A Knights Bridge Christmas (14 page)

A Recipe for Hot Chocolate

⅓ cup Droste or other cocoa (unsweetened)

½ cup sugar (or to taste)

⅓ cup hot water

4 cups milk

½ teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)

Combine cocoa and sugar in a medium saucepan. Blend in water. Stirring constantly, cook over medium heat until mixture comes to a boil. Let boil, continuing to stir, for two minutes. Add milk, heat to desired temperature (don’t boil). Remove from heat and add vanilla. Serve by itself or topped with whipped cream and/or marshmallows.

Fourteen

Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh.

—Charles Dickens,
A Christmas Carol

MOLASSES COOKIES AND
milk in Daisy’s kitchen did the trick. Clare felt better. “It’s not kale,” she said with a smile. “It’s a good source of calcium.”

Logan shuddered. “There are dark green leafy vegetables, and there’s kale.”

“Not your favorite?”

“I don’t even want to think about it while I’m eating a molasses cookie.”

She laughed, enjoying his company, but she knew his mind was on his grandmother’s story.

“I have to get rolling,” he said. “I have a twelve-hour overnight shift and need to get myself ready. Keep the key to the house. Check for more books, drop by for cookies with Owen—my house is your house.”

“You say that now. Wait until I eat all the cookies.”

He kissed her softly. “We can always make more cookies.”

“I’m going to find out more about your grandmother’s edition of
A Christmas Carol
.”

“I’ve only seen the movie adaptations. I’ve never read the book.”

“What’s your favorite adaptation?”

“I’m not sure I have a particular favorite. Maybe we can watch different versions together.”

“Logan...”

He pressed a finger to her lips. “No thinking right now. Not with molasses, sugar and butter in your system.”

Not to mention him, she thought. “Have a good shift at the hospital.”

She returned to the library after he left. Daisy’s books were a temptation, but she got the boxes out of the way. She didn’t expect to find anything else as intriguing and potentially valuable as
A Christmas Carol
. The small library was different from what she was accustomed to in Boston, but she loved its atmosphere and the breadth of the work she did. She had no ambitions beyond doing the best job she could and making a home for herself and Owen.

When she picked him up at the Sloans’ house, Owen wanted Logan to come back to their sawmill apartment with them. Clare explained he’d returned to Boston to work. Owen looked thoughtful for a moment. “Logan’ll be back. He likes it here.”

“Do you like it here, Owen?”

He beamed. “I
love
it here. In Knights Bridge,” he added quickly as they went up to their apartment. “You still need your own room, Mom. And I want to live in a house next to Aidan and Tyler so we can walk to school together. You could walk to the library. What about Logan’s house? Tyler says it’s for sale. Can we buy it?”

“We won’t be living in this place forever, but it’s good right now. It’s quiet.”

“I can hear the waterfall.”

“How many places have their own waterfall?”

He liked that. His transition from city life to country life hadn’t been without incident, but he was making friends, doing well in school and seemed content.

He plugged in the lights on their Charlie Brown Christmas tree and crawled under a blanket on the couch, yawning as Clare read him a story. After he went to bed, she kept the tree lights on as she tried to hear the water tumbling over the dam, rocks and ice, and imagine Logan with her.

* * *

On Tuesday, Clare drove into Boston for a workshop at a city college for small-town librarians. While she was in town, she stopped to see a friend, an archivist and rare books specialist. It was enough to prompt her to walk over to the busy hospital where Logan worked, but she also wanted to see it for herself.

The emergency department was relatively quiet at four o’clock on a December weekday afternoon. She didn’t want to interrupt Logan—wasn’t sure he was there—but she appreciated seeing where he spent his days, and, often, his nights. His life was so different from hers. Even when she had lived in Boston, she’d had a quiet work life compared to his. What had drawn him into emergency medicine?

She hadn’t been in an emergency room since Stephen’s death.

“Clare,” Logan said behind her.

She turned, smiling at him. “You caught me. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“Not at all.” He wore a suit under a white doctor’s coat, his eyes on her as they stepped away from the desk. “I’ve been deep in documentation. It’s not the most exciting part of my job but it has to be done.”

“You don’t do well with tedious tasks.”

“Ah. You
are
getting to know me.”

“I won’t keep you. I’m in town on library business, but I wanted to tell you that it looks as if the edition of
A Christmas Carol
your grandfather gave to your grandmother could be a first edition. I recommend having it appraised.”

“It belongs to the library now.”

“It wouldn’t be right to keep it.”

“Someone made a mistake putting it into the book sale when my grandfather bought it. Gran obviously wanted the library to have it back. She doesn’t need to sell it for the money. What makes you think it’s a first edition?”

