Shadows on a Maine Christmas (Antique Print Mystery Series Book 7) (2 page)

Will had his hands full. She hadn’t thought about details like snow.

“One positive change, though,” he added, smiling at her. “The bedroom you used in August is still the guest bedroom, but with Aunt Nettie downstairs…my dear, you have your choice.”

“You mean,” she said, coyly, “you’re offering to give me your bedroom while I’m visiting?”

“In no way,” he said, reaching out, and stroking her hand, now well-warmed from hot chocolate, cognac, and his presence. “I’m offering to share. After all, Maine nights can get wicked cold.”

“So I’ve heard,” Maggie replied, as seriously as she could manage under the circumstances. “That would be the more practical plan, now, wouldn’t it?”

“And you and I have always been two uncommonly practical people,” he said, standing and pulling her up toward him.

A Winter Morning—Shovelling Out.
Wood engraving by Winslow Homer (1836–1910), major American nineteenth-century artist, for newspaper
Every Saturday
, January 14, 1871. Three members of family outside their snow-covered home standing in a path perhaps four feet deep. The two men are digging with wooden shovels; the woman is throwing seeds or crumbs to birds on top of the drifted snow. 9 x 11.75 inches. Price: $400.

Maggie woke
to the smells of Will’s aftershave on the pillow beside her and coffee brewing downstairs. She glanced at the clock on the bedside table. Eight-thirty.

She hadn’t asked when he and Aunt Nettie usually got up in the morning. She stretched and smiled. Somehow, the subject hadn’t come up.

But he hadn’t been kidding about cool temperatures. Her toes were warm under several blankets and a quilt, but her nose was definitely frosty. She sat up and pulled the quilt around her. Good; her duffel was by the door. Will must have brought it upstairs this morning. She didn’t remember them thinking of it last night. Reluctantly she put her feet on the chilly pine-plank floor. Time to get going.

Downstairs, she found Aunt Nettie happily dunking a sugar cookie in a mug of coffee and nibbling the edges. “Good morning, Maggie. If all your cookies are as good as the ones I’ve tasted this morning, I’ll have to ask for your recipes.”

“More hot chocolate this morning, or your usual Diet Pepsi?” Will asked after a quick hug.

“Hot chocolate is tempting…but with all the calories in holiday cooking, I think I’d better start out with Diet Pepsi,” said Maggie, moving toward a heating vent on the floor. “It is chilly this morning, though.” Despite her turtleneck, wool sweater, and jeans she was shivering.

“You’ll get used to it,” Will assured her. “I’ll turn the heat up a bit until you do. We keep it at sixty during the day.”

“Sixty?” she managed to choke out. “Fahrenheit?”

“At night I turn it down a few degrees,” he added, obliviously. “You wouldn’t believe what it costs to heat this place.”

“What’s the temperature outside?”

“Last time I looked it was almost zero,” Will said. “Early weather report said it hit nine below in Portland last night. So it’ll be a good day to cut our tree. Supposed to get up to twenty or so, and not much wind. It’s the wind that’ll get you.” He looked over at Maggie. “You did say you’d brought boots?”

“They’re in the van. With my hat and scarf and gloves. I knew I was coming to Maine.” I just didn’t know I’d need all that gear inside the house, she thought, pulling the sleeves of her sweater down over her hands.

“Then you’re set. Cheddar-and-parsley omelet okay? After that, while I’m getting out the saw and the sled, you can unpack. We’ll head over to the Straits’ and look at trees in the middle of the morning, when it’s a little warmer.”

Maggie nodded. “An omelet sounds good. You have our day all planned.”

“I have lots of plans for your visit,” Will continued as he reached for the eggs and cheese. “We’ll be home in time to get lunch, and then we can put the tree up while Aunt Nettie rests, and decorate it later tonight, or tomorrow. After the branches thaw. But first—three omelets coming up.”

“You haven’t eaten?”

“We didn’t want our guest to eat alone,” added Aunt Nettie, who was munching on another cookie.

Maggie looked from the half-empty pot of coffee on the stove to the cookie crumbs on the plate. “When do you usually get up?”

“Depends,” said Aunt Nettie. “I wake up about five, but I wait for Will to come and help me get out of bed. He’s a late sleeper. Some days he doesn’t come downstairs until six-thirty or so, do you, Will?”

