Chapter Eighteen #3
“No, but it might do something better.” His eyes were bright now, that manic gleam she’d seen when he talked about his maps. “What if we made Margaret’s trail real? Physical? Something people could walk, touch, experience?”
Eva’s exhausted brain tried to keep up. “Like a heritage trail?”
“Exactly. Every place she touched, every life she changed. Mapped, marked, unmissable.”
Eva looked at him in awe. This was a brilliant idea, people would love it! “But Charlie, we have next to no time, how can we plot that all out?”
“We don’t need to. Margaret did it for us.”
“What?” Eva was tired and now even more confused.
“The diagram. Eva, do you remember the diagram in the box? I thought it was just decorative, but when I took a closer look it was as clear as day. Margaret created a map. It was a literal guide to where she had hidden all her notes.
“The veterans’ corner, the library, the orphans’ Christmas spot, the hidden garden where she went to grieve, all of them.” His speech seems to speed up with each location added.
Eva’s exhaustion vanished. “Charlie, you genius. That’s it. That’s our trail.”
They looked at each other, breathless with possibility. Then reality crashed back like cold water.
“Charlie, the deadline is midnight. We have just hours.”
“Good job I’ve already made a start on it then, isn’t it? With a little help, of course …”
“Charlie Blackwood, what have you been up to while I’ve been writing miste—”
Instead of answering, Charlie did something that stopped Eva’s heart. He stepped forward, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her forehead—gentle, reverent, a blessing and a promise. She could smell his soap, feel the calluses on his palms from years of drawing maps.
“I think,” he said softly, “that Margaret Wells spent her life proving that impossible things happen when people choose kindness over fear.”
Eva felt herself sway towards him, exhaustion and emotion making her brave. Her hands found his chest, feeling his heartbeat race to match hers. “What do we do now?”
For a moment, they just looked at each other. Eva thought he might kiss her properly. Thought she might die if he didn’t. The evening room was chilly now that she’d left the blanketed seat at her desk.
Then Charlie pulled her into a fierce embrace, his arms wrapping around her like he was trying to hold all the pieces of her together. She felt him shake slightly—exhaustion or emotion, she couldn’t tell. Maybe both.
“We save it,” he whispered into her hair. “We save all of it.”
Eva buried her face in his shoulder, breathing him in. “Together?”
“Together.” He pulled back just enough to look at her, his eyes bright with unshed tears and something that looked dangerously like hope. “I know how to save the inn. Let me show you the real people of York too.”
“Show me the way.” Eva’s voice was steady now, sure. “What’s the plan?”
“Then the last stop leads us back to the Inn,” Charlie’s smile was radiant as he finished walking Eva through the crash course of the trail he’d marked out for Margaret’s Map.
While she’d been hard at work writing, Charlie had rallied every man, woman and child in the vicinity to get Margaret’s points adequately marked.
A good thing no one had retired to bed yet.
His friends from the Christmas dinner get together and fellow stall owners had divided and conquered each of the zones.
Together, they’d created beautiful handmade markers that labelled each spot.
Even Sophie had managed to shake off her ego and offered to help.
“So, what’s next?”
“Now? We set Trinkett loose on the town’s people while they’re jolly and weaponise his theatrical tendencies. We’re going to rally everyone who’s ever been touched by Margaret’s kindness. We’ll make this city remember why some things are worth saving.”
“And if it doesn’t work?”
“Then we’ll have tried.” He squeezed her hand. “Margaret would expect nothing less.”
Eva squeezed back, feeling the weight of the past and the possibility of the future all tangled up in this moment. “For Margaret, then.”
“For Margaret. For Florence. For the inn.” His eyes held hers. “For us.”
Before Eva could unpack everything in that ‘us’, Charlie was already heading for the door, battle plans forming.
“Trinkett will be our voice on the ground. The stall I bought your notebook from, that’s owned by a really cool local artist, he created fliers this afternoon that we’ve had people posting door to door, we’re going to hand out the last of them now.
I want to see a queue winding through the streets of York tomorrow morning to understand Maragaret’s story.
“Charlie,” Eva called after him. “We need to sleep. Both of us.”
He turned back, grinning like a man about to charge into glorious battle. “Sleep is for people who aren’t trying to save Christmas. Come on, Coleman. Let’s go make some magic.”
And despite her exhaustion, despite the impossible odds, despite the keyboard marks on her face, Eva tightened the scarf around her neck and followed him into the night. Because sometimes the best stories weren’t about the endings you got, but the battles you chose to fight.
And sometimes, if you were very lucky, the battle was worth it because of who stood beside you.
Margaret Wells had taught them that.