Their First Noel (11 page)

A
ndy spent the next two hours tracking down the painters, dealing with their mistake, arguing with them when they said they couldn't come out to start his job until tomorrow and then looking at countless paint samples in almost imperceptibly differing shades of blue. Corrie sat on a stool in the paint store and stared at her phone. It was not her most productive morning.

Andy hated seeing her like this, this woman he'd seen chase after whatever she wanted—from a popover to a whole new life perspective—with joy and determination. He wished he understood her sudden bout of wishy-washiness. She had her goal within reach at last. She just needed to call her mother and confirm that she had the right name, just so she didn't bother some poor local family with her claim, then contact the mayor to find out how to reach her father. She just needed to get up her courage and follow through. Simple as that.

Simple as picking out a color for an inn you'd devoted every waking hour of the last year to completing. He winced, then glanced over at her and lifted up the two paint samples in his hands. “Blue or bluer?”

“The bluest.” She slumped against the counter, her chin in her hand.

“The color for the dining room.” He walked over to her and showed her the samples again, hoping to stir her out of her funk by giving her a chance to do what she seemed to love most—meddle in his business.

Her face did brighten up a bit. “You're going to let me choose the color for the dining room at the Snowy Eaves Inn?”

“Whoa. I didn't say I'd let you choose. It's still my baby, you know, but I would like your input.” He meant that. She had good taste and a vested interest in the old inn.

“Can't let anyone else do a job that you had on your ‘to-do' list, right?” She sort of smiled as she said it, but didn't give off the feeling she actually found any humor in her observation.

“Blue or bluer?” he asked again.

“My mom said I wasn't going to find what I was looking for in a museum or a photograph. I realize now, it's not even in a name.” She rubbed the pad of her thumb lightly along the edge of her cell phone, frowned and looked off into space. “Maybe the truth is that I don't even know what I'm looking for, and until I do, I'm never going to find my way.”

He'd only made the offer as a subtle way of helping her. But what had ever been subtle about Corrie Bennington? He tossed the paint samples down on to the counter, anchored himself directly in front of her and folded his arms. “Look, you want my opinion?”

She barely looked up from the phone. “I thought you wanted mine.”

He took the phone from her and held it up like a lawyer offering a vital piece of evidence. “About that call you can't seem to make.”

“Yeah, sure. Why not?” She snatched the phone away from him and sighed. “But I think I already know what you're going to say.”

“Oh, you do, do you?”

“Same advice you've been giving me since I got here. Make a plan. Get things in their proper order, maybe even write up some notes for the conversation. Then just stay on track, don't let anything or anyone throw me off course.”

“Actually, I—”

“And you know, you're right.”

“I am?”

“Yes. You're right and I… I'm all wrong.” She shook her head and met his gaze at last. “I've been going at this from all directions. Thinking every new avenue, every new person I met might just have something important to add. Hoping that if I kept my eyes, my ears, my heart, my options open I'd stumble on my answers eventually.”

“That doesn't sound ‘all wrong' to me, Corrie.” In fact, the things she was beating herself up over were some of the very things he found most endearing in her.

“You're sweet to say it, but really, I can see now I've just been spinning my wheels. If I had listened to my mother to begin with, I'd have accepted that I have only myself to rely on. I'd have demanded she give me all the information I needed and probably found the man without all this gingerbread inn, wasting your time,
decorating bandstands and cutting down Christmas trees nonsense.”

“I never said you wasted my time.” He wanted that made very clear.

“Well, then, let's not waste any more of it. Pick a color.” She tapped the counter, missing the two samples Andy had selected and landing on a pamphlet of heritage colors with a blue wall on the cover. “We have ornaments, marshmallows and Christmas-pageant-costume supplies to get. That's what we came here for, that's the plan. Let's stick to it.”

She marched off toward the door, leaving Andy to pick up the decorating pamphlet, peer closely at it then hand it to the man waiting to fill his paint-mixing order. “Four gallons of whatever color this is.”

“It's all a matter of sorting things out and getting them done now. Shopping? Tick.” She made a check mark in the air as she strode out the door. “Gingerbread contest entry? Tick. Phone calls to Mom, Ellie Walker, my father? Tick, tick, tick. No wild goose chases that lead nowhere. No more living in a fog like a kid who thinks that there's some wonderful place where she could go and find her answers. I had my answers, Andy. My mom and
you
were right all along.”

