CHAPTER TWENTY
Hannah Leigh felt a knot of anxiety tighten in her stomach as she approached the door.
A fresh pine wreath hung on the door of Margaret Jane’s condo. Beside her, Aunt Winnie tightened the red ribbon on a tin of pralines.
“You ready, honey?”
“As I’ll ever be.” Hannah Leigh tugged her scarf loose and knocked.
The door opened. Margaret Jane, wearing a red, buttoned cardigan with a pretty silver angel brooch. Her blue eyes carried the calm of someone who’d weathered plenty.
“Come on in,” Margaret Jane said, warm but careful. “No sense catching a cold.”
The living room was tidy, almost too tidy, like one of those Airbnbs that are sparse and void of anything personal. Only one picture graced the mantel. A young woman wearing a plaid dress, smiling beneath the Colonial sign.
Winnie set the pralines on the table. “A little thank you for jumping in and helping with the choir, and for that lovely solo.”
Margaret Jane tugged on the ribbon and opened the tin. “They look delicious. Thank you. Have a seat.”
Hannah Leigh sat down and then waited a beat before reaching inside her coat pocket and setting the oval locket in front of Margaret Jane.
It was risky to pretend they didn’t know who the locket belonged to, but it was the best way to shake out the intertwined stories.
“I found this locket near the old dogwood. Do you recognize the people in the photographs inside?”
A faint breath caught. She turned it over with a trembling hand, tracing the faint engraving. “So beautiful,” she whispered, opening it. “But no, I don’t know these people.”
Hannah Leigh hesitated. “Someone said you might have had some history with that tree. A love story?”
“I definitely have a story,” she smiled, bittersweet. “But it’s mine, not theirs.” She folded her hands, gazing past them out the window. “I was eighteen. He was twenty. We thought we had forever figured out. We didn’t.”
“Don’t we all think we have all the answers at that age?” Aunt Winnie teased.
“First met under that dogwood. Me reading, him chasing an overthrown ball. Years later we found each other again at the train station. My father had passed, and somehow he filled that quiet. We were inseparable for weeks while I helped settle the estate.”
“Young love always feels like destiny,” Winnie said as if she’d lived that too.
“Until it doesn’t.” A wistful laugh had her shaking her head. “His family didn’t approve. That Christmas he asked if I’d meet him under the dogwood. He wanted to elope. We’d figure out the rest later.”
Winnie leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Elope?” Her voice filled with interest.
Hannah Leigh could imagine a proposal under that tree.
“I was so excited. Everyone knows the story of the lovers who were supposed to meet under the dogwood. I’d dreamed of being the one who actually got to find their true love there.
But I couldn’t run off and get married without telling Momma.
Only when I told her she became outraged.
She packed us up and hauled me to Delaware that night.
By spring, I tried to check on things back here only to find he’d married someone else. ”
The room went still.
Hannah Leigh leaned in, her voice low. “Someone thought maybe you were the one who wrote this note on the Love Left Behind board.” She read it. “A man beneath the dogwood. A broken heart. A promise unkept.”
“I did.” Her smile wavered. “He was the most romantic man I ever knew. He still holds that title in my heart. But life went on. I married and had a good life. Still, I wonder what might’ve been. I guess I just couldn’t resist putting that note on the board.”
Winnie reached over and squeezed her hand. “You really loved him.”
“More than anything, I still wish him peace.” Margaret Jane crossed the room to a cedar chest, pulling out a folded church-social bulletin, a ribbon and an old photograph of herself with a tall young man. “That was Clarence,” she said with affection still hanging on the words.
Winnie blinked. “Clarence Collier?”
Margaret Jane nodded. “We were careful. He came from folks who thought little of mine. We were in a different class, but I never felt like he was ashamed of me. But he married so quickly that I have to wonder if it was ever real.”
The words landed like a church door closing. Not loud. Just final.
Margaret Jane straightened and managed a smile. “Christmas has a way of stirring settled things. Sometimes that hurts.”
“Then maybe it’s time for some healing,” said Hannah Leigh. She put the locket back in her pocket.
Winnie stood, eyes glistening. “Thank you for trusting us with your story. We won’t breathe a word.
But you’ve probably figured out Birdie was the ‘someone’ we mentioned.
She’s got a knack for spreading news faster than a grassfire.
” Winnie smiled. “Still, she’s good people.
Tell her straight it’s private, and she’ll button up tight. ”
Margaret Jane gave a small nod. “Noted.”
They lingered a few more minutes, as women do when they have already said the hardest words. Then came the hugs, soft goodbyes, and the slow shuffle toward the door.
Outside, twilight painted the sky a pale lavender. A cardinal lit on a low branch near the porch, a flicker of red against the quiet.
At the car, Hannah Leigh looked back. Margaret Jane stood framed in the window, one hand resting on the sill. A woman who had learned how to keep living with what she’d lost.
As Hannah Leigh got into the car, a quiet thought settled in her heart. Maybe some loves didn’t end at all; they just waited for the right moment to be found again.