Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

Nora was sitting wrapped up on the front porch of the inn, looking out over yet another fresh snowfall and drinking hot tea when her cell phone rang.

She set down her breakfast—a homemade banana muffin leftover from breakfast, soft and airy and still warm on the inside, with fresh butter from the local farm that tasted better than anything she'd had in a long time—and reached for it.

"Hello?" She reached for her tea, wanting the warmth of the mug in at least one hand.

"Nora! How's the small-town life treating you?" Her coworker Linda's voice chirped over the line, bright and cheery. "Have you turned into a snowman yet?"

"Not yet. But I'm sure they'll be rolling me up into one any day now." Nora tried to sound upbeat, but she felt a flicker of self-consciousness. She knew Linda—and her other coworkers, probably—were expecting her to have more to report. They were probably expecting stories of pink-cheeked sledding days and handsome lumberjacks, bonfires, and plenty of town gossip. But Nora had never been a fan of sledding, bonfires weren't really a common pastime in Evergreen Hollow, and she avoided gossip like the plague. The propensity for it in a small town was, in fact, one of the reasons she'd been glad to escape.

There were few things she liked less than people knowing all of her business, all of the time.

As far as lumberjacks went, Evergreen Hollow still seemed to be in short supply, although there had been that pair of carpenters working on the roof. But one of them had seemed to have eyes for Melanie, and the other had been the strong and silent type.

So… not her type.

"Earth to Nora!" Linda giggled on the other end of the line. "Come on, spill the tea. What's it like being home?"

"It's nice," Nora hedged. She truly didn't know what to say. It wasn't as if she'd been helping out much at the inn—her mother seemed insistent that Nora was on vacation, and Melanie said the same whenever Nora offered help at the coffee shop. Caroline determinedly did whatever she could to keep Nora from sticking her nose anywhere near the inn's business. So she'd spent the past days just puttering around town, and everything moved so much slower in Evergreen Hollow. Like maple syrup through snow, really, and she couldn't measure her days by her productiveness the way she could back in Boston. There was no hustling out here, and that was really all she knew how to do.

She'd become very good at hustling, and standing still felt a bit like she might vibrate out of her skin at any moment.

"How are things there?" she asked, pivoting quickly to a more comfortable topic. "Nothing has exploded since I left, right?"

"Not at all," Linda assured her. "It's all running just fine. Not so much as a hiccup."

Nora knew Linda meant to be reassuring, but the response made her a little sad. She'd always worked so hard to be good at her job, irreplaceable, really—and she knew she was good at it. But it was clear that they didn't actually need her there. It wasn't that she wanted things to fall apart in her absence, obviously, but she found herself wishing that Linda had said things weren't the same without her—or something along those lines.

Rob clearly didn't need or want her either. There really was no one in Boston who depended on her. No one who noticed her absence acutely, and needed her to come back as soon as possible.

"Don't even worry about it," Linda continued, driving the knife in deeper. "You enjoy your vacation for as long as you want. Goodness knows you've earned it."

"Absolutely." Nora tried to sound cheery, hoping Linda couldn't hear the small crack in her voice.

"Tell me more about this Evergreen Hollow! You never really talked about home. What's it like there?"

Nora leaned back in the rocking chair, tucking her feet in their fluffy Ugg slippers underneath herself. "This time of year, everything really centers around this festival. The ‘Evergreen Snowman Festival'. It's this huge event, and people come out of town for it. There's booths and costume contests and everyone goes completely over the top—but at the same time it's really rustic? They're reusing decorations from the school's winter dance, for goodness' sake."

Linda laughed. "It sounds very quaint and fun. A little haphazard, maybe, but unique. Really sounds like it has that small-town charm."

"It does have that." Nora took another sip of her tea. "It's an every year thing, so they really just have it on autopilot at this point, I think. Although it does sound like there are some new ideas being pitched this year. I've mostly stayed out of it."

"Stayed out of it?" Linda snorted. "Really, you should be the one putting it together, with all your experience. I bet they've never seen a real event planner before. I'm joking, obviously," she added in a hurry, as if worried that Nora might take offense.

Nora didn't though. If anything, the comment struck her, taking her aback for a moment. She knew Linda hadn't meant it as a challenge, but she couldn't help having the same thought that had sprung into her head at the meeting—she could spruce up the festival, if she wanted to. It definitely needed sprucing up, just like the event center that Melanie had said that handsome carpenter had made improvements to, but everyone seemed perfectly happy to keep doing things the same old way. If anything, they were making it more homey and rustic. What it really needed was a facelift, and Nora knew she could do exactly that. If she wanted to, of course.

