Chapter 33
SYLVIE
Sunday dinner at my parents’ house was a tradition I had cherished since childhood, but tonight it felt different. More precious, somehow, as we all gathered around the same dining table where I’d eaten countless meals growing up.
I didn’t think it was just me that felt the change in the air. We all knew the inevitable was coming but none of us really wanted to say it. That would make it all real. Denial was so much easier to deal with. Denial gave us a little more time to live in the fantasy that everything would work out.
“It smells good in here,” I said.
“Thanks,” Mom said. “Dinner is ready. We’ll be eating in about ten minutes.”
Mom had outdone herself with the spread. It was just another sign. She wasn’t going to admit it, but I knew exactly what was happening.
She had made a hearty chili that filled the house with the smell of cumin. She even made fresh cornbread. Stacy was working on a crisp salad with vegetables from what remained of her winter garden. It all looked amazing.
“Can I help?” I asked.
“Can you check on my hoodlums?” Stacy asked. “They’re being just a little too quiet.”
“Absolutely.”
I walked into the den and found them being very quiet indeed.
They were flipping through an old photo album.
My heart clenched. The album was one my mother had put together years ago.
Photos there were more than a hundred years old and had been carefully preserved and placed inside.
She had taken the time to caption every picture with the names of the people in them.
Most were all our ancestors. It was her way of preserving history.
It was something the Northwoods had always done, which was why we all knew who our great-great-great grandparents were.
It was an education unto itself. We all grew up on the stories of how the lodge got started. How Northwood in general got started.
“Hey guys,” I said.
They both looked up.
“Hi, Aunt Sylvie.” Alder grinned.
“You guys ready to eat? You can help me set the table.”
I helped Alder and Aspen carry plates and silverware from the kitchen to the dining room, their chatter filling the comfortable silence that had settled over the house.
They were excited about the photo album they’d been looking through, bombarding me with questions about the people in the old pictures.
“Aunt Sylvie, who’s the lady in the white dress with all the flowers?” Aspen asked, carefully placing napkins beside each plate.
“That’s your great-great-grandmother on her wedding day,” I told her. “She married the man who built the original cabin that became our lodge.”
“Was she a princess?” Aspen’s eyes went wide with the possibility.
“She was our princess,” I said, smoothing her hair. “Just like you are.”
By the time we had everything set up, Mom was ladling steaming bowls of chili while Dad carved thick slices of cornbread. The familiar ritual of passing dishes and settling into our usual seats felt both comforting and bittersweet. How many more Sunday dinners would we have in this house?
Sylvie opened the bottle of apple cider and filled Aspen and Alder’s glasses while Mom filled our glasses with red wine.
I always admired how Stacy paid attention to these little details with her kids.
I loved the way she made ordinary moments feel special.
Those plastic flutes weren’t expensive, but they made the children feel included in the adult ritual of toasting and celebrating.
It was the kind of thoughtful parenting that I hoped to emulate someday, if I ever got the chance.
But with how uncertain everything felt right now, I couldn’t let my thoughts wander too far down that road. The possibility of having a family of my own seemed increasingly remote when I didn’t even know if I would have a stable income or a home in a few months.
And now I had to try and get over the asshole that had left me high and dry and apparently fell off the face of the earth. I was trying to figure out how I was ever going to have sex with another man and not compare that experience to being with Kent.
He had rocked my world.
The man knew his way around a woman’s body. Just thinking about how he knew sent jealousy running through me to the point I could feel my jaw clenching.
But I had no claim over him then or now. His experience would only improve.
And that really pissed me off.
“Alder, stop making faces at your sister,” Stacy said mildly, refilling her wine glass. “And eat your cornbread before it gets cold.”
“But she started it,” Alder protested, though he dutifully took another bite.
“I did not!” Aspen shot back, her voice reaching that pitch that meant tears weren’t far behind.
“Both of you, enough,” Brom said with the practiced ease of a father who’d refereed countless sibling squabbles. “Save the drama for after dinner.”
I found myself smiling despite everything. This was what I loved about our family dinners. The chaos and laughter were natural. Normal. The way three generations could come together around this table and feel connected to something larger than ourselves.
Alder and Aspen reminded me of Brom and me when we were their age. One day they would have children, but unfortunately, I had a feeling those kids would not be sitting at this table or living in this house. They were the last generation of Northwoods to enjoy this little slice of heaven.
I couldn’t shake the melancholy. I wished I could, but it was just there, planted deep in my soul.