The minute they got back into his truck, Corrie began to lay out a strategy. They'd go to a big discount store where they could get everything they needed in one place, return to pick up the cans of newly mixed paint and get back in Hadleyville in time for Andy to pick Greer up from school.

Andy couldn't have laid it all out better himself. That should have pleased him but seeing her like this, so
focused on the goal and keeping one foot in front of the other to get to that goal kind of made him want to fog up her glasses and see if she wouldn't rather go try to find a civic club luncheon to crash.

“We can get this done faster if I gather the grocery items, you pick out the Christmas ornaments then we meet in the craft department to get what we need for Greer's costume.” She breezed in and grabbed a shopping cart.

Andy had to hustle to catch up with her. “What? You're in too big a hurry to stop and make that poor elderly greeter your new bff? Or at least ask him if there's a lady's sewing circle meeting today that you can crash for the homemade pie?”

She gave him a sidelong look. “I don't have time for that now, Andy.”

“Don't have time for pie or…jokes?” he asked quietly as she pushed purposefully on past him. She didn't answer.

His cell phone rang and she called out behind her without breaking stride, “Meet me in the craft section in ten minutes.”

He watched her walk away and somehow even the way she carried off that pink coat and those chunky boots had changed. It was an act. He realized that. But still, an act born of pain and embarrassment. She could have found her father anytime, if she had been willing to accept her mother's bitter life view. Instead, she followed her own heart and where had it gotten her?

Here. It had gotten her here. It had gotten her to the Snowy Eaves Inn. It had gotten her to him. How could
Andy
not
be a bit sad to see her deny the part of her that did all that?

He cleared his throat and answered the phone as she disappeared from sight behind an oversized candy-cane-framed sign promising “Christmas savings on the things you need now.”

Ten minutes later he strained to read the overhead signs searching for the craft section in the huge, brightly lit store. When he couldn't readily find it, he just began looking aisle by aisle through the bundled up shoppers for that familiar coat and boots.

“Nope. No. Uh-uh. Not…” He pulled up short, turned and went back two steps. Hands on hips he shook his head at what he saw. “Okay, I understand taking off your coat and tossing it in the cart, but where are your boots, young lady?”

“You like?” She stepped out into the aisle, placed one toe out and rolled her ankle.

Andy couldn't admire the bright white athletic shoe on her foot without taking in the view of Corrie head to toe. He'd grown too used to seeing her in her padded coat, shapeless boots, winter scarf, even that wraparound bib apron that practically enveloped her when she worked in his kitchen. He hadn't realized how tiny she was, almost fragile, it seemed.

He'd never thought of her that way but looking at her with her boots and her coat in a cart looking like every other woman in the store…

“Why?” he asked.

She shrugged one shoulder to downplay it all and looked at the floor. “It's not going to snow while I'm
here. It's time I accepted that. These shoes are practical. Don't you like them?”

He had liked her unfounded optimism. He had liked her being ready for her dreams to come true. The idea that she was now ready to kick all that to the curb, and wearing sensible shoes while she did it? He didn't like that one bit. He came to her and said softly, “I liked your boots.”

She smiled up at him. “But these are for ‘what is,' not for ‘what if.'”

“But, Corrie…”

“You didn't get any ornaments?” She adjusted her glasses, giving him a stern look.

“I, uh, no…the call took longer than… It was the dispatcher at the company where we bought the reclaimed wood flooring.”

“Problem?” She moved back behind the shopping cart and rolled it along, scrutinizing the shelves piled with glue and felt and beads and more.

“No. Actually, they plan to load our order up tomorrow and send it out Wednesday. We should have it by the weekend. We may have to point every fan in Hadleyville on to them to get the varnish to dry in time, but the floors should be installed and ready for guests by the open house on Christmas Eve.”

“Great!” She paused to pick up two large jars of glitter. “Score another point for taking things on yourself and sticking with the program until you get results. Which do you think? Silver or diamond dust?”

“Honestly, Corrie, I think—”

“You're right. I said I'd do Greer's costume myself, that makes it my choice. I'll take them both.” She
clunked them into the basket. “So, I've got the new shoes, the replacement marshmallows and some candy canes and cinnamon sticks to put on the tree. Now all I need is some poster board and we can be on our way. What about you?”