She might not have any interest in staying in Evergreen Hollow in the long term, but she was a professional event planner. She could make any event successful, if she wanted to.

"That's an interesting idea." She found that it perked her up a bit, oddly enough, saying it out loud.

Linda laughed, more loudly this time. "I knew you wouldn't be able to sit still for long out there. You're too much of a go-getter for that place."

"It does feel like there are forty-eight hours in the day here, instead of the usual twenty-four." Nora bit her lip, picking off another piece of the banana muffin. "I should probably go. My tea is getting cold out here."

"You're sitting outside ?" The shiver in her voice was palpable. "They really have gotten to you already."

"Just getting a little of that color in my cheeks is all. I'll catch you up later," Nora promised.

Just as she was hanging up the phone and tucking it back into the pocket of her cardigan, she saw Bethany's car pulling into the driveway. Bethany got out a moment later, as Nora was standing up with her plate and tea, retrieving a box of decorations from the trunk.

"Oh, Nora!" She flashed her a smile as she came up the stairs. "I was going to see what Rhonda's thoughts on these were. Sabrina left some at the store this morning, and I thought we might go through them."

"I'm sure she'd like that." Nora opened the door, letting Bethany and her armful of decorations walk in first. "She's in the living room, going over some things."

Nora tried to hide her expression as Bethany walked past. The decorations themselves weren't even out of the box yet, but Nora could see that they were mismatched, and a little rough around the edges. Definitely not what she would have chosen.

She carried her plate and mug into the kitchen, rinsing them off, and by the time she came back out to the living room, she saw that Bethany had started unpacking them. Rhonda was making small approving noises, but it was clear from the look on her face that she didn't really like them any more than Nora did.

Nora winced, sitting down across from her mother. She didn't want to say anything, but the decorations looked tacky to her. Popcorn garlands, a wreath done up with fake holly covered in gold and silver glitter, and faux mistletoe that would look like plastic even from yards away. That didn't begin to cover the strings of Christmas ball ornaments, or the miniature reindeer that didn't have the best paint job.

"These are—nice," Rhonda said, looking at the string of ornaments. "Where are we thinking of putting these, exactly?"

The question at the end of the sentence was clearly enough to break Bethany. She let out a sigh, sitting back in her chair. "I know they're awful." She shook her head, looking between Nora and Rhonda, clearly as aware as the other two women that they all knew the decorations were bad. "But Sabrina is in charge of decorations. And she's so busy with getting the articles together about the event for the newspaper that she's not going to have time to replace them with all new decorations. You know how on top of that place she always feels like she needs to be. Really, she'd have to be in three places at once, and you know she can't do that."

Linda's words from earlier echoed in Nora's head. She'd sat back so far and watched, but it was painful to see people making such rookie mistakes, when she knew she could step in and easily put it all to rights. They were stumbling around in the dark, and she could clearly see the path forward.

But she knew that wasn't all there was to it.

Linda was right. She was a go-getter, someone who liked to keep busy. She needed a project to focus on while she was in town, or she'd go crazy. She'd tried to give herself one by helping Melanie out with her staffing issues at The Mellow Mug, but Melanie had remained so steadfast in her insistence that Nora couldn't lift a single finger on her vacation that it had come to nothing.

"I'll help," Nora said quickly, and she didn't miss the surprised look that her mother shot her. "I can see about some different decorations. It's easy enough for me to figure it out—I've got tons of experience sourcing this kind of thing. Really, it's no trouble at all," she added, before Bethany could argue.

Bethany didn't seem all that inclined to argue. "That's amazing, Nora. Really. You're a lifesaver. If you don't mind, could you stop by the Gazette to give Sabrina the good news? Let her know that you're happy to take something off of her plate. And I hear the event center is basically good to go, so if you want to stop in there, you could look around and get some ideas for what you want to do."

The beaming smile on her face felt like a balm to Nora. This was what she enjoyed, taking someone's vision and turning it into the best possible version of that.

She returned Bethany's smile. The festival might not have been exactly what she had had in mind, when she came back to Evergreen Hollow for the holidays, but she was glad to have something to focus on.

It would make the days pass, at the very least.