When we finished eating, the kids escaped to the living room to play by the Christmas tree. I smiled listening to them. They were talking about which ornaments were prettiest. The adults lingered at the table, reluctant to break the spell of togetherness that seemed especially important tonight.
We all felt it.
Dad cleared his throat in the way that meant he had something serious to discuss. Some of us instinctively reached for each other’s hands. Mom took mine. Stacy took Brom’s. It was as if we could already sense that we were going to need the connection.
My stomach rolled and all that chili started to rebel. Dad had been hinting about this for a while, but the time had come.
“We need to have a hard conversation,” he said, his voice heavy with the weight of whatever he was about to share. “About the future of the farm and the lodge.”
My stomach dropped, though I’d been expecting this moment for weeks. Still, hearing it said out loud made it real in a way that all my private worrying hadn’t.
“Mom and I have poured everything we’re willing to risk into trying to save this place,” Dad continued. “All of our retirement savings, most of our emergency fund, everything we can afford to lose. But it’s not enough. It will never be enough to get us back to where we were.”
His voice cracked slightly on the last words. Mom’s hand tightened around mine. I glanced over at Brom. His jaw was clenched. I could see the anger in his eyes.
“We have to make our peace with the fact that the Northwood Christmas Tree Farm as we’ve known it is over, before we let our dream bankrupt our entire family.”
I blinked back tears that threatened to fall. I had to be strong for all of them. We all had to be strong for each other.
Brom immediately pushed back, his voice urgent. “Dad, Stacy and I have savings too. There has to be new things we can try, different approaches—”
Dad shook his head slowly. I could see how much it cost him to crush his son’s hope.
“The kind of money we’d need to put our rustic little lodge back on the map isn’t attainable, son.
We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars for marketing, renovations, staffing, equipment replacement.
Even if we had that kind of capital, there’s no guarantee it would work.
We’re a dying business. The lodge might make a decent income, but the tree farm is dead.
There is no coming back. If we focused on the lodge, we might last another couple of years.
I don’t see the benefit to putting off the inevitable. ”
The silence that followed was deafening. I could feel everyone’s hearts breaking around the table. I could see the dreams and hopes we’d all been clinging to crumbling in real time.
Mom dabbed at the corner of her eyes with a tissue. Stacy’s lip quivered but she was keeping it together.
“When?” Stacy asked quietly. “When do we close?”
Dad delivered the final blow with the matter-of-fact tone of someone who’d already accepted the inevitable. I knew it wasn’t an easy decision. He had probably been tossing this around all year. I suspected he gave us one last year and it was clear we weren’t going to make it.
“After New Year’s Day,” he answered. “We’ll honor our existing bookings through the holidays, but no new reservations. It’s time to close the lodge, sell off sections of the land to developers, and be grateful for what we still have—each other and our homes.”
The words hit hard. They were physically painful. January. We had weeks, not months. Soon there would be bulldozers where Christmas trees now stood, strip malls where families had made memories for generations.
My throat hurt. Probably because there was a giant lump lodged in it. I took a second to collect my thoughts.
“What does this mean for the town?” I asked, thinking about all the people whose livelihoods were connected to our property. “For everyone who depends on us?”
Dad’s expression grew even more weary. “The Northwoods have done their part for this community for three hundred years. We’ve employed half the town, kept the local economy afloat, preserved traditions that most places have forgotten.
But we can’t sacrifice our family’s entire future for a dream that’s already dead.
Your mother and I put off our retirement.
We drained our savings, which eliminated a lot of the plans we dreamed about for our retirement.
We’ve all made sacrifices and I think it’s enough. It’s time to stop the bleeding.”
He looked around the table at all of us. “Hopefully, change will be good for everyone. New development might bring different kinds of jobs, different opportunities.”
I thought about Kent and his offer, about the possibility that still existed if he kept his word and came back. There was still a chance he could save everything. The farm, the lodge, the jobs, the community traditions that meant so much to all of us.
But would he come back? Had I ruined everything by sleeping with him and letting my emotions complicate what should have been a straightforward business discussion?
The questions had been eating at me all day, and sitting here listening to Dad outline the end of everything we’d worked for, I wanted desperately to tell them about the potential lifeline.
But I held my tongue. I couldn’t give them hope based on promises from a man who’d walked out of my apartment that morning without a backward glance.
I couldn’t risk raising their expectations only to have them crushed again if Kent decided our little mountain community wasn’t worth his family’s investment after all.
So I sat there holding Mom’s hand, