Christmas on Honeysuckle Lane Read online

  A quick glance at her iPhone in its charger revealed that Ian had sent her a text. It would have to wait. For one, she didn’t make it a habit of using her phone while driving. For another, Ian Hayes was no longer a priority. Just the day before, she had finally ended their relationship. It had not gone well. She had gotten the feeling that Ian hadn’t really heard her. He hadn’t shown any anger or even puzzlement; he hadn’t tried to argue her out of her decision. Instead, he had been remarkably calm and collected. She had seen that behavior countless times before, his escaping (that’s how Emma saw it) into a deeply reasonable state of mind, almost emotionless but not cold.

  With some effort Emma shook off the uncomfortable memory. She had more important and immediate things to think about, like what was waiting for her in Oliver’s Well. She felt slightly apprehensive about this gathering of siblings. She didn’t foresee any arguing over the sale or distribution of what was left of their parents’ estate; none of the siblings badly needed money. But Daniel had been so adamant about their all being together for this Christmas, as if their coming together was of life or death importance. Maybe that was overdoing it a bit. Still, her brother had made it clear he would not be happy taking no for an answer.

  Not that Emma would have said no. She loved her brother and his family and hadn’t seen them since Rumi’s birthday back in June. And she hadn’t seen Andie since Caro’s funeral fourteen months ago; Andie had been on an extended book signing tour at the time of Rumi’s celebration. Emma and her sister kept in touch as best they could. Though Andie had a presence online, it was for her professional self, not for sharing intimacies with her younger sister. And Andie frequently traveled to places where cell phone service was spotty or simply not available. Besides, the last thing Emma wanted was to interrupt a visit to an ashram for study and meditation with relatively trivial concerns like the latest antics of the annoying president of her condo board.

  If Emma remembered correctly she would soon be passing Holinshed Nursery; it was where her mother had bought most of her garden supplies through the years. Caro had kept a lovely garden, and Emma knew that Daniel had been doing his best to care for it since her passing, though he hadn’t much time to spare for watering, pruning, and planting.

  Time. Emma found it hard to believe that her mother had been gone for over a year. Last Thanksgiving she and Ian had stayed in Annapolis rather than travel to Oliver’s Well; they had been back only the month before to attend Caro’s funeral. And Christmas, too, they had spent at home, and while Emma sipped a classic whiskey sour and nibbled on spicy roasted almonds, she had given barely a thought to either of her parents. Thinking back on those two holidays, Emma realized the fact that her mother was no longer in this world hadn’t entirely registered with her until now. Now, in these final weeks before the second Christmas since Caro’s death, Emma felt her mother’s absence keenly. That they hadn’t been close for years didn’t diminish the fact that they had been mother and daughter, and that primary relationship could never be ignored.

  It was odd, Emma thought, how something small or mundane could trigger a wave of strong emotion and nostalgia. Just the other day she had been walking along a street close to her home, and the sight of a Christmas wreath decorated with a velvety blue ribbon on a storefront had literally stopped her in her tracks. Her mother had decorated her Christmas wreaths with the same velvety blue ribbon. It was a moment before Emma could move on, tears in her eyes.

  While Andie was probably expertly handling her mourning—she had the skills and the training to do so—Emma wasn’t quite so sure about Daniel. If his adamant invitation that his sisters gather for Christmas was any indication of his emotional state, he might still be feeling pretty raw. In fact, when she had last seen Daniel, at Rumi’s twentieth birthday celebration at the Angry Squire, he had seemed tense. Even Ian had noticed the change. Ian had gone to the party with Emma, of course. He had always enjoyed visiting the Reynoldses in Oliver’s Well, and they had always enjoyed being with him.

  Emma closed her window and wondered how her brother and his wife would take the news of the demise of her relationship. Anna Maria would be supportive, and while Daniel wouldn’t want to see his sister stick around in an unfulfilling relationship, he could be awfully . . . What was the word? Old-fashioned? Whatever the word, the fact was that Daniel had married his first and only love and sometimes seemed to have difficulty understanding that not everyone was quite so lucky.

