Wrapped Up In Christmas

“If he’s smart, it’s a trip to anywhere but here,” Rosie mused.

Sarah caught Maybelle and Claudia’s husband exchanging a look, saw the glimmer of amusement in Maybelle’s eyes, and knew the woman knew exactly what Claudia’s husband had planned.

Not only that, but she’d played a role in it coming about. God love her.

Maybelle and Sarah’s father stayed a few minutes longer, then both claimed they had to leave as well.

From the front porch, Sarah watched them drive away.

The open house had been a big success. The local paper and the magazine were both doing features. Dozens had attended.

She should be ecstatic.

Instead, she was haunted by thoughts of that one person who should have been there but wasn’t.

Had she been secretly hoping he’d come to the open house? That she’d be talking to one of the Butterflies, turn, and there he’d be, smiling at her and stealing her breath?

How foolish. What would change if he had? She was tied to Pine Hill. Tied by strings of history, family, friends, community. Strings she cherished and didn’t want to break.

But that didn’t stop the ache of Bodie not being there, his not having come to the open house he’d help make possible, his not being there to receive his share of all the compliments on the classy way he’d created a modern bathroom yet kept the historic feel of the home.

His just not being there, period.

Get a grip, Sarah.

Struggling with her emotions, she went back inside Hamilton House.

She wandered from room to room, looking around with pride, flipping lights off as she went. As she walked into each room, she let memories from the past fill her mind. Aunt Jean, the Butterflies, all the open house visitors, even Bodie.

Inside these walls were so many memories.

She paused in the foyer, her eyes going to the photos over the staircase. She studied each one. Roy’s parents wedding photo, Aunt Jean and Uncle Roy’s, and the silly snaggle-toothed photo of her that Aunt Jean had adored.

She came from a long line of lovers. Loyal lovers who loved once and only once.

She would only love once.

A chill hit her.

She went to the living room, picked up Bodie’s quilt, sat in the rocking chair that had once been her grandmother’s, and wrapped herself up in the patriotic cover.

Had she been right in what she’d told Maybelle why Bodie had left it?

Or had he thought she needed the quilt more than he did?

In that moment, she realized she did need the comfort it provided. It wrapped around her like a gifted hug from him. Was that how he’d once felt about the quilt?

Was that what he’d wanted to give back to her? Knowing she’d need it more than him?

Having constantly checked her phone during the night to see if he’d texted back, she hadn’t slept w

ell. As she rocked, her eyes became heavy and she drifted off.

In her dreams, Bodie had never left. They’d replaced the photo on the stairs with a photo of them, a black and white one taken inside the church. The upstairs suites had been returned to their beauty and grandeur, filled with the wedding gifts from the Butterflies.

Hamilton House’s walls threatened to burst from all the new memories being made within them. Memories that were happy and full of love.

Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, she knew none of it was real.