I’m pregnant.
Okay, before you freak out. I’m five months. It was touch and go for the first three and we didn’t tell anyone. I wanted to tell you last month in person but work got in the way. And… Josie. I just want to see you. And it’s Christmas. And I’m pregnant. Please come home.
Helen
JOSIE
The Riverview Inn at Christmas was a total show-off. All the white twinkle lights in the snow-dusted pine trees. The windows filled with the warm glow of fireplaces. The gigantic red and gold wreath on the front door. Even nature was contributing to the scene; snow was coming down in big, fat Hollywood flakes, like the whole world was in a snow globe that had just been twirled upside down.
It looked, actually, like every Christmas set Josie had ever tried to create but somehow failed to. It didn’t matter how much money they put into set design or props, it was just never quite right.
It’s the smell, she thought. You just can’t recreate the smell of snow and pine trees. It was so powerful it was practically a taste on the tip of her tongue.
The Uber drove off behind her. Leaving Josie and her bags standing at the entrance of the inn. Feeling an excruciating combination of dread and excitement.
Smile. Keep smiling. Don’t stop smiling.
As coping mechanisms went it was fairly lame, but it was all she had and so she was committed. Besides, there was usually enough mayhem in her family that she could blend in and escape too much notice.
Though the five years she’d been gone were going to be a thing.
Christmas was a few days away and everyone was home for the holiday. Mom and Dad. Gabe and Alice. Jonah and Daphne, Josie’s half-brother Dom and all the cousins. This place was absolutely filled with Mitchells. She could practically hear them arguing about table setting and laughing over Dom’s hair.
Why am I scared?
She knew that she shouldn’t be. It didn’t make sense.
But her heart was pounding in her neck. And her hands were slick in her gloves.
The inn looked somehow bigger and smaller than she remembered. But that was the way of memory, wasn’t it? It played tricks like that all the time. Like the emotion attached to things changed the scale of places or the color of walls. Her heart changed the size and shape of the front door and planted trees where there weren’t any. It was familiar and completely strange all at the same time.
Five years since she’d been here.
“You can’t turn back now,” a voice said behind her and she turned to see Patrick wearing a thick coat and big hat making his way up the road toward her.
Smile. Keep smiling.
“I wasn’t going to,” Josie said with a big smile as the man who’d been the best grandfather she could imagine came to a stop in front of her.
“I’d like to hug you,” he said, his eyes twinkling.
“I’d like to hug you too,” she said, and the words weren’t even out of her mouth before he had his arms around her. He smelled like snow and Old Spice.
Okay. New coping mechanism. Don’t cry. Just don’t cry.
“We missed you, girl.”
“I doubt that,” she said.
That made Patrick lurch back and frown at her. His eyebrows were exceptionally white and bushy. And capable of a lot of disapproval. “No,” she said, trying to backtrack to avoid a lecture about her spot in the Mitchell family. “I’m just saying there are so many cousins and kids now—”
“None of them are you, kid,” he said and gave her a little shake.
“Hardly a kid anymore,” Josie said with a smile. Turning twenty-four this year had been strange. She’d felt it more than she’d felt any other birthday. Probably because she’d been alone. By choice, mind you. Mom and Dad usually came down for her birthday, took her shopping and out to dinner. Max always looked surprisingly comfortable in the city. The mountain man persona he cultivated up here just fell away and he was the city cop once again. Pretty handsome in a suit and tie, ordering oysters at restaurants like he’d always done it.
Mom always looked at Max a little differently when they were in the city. Like he was a stranger she’d just met. Josie did not want to think about what they got up to in the hotel room they always rented.
But this year her birthday had fallen right in the middle of release week for the show and there’d been just too much going on to celebrate.
Or, at least, it had been convenient to say that.
“Dad?” Max yelled from the front step, the door open behind him revealing the long dining room table set for dinner, the fireplace, and about seven hundred of Josie’s cousins. The beautiful mayhem of Mitchell life at the Riverview Inn. Her heart gushed a fresh, painful longing.