Christmas At The Riverview Inn Page 3

  Everyone misses you. Especially me.

  The wi-fi out there is SOLID so you can still work. Jonah got the whole mountain’s internet improved so he could work. So, work is 100% not an excuse.

  I’m pregnant.

  Okay, before you freak out. I’m five months. It was touch and go for the first three and we didn’t tell anyone. I wanted to tell you last month in person but work got in the way. And… Josie. I just want to see you. And it’s Christmas. And I’m pregnant. Please come home.

  Helen

  JOSIE

  The Riverview Inn at Christmas was a total show-off. All the white twinkle lights in the snow-dusted pine trees. The windows filled with the warm glow of fireplaces. The gigantic red and gold wreath on the front door. Even nature was contributing to the scene; snow was coming down in big, fat Hollywood flakes, like the whole world was in a snow globe that had just been twirled upside down.

  It looked, actually, like every Christmas set Josie had ever tried to create but somehow failed to. It didn’t matter how much money they put into set design or props, it was just never quite right.

  It’s the smell, she thought. You just can’t recreate the smell of snow and pine trees. It was so powerful it was practically a taste on the tip of her tongue.

  The Uber drove off behind her. Leaving Josie and her bags standing at the entrance of the inn. Feeling an excruciating combination of dread and excitement.

  Smile. Keep smiling. Don’t stop smiling.

  As coping mechanisms went it was fairly lame, but it was all she had and so she was committed. Besides, there was usually enough mayhem in her family that she could blend in and escape too much notice.

  Though the five years she’d been gone were going to be a thing.

  Christmas was a few days away and everyone was home for the holiday. Mom and Dad. Gabe and Alice. Jonah and Daphne, Josie’s half-brother Dom and all the cousins. This place was absolutely filled with Mitchells. She could practically hear them arguing about table setting and laughing over Dom’s hair.

  Why am I scared?

  She knew that she shouldn’t be. It didn’t make sense.

  But her heart was pounding in her neck. And her hands were slick in her gloves.

  The inn looked somehow bigger and smaller than she remembered. But that was the way of memory, wasn’t it? It played tricks like that all the time. Like the emotion attached to things changed the scale of places or the color of walls. Her heart changed the size and shape of the front door and planted trees where there weren’t any. It was familiar and completely strange all at the same time.

  Five years since she’d been here.

  “You can’t turn back now,” a voice said behind her and she turned to see Patrick wearing a thick coat and big hat making his way up the road toward her.

  Smile. Keep smiling.

  “I wasn’t going to,” Josie said with a big smile as the man who’d been the best grandfather she could imagine came to a stop in front of her.

  “I’d like to hug you,” he said, his eyes twinkling.

  “I’d like to hug you too,” she said, and the words weren’t even out of her mouth before he had his arms around her. He smelled like snow and Old Spice.

  Okay. New coping mechanism. Don’t cry. Just don’t cry.

  “We missed you, girl.”

  “I doubt that,” she said.

  That made Patrick lurch back and frown at her. His eyebrows were exceptionally white and bushy. And capable of a lot of disapproval. “No,” she said, trying to backtrack to avoid a lecture about her spot in the Mitchell family. “I’m just saying there are so many cousins and kids now—”

  “None of them are you, kid,” he said and gave her a little shake.

  “Hardly a kid anymore,” Josie said with a smile. Turning twenty-four this year had been strange. She’d felt it more than she’d felt any other birthday. Probably because she’d been alone. By choice, mind you. Mom and Dad usually came down for her birthday, took her shopping and out to dinner. Max always looked surprisingly comfortable in the city. The mountain man persona he cultivated up here just fell away and he was the city cop once again. Pretty handsome in a suit and tie, ordering oysters at restaurants like he’d always done it.

  Mom always looked at Max a little differently when they were in the city. Like he was a stranger she’d just met. Josie did not want to think about what they got up to in the hotel room they always rented.

