Chapter 3
Lili woke to the sound of a three-year-old singing “Jingle Bells” at full volume while jumping on a couch.
She lay on the air mattress in Rose’s craft room, which doubled as a storage room and tripled as the place where unused exercise equipment went to die, and stared at the ceiling.
Downstairs, Rose’s voice called something about inside voices. A door slammed. Someone started crying. The dog barked. Lili closed her eyes and tried to remember what silence sounded like.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love Rose and her family. She did. Her nieces and nephew were sweet little tornadoes of energy and questions. Rose’s husband, Tom, was kind in a steady, uncomplicated way that made Lili wonder what it was like to trust someone so completely.
But the house was small, and three kids meant every surface was covered in toys, school projects, shoes, jackets, and the general debris of well-lived lives.
And Lili, with her single suitcase and her need for clean surfaces and locked doors, felt like an invasive species. She pulled on jeans and a sweater, ran her fingers through her hair, and walked downstairs.
The kitchen was a disaster zone. Cereal boxes lined the counter. Someone had spilled orange juice. Emma, the three-year-old, sat at the table wearing a tiara and Snow White pajamas, conducting an elaborate tea party with stuffed animals.
Rose stood at the stove, flipping pancakes with one hand while scrolling through her phone with the other. She had mastered the art of multitasking somewhere around kid number two.
“Morning,” Lili said.
“Morning. Coffee’s fresh. There’s—Emma, honey, we don’t feed Cheerios to Mr. Bear; he’s not real—” Rose glanced at her. “You know what? Forget breakfast here. Let’s go to Millie’s. Get you some decent coffee and actual quiet.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to. Tom can handle the mess for an hour.” Rose grabbed her keys. “Plus, you need to return Miles’s sweater, right? The clinic’s near the diner. We’ll eat, then you can drop it off.”
Twenty minutes later, they sat in a red vinyl booth at Kringle Kafe, the smell of coffee and bacon wafting in the air. A waitress appeared with menus and coffee, calling Rose by name and asking about the kids.
“You know everyone,” Lili said.
“Small town. You will too, if you stay long enough.”
Lili wasn’t planning to stay. Just through the holidays, perhaps into the new year. Then back to real life, whatever that looked like now.
The bell above the door chimed, and Lili glanced up.
A striking redhead strolled in, late twenties, near Lili’s own age, elegant in that effortless way some women managed. Dark jeans, cream sweater, expensive-looking coat. Prom queen energy.
“Gosh, she’s gorgeous.”
Rose followed Lili’s gaze. “Oh. That’s Sarah. Miles’s ex-fiancée,” Rose said. “She must be back visiting her parents for Christmas.”
Lili watched Sarah greet the waitress like an old friend, slide into a booth on the far side of the diner, and pull out her phone. Beautiful. Put-together. The kind of woman who belonged with a doctor.
“What happened with them?” Lili asked before she could stop herself.
Rose shrugged. “Depends on who you ask. Sarah says Miles was too closed off. Miles doesn’t really talk about it.
Nina says they were never right for each other and that it was for the best. Miles was just out of college at the time of the breakup and headed off to medical school.
Long distance is hard. It was that as much as anything else. ”
“It sounds sad.”
“Most breakups are.” Rose studied her sister. “Why? You interested in Miles?”
“What? No. I just met him. He dumped barbecue sauce on me.”
“He gave you his sweater. That’s basically a marriage proposal in small-town terms.”
“Rose.” She gave her sister a “no matchmaking” stare.
“I’m just saying. He’s single. You’re single. You’re both awkward at parties. It’s a match made in heaven.”
Lili glanced at Sarah again, scrolling through her phone, looking comfortable and confident, like she never doubted a decision in her life.
“I’m not looking for anything,” Lili said. “I’m just trying to get through Christmas while I wait to hear back on the jobs I applied for.”
Rose reached across the table to take her hand. “I’m so going to miss you being so far away. I hate that you feel you have to leave Texas.”
“I need a fresh start.”
“Stupid David. What a jerk.”
“Let’s not talk about him, okay?”
Rose flagged down the waitress. “We’ll have the pancake special. Extra bacon.”
Lili avoided glancing over at Sarah again. None of her business. She tried not to think about Miles being engaged to someone who looked like that, someone who would never wear ugly Christmas sweaters or get tongue-tied at parties.
But she did look. Once more, as they were leaving. Sarah was laughing at something on her phone, sunlight catching her hair through the window. She was the kind of woman men didn’t get over.