“A friend who knows about such things told me. It was first published in 1843 by Chapman & Hall in England, with a pink-brown cloth cover and gold lettering. That first edition had green endpapers, but the ink wasn’t fast and came off on people’s fingers—so it was changed in subsequent editions to yellow.”

“And Gran’s copy has green endpapers?”

Clare nodded. “The yellow would be valuable, too. The etchings and engravings also suggest a first edition. The book was an instant bestseller. Dickens was very involved in its publication. It was his idea to sell it at a low five shillings per copy.”

“That must have helped,” Logan said. “I’ll be happy to have it appraised, but it belongs at the library. It would be a great annual Christmas display.”

“I wish we had a copy of your grandfather’s book report.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Gran saved it, but I bet he burned it before she got the chance. Speaking of Christmas, I am free as of 7:00 a.m. on Christmas Eve and I have Christmas Day off. I’ve decided to spend it in Knights Bridge. I did promise Gran I’d light a candle in the window.” He fell silent, as if taking pause to remember Daisy’s story about her father and brother-in-law. Finally he stood straight, the busy ER doctor again. “What are your plans for Christmas?”

“I don’t know about Christmas Eve yet, except for the early service at church with Owen. I imagine he’ll get me up early on Christmas Day. Santa has big plans for him. Well...maybe not quite as big as Owen thinks.”

“Let me make dinner for you two on Christmas Eve.”

“That would be lovely, thank you.”

An ambulance arrived. Logan clearly had to go. Clare left him to his work and went back to hers. As she left through a revolving door, she was breathing rapidly, but her mind was on the future, not the past.

* * *

Four hours after Clare left the hospital, Logan finally had time to grab a sandwich and sit for a few minutes. His visit with her was a blur, but he knew he’d said he’d be spending Christmas Eve in Knights Bridge and invited her to his grandmother’s house for dinner.

“Christmas Eve in Knights Bridge?” His friend Paul chuckled over a beer together that evening. “Great. You can catch up on your sleep.”

“I’ll need a week of Christmas Eves in Knights Bridge to catch up on my sleep.”

“I hear you. What’s drawing you to your dad’s hometown?”

“My grandmother.”

“She’s lived there for eighty-plus years. Damn, Logan. You’ve never had this look when you’ve mentioned the Farrell hometown.”

Logan frowned. “What look?”

“Twitchy.”

“Twitchy isn’t a look.”

“With you it is. Your grandmother’s great. I met her, remember? She came to town with a cake and that insane fruit salad with the coconut. That was the best. I think it had almonds in it, too.”

“Pecans.” Logan yawned. “I’m calling it a night.”

His friend leaned back, eyes narrowed, appraising. “It’s the librarian.”

“Good night, Paul.”

“I admit my mind flooded with stereotypes when I heard a librarian had shown up at the hospital to see you, but I caught a peek of her. Pretty, pretty. A little on the harried side, and she obviously doesn’t like hospitals. I can’t say I blame her.
I
don’t like hospitals. She looked like she wanted to throw up—I take it that wasn’t you.”

“Her husband died in an ER.”

“Ouch. Not ours, I hope?”

“I don’t know which one. Boston, somewhere. She was expecting.”

His friend blinked in confusion. “Expecting what? Her husband to come home for dinner?”

“A baby, Paul.”

“She was
pregnant?
Double ouch.”

“She had a baby boy. Owen. He’s six now. Cute kid. We cut a Christmas tree together.”

“Logan...” Paul was serious now. “Being back in Boston hasn’t helped you snap back to your senses?”

“Not yet.”

“Volunteer for a double shift. A triple shift. Anything.”

“I don’t need to. I’m visited by Ebenezer Scrooge’s ghosts at night. They’re trying to get me to change my approach to Christmas, maybe to life.”

“They only visit when you’re in Knights Bridge, right? Not here in Boston.”

“Here as well as at home.”

“Home.” Paul grimaced, finishing his beer. “Logan.”

“Did I just call Knights Bridge home? Damn. It’s been a long day.”

“It’s a cute town. A picnic on the town common, a stroll in the shade—”

“There’s a skating rink on the common in winter.”

“I hate ice-skating. I got ten stitches once when my brother tripped me. He says it was an accident. I don’t believe him.” Paul shrugged. “Okay, maybe it was a couple of Band-Aids but it felt like stitches. Loads of blood. I think I decided to go into medicine then.”

“You loved it,” Logan said, amused. “You felt like a hockey player.”

“Dylan McCaffrey lives in Knights Bridge now. He was a hell of a hockey player. I hear he’s made a fortune since then.”