  But this year her birthday had fallen right in the middle of release week for the show and there’d been just too much going on to celebrate.

  Or, at least, it had been convenient to say that.

  “Dad?” Max yelled from the front step, the door open behind him revealing the long dining room table set for dinner, the fireplace, and about seven hundred of Josie’s cousins. The beautiful mayhem of Mitchell life at the Riverview Inn. Her heart gushed a fresh, painful longing.

  “What are you doing out here?” Max yelled.

  “Look who I found,” Patrick shouted back, and like he wasn’t a gazillion years old, he picked up her bag, swung it over his shoulder and pretty much pulled her into motion.

  “Oh my god,” Max said. “Josie?”

  He glanced behind him and she knew what he was thinking. Tell Delia.

  It was one of the reasons she loved Max, because his first thought was always about Mom. It was pure, that kind of love. But then Max jumped down the steps in his socks and grabbed Josie in his big arms. Crushed the breath right out of her.

  “My god, girl,” he said.

  Josie held herself stiff in his arms, because if she wasn’t stiff, if she wasn’t strong and careful, it would be nothing but tears. This homecoming needed to be happy. For Mom’s sake. For Helen’s sake.

  For hers.

  Smile.

  “Hi Dad,” she whispered against the soft flannel of his shirt. Red, because Mom always said he looked handsome in red.

  “What…why didn’t you tell us you were coming tonight? We could have met you at the train. I could have come and—”

  So predictable, this guy. “Because work was a question mark until the very last minute and I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone.”

  They’d known she was coming; she’d called with that news the second she’d accepted Helen’s demands. But she’d been sketchy on the details, hoping if she caught them all slightly unaware there wouldn’t be any production.

  She saw all the old gears turning behind Max’s eyes, but in typical Max fashion he just nodded, took the bag from his own father and pulled Josie up into the inn.

  If she paused at the door, scared and a little haunted, he just held on tighter. Harder. I got you, kid, his arm around her shoulder said. I got you.

  “Hey,” he said, and every Mitchell there turned to face them. “Look who I found.”

  Josie lifted her hand, smiling as hard and as brightly as she could. “Hi!”

  There was one second of open-mouthed astonishment. And then it was pandemonium.

  Garth and Stella, who was in high school now. Little Iris, who’d been born just before everything fell apart. Her half-brother, Dom, who’d hit puberty hard and had grown five inches in all directions since she saw him last summer in the city. Gabe and Alice and Jonah and Daphne. Hugs and kisses and oh-my-god-look-at-yous. Stella asked if she could borrow Josie’s boots—heeled Pradas that had no business out in this snow.

  “Sure,” she said with a big smile.

  Helen appeared in front of her, looking beautiful in leggings and a bright red sweater pulled taut over her tiny belly. Her cousin was showing off and Josie loved it.

  “You came,” Helen said, squeezing Josie’s cheeks

  “You told me I had to,” Josie answered awkwardly. “You really are pregnant.”

  Helen, her cousin and her oldest and dearest friend, smiled, tears in her eyes. “I really am.”

  And then it was Mom’s turn, cutting through all of them, pushing aside everyone to get to Josie. And Josi
e slipped right out of the numbness she’d been trying to keep around herself and grabbed onto her mother just as hard as Delia grabbed onto Josie.

  The sound that came out of Josie was a sob, but as quick as she could, she turned it into a laugh.

  Mom squeezed Josie tighter like she knew.

  “Welcome home,” Mom whispered. “We missed you.”

  “I missed you, too.”

  But her mom, who really was rarely wrong, was wrong about one thing.

  This wasn’t her home anymore. And it hadn’t been since the night of her high school graduation.

  3

  “So,” Jonah said, leaning back from the table, his hand on Daphne’s shoulder. Alice’s dinner, a feast of pasta carbonara and salad with blood oranges and pistachios, was absolutely decimated. The dishes in the middle of the table were empty. The plates in front of everyone practically licked clean. Josie had missed the food at the inn with an acute ache. Because of Alice, and in turn Cameron, she’d never learned a thing about cooking; the best she could do for herself was takeout. She even screwed up hard-boiled eggs.