“You’ve got me pretty well trained now,” Will replied, raising his eyebrows behind her back. “Once in a while I sleep a bit later. If I do, Aunt Nettie rings her cowbell to wake me up, don’t you?”

They both laughed. Maggie managed a smile. They’d been up for hours, waiting for her. This was not going to be a lazy Christmas vacation lying in bed.

Aunt Nettie picked up the last cookie from the plate in the center of the table. “We mustn’t gobble all of Maggie‘s cookies. They’ll be wonderful refreshments for my party.”

“Your party?” Will turned around from the bowl he was stirring. “What party?”

“You just finish those eggs, Will, and I’ll tell you both. I wasn’t sure about it, but with the two of you here to help, well, I think it’ll be fine. And, after all, it’s my turn. I can’t very well not have it this year, can I?”

The kitchen was silent for a moment.

“What can I do, Will?” Maggie asked.

“Why don’t you put plates on the table,” he said. “I already have bread warming in the oven. You remember Borealis, the bakery you liked when you were here last summer? I got a loaf of their onion rye yesterday, so it’s still fresh. You could get that out and slice it.”

“Yum!” Maggie complied, easily remembering where everything was in the kitchen. She had butter and a board of warm sliced bread on the table before Will served the omelets.

“Delicious, Will,” said Aunt Nettie. “Maggie should come to visit more often. Our breakfasts aren’t this elegant every day.”

“That’s because every morning you ask for oatmeal with blueberries,” said Will, a bit tartly. “If you’d like eggs some days, I’d be happy to cook eggs.”

Aunt Nettie only ate a little of her omelet, Maggie noted, but she did eat a slice of bread and butter. Wonderful fresh bread, as she’d remembered. She had two pieces, and found it hard to resist taking a third. So she didn’t.

As soon as they’d cleared the plates and refilled the coffee mugs (for Will and his aunt) and the cola glass (for Maggie), Will sat back down.

“Now, Aunt Nettie. What’s this about a party?”

“Every year the girls and I have a little Christmas gathering, just ourselves, before any family gatherings any of us might have. We take turns being hostess. And this is my year.” Aunt Nettie turned to Maggie. “It’s not a fancy shindig. And it’s gotten smaller every year, sadly. This year, of course, we’ll be missing Susan.”

Last summer Susan Newall’s death had set off a chain of events that had led to a murder, and to Aunt Nettie’s stroke. But the death of her friend had been the hardest part for Aunt Nettie.

“Our Christmas party’s a tradition with us, and I wouldn’t like it to end when it’s my time to pour the wine and put out nice things to eat.” She looked from Maggie to Will and then back to Maggie again. “Friends are so important, and old friends are the most important of all, especially when you don’t know how much time you’ll have with them.”

“Who are ‘the girls’?” asked Maggie.

Will answered. “Aunt Nettie, you mean the friends you used to go out to dinner with sometimes, or to the movies? The ones you grew up with here in Waymouth.”

“We did a great deal more than that together over the years,” Aunt Nettie said. “We shared our lives in ways you wouldn’t understand. But only four of us are left now. Ruth Weston and Betty Hoskins—they’re sisters, Maggie, and they live together. Betty’s doing poorly, but I’d hope Ruth could still bring her. And Doreen Strait. You’ve met her son, Nicky, who’s a state trooper. Doreen’s mother, Mary, used to be one of our group, but she was sickly, and Doreen took care of her for years, and brought her to our gatherings, so when Mary died we kept including Doreen. She’s the youngest of us.” Aunt Nettie counted on her fingers. “So it would be three people coming, to share a little wine or tea and maybe a few of these nice cookies. Perhaps we could get a box of that fancy ribbon candy or make plates of little tea sandwiches. The kind with the crusts cut off that are so elegant? I love those. And they’re easy to eat when you’ve got dentures, too.”

Will pushed his chair back a little.

Maggie avoided looking at him. “We’d be happy to help you host your party, Aunt Nettie. It sounds like fun. And the tree will be up soon, and the house decorated so everything looks very Christmassy. When did you have in mind?”