  And Andie? Well, she would respond with her native gifts of sympathy and empathy. Emma deeply admired her sister; she believed that Andie deserved what success she had achieved as a writer and speaker, not that fame or money mattered to Andie Reynolds. She had always been of a self-effacing and generous nature, even as a child. Emma remembered Andie routinely giving half her lunch money to a boy whose family was known to be struggling, and she never failed to rush to the aid of an older person having trouble reaching a can from a high shelf in the grocery store or to open doors for mothers juggling a stroller laden with diaper bags, plush toys, and an antsy toddler. Emma smiled to herself. Her sister simply couldn’t help helping people.

  Happily, Emma saw some of that generous nature in Andie’s daughter, Rumi, who from the first had been very loving with her younger cousins. Sophia was a sweetheart; at twelve she was already taller than her mother. Marco, a charmer and now ten, looked to have inherited his mother’s small stature, but you never knew what changes adolescence might bring.

  Emma smiled. There, up ahead, just past Holinshed Nursery, was the town line. Oliver’s Well at last. Emma needed a big dose of small town charm after the year she’d had; she had been too swamped with work even to take a brief vacation. And the breakup with Ian, and before that, the long and difficult process of coming to terms with the fact that the break had to be made had taken its toll.

  Instead of going directly to the house on Honeysuckle Lane, Emma decided to make a detour and visit one of her favorite places in Oliver’s Well, an old gristmill. Nettles Mill had been beautifully restored by the Oliver’s Well Historical Association, but back when she was young the buildings were still largely dilapidated. Emma used to ride her bicycle to the site, prop it against the remains of an old stone wall, and explore the property, losing herself in thoughts of what life must have been like for the people who had operated the huge stone grinding mechanism and who had lived in a few rough rooms attached to the mill building. Caro would have forbidden Emma to visit the old mill on her own; knowing this, Emma simply never told her mother where she was going.

  Emma pulled her car into the visitors’ parking lot and climbed out. A volunteer member of the OWHA, bright red Santa hat on her head, was leading a group of visitors out of one building and toward a structure Emma remembered from her childhood as a pile of rubble. As she stood gazing up at the water wheel by the building that housed the original millstones, she thought about the last time all three Reynolds siblings had gathered for Christmas, five years earlier. Ian had danced attendance on Caro for the two days of their visit, and had spent far more time with Daniel than Emma had. At least I had time to talk with Dad, Emma thought. And even if their conversation had been mostly about business, at least it was conversation.

  Emma felt an involuntary shiver run through her. That was all ancient history. Her mother and father were gone now. The slate was wiped clean. Strange that she would see their passing as events that finally allowed for a fresh start, but that was how it felt to Emma, like a release of sorts. In fact, since shortly after Caro’s death Emma had been feeling a stirring inside, a yearning for some essential change in her life. And she had been experiencing an emptiness that bothered her, a longing.

  A longing for home? But what did that mean? Was home really an ideal to achieve, or was it only a place to which you could return for short periods of time before your heart told you to move on? A longing for love? That’s why she had finally ended the relationship with Ian. It hadn’t been love, not the kind that could sustain and n
ourish a marriage over the years.

  Emma sighed and looked at her watch. With a silent good-bye to Nettles Mill, she got back into her car and continued on to the house on Honeysuckle Lane where, she knew, her brother would be anxiously awaiting her arrival.

  CHAPTER 2

  Andie Reynolds had picked up a rental car at Dulles airport for the final leg of her journey to Oliver’s Well. Andie didn’t enjoy driving. In fact, she had delayed getting her license until she was nineteen, in spite of living in a town with no public transportation. She had been perfectly happy until her father sat her down and explained that getting a driver’s license was an important milestone for every young person to achieve. “Andie,” he had said, “you’ve let it go too long already.” So, obliging person that she was, she had gotten her license. And she was a good driver, careful, attentive, and when necessary defensive. She just didn’t enjoy being behind the wheel.

