Christmas at the Riverview Inn

A purposeful life.

And a love that could survive everything that got thrown at it.

The great curveball that fate had thrown her way was that she really believed she’d met that person when she was just a kid.

An hour later Max, Dom, and Josie were headed out into the woods to find a Christmas tree. Mom had loaned Josie some boots and a thick winter coat after determining that what Josie had brought from the city was not enough. She was grateful for the boots. And the coat was one of those long ones that went down to her ankles like a giant sleeping bag.

“We need two trees,” Max said.

“For what?” Dom asked. He was in the back seat, hood up, head against door, eyes closed. He’d woken up about ten minutes ago and looked like he could go right back to sleep. God. To be a teenager again. Josie was lucky if she got five good hours a night.

“Well, son,” Max said, glancing in the rearview mirror as they bounced over the uneven dirt road. “Not sure if you noticed, but we don’t have a tree up in our place, either.”

“We don’t?” Dom asked, cracking one eye.

Max and Josie shared a laughing look. Dom was fourteen, and unless it was food or hockey related, he didn’t seem to notice it.

“How’s school?” Josie asked her brother, reaching back to shake his knee.

“Fine.” He shifted out of the way. “How is New York City?”

“Amazing. You should come visit me.”

Dom opened one eye again. “For real?”

“For real,” Josie said. Dom could use a little New York in his life. And it had been a very long time since she’d spent any time with him, one on one. The perils of being born so many years apart. They were like strangers who looked alike.

“Hold on,” Max said. “The two of you running around New York City unchaperoned—”

“Max, I’m twenty-four.”

“And I’m fourteen.”

“You’re not helping, Dom.” Josie laughed at her brother, who grinned at her.

“I’d love to come. We could see a Rangers game.”

“Well, I was thinking maybe a Broadway show. Go to some museums.”

“And then a Rangers game. And a hot dog. From a cart.”

“Oh my god, Alice would die,” Josie said. They bounced down a gravel road covered with snow, heading deeper into the forest. Boughs of pine trees slapped against the sides of the truck.

“What we eat in New York, stays in New York,” Dom said.

“Particularly if it’s street meat,” Max said.

“How is hockey?” Josie asked, having put off the only question that really mattered in her brother’s life.

He perked right up, and for the next ten minutes Josie got a rundown on hockey stuff she barely understood—but looking at her brother’s happy, smiling face was more than enough information.

“Okay, okay,” she said. “We’ll go to a Rangers game.”

“I want to come too,” Max said.

“You’re not invited.”

He pretended to be aghast. But she knew he was thrilled. He and Mom worried about the two of them being born so far apart and never being able to figure out their common ground.

“How is the city treating you?” Max asked.

She laughed. “Like it doesn’t know I’m there? How is a city supposed to treat me?”

He glanced over, his eyes smiling. “Just making sure you still like it.”

What she liked about it she didn’t get to experience much anymore. When she was younger there had always been something new to see. Something completely different. Fun. Neighborhoods and markets. Book readings and Off-Off-Broadway plays. Museums. She even used to do those walking tours, visiting historic crime scenes. Or those food tours through Chinatown. She’d jumped into all of it.

“I’m just really busy,” she said, looking out the window. Max let it go.

Finally, they stopped, surrounded by snow and pine trees. The sky was slate gray above them. The trees so green they were nearly black. “All right,” he said. “We need a ten-footer for the lodge and a smaller one for our house. I’ve got—”

“That one and that one,” Dom said, pointing out two different trees, one on each side of the truck.

“You think that’s ten feet?’ Max asked, looking out the window.

“Measure it, but it’s ten feet.” Dom got out of the truck.

Josie looked at Max who could only shrug. “It’s weird, and I don’t know how we can make money on it, but he’s always right about this stuff.”

“It’s too bad you can’t sell him to the carnival.” Josie said.

“You might be on to something. The incredible sleeping, measuring, eating teenage boy.”

“Come see him with your own eyes as he guesses how tall you are and then eats your weight in peanut butter sandwiches.”

“I can hear you!” Dom yelled from outside the truck.

Josie laughed and Max patted her hand. “It’s good to have you home.”

It was, in that moment, incredibly good to be home.

Josie, unused to any kind of outside labor, much less chopping down trees, immediately got a palmful of blisters and Dom, having pulled off his hoodie, got pine sap in his hair.