Aunt Nettie hesitated. “We can’t wait too long. Ruth and Betty often have family coming to visit over the holidays and we’d want the party before then. What about two days from now, at about four in the afternoon? Will that give you two enough time to get the tree ready and do the shopping?”

Will nodded. “Two days it is. Call your friends and invite them and write up a menu. We’ll take care of the food and drinks. You don’t have to worry about anything, Aunt Nettie.”

“Thank you. So much.” Aunt Nettie looked from Will to Maggie and back again. “It’s going to be the best Christmas this old house has had in years. I just feel it.”

Gathering Christmas Greens.
1870 black-and-white wood engraving for
Harper’s Weekly
by Felix Octavius Carr Darley (1822–1888). Darley was a well-known nineteenth-century illustrator and artist. He was the first illustrator of Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” illustrated James Fenimore Cooper’s works, and worked for Edgar Allan Poe’s journal,
The Stylus
. This illustration shows several men pulling a cut Christmas tree toward a horse-cart already loaded with trees and greens. 9 x 12 inches. Price: $70.

An hour after
breakfast they were headed north along a lightly traveled road, a two-person saw, ropes, and a sled in the trunk of Aunt Nettie’s small blue car.

“How far is Nick’s house from town?” asked Maggie. They’d briefly discussed taking Maggie’s van, until Will had seen that the back was still packed with the tables, racks, table covers, and portable wire walls she’d used at her last antiques show.

“It seemed such a pain to unpack all that stuff,” Maggie admitted. “And I knew I was heading into snow country. They say it’s good to weigh down your rear end so you don’t skid.”

Will glanced at her rear end admiringly. “I’d say there’s just the right amount there,” he commented with a straight face, giving her a swat on the mentioned area before she reached over and lightly punched his arm. “Nick lives a couple of miles north of here.”

“We weren’t going to get a twenty-foot tree anyway, were we?” Maggie asked, pretending to ignore him. “The living room isn’t that big.”

“No. Especially if we’re going to leave room for company. And presents. Santa might visit, you know, so we should leave space under the tree.”

“So. How much land does Nick have?”

“I’m not sure. He’s lived in the same place his whole life. They don’t farm it themselves anymore, the way his grandparents did, but they lease a couple of fields out to a neighbor for haying.”

“‘They’? I didn’t know Nick was married,” said Maggie.

“He’s not,” said Will. “Hasn’t been in years. He lives with his mother, Aunt Nettie’s friend Doreen, and his daughter, Zelda.” He shot a sideways look at her. “He’s a single parent. His wife left Zelda with him after they’d only been married a few months.”

“I never knew that,” said Maggie. She’d met Nick several times, and knew he was Will’s closest friend in Maine. No one ever mentioned he had a daughter.

“Guess it never came up. Every time you’ve met Nick he’s been investigating a murder. Not exactly on-the-job conversation.”

“So his mother helps him take care of Zelda.”

“Yup. Always has. She was a nurse, like her mother before her, but gave it up to stay home with Zelda so Nick could go to college and become a state trooper.”

“And he never married again? I’m surprised. He’s a good-looking guy.”

“I never noticed. Besides, marriage takes more than good looks.”

“Usually divorced guys with young children remarry pretty fast.”

“I don’t know about that. But come to think of it, I don’t remember Nick’s ever dating anyone after Emily.” He reached over and patted Maggie’s leg. “Never found the right girl, I guess. Or maybe he’s been too busy between his job and his family to look very hard. He and his mom are pretty close. And from what I hear, Zelda’s been a bit of a handful recently. He can use all the help he can get.”

“How old is she?”

“Seventeen, eighteen. Senior in high school. Old enough to give Nick headaches.”

What kind of headaches? Typical teenage-angst headaches? Drug or alcohol or boyfriend problems? Maggie wanted to ask. But single parents with problems? Probably on the “too sensitive to discuss” list now. Before she could figure out a way to bring the subject up delicately, Will turned into a narrow side road that hadn’t been well plowed.

“Nick’s probably working today, and Zelda’ll be at school. His mom might be in the house, but Nick told her we’d be by. We’ll park by the barn and take off for the woods. He said to take any tree we wanted.” Will parked the car in a wide plowed area along the ell, the series of small connected rooms between the barn and the small farmhouse. “Here we are.”