  “How is work, Josie?” Jonah asked. And of course Jonah asked; the guy had enough work ethic for, like, twenty people. He’d been a big-deal developer in the city before he met Daphne and gave it all up to grow vegetables on her organic farm and start Haven House—his dream project for single moms and their kids. Growing up with a single Mom Jonah had dreamt of a place where his mother could not just relax but get instruction on things that she never had time to learn. And that dream had turned into a reality with women and kids getting educations, counseling and therapy, second chances. It was all really beautiful, but the guy was nonstop, no matter what he did. His idea of a vacation was a 10K run.

  “Fine,” she said. “Good. Busy.” Jonah had helped her get the job when she was still at NYU by putting her in touch with an executive at the NOW network. Her résumé and his recommendation had circled around the network until she’d landed an internship at the reality show I Do/I Don’t.

  An internship that had turned into a job.

  “How is the promotion?” he asked.

  “Good.” And cue Jonah…

  “I can’t believe a reality show has a head writer.”

  Cue family groans.

  “You gotta stop the Dad jokes, Uncle Jonah,” Dom said in his ever-bored teenage boy voice.

  “Can’t stop. Won’t stop,” Jonah shot back, and Dom rolled his eyes.

  Josie’s brother had changed his hair. He’d been growing out the front in that Justin Beiber-esque flop that had ruled the world for a while. Now he seemed to have…a mullet?

  Josie had so many questions.

  “I cannot believe Adriane left Hank at the altar,” Stella, Josie’s cousin, was a die-hard fan of the show and was always up for gossip. “Did you know that was going to happen?”

  “Producers had a pretty good idea,” Josie said.

  She couldn’t spill all the secrets about her job as a writer at the reality TV show, even to her family. She’d signed a very scary contract that laid out just how much trouble she could be in if she did. And as executive producer she’d fired interns and assistants and some cast members for tweeting and snap-chatting and talking to TMZ. But once someone found out she worked on I Do/I Don’t, that’s all they wanted to talk about.

  “But I really liked Jill and Sam,” Stella said.

  “I did too,” Josie admitted. They’d agreed to pretend to be in a relationship to extend the social media glow they were both enjoying. It was about as contrived and business-focused as a show about love could be.

  But they were decent people and total professionals.

  Josie wanted to tell Stella what she was planning for the show. The pitch she’d created that the rest of the team was reviewing. Shifting the show from a contrived dating show to…a social experiment. Her plan was to bring people in from different walks of life, different races, religions, sexual orientations, and gender identifications, and instead of falling in love and forcing marriage, they’d talk to each other. Learn who the others were behind the differences that, in today’s world, seemed all-important. And create real communication and show real examples of how—at the heart of everything—humans were so much more alike than anyone thought.

  Josie thought it could be groundbreaking. She believed it was groundbreaking. But her bosses were discussing it now, and even though things looked good for her plan, nothing was ever set in stone. But she had an excited energy in her stomach that told her this was going to happen. The show was going to be something they could all be proud of.

  “Hey,” Dom said. “I saw that picture of you in People magazine.”

  “Let’s not get carried away. You saw the picture of the side of my face,” she said. Ben, a stockbroker who’d been after her for a date, had finally caught her with tickets to a hot new Broadway musical. He’d spent the night trying to get their picture taken. It had been more than a little gross. But she’d met Lin-Manuel Miranda, so the night hadn’t been a total waste.

  But that picture came out with her name in the caption and her family acted like she’d met the queen. It was adorkable.

  “You’re so famous,” Mom teased.

  Josie rolled her eyes.

  “But honey,” Mom said. Her red hair had a little bit more gray in it than the last time Josie had seen her in the summer, but she was still a total knockout. Josie had her birth father’s height, but the rest of her was a carbon copy of her mother. She was grateful on all fronts. “Last year you were looking for a new job…”

  This again. And at Christmas? Come on, Mom.