  Andie, born Andrea Jane, was forty-four years old. She had always been “a bit on the heavy side”—those were her mother’s words—built more like her father than her siblings were, both of whom tended to be tall and slim like Caro Reynolds. Her hair was dark and unruly, also like Cliff’s, and rather than struggle with blow dryers and straightening products, she simply tied it back in a ponytail or stuck it up with a big plastic clip. What jewelry she wore had meaning for her—a beaded necklace given to her by an elderly woman she had befriended on her first trip to Mexico, a silver cuff she had bought from a street vendor in India, the tiny gold and moonstone ring she had found half buried in the dirt close by the rim of the Grand Canyon. As for her clothes, Andie liked them to be colorful and, above all, comfortable. There were far more important things to be concerned with than tight waistbands and restricting tops.

  Andie glanced down at her paisley ankle length skirt and pink and purple striped top and couldn’t help but smile. No, her mother, always impeccably and conservatively dressed, would find her daughter’s outfit sloppy and bohemian and she would say as much. But Caro Carlyle Reynolds was no longer here to approve or disapprove of her children, and that, Andie had realized with surprise, was still taking some getting used to. Just before she had left her home in Woodville Junction Andie had spent a fair amount of time meditating on the fact of her mother’s death and wondering about the answer to an important question she had never ventured to ask. Had her mother feared death or had she welcomed it? In her ill and weakened state had she longed for this life to be over and for whatever was to come to come quickly? “Without health life is not life; it is only a state of languor and suffering—an image of death.” Had Caro Reynolds agreed with the Buddha on this matter?

  “Welcome to Oliver’s Well,” Andie read aloud. “Founded 1632.” Not far up the first turn off to the right was the Unitarian Universalist Church, where she had married Bob Dolman when she was just out of college. Andie was looking forward to seeing Bob; she thought they might be the only divorced couple in the country to consider each other dearest friends.

  Still, Andie felt her stomach flutter with the proverbial butterflies. No matter how much time had passed and how much serenity she had achieved, going home to Oliver’s Well always caused a degree of unease. She wondered how Emma felt when she visited. Was she, too, haunted by the ghosts? Daniel was the only Reynolds sibling who had chosen to make a life in Oliver’s Well, and from what Andie could tell, he had chosen wisely for himself. If he was troubled by the past and its habit of lingering in the present, he hadn’t shared that trouble with his oldest sister. We three siblings are so different in some ways, Andie thought. United by DNA, but at times, not much more.

  There, Andie noted, coming up on the left was the rambling old house in which Dr. Burton had lived and practiced family medicine until well into his eighties. Andie remembered as if it were yesterday the big jar of hard candies and lollipops on his desk. And she remembered how she had loved old Dr. Burton as if he were her grandfather. Who knew who occupied the house now? So much change, Andie thought as the house receded into the distance. So much we need to learn how to let go of.

  The last time Andie had been back to Oliver’s Well was for her mother’s funeral. The compelling reason for this visit was her brother’s insistence on the whole family being together for Christmas. The butterflies took flight again in Andie’s stomach, a manifestation of her well-honed instinct for unhappiness, her own or someone else’s. She almost smiled as she wondered what people would think if they knew that Andie Reynolds—she had reverted to her birth name after her divorce—self-help author /speaker/respected guru and lifestyle coach (call her what you will), was momentarily overcome with good old-fashioned fear.

  “Just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again.” Andie firmly believed this process of shedding was necessary; problem was that too often the past dug in its claws and refused to be thrown off without almost superhuman effort. And here was a good example, Andie thought. Six months earlier she had missed Rumi’s twentieth birthday celebration due to a long-standing commitment to her publisher. Since then she had sensed from Rumi a slight coldness. Well, maybe coldness was too strong a word. It might be more accurate to say that the usual easy way they had with one another seemed a bit forced; instead of being her warm and bubbly self, Rumi seemed reserved. Hopefully, coming face to face would allow them to regain their happy intimacy. Andie knew she wasn’t the most conventional mother in the world; she also knew that she truly loved her child.