He tied the saw onto the sled and picked up the sled’s rope.

“Where’s the path?”

He grinned. “You’re in Maine, m’dear. We’ll make our own path. Not to worry. We don’t have to go far.” He pointed past the barn at trees that edged an expanse of white. “The snow in the field may be over the top of your boots, but once we get into the woods it won’t be as deep.”

Maggie turned her coat’s collar up and tied her scarf tighter. “It’s cold.”

“The trees’ll block most of the gusts in the woods. Let’s go, city girl!” He smiled down at her. “I’ll go first with the sled to break a trail.”

Maggie’d imagined a romantic walk along paths lined with snow-covered pine trees. Instead, she followed Will, slogging through knee-to-thigh-high snow drifts, getting colder and wetter at every step.

She was no wimp, she kept telling herself. But the snow was deeper than the top of the boots she’d thought perfectly adequate for a walk in the country. Plus, although she was following in Will’s larger footsteps, she was beginning to breathe heavily. Crossing an uneven field in knee-high snow wasn’t easy.

She focused on the woods. There’d be less snow in the woods. She wasn’t going to let on she was having trouble just walking across a field.

“Almost there!” he cheerfully called to her over his shoulder.

Thank goodness, she thought. Her nose was dripping, her face felt as sweaty as though she’d run a marathon, her hands were frozen in their gloves, and her feet were already sloshing in the melted snow inside her boots.

When Will finally stopped, she took a deep breath. True, the air was clear and smelled of pine, and the sky was clear Parrish blue, the color named after the artist Maxfield Parrish, who’d used it so lavishly. But it required all her energy to focus on the positives and not on her frozen feet and hands and the burning in her chest and thighs.

Will looked down at her. “Those drifts were pretty deep, even with me opening a path. Next time we go for a walk we should wear snowshoes.”

Next time? “I’m fine. Just need to catch my breath a little.”

“I can see that.” Will was clearly trying not to laugh. “Luckily, there are a lot of trees not far from here.”

“Good!”

He bent down and untied the saw on the sled. “Let’s leave the sled here. When we find our tree we’ll carry it back this far and then put it on the sled to pull it over the field.”

“How much further are the trees?”

“These,” Will gestured at the woods in front of them and to the sides, “are trees.”

“I mean—where are the trees we’re going to cut?”

“Oh? You meant
those
trees,” Will teased. “True, most of these are a little high for the living room.” He looked up at the thirty- to fifty-foot pines surrounding them. “These are the old-timers. Been here for decades. We’re probably looking for one about, oh, ten years old. We can trim the branches, here or at home, if the shape isn’t quite right, or we need to top it, or take a few inches off the bottom to fit in Aunt Netttie’s old Christmas tree stand.”

“Any other lessons? Before I freeze to death?”

“Well, I’m about six feet tall, so I’d say a tree a foot or so taller than I am would leave space for a stand at the bottom and a star at the top. How does that sound?”

“As though you’re ordering a suit or a car. I think we’re better off just walking and seeing if we can find a tree we like, no matter how tall or short or wide or narrow it is. One that has personality.”

“Okay. Personality. And a little over six feet tall.”

“So—onward! Now,” ordered Maggie. This could be is a test for our possible future life together, she thought as they started walking. Can we even agree on choosing a Christmas tree?

“When I was growing up in New Jersey I remember reading books about people cutting their own Christmas trees,” Maggie said, determined to let Will know she was enjoying what he’d planned. “I always envied them. It sounded so traditional.”

“Then I’m glad we’re doing this. Now you can cross it off your bucket list. I’ll admit I’ve only done it a half dozen times myself, when I’ve been in Maine for Christmas. When I lived in Buffalo we used to buy our tree at a lot, like you probably did.”

We.
That would have been Will and his wife. The wife he’d loved so much. The wife who had died because of an ectopic pregnancy.

They were silent long enough so they knew that’s what they were both thinking of. There was no way they were going to avoid their pasts, and their previous marriages. Christmas itself was entwined with memories.

“If we cut extra branches, we could use them to decorate the tops of the kitchen cabinets,” Maggie said. “Or make a centerpiece for Aunt Nettie’s party. You can’t have too many pine boughs around during the holidays.”

