Chapter 17
Aunt Eleanor arrived at Winter Wishes with a rolling suitcase and a wool coat the color of cranberry sauce. Her expression was a little unsettling. She looked very much like a woman who had been sitting on information for far too many miles.
Natalie saw her through the front window before the bell over the door even jingled.
Her aunt stood on the sidewalk for a moment, looking up at the painted sign above the shop as if she needed to admire it properly before coming inside.
Then she blew a kiss toward the window, hauled her suitcase over the threshold, and came in with cheeks pink from the cool air.
“My girl,” Aunt Eleanor said, opening her arms.
Natalie abandoned the basket of ornament hooks she had been sorting and hurried around the counter.
The hug was fierce, smelling faintly of lavender hand cream, peppermint gum, and the almond cookies Aunt Eleanor always packed for long drives because she didn’t trust gas station snacks to “have any honest substance.”
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Natalie said, holding on a little longer.
Aunt Eleanor squeezed her once more before pulling back to frame Natalie’s face in both hands. “You look tired.”
“That’s your first observation?”
“It’s not my first observation. It’s merely the one I said aloud.
” Aunt Eleanor’s eyes danced as she looked around the shop, taking in the garland, the candles, the wrapped display gifts, the western tree, the gift-wrap station, and finally the mistletoe hanging above it.
“My first observation was that Winter Wishes looks even more beautiful than last year.”
Natalie smiled despite herself. “That was better.”
“My second observation was the mistletoe, but I thought I would save that until I had taken off my coat.”
Natalie’s stomach gave an immediate, guilty flip. “The mistletoe is for atmosphere.”
“I’m sure it is.” Aunt Eleanor shrugged out of her coat and handed it over before Natalie could escape. “And possibly public safety, depending on where handsome cowboys happen to stand.”
Natalie froze halfway to the coat rack.
Aunt Eleanor’s smile widened. “Ah, so it is true.”
Natalie hung the coat with exaggerated care. “What’s true?”
“That my niece has been keeping secrets from me.” Aunt Eleanor rolled her suitcase closer to the counter then pointed one gloved finger at Natalie.
“I had to hear from Beatrice Mason, who heard from Mrs. Barlow, who apparently heard from half the town, that you have been seeing one of Johnnie and Maggie Clemons’s sons. ”
Natalie closed her eyes briefly. “That sounds like a very long and dangerous chain of information.”
“But it seems accurate.” Aunt Eleanor removed her gloves one finger at a time. “Not accurate in every detail, perhaps. Beatrice seems to think he proposed already, but I told her that even you would have mentioned an engagement.”
Natalie’s eyes flew open. “An engagement?”
“I corrected that part.” Aunt Eleanor patted her hand. “You’re welcome.”
“There is no engagement.” Natalie held up her left hand as proof.
“That is what I said.” Aunt Eleanor leaned one hip against the counter, all casual affection and sharpened attention. “But there is a cowboy. Which one?”
Natalie reached for the basket of ornament hooks and immediately regretted it when a few slipped through her fingers and scattered across the counter. “Um, Mark.”
“Mark.” Aunt Eleanor said his name slowly, testing it. “Mark Clemons. Second oldest, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“The oldest of the boys, right? Good family?”
“Yes, and yes.”
“Kind?”
Natalie’s fingers stilled among the hooks. “Yes.”
“Hard working?”
“Yes.”
“Handsome?”
Natalie’s cheeks grew far too warm. “Aunt Eleanor.”
“Interesting that that’s the question you don’t answer. Why is that? I do know that looks aren’t everything, sweetheart, but they don’t hurt either.”
Natalie picked up one hook and dropped it into the basket. “Yes.”
Aunt Eleanor’s pleased hum was almost worse than a squeal would have been. “I knew something was different when you called me last week.”
Natalie rubbed her forehead. “You did not.”
“I did. You sounded lighter but more cornered at the same time, which is a very strange tone for you.” Aunt Eleanor walked toward the nearest display and straightened a red glass ornament that did not need straightening. “Now tell me why I had to learn this through gossip instead of from you.”
Natalie had expected excitement. She had expected questions. She had even expected a little hurt because Aunt Eleanor had earned the right to be hurt when Natalie kept anything important from her. What she had not expected was that the truth felt too close to the surface.
“It happened quickly,” Natalie said slowly.
“That can be true.” Aunt Eleanor moved to the next ornament. “It can also be an evasion.”
Natalie swallowed. “It started with a misunderstanding.”
“Most town gossip does.”
“People saw us together, and they assumed things.”
“And you corrected them?”
Natalie’s mouth went dry.
Aunt Eleanor turned from the display slowly. “Natalie.”
The single word held more concern than accusation.
Natalie set the basket down and wiped her palms against her skirt. “At first, there didn’t seem to be a point. It was Mrs. Barlow being Mrs. Barlow, and then everyone kept repeating it, and by then…”
“By then what?”
People stopped trying to fix me.
The answer rose so clearly that Natalie nearly said it.
Instead, she looked toward the front window, where Main Street moved through an ordinary afternoon.
A mother held a child’s hand near the bakery.
Two older men stood outside the hardware store talking as if the fate of the world depended on whatever subject had trapped them there.
A wreath swung gently on the lamppost Mark had helped decorate.
“By then, it was easier not to correct them,” Natalie said.
Aunt Eleanor’s expression softened, but her eyes stayed watchful. “Easier because you like him?”
Natalie breathed in slowly. The familiar, safe scents of cedar, cinnamon, peppermint, and candle wax did not help any. “Yes.”
