Christmas at the Riverview Inn

“Why am I getting all the questions?” Josie laughed, setting her fork down next to the pear tarte Alice had made for dessert. “Am I the only one who has a million questions for Helen?”

“Yeah, yeah, she’s pregnant,” Daphne said, winking at her daughter. “Big deal.”

Helen smiled her cypher’s smile and ran a hand over her stomach.

“How long has everyone known?” Josie asked.

“Mom says she woke up in the middle of the night five months ago and knew something was different,” Helen said.

“I’ve always said you two were a little too close,” Alice said from her place at the end of the table, next to Gabe. And Stella, her daughter and only child, laughed.

“Mom,” the teenager cried. “You still ask if you can sleep with me.”

“I just like your bed better.”

It was a lie and everyone knew it. Even Gabe, who gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder. On the other side of the table, Josie had a hard time looking at Gabe and Alice, and chose instead to focus on Helen. Blonde and pregnant and looking so happy it was like she’d swallowed a lightbulb.

“You really are glowing,” Josie said.

“I really am happy.”

“Where’s Evan?” Josie asked. Helen’s longtime boyfriend and the father of the lightbulb.

“He’s still in DC,” Helen said. “He should be here on Christmas Eve.”

“Isn’t that cutting it close?” Josie asked. Because while Christmas as a whole was a big deal at the Riverview, the real star of the show was Christmas Eve. The outrageous number of traditions that had been piled onto Christmas Eve was nearly insane. No holiday should have to be so much to a single family. But the Mitchells were not like other families.

And Christmas Eve was only three days away.

“That’s the plan,” Helen said. Evan and Helen both worked for a nonprofit organic farmers’ association that lobbied state and federal government to try and change laws and regulations.

They were two very adorable do-gooders.

“And seriously…” Josie lowered her voice. “You’re not getting any flack about not being married.”

“Are you kidding me? With this crowd?” Helen looked around their assembled family. Gabe and Alice, who’d been married before and had three horrible miscarriages that had ultimately ended their relationship the first time around. But when Gabe opened the inn and needed a chef, he’d begged Alice to come and work with him. Of course they hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other, and when she’d ended up pregnant she tried to keep it a secret.

Gabe insisted they get married but they didn’t actually do it until after Stella had been born.

Iris, their grandmother, sitting across the table with Patrick, had left her two sons in a terrible bout of post-partum depression only to find out she was pregnant again. She’d asked to come back but Patrick had said no, so she’d kept Jonah a secret from the rest of the family for years.

It hadn’t been pretty when they first got back together, but it was now. Proof, maybe, that things always got better, even when they were really dark.

“Yeah, the Mitchells don’t exactly do things in order,” Josie said with a smile, feeling that gush of affection she had for her unorthodox family.

“Well…” Alice, at the head of the table, sighed. “I made this meal. I’m sure as hell not cleaning it up.”

“I got it.” Josie jumped to her feet and began clearing dishes. Wanting so badly to be useful and busy, and away from everyone’s curiosity about her life. And—she was adult enough to admit it—wanting somehow to change the way Alice looked at her.

Everyone told her in quiet voices that Alice didn’t blame her for Cameron leaving. But the way Alice looked at her said otherwise.

Not that dishes would do it—but it felt like a start.

The kitchen of the Riverview was the unofficial heart of the place and it had grown over the years, just as the inn had grown. Gabe used to have an office next to it, but the walls had been taken down to make room for a bigger industrial oven and dishwasher. The windows in the far corner revealed the jet-black night and the tiny pinpricks of stars over the mountains. Josie set the plates down on the stainless steel table where she’d tried and failed to learn how to bake. It was where she’d helped plan the area school lunches. It’s where she and Helen had eaten a million pieces of cold pizza and giggled about boys.

It’s where she’d fallen in love.

And had her heart broken.

Where is he? she’d asked the morning after her graduation. Sick to her stomach and shaky, and so humiliated her bones hurt. She couldn’t see straight. Alice had given her coffee, but it made everything worse.

He’s gone, Max had said.

Where?

We don’t know, Alice had snapped. Her eyes were red, too, and she was pissed. At Josie and Max.