“Let’s change the subject.”

The temperature had dropped when Logan headed back to his apartment. He hit a wind tunnel, a gust of frigid air slamming into him. He half expected one of Scrooge’s Christmas ghosts to ooze out of the shadows. Old Ebenezer had most feared the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
Do I fear him?
Logan asked himself. Would he become a workaholic doctor with a string of divorces and estranged children? Would he face burnout alone and bitter?

And Clare Morgan. She was content with her life in Knights Bridge, but she was lonely. What would the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come show her?

Logan shook off such thinking. He buttoned his jacket and walked faster. He hadn’t planned anything special for Christmas before deciding to go to Knights Bridge. Work, a movie, sleep. He’d have called his family and not thought twice about the kind of life he was leading. His ability to shut out everything and focus on the present was an asset in emergency medicine. He could be impatient and irritable but he didn’t have a noisy mind.

Did that make him shallow, destined to live an unexamined life?

He thought of his grandfather’s note to his grandmother. The love—the depth of that love.

He crossed Boylston Street, glad to be out of the wind. He walked down to the tall, beautifully lit Christmas tree outside the Prudential Center. A long day at work and a good evening with a friend, but he thought of how much Owen Morgan would enjoy the tree...and Clare.

Logan shut his eyes, but it was as if she were here with him, with her smile, with her translucent skin, pale hair and shapely body.

He gritted his teeth. He was an idiot.

He needed to go home, get some sleep, go to work tomorrow and regroup.

And plan Christmas Eve dinner.

Fifteen

“I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody!”

—Charles Dickens,
A Christmas Carol

LOGAN HAD CHRISTMAS
Eve lunch with his grandmother and her friends in the Rivendell dining room. Clare saw him laughing with the white-haired women as she dropped off books. She didn’t interrupt them, just left quietly and returned to the library.

Owen, Aidan and Tyler Sloan, and a handful of other children arrived for story hour.

It was snowing lightly when she closed the library and she and Owen walked down South Main Street toward the Farrell house.

“That’s Logan,” Owen said, pointing across the street at a man on the common.

Logan waved to them. Clare took Owen’s hand and ran across the street with him.

“I want to show you something,” Logan said.

They walked to the town’s World War II memorial. Carved in the granite were names of Knights Bridge men who’d served during the war, and the one who’d died?

Angus Robert Farrell.

Logan touched his great-uncle’s name. “I found a picture of him at the house.”

“He looked a lot like you,” Clare said.

“The librarian at work?”

“I found a notice about him...”

“His obituary,” Logan said. “He died during Operation Market Garden. It was a long time ago to us. To the women I had lunch with, it must feel like yesterday.”

“I’m glad Daisy told you the story about the candle.”

“I am, too.” He looked up at the gray sky, the snow easing. Then he turned to Clare and took her hand. “What do you say the three of us go ice-skating before dinner?”

Owen was all for it. Clare couldn’t remember the last time she’d been on skates, but she realized she was excited about the idea. And he’d obviously been planning it, since he’d borrowed skates for her from Maggie Sloan.

With Dylan McCaffrey and Olivia Frost’s Christmas Eve wedding, the skating rink was quiet. Logan glided out onto the ice with Owen as Clare got used to being on skates again.

“It’s like riding a bike,” she said, laughing as she eased onto the ice.

Owen found a stray hockey puck and hockey stick and busied himself pretending he was an NHL player. Logan eased in next to Clare, sweeping an arm around her and spinning her out onto the ice.

The snow picked up again, glowing in the Christmas lights as dusk descended on the village.

When they finally crossed South Main Street to the Farrell house, it was almost dark. Logan had the dining room table set for dinner and a sweet-potato-and-apple casserole, baked salmon with chive-and-parsley butter, green beans and rolls set to go.

“Dessert’s hot chocolate and marshmallows,” he said. “I’m not much on baking.”

After dinner, they went into the front room. A fire burned in the fireplace, and the Christmas tree twinkled with its strings of lights. Logan set the half-melted pillar candle on the windowsill—the same candle Betty Farrell, his great-grandmother, had made in her farmhouse kitchen and lit on Christmas Eve through the war that had claimed her older son.

He got the candle lit just as carolers arrived in front of the house.

Clare took his hand. “Come on. Let’s join them.”

The snow had stopped, just an inch or so freshening up the landscape. Pleased to have a six-year-old in their midst, the carolers asked Owen what he would like to sing. “‘Jingle Bells,’” he said happily, then smiled up at Logan and his mother. “This is going to be the best Christmas ever.”

And so it would be, Clare thought, feeling Logan’s arm come around her and realizing that she was in love with him.