“And because he likes you?”
Natalie thought of Mark at his family’s house telling her she could come back.
She thought of his hand brushing the hair from her cheek beneath the mistletoe.
She thought of the container of leftovers she had eaten standing in her kitchen late last night because sitting down with them had felt too much like admitting she wanted what they represented.
“I think so,” she said.
Aunt Eleanor came closer then, her face gentler than Natalie deserved. “That was not the confident answer of a woman in a relationship.”
Natalie forced a laugh. “Not every relationship starts with confidence.”
“No, but honest ones tend to have more clarity than this.”
Natalie turned away and lifted a small wooden nativity ornament from the counter, pretending to inspect a chip along the edge. There wasn’t one. She simply needed a reason not to look at her aunt. “Mark is a good man.”
“I did not ask whether he was good.” Aunt Eleanor’s voice remained calm. “I asked whether this is honest.”
Natalie’s fingers tightened around the ornament.
She could still back out. She could confess that she and Mark had made rules, that they were only letting people assume, that the whole thing had begun as a shield against pity and matchmaking.
Aunt Eleanor might be disappointed, but she would listen. She always had.
Then Natalie imagined the look on her aunt’s face if she admitted she had been pretending because it was easier than saying out loud that loneliness had begun to hurt too much.
“It is,” Natalie said.
Aunt Eleanor studied her for a long moment. “It is honest?”
Natalie’s heart thudded once, hard. “Yes.”
The lie settled between them, small and plain and terrible.
Aunt Eleanor nodded slowly and glanced toward the mistletoe above the gift-wrap station. “Has he kissed you?”
Natalie almost laughed at the cruelty of the question, not that her aunt had any way to know the question was cruel in the first place. “No.”
“That answer sounded true.”
Natalie winced. “It was.”
“Do you want him to?”
Natalie looked down at the nativity ornament in her hand. Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus, and the tiny manger were all carved from one piece of pale wood. Something about holding it while lying made shame burn hot in her throat. “I know you mean well, but all the questions…”
“It’s a loving question.”
“I know.” Natalie’s fingers tightened around the ornament. “But I’d rather not answer that one.”
Aunt Eleanor’s mouth softened, and for once, she said nothing.
Natalie set the ornament down with more care than necessary. “I don’t know what this is yet.”
“That answer I believe.”
Her eyes lifted.
Aunt Eleanor reached for her hand, and Natalie let her take it.
“Sweetheart, I am thrilled if there is a man in your life who sees you properly. Truly, I am. I have prayed for that for years. No, you aren’t incomplete without a husband, but I know your heart.
I know you want a home full of noise and sticky hands and burnt cookies and someone who remembers what makes you smile when you are too tired to remember for yourself. ”
Tears pressed behind Natalie’s eyes, and she hated them. “Aunt Eleanor.”
“I also know you.” Her aunt squeezed her hand. “You dress up pain, and you wrap loneliness in ribbon and call it service. You make beauty out of ache, and that is a gift, but gifts can become hiding places if you are not careful.”
Natalie could not speak.
“So I will ask only one more question tonight.” Aunt Eleanor’s thumb moved gently over the back of Natalie’s hand. “Are you pretending with this man?”
The shop seemed to go unnaturally still around them. Even the soft Christmas music behind the counter felt distant.
Natalie closed her eyes. She could see Mark’s face when she told him she did not feel like a project with him.
Then she saw the way he had looked at her as if the words mattered.
She opened her eyes and thought of the rule, the almost kiss, the way her heart had been leaning toward him long before her common sense caught up.
“No,” Natalie said, and the lie hurt more because part of her wished it were true.
Aunt Eleanor’s gaze searched hers. “All right.”
That was all. All right. Not I believe you. Not I’m satisfied. Just all right, wrapped in enough love to make Natalie want to confess everything and enough doubt to make confession impossible.
The bell over the door jingled, and two customers came in carrying shopping bags from the bakery.
Natalie welcomed them with the smile she had practiced for years, bright and warm.
Aunt Eleanor moved behind the counter as if she had always belonged there and began unpacking a tin of almond cookies from her tote bag.
For the next twenty minutes, Natalie helped customers choose teacher gifts, wrapped a ceramic angel in tissue paper, and laughed when Aunt Eleanor insisted that every purchase over twenty dollars deserved a cookie.
She made the shop feel warm, made people feel seen, and made Christmas easier for everyone who walked through her door.
But every time she glanced at her aunt, the lie waited. It waited above the counter, beneath the mistletoe, in the space where Mark’s name had become something more tender than pretend. It waited while Aunt Eleanor smiled at customers and let Natalie keep the story she had chosen.
By the time the shop emptied again, Natalie’s chest ached from holding herself together.
Aunt Eleanor set the cookie tin on the counter and brushed crumbs from her fingers. “I’m going upstairs to put my suitcase away. Then I’ll come down and help you close.”
“You don’t have to help.”
“I know.” Aunt Eleanor paused near the back stairs. “That has never stopped me.”
Natalie smiled faintly, but once her aunt disappeared upstairs, the smile disappeared.
She stood alone in Winter Wishes, surrounded by lights and ribbon and tiny, beautiful things meant to tell other people they were loved. Then she looked toward the mistletoe, and the truth rose with such force that she had to grip the counter.
She had lied to Aunt Eleanor, but the worst part was not the lie itself.
The worst part was that when she said she and Mark were not pretending, she had wished with everything in her that it was true.