  Last year one of the male contestants had said some really offensive things on Twitter and it had been the last straw for a lot of staff. There’d been a serious exodus of production people. She’d made the mistake of telling her mom that she was thinking about looking for a new job.

  But honest to god, she’d just been too busy. Still was. Right now she could feel her phone in her back pocket buzzing with about seven thousand notifications from her messenger and email.

  And her bosses had that sixth sense about anyone thinking of looking for another job, and they’d set the trap of a promotion and salary bump like putting out Christmas cookies for Santa Claus.

  And everyone had fallen for it. She’d thought she’d be different.

  She hadn’t been.

  And then she got this new idea and this new energy. She just couldn’t tell her mom about it, yet. Not until it was a done deal.

  “Why am I getting all the questions?” Josie laughed, setting her fork down next to the pear tarte Alice had made for dessert. “Am I the only one who has a million questions for Helen?”

  “Yeah, yeah, she’s pregnant,” Daphne said, winking at her daughter. “Big deal.”

  Helen smiled her cypher’s smile and ran a hand over her stomach.

  “How long has everyone known?” Josie asked.

  “Mom says she woke up in the middle of the night five months ago and knew something was different,” Helen said.

  “I’ve always said you two were a little too close,” Alice said from her place at the end of the table, next to Gabe. And Stella, her daughter and only child, laughed.

  “Mom,” the teenager cried. “You still ask if you can sleep with me.”

  “I just like your bed better.”

  It was a lie and everyone knew it. Even Gabe, who gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder. On the other side of the table, Josie had a hard time looking at Gabe and Alice, and chose instead to focus on Helen. Blonde and pregnant and looking so happy it was like she’d swallowed a lightbulb.

  “You really are glowing,” Josie said.

  “I really am happy.”

  “Where’s Evan?” Josie asked. Helen’s longtime boyfriend and the father of the lightbulb.

  “He’s still in DC,” Helen said. “He should be here on Christmas Eve.”

  “Isn’t that cutting it close?” Josie asked. Becau
se while Christmas as a whole was a big deal at the Riverview, the real star of the show was Christmas Eve. The outrageous number of traditions that had been piled onto Christmas Eve was nearly insane. No holiday should have to be so much to a single family. But the Mitchells were not like other families.

  And Christmas Eve was only three days away.

  “That’s the plan,” Helen said. Evan and Helen both worked for a nonprofit organic farmers’ association that lobbied state and federal government to try and change laws and regulations.

  They were two very adorable do-gooders.

  “And seriously…” Josie lowered her voice. “You’re not getting any flack about not being married.”

  “Are you kidding me? With this crowd?” Helen looked around their assembled family. Gabe and Alice, who’d been married before and had three horrible miscarriages that had ultimately ended their relationship the first time around. But when Gabe opened the inn and needed a chef, he’d begged Alice to come and work with him. Of course they hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other, and when she’d ended up pregnant she tried to keep it a secret.

  Gabe insisted they get married but they didn’t actually do it until after Stella had been born.

  Iris, their grandmother, sitting across the table with Patrick, had left her two sons in a terrible bout of post-partum depression only to find out she was pregnant again. She’d asked to come back but Patrick had said no, so she’d kept Jonah a secret from the rest of the family for years.

  It hadn’t been pretty when they first got back together, but it was now. Proof, maybe, that things always got better, even when they were really dark.

  “Yeah, the Mitchells don’t exactly do things in order,” Josie said with a smile, feeling that gush of affection she had for her unorthodox family.

  “Well…” Alice, at the head of the table, sighed. “I made this meal. I’m sure as hell not cleaning it up.”

  “I got it.” Josie jumped to her feet and began clearing dishes. Wanting so badly to be useful and busy, and away from everyone’s curiosity about her life. And—she was adult enough to admit it—wanting somehow to change the way Alice looked at her.