He needed a great deal more than anything he could find in a superstore, he thought. In that instant, he recalled the prayer he had uttered the night Corrie showed up on his doorstep. He had asked the Lord for help.

Just a few days later, the final details for the inn had begun to fall into place. It actually looked like he might make the Christmas Eve deadline for the open house. On top of that, he'd shown Corrie how to fix her entry in the gingerbread house contest. And as of today, she not only knew her father's name, but had a lead on one of his—of her—relatives who could bring them together. Taking all that into account, it seemed like Andy had everything he needed and more.

He looked into the basket and then at Corrie. “Maybe we should get a few ornaments, just in case Mom doesn't get home tomorrow, for Greer.”

“Okay, then.” She gave a quick nod and wheeled the cart right by him. “We'll do that but you two are on your own to hang them up. I want to go back to my hotel room and do some research online with the new name I have for my dad. I don't expect anything new to turn up, but I should cover all the bases. If he really is the mayor's nephew, he doesn't even live in Vermont anymore, so I can backburner that until I've done what I came here to do, represent my mom's bakery in the gingerbread house contest.”

“And see snow,” he called out after her.

“I can't see it snowing, Andy. I just have to accept the way things are and keep my eyes on the prize.”

“I thought the things you can't see with your eyes
were
the prize,” he murmured as she walked away.

“W
here's the sparkle? You promised sparkle.” Greer's black dress shoes scuffed over the lobby's concrete floor as she twisted around to try to look at her cardboard-cutout wings.

“First things first, sweetie. I have to get them on and make sure they'll stay put and not droop.” Corrie chewed on her lower lip.

Yesterday she might well have covered the wings in glitter as soon as she was happy with their shape and size and then worried about whether they worked for the costume. It would have been messier that way, and more fun. And it would have made Greer's eyes light up when she tried on the simple but adorable costume that Corrie had managed to whip up with another spare white sheet, some golden tinsel garland and poster board. But this way was better, she told herself. “Once we get the kinks worked out we can—”

Greer did another spin.

“Honey, you have to stand still.”

“But I feel prettier when I twirl. Don't you think twirling is the best, Corrie?”

“We don't have time for twirling right now, no matter how pretty it makes you feel or what I think of it.”

For the record, Corrie did think twirling was the best but clearly the things she thought were best didn't get her anywhere. Greer was right that all the sparkle had gone out of this whole costume bit, and Corrie didn't mean the glitter. She hung her head and sighed.

“Knock it off, kid. You're like a puppy chasing its tail.” Andy came from the dining room into the lobby wiping paint off his hands with a rag. “Let Corrie do her job.”

Corrie sat back on her heels. “That's as good as it's going to get for now. Go upstairs and take this off, sweetie, you can put it back on when we get to the church for the rehearsal.”

“Oh, man, the rehearsal!” Andy scrunched his eyes shut tight and smacked his forehead with one open hand. “I forgot all about that. When do we need to leave?”

Greer and Corrie shared a look then both broke out giggling. Corrie pushed up from the floor, went to him and took the rag from his grasp. “We need to leave as soon as we get you cleaned up.”

Greer scampered on upstairs.

“Aww, no.” Andy raised his hand to the exact same spot where he'd left a streak of pale blue paint. “I didn't…”

“You did.” She had to go up on tiptoe to reach his forehead, especially without the added oomph of her thick-soled boots. But if she rested one hand on his shoulder and stretched… “There. All better.”

“I've said it before, Corrie, you do make everything around here better,” he said quietly as he took the rag from her hand.

She lowered her feet to the floor. Another time, another circumstance, if she had stood this close to Andy and he had said that, Corrie doubted if her feet would touch the ground for days afterward. “Thanks.”

“I only wish it were that easy to make it
all
better.” He shut his eyes and his head shook slightly.

She studied his face for a moment. He had dark circles under his eyes and a grim set to his lips that he hadn't had when they had gone out to cut down the tree. “Problems?”

He leaned forward to put his mouth near her ear and whisper, “Got a text from Mom. Flights delayed. No details. Greer is going to be so disappointed.”

“Oh, no.” Corrie angled her shoulders back so she could meet his gaze. “What can I do to help?”

“You're doing it. Keeping Greer busy, making the costume. I can't tell you how much it means to me.” He looked into her eyes.

