching him warily and he forced himself to smile. “I like your place.”