Candlelight Christmas

“Sorry, I’m afraid I heard you wrong,” Darcy said to her sister Lydia. “Because I think I heard you say Huntley was planning to come to Thanksgiving dinner.” Darcy and Lydia had met at a lunch counter on Madison Avenue. She was juggling a big work project, but she’d made time to meet with her sister to talk about the upcoming holidays. She was already regretting the decision.

“No, you heard correctly,” Lydia assured her. “You know our families always celebrate the holidays together. It would just be weird if we suddenly stopped.”

“You know what would be weird?” Darcy demanded. “Forcing me to endure Thanksgiving within a mile of my ex. That would be weird.”

“Come on, Darce. There’ll be at least twenty people at dinner. You don’t even have to talk to him.”

I’ll have to breathe the same air as Huntley, she thought, seething. “I can’t believe you think this could work for me on any level,” she stated.

“I’m still married to Huntley’s brother, or have you forgotten? This puts Badgley and me in an incredibly awkward position.”

“And where does it put me?” Darcy shot back.

“At the far end of the room, eating and drinking with friends and family, the way we’ve always done.”

“The way we’ve always done no longer works for me.” Darcy tried to picture herself spending Thanksgiving the traditional way, pretending all was well as she slowly strangled inside. She pictured the gathering—friends, families, relatives, everyone convivial and excited as they set out the good china and their best recipes for the holiday feast. The gathering would convene at the Fitzgerald place on Long Island, in the house where Darcy had grown up. The big warm kitchen, with its old-fashioned hearth and scrubbed Colonial maple table, would be teeming with chattering women and guys trying to steal a sample of pumpkin pie or toasted sage dressing. Though the image made Darcy nostalgic, she knew she’d end up having a miserable day, trying to pretend that all was well, that the breakup had been so civilized that she could stand to be in the same room with Huntley Collins.

“Lyddie,” she said gently, “as much as I love you, I’ll break out in hives if I have to see Huntley.”

“Come on, your divorce was amicable—”

“News flash—there is no such thing as an amicable divorce.”

* * *

Darcy struggled with the decision, she really did. Letting down your family simply was not done, not by a Fitzgerald girl. But in the crazy new reality she’d been living since her divorce, letting go had become the more important task. The day before Thanksgiving, she called India. “I’ve been thinking about your invitation. How does your family feel about having stragglers and rejects at Thanksgiving?”

India didn’t miss a beat. “We’d love to have you. You know that.”

Thank God. Darcy was determined to make this Thanksgiving different. She grasped at the invitation. India was being incredibly kind and sensitive. One important discovery Darcy had made in the wake of her divorce was that friends were the people who took care of you when your family let you down.

“We’re in Florida, you know. Can you get a flight?”

“Sure, I’ll get myself down there. It’ll probably have to be early morning on Thanksgiving Day. Standby is easy for solo travelers.”

Darcy told herself she liked being a solo traveler. She did. Going it alone simplified everything. Thanks to her work schedule, she would have to return before the weekend was up, but the prospect of a couple of days of sunshine filled her with a powerful craving.

She needed this. She needed a festive rendezvous with people who didn’t judge her. She needed to sink her toes into the white sand of a Florida beach, far from anything resembling her former life. She needed escape. That was what she was after.

True to her word, she caught a flight at the crack of dawn, and emerged into the tropical warmth of Paradise Cove in Florida just as most people were having breakfast and getting their turkeys in the oven on Thanksgiving morning. India had sent her a text message, asking her to pick up some flowers for the table and letting her know the back kitchen door was open, and to let herself in.

At the airport, she rented a car and made a pit stop at a discount liquor store that boasted extended holiday hours. With the help of the navigator on her phone, she found the O’Donnell residence, a luxurious rambler with its own gardens and orange grove, steps away from a glorious sunny beach. The gated neighborhood was old Florida at its finest and most exclusive, a community of broad boulevards hung with Spanish moss, shiny cars parked in wide driveways, manicured lawns and whimsical names for the houses, like “Pirates’ Cove” and “Gem of the Ocean.” It was all very elite, giving her a glimpse of the wealth and privilege of the O’Donnells.

Darcy decided she could do worse than spend the holiday with people who wanted nothing from her except the pleasure of her company. She just hoped she could be pleasurable enough for them. She had not grown up the way her friend India had. The O’Donnells were vastly wealthy, thanks to Al O’Donnell’s successful worldwide shipping company. They enjoyed the best of everything.

The Fitzgeralds, by contrast, were merely comfortable. With five daughters, and both parents working as college professors, the concept of a second home in Florida—or anywhere, for that matter—was considered a wild extravagance. The Fitzgerald girls had grown up on the fringes of the elite. Darcy had often found herself in the role of the less privileged friend brought along on trips with girls whose families took them skiing in Gstaad or yachting in Cape d’Antibes. She was the kind of friend favored by parents—polite, unassuming, unlikely to overshadow their own daughters. This was fine with Darcy. She’d been lucky enough to see some of the world that way. She’d attended college on scholarship, excelled at sports and ultimately found a best friend in India O’Donnell.

Florida opened its sunshiney, welcoming arms to her. It felt good to be away from the cold, hissing sleet of Manhattan, the crowds and exhaust from traffic cramming the dark, wet streets. Juggling her variety case of booze, with a nice Thanksgiving centerpiece perched precariously on top, she backed into the kitchen, determined not to cause a disaster.

“I’m here,” she warbled. “India? Did you miss me? I brought enough booze to make me forget Huntley Collins and his rotten, soul-crushing kids, as well.”

She maneuvered the cardboard case to a countertop and set it down. Moving the centerpiece aside, she found herself looking at Logan O’Donnell.

Logan O’Donnell, of the big shoulders and red hair and killer smile. Her heart flipped over. She hadn’t seen him since the end of summer in Avalon—but that didn’t mean she’d stopped thinking about him. Far from it; she thought about him every day.

“Oh God,” she said. “Tell me you won’t judge me for saying that.”

He grinned. Yep, killer smile. “I make it a practice not to judge anyone struggling with substance abuse.”

She grinned back at him. She couldn’t help herself. “It’s use, not abuse. Alcohol is useful to me. Helps me get over my rotten marriage and even rottener divorce.”

“So, you were married. To...Huntley Collins? No wonder it didn’t work out. No one could stay married to someone named Huntley Collins.”

“Good point.” Maybe she was being too flippant and dismissive, but it was hard to think clearly around him. At the moment, he was wearing board shorts and flip-flops, and a dusting of sand on his bare chest. She couldn’t keep herself from noticing he was a true redhead, with ginger-colored chest hair that came together in an arrow shape, pointing south. She found herself wishing she’d worn more attractive clothes for her flight instead of the usual yoga pants and shapeless top.

He helped her move the bottles from the case to a sideboard bar—vodka, tequila, rum, bourbon. “You’re bringing coal to Newcastle,” he said. “This is the O’Donnell place. Booze is as plentiful as water.”

“It’s my contribution to the feast. Along with this amazing centerpiece.” It was a crazy arrangement of birds-of-paradise in the shape of a turkey.

“Nice,” he said. “Mom will love it.”

They finished unloading everything and he stuck out his hand. “Welcome to Sea Breeze. Yes, my parents named their house. I had nothing to do with it.”

She looked around the kitchen—granite countertops, stainless-steel appliances, a view of the flat forever of