  “Here we are,” Andie murmured as she turned onto Honeysuckle Lane. She had spent most of the first twenty some odd years of her life on this street. It was all so terribly familiar. There was the Burrowses’ house on the left, a thorn in the side of the more “respectable” homeowners, who didn’t approve of the family’s lackadaisical ways or their less than diligent upkeep of house and property. And then, a bit further on and across the way, was the perfectly kept home of the Fitzgibbon family, well-known and respected in Oliver’s Well, and once, friends of a sort to Cliff and Caro Reynolds.

  And then, just up ahead, number 32 Honeysuckle Lane. Like most of the other houses on the block, it was a handsome, mid-nineteenth-century white clapboard two-story structure with black shutters and a large central chimney. Andie pulled into the drive in front of the house in which her mother had breathed her last. And there was her brother, standing at the window, waiting. Daniel Reynolds. The Keeper of the Flame. With a silent prayer for strength, Andie got out of the car and, grabbing her bag from the backseat, walked briskly up to the front door.

  CHAPTER 3

  Daniel and his son, Marco, stood at the living room window keeping an eye out for Daniel’s sisters.

  “What time is it, Dad?” Marco asked.

  “Ten minutes after ten,” Daniel told his son, looking at his watch. It had once belonged to his father and had come to him after Cliff’s passing. Daniel only took it off when he showered.

  Marco frowned. “Why don’t I have a watch?”

  “You can have my old one if you want.”

  “Nah,” Marco said after a moment’s consideration. “I like to ask you what time it is.”

  Daniel smiled and ruffled his son’s thick dark hair. Daniel had turned forty at the end of August, though sometimes lately he felt as if he were half again as old. Maybe that was the result of the long hours he put into the business. Maybe it was also due to the stress that resulted from trying to be the best husband and parent and, once, son he could be. His medium brown hair was beginning to thin, and there were lines around his mouth caused as much by frowning as by smiling. He was still as slim as he had been in college, and that was entirely due to the Carlyle genetics. Life as a professional chef wasn’t exactly conducive to, as his mother might have said, “maintaining one’s figure.”

  Anna Maria, Daniel’s wife, had also inherited the “slim gene.” At five feet one inch tall she was a whopping ninety pounds, with exuberant dark curls and bright brown eyes. Though she complained about her hair being imposs
ible to manage and about not being tall enough to reach the uppermost cabinets in their kitchen, Daniel knew she didn’t care one whit about her appearance. Anna Maria focused on the important things in life, like her family. For example, just the day before she had asked Daniel what he expected from his sisters’ visit; she was concerned he was gearing up for a showdown of sorts.

  “Why should I be expecting a showdown?” Daniel had asked.

  “Because,” she said, “you seem unhappy. I know you, Daniel. I can tell when you’re feeling stressed.”

  He had roundly denied feeling stressed, certainly not about his sisters. “I think it’ll be great, all three of us together at Christmas for the first time in years.”

  “Visions of a Norman Rockwell holiday dancing in your head?” She hadn’t said it mockingly.

  Daniel had shrugged. “Yeah, why not?”

  But the truth was that he had been unhappy for the past months. The house and all it contained, both tangible and intangible, had become a drain on Daniel. Caro had left the property to all three of her children equally, but Daniel, as the local one and the trustee of the estate, had been the person keeping it in perfect order, paying bills and seeing to essential repairs. He glanced over his shoulder to the painting above the mantel of the fireplace. It was an oil portrait of his parents, done years ago by an artist in Westminster. Cliff and Caro were dressed formally, Caro seated in a high-backed armchair, Cliff standing a bit to the side, his hand resting on his wife’s shoulder. Both looked properly dignified. Daniel knew that his parents had paid dearly for the portrait, and to be fair it was a good likeness, but for some reason he couldn’t name, the painting had never appealed to him.