CHRISTMAS DAY WENTby in a blur. She tried to imprint specific moments on her mind—Mason’s sheer delight in the antique medical bag she’d found him, Harper and Austin squaring off over a foosball table. There was Lily’s predictable fascination with boxes and wrapping rather than toys, and Hayley’s joy in showing off a new pair of earrings.
She loved seeing Logan sitting cross-legged on the floor, showing Stella’s boys—his boys now—the child-sized tools inside the toolboxes he’d made them.
She wanted to slow the clock down—just for this day, just this one day—but it sped by, from dawn and the excitement of opening gifts, to the candlelight and the lavish meal David prepared and served on her best china.
Before she knew it, the house was quiet once more.
She wandered down to take a last look at the tree, to sit alone in the parlor with her coffee and her memories of the day, and all the Christmases before.
Surprised when she heard footsteps, she looked over and saw her sons.
“I thought you’d all gone over to Harper’s.”
“We were waiting for you to come down,” Harper told her.
“Come down?”
“You always come down Christmas night, after everyone’s gone to bed.”
She lifted her eyebrows at Mason. “I have no secrets in this house.”
“Plenty of them,” he disagreed. “Just not this one.”
Austin came over, took her coffee, and replaced it with a glass of champagne.
“What’s all this?”
“Little family toast,” he told her. “But that comes after this one last gift we’ve got for you.”
“Another? I’m going to have to add a room on the house to hold everything I got this morning.”
“This is special. You’ve already got a place for it. Or did at one time.”
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense. What have y’all cooked up?”
Harper stepped back into the hall and brought in a large box wrapped in gold foil. He set it at her feet. “Why don’t you open it and see?”
Curious, she set her glass aside and began to work on the wrap. “Don’t tell Stella I’m tearing this off, she’d be horrified. Myself, I’m amazed the three of you got together and agreed on something, much less kept it quiet until tonight. Mason always blabs.”
“Hey, I can keep a secret when I have to. You don’t know about the time Austin took your car and—”
“Shut up.” Austin punched his brother’s shoulder. “There’s no statute of limitations on that sort of crime.” He smiled sweetly at Roz’s narrowed look. “What you don’t know, Mama, can’t hurt this idiot.”
“I suppose.” But she wondered on it as she dug through the packing. And her heart simply stuttered as she drew out the antique dressing mirror.
“It was the closest we could come to the one we broke. Pattern’s nearly the same, and the shape,” Harper said.
“Queen Anne,” Austin added, “circa 1700, with that gold and green lacquer on the slanted drawer. At least, it’s the best our combined memories could match the one Mason broke.”
“Hey! It was Harper’s idea to use it as a treasure chest. It’s not my fault I dropped it out of the damn tree. I was the baby.”
“Oh, God. Oh, God, I was so mad, so mad, I nearly skinned y’all alive.”
“We have painful recollection of that,” Austin assured her.
“It was from your daddy’s family.” Voice thick, throat aching, she traced her fingers over the lacquered wood. “He gave it to me on our wedding day.”
“We should’ve been skinned.” Harper sat down beside her, rubbed her arm. “We know it’s not the same, but —”
“No, no, no.” Swamped with emotion, she turned her face to press it against his arm for a moment. “It’s better. That you’d remember this, think of this. Do this.”
“It made you cry,” Mason murmured, and bent to rub his cheek over her hair. “It’s the first time I remember seeing you cry. None of us ever forgot it, Mama.”
She was struggling not to cry now as she embraced each one of her sons. “It’s the most beautiful gift I’ve ever been given, and I’ll treasure it more than anything I have. Every time I look at it, I’ll think of the way you were then, the way you are now. I’m so proud of my boys. I always have been. Even when I wanted to skin you.”
Austin picked up her glass, handed it to her, then passed around the other three flutes. “Harper gets the honors, as he’s the oldest. But I want it on record that I thought it up.”
“We all thought it up,” Mason objected.
“I thought most of it up. Go on, Harper.”
“I will, if you’ll shut up for five seconds.” He lifted his glass. “To our mama, for everything she’s been to us, everything she’s done for us, every single day.”
“Oh. That’s done it.” The tears welled into her throat, spilled out of her eyes. “That’s done it for sure.”
“Go ahead and cry.” Mason leaned over to kiss her damp cheek. “Makes a nice circle.”
GETTING BACK TObusiness as usual helped fill the little hole in her heart from kissing two of her sons goodbye.
It would be a slow week—the holiday week was, routinely—so she took a page out of Stella’s book and shouldered in to organizing. She cleaned tools, scrubbed down worktables, helped with inventory, and finally settled on the style of potting-soil bag, and the design.
With some time to spare, she worked with Hayley to pour a fresh supply of concrete planters and troughs.
“I can’t believe Christmas is over.” Squatting, Hayley turned the mold as Roz poured. “All that anticipation and prep, and it’s over in a snap. Last year, my first after my daddy died? Well, it was just awful, and the holidays dragged and dragged.”
“Grief tends to spin time out, and joy contracts it. I don’t know why that is.”
“I remember just wanting it all to be over—so I wouldn’t keep hearing “Jingle Bells” every time I went to work, you know? Being pregnant, and feeling alone, the house up for sale. I spent most of Christmas packing things up, figuring out what I was going to sell so I could leave Little Rock.”
She sat back on her heels to sigh, happily. “And here, just one year later, and everything was so bright and happy. I know Lily didn’t know what was going on, but it was so much fun to watch her play with her toys, or mostly the boxes.”
“Nothing like a cardboard box to keep a baby entertained. It was special for me, for all of us, to have her, to be able to share that first Christmas with her.”
With the mold full, Hayley tidied the edges with a trowel. “I know you love her, but, Roz, I just don’t feel right about you staying home New Year’s Eve to sit with her while I go out to a party.”
“I prefer staying home New Year’s Eve. Lily gives me the perfect excuse. And I’m looking forward to having her to myself.”
“You must’ve been invited to half a dozen parties.”
“More.” Roz straightened, pressed the small of her back. “I’m not interested. You go on out with David and celebrate with other young people. Wear your new earrings and dance. Lily and I will be just fine seeing the new year in together.”
“David said he never could talk you into going to this party, even though it’s been a tradition for years now.” She picked up a bottle of water, drank casually. “He said Harper would probably drop by.”
“I imagine so. They have a number of mutual friends.” Amused, she patted Hayley’s shoulder. “Let’s get this next one done, then call it a day.”
She was tired when she got home, but in that satisfied way of knowing she’d crossed several chores off her list. When she noticed Mitch’s car in her drive, she was surprised to find herself considering going up to change before seeking him out in the library.
Which was, she reminded herself, both a waste of time and hardly her style. So she was wearing her work clothes when she walked into the library.
“Have everything you need?”
He looked up from the piles of books and papers on the library table. Stared at her through the lenses of his