“You and Aunt Nettie can be in charge of decorating. I volunteer to put the lights on the tree.”

“Good. I hate having to untangle them and check all the bulbs and then make sure they’re distributed artistically on the tree. Tree lights are all yours!”

The trees in the woods were free spirits. They hadn’t been raised on a Christmas tree farm with plenty of space to spread their branches. None were perfect cone shapes. Branches had been trimmed by deer, slanted by storms, and pushed downward by heavy snows. In areas the sun reached, many had grown together, their branches woven between them into random paths for squirrels and birds.

“We’re probably going to put the tree in the corner of the living room,” said Maggie, wondering if they’d ever find a tree that was suitable. “So we only need one with branches good enough to decorate on one or two sides.”

“You’re probably right,” agreed Will reluctantly. “It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

A little further in, highlighted by a beam of sunlight, they found the tree they’d been looking for.

It was a smidgen taller than Will, and its branches weren’t too wide. One side had hardly any branches at all. And in one place its trunk made a short twist sideways before turning skyward again.

“I love it,” Maggie declared. “It has personality. And,” she added practically, “it won’t need much trimming.”

They hunkered down on each end of the two-person crosscut saw and began moving it rhythmically back and forth through the pine more easily than Maggie had anticipated. She and Will worked as well together sawing as they did setting up an antiques show booth.

Even adding a few lower branches from a nearby tree to use for decorating, it didn’t take long to get both the tree and the extra boughs to the sled, and then to the car.

As they were tying the trunk down over the tree a trim gray-haired woman wearing jeans, L.L. Bean boots, and a long knitted scarf over her sweater came out of the farmhouse to join them.

“Will! Good to see you! And this must be the much-spoken-of Maggie.”

“It is,” Will agreed. “Maggie, meet Nick’s mom, Mrs. Strait.”

“Will, at this point in life you might as well call me Doreen, same as your aunt Nettie does. I’ve known you practically your whole life. Nettie called to invite me to the girls’ Christmas party. Thank you both for helping her to host this year. It means a lot to her. To all of us, really.”

“It’s not a problem, Mrs. Strait. Um, Doreen. She just told us about it this morning, or we could have planned it earlier.”

“If I can bring anything, you let me know.”

“I think Aunt Nettie has it all figured out already. But thanks. And thank you and Nick for letting us have one of your trees. Maggie’d never cut her own Christmas tree before.”

“It was fun, Mrs. Strait. Cold, but fun.”

“Doreen, please. Glad you enjoyed it. Wish Zelda felt that way. She did when she was little. Guess if you’ve been doing something all your life it’s more a chore than a privilege. I think Nick’s going to get after her tonight to get ours cut. Or more likely, he’ll do it himself.”

“Teenagers, Doreen.” Will shook his head in understanding.

Will had spent years teaching high school. Maggie worked with college students, but he probably knew at least as much about teenagers as she did.

“Don’t I just know it. If he’d let her take the saw and go out to choose a tree with Jon Snow, the young man she’s sweet on, why then she’d be out there as excited as she was when she was six. But no, Nick’s told her she can’t even see Jon, so she won’t let him see her happy about anything.” Doreen shook her head. “Nick’s stricter than he needs to be, but she’s his baby girl. And Zelda’s not at an age when she wants to listen to her daddy. Wish I remembered how old Nick was when he got sensible again. I suspect it was after Zelda was born, more’s the pity. Anyway, wanted to say Merry Christmas to the both of you, and thank you for helping Nettie host the party.” Doreen reached over and took Maggie’s hand in hers. “Thank you, too, for sharing your time with Will with us old ladies.”

“We’ll see you in two days, then,” said Will.

“You most definitely will,” Doreen said and waved, heading back to her house.

“Merry Christmas!” Maggie called after her. She turned to Will. “Sounds as though Nick has a problem with Zelda’s boyfriend.”

“I told you. Zelda’s been a challenge recently.”

But her grandmother hadn’t made it sound as though the problem was only Zelda, Maggie thought. Fathers and daughters… Maybe Nick was being a little overprotective. Teenage years weren’t easy for anyone.

She settled back and enjoyed the ride. Thank goodness she wasn’t adopting a teenager. She’d have a few years to get used to motherhood first.