* * *
The Kringle Medical Clinic sat at the edge of downtown, a converted house that still appeared residential despite the medical shingle hanging from the porch.
Christmas lights dangled along the roofline.
A wreath hung crookedly on the door, and someone had created a candy cane border along the walkway with plastic stakes.
Several cars were in the parking lot.
On Sunday?
Lili sat in Rose’s minivan with the ugly Christmas sweater folded in her lap, watching through the front window. Rose was on the phone with Tom.
“Go on in,” Rose waved at her. “I’ll wait here.”
Lili could see Miles moving inside. Just glimpses. His dark head bent over paperwork, his hand gesturing as he talked to someone, his profile as he turned toward a back room.
She should just leave the sweater on the porch. Knock and run like a teenager playing pranks.
Instead, she got out of the van.
Inside the clinic, five people sat in mismatched chairs. A mom with a cranky toddler, an elderly man reading a three-month-old magazine, a teenager with earbuds, gaze transfixed on his phone, his mother beside him, and a middle-aged man coughing into his sleeve.
Wait. Miles was actually seeing patients on Sunday morning?
Lili paused.
What caught her attention next was the explosion of half-finished holiday decorations.
Paper snowflakes hung from ceiling tiles at varying heights.
A small artificial tree sat in the corner, undecorated except for a strand of lights that weren’t plugged in.
Someone had taped construction paper Santas made by children to the walls, but several had fallen down.
A half-assembled nativity scene sat on the reception counter, with Mary and Joseph present but baby Jesus missing.
The chairs were too close together. The air smelled like antiseptic and peppermint. A radio played “Silent Night,” competing with a crying child and a coughing man. Behind a sliding glass window, a desk sat empty. No receptionist. No one to check in with. Just a handwritten sign:
Brenda will return soon. Dr. Ellis is seeing patients. Wait your turn.
All rightee then.
PS—If you want to enter the lights contest, you better get on the stick. Entry forms are at the Chamber of Commerce.
The woman with the toddler glanced up. “If you’re here to see Doc Ellis, you just wait. He’ll call you back when he can. Might be a while, though. The flu’s going around, and Brenda’s out.”
“Oh, I’m not. I just need to return something.”
“You can leave it with Brenda when she gets back.” The woman gestured. “Poor Doc Ellis opens Sunday mornings during flu season. Half days, but still. The man never stops.”
The mother with the teen chimed in. “And he’s supposed to judge the lights contest on Tuesday. I don’t know how he’ll manage.”
Lili stood by the door, holding the sweater, aware she had no plan. She should leave. This was awkward.
The phone rang. Sharp, insistent, cutting through the ambient noise.
It rang again.
And again.
No one moved to answer it. Lili lasted thirty seconds before she reached through the sliding window and picked up the receiver.
“Kringle Medical, how can I help you?” she asked.
A pause. “Brenda?”
“No, Brenda’s away from the desk. May I take a message?”
“Well, I need to talk to Doc Ellis about...wait, are you the new nurse?”
“I’m helping right now. What do you need?”
The woman, Mrs. Carson, according to her rambling explanation, needed a prescription refill. Lili took down the information, found a message pad under a stack of Christmas decoration catalogs, and wrote it down. Then she pulled out her phone and texted Rose.
Go on home. This might take a while. I’ll walk back.
Rose texted:
It’s two miles to my house.
I need the exercise.
Rose texted:
Ooh, the plot thickens.
Stop it! You’re the mother of three.
How do you think I got those kids?
Shaking her head and grinning, Lili texted.
See you later.
I want all the dets when you get back.
The toddler’s mom smiled at her. “You new here?”
“No, I just…” She wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence.
The door to an exam room opened. Miles appeared with an elderly woman clutching a prescription and sniffling into a tissue.
“Get that filled today, Josie. Take it with food, and call me if you’re not better in three days. And please, stay home. Rest. Watch all your Christmas movies.”
The woman nodded and made her way out.
Miles turned to call the next patient and stopped. He stared at Lili sitting behind the desk, his sweater on her lap, a message slip in her hand.
“Lili?”
“Your phone was ringing. I didn’t—I know I shouldn’t have—”
“Did you answer it?”
“Yes.”
Something like relief crossed his face. “Thank God. I’ve been ignoring it for an hour. Maybe two. I’ve lost track. How long have you been here?”
“Ten minutes.”
“You could’ve come on back.”
“You were busy.”