Corrie pressed her lips together. Her head felt light and that lightness radiated through her arms and legs right down into her fingertips and toes. One more word from Andy…the right words…if he'd only ask her to stay. It wasn't part of the plan, of course. But if he would show the slightest inclination to change his plans…

“It means a lot to
us,
” he corrected. “We'll never forget your kindness this week.”

“Yeah.” Corrie inched backward, her hand slipping from Andy's shoulder. Before her decision yesterday to not follow every whim, she might have pressed him for
more. Might have even told him outright that she was open to helping out beyond this one week.

She took a deep breath as the conflict between the things she had decided to be true and the things she had always believed clashed within her.
You are on your own. You can always find a friend to help you along the way. Order brings results. You have to be flexible. She would never see Andy McFarland again after this weekend. She would see Andy everyday for the rest of her life in her dreams of what might have been.

“Ready to get going?” Greer bounded down the stairs with her costume under her arm.

“Yes, it is time we moved on,” Corrie said.

“I'll get my coat and my keys.”

The rehearsal went smoothly. Well, as smoothly as any rehearsal involving a dozen kids in costume on the eve of a big chance to show off just one week before Christmas could go.

Corrie had stayed to watch over Greer. She wanted to see how the costume held up and get pointers on possible additions or adaptations from seeing the rest of the getups. And she did all that. She also avoided going grocery shopping with Andy.

Grocery shopping seemed like such a mundane thing, but walking through the store at his side, in the town where he grew up, where her
father
had grown up? It hinted at a sense of normalcy and belonging that weren't Corrie's to claim. She didn't belong anywhere. She never had.

That's what had brought her to the Snowy Eaves Inn. That's what she had been looking for all along. That's why she had chosen to spend time with the wonderful
people in Hadleyville rather than press them for info on her father. It was why she had stayed open to every possibility rather than lay out a set course and strive toward a practical goal. She had been hoping for something too wonderful.

She had been searching, not for a father or the right way to fit into her mom's work or even a snowfall to make her happy…she had been looking for a home.

It wasn't going to be Hadleyville, Vermont. Her father didn't live here. Her mother didn't live here. Andy wasn't going to ask her to stay here.

When the rehearsal ended and the children poured out of the church on to stone steps, Corrie tramped out in her plain no-name athletic shoes and splashed down in a big puddle of icy, mucky water. She grimaced and looked upward. “Rain?”

Greer squealed, pulled her coat up over her head and ran toward the street where Andy's truck sat. He flung open the passenger-side door for them.

Corrie sighed and started down the steps, muttering, “I thought for sure it would have snowed by now.”

“Don't worry. Weatherman promises we'll be knee deep in the white stuff by Christmas,” a woman said as she propelled her two children toward the curb.

“I'll be long gone by Christmas,” she answered even though the family had already whisked past her.

She slouched in the seat next to Greer.

“Rehearsal that bad?” Andy asked, guiding the truck into the road.

She managed a laugh. “I'm a baker not a seamstress. The costume took longer than I expected and I still have to glitter the wings.”

“And she's going to use lots of glitter,” Greer insisted.

Corrie tried to calculate how long that would take, then leaned the side of her head against the cold glass of the window. “I just thought I'd have more done by this time today, what with doing things your way now.”

“Yeah. Maybe I didn't mention that my way doesn't always mean a fast track.” He chuckled and pointed the truck toward Mt. Piney. “But it's rocking and rolling now so how about you work on your contest entry while I make us all dinner?”

Forty-five minutes later Corrie had put the costume away, assured Greer that she'd decorate the wings before she left tonight then settled into the kitchen at long last. She had begun the process of making fondant when Greer came bounding in with her sock monkey wrapped in a bit of scrap sheet and a pair of cardboard wings taped to its back.

She set the toy aside and climbed on a stool next to Corrie. “What's that for?”

Corrie worked over the soft, pliant fondant and explained what she intended to do with it and that they'd have to let it rest before shaping it into snowdrifts and so on. “The real thing that has me worried is that before I can do anything else, I have to cover the entire roof with these little chocolate wafer candies. I brought as many as I could from home hoping I'd find some more here, but since I didn't, I can't afford to make even one itty-bitty mistake.”

That from the queen of mistakes of all sizes. Her penchant for flying by the seat of her pants had come around to bite her yet again. She took out her frustration
kneading the fondant. She was in such a rotten mood today. Maybe she should just chuck it all for tonight, go back to her hotel and work extra hard tomorrow.

“Painters finished the primer coat. Once they've gotten all the work around the trim, they're going to call it a day.” Andy came in and went straight to the sink to wash his hands. “So that leaves me free to get dinner on the table.”

“Corrie is going to use chocolate candy for the roof of her inn, Andy,” Greer reported.

“Hey, that's a cool idea. If we ever get a leak in our roof, I'll remember that.” He dried his hands on a kitchen towel then motioned for his sister. “Why don't you come over here, Greer, where you can hand me the ingredients for the casserole.”

“Where I can't reach the gingerbread house and mess it up is more like it,” Greer grumbled, wriggling down off the stool and going to Andy's side. “Man, you drop one snow globe and nobody trusts you, never again.”

“We trust you, short stuff, just not with things that can't be easily fixed that have to be done by a certain time.” Andy handed the girl two cans of condensed soup and pointed her toward the can opener. “I trust you with our dinner, if that's any consolation.”

She rolled her eyes and promptly dropped a can of soup on his foot.

He let out a yelp and hopped around for a second before he gave Corrie a grin and a wink much to Greer's delight.

“Construction boots. Steel toes.” He bent down and handed the dented can to Greer. “Now you see
why you're on casserole duty and not going near that gingerbread house.”

Corrie started to tell him that she didn't mind if Greer worked on the piece. Before she could, the whirr of the can opener cut her off.

Andy put one hand on the counter to create an intimate zone between them, lowered his head and said, “I want you to know I haven't forgotten about your snow globe. I said I'd figure out a way to make it right and I will.”

The things Corrie wanted set right, Andy couldn't fix. He couldn't make up for all the conflicts stirring around in her about her father. He couldn't, and
wouldn't,
even if he could, tell her that her mother was wrong and Corrie should rely on faith and hope and friendship along with her own wits to get by. But when she looked up at his kind, handsome face?

She wanted to believe him. She wanted to allow herself to rely on him, to trust without cynicism. She mustered a fragile smile and met his gaze, so close that she could see the reddish tint to the tips of his eyelashes. “You don't have to worry about it, really.”

The can opener went silent.

“I'm not worried.” He stood up straight and folded his arms. “I'll get it done.”

Corrie pressed her lips together and nodded. If she had tried to speak she'd have lost her voice and probably found herself blinking away the tears. She wanted her world to be the way it was the day she first arrived here. She wanted…

“Soup's ready,” Greer called out over the bang and
clatter of cabinet doors opening and shutting. “What can I open next? Sardines? Coffee? Baked beans?”

“Better take care of this.” He gave her a nod then turned to deal with Greer.

Corrie hunkered down over her project and began carefully laying out the chocolate wafers so as not to waste a one.

When Andy and Greer finished assembling the casserole, he went to the school backpack in the corner of the kitchen and handed it to her, knowing she had a reading assignment that she could just finish before dinner was ready. As the child got down to that he came over to inspect Corrie's progress.

“Nice work.” He moved close in behind her then around to the side. “You see any room for real-world application with this method?”

“Is that renovation contractor speak for ‘can you do some work around this place'?” She dipped her finger in a glass of lukewarm water and smoothed down a bead of icing before delicately pressing another wafer in place.

“No.” He dipped his own finger into the icing bowl and then took a taste. “That is guy-standing-around-with-nothing-to-do speak for ‘maybe this would go faster if you had a guy who has actually been on the roof of the Snowy Eaves Inn sticking those wafer things on on the other side'.”

She looked up at him and smiled. “Very precise work to get the layers just like this. Think you can handle it?”

He adjusted his sleeves, which were already pushed up from cooking, then waggled his fingers like a street
performer preparing to carry out an intricate sleight of hand. “Watch and learn.”

Andy worked steadily away on one side of the roof while Corrie worked on the other. They didn't speak much. She could have chalked that up to concentration or even the weariness of the day or her anxious mood. But in truth, every time she raised her head to share a thought or witty remark or launch into a story about baking or Greer or what she hoped to do about the whole father-finding situation, she'd look at him working away and end up sighing. Just sighing.

What a nice guy. Strong guy. Take-charge guy. Why did he have to live a thousand miles away? It didn't seem fair. She wondered if those very thoughts had gone through her mother's mind all those years ago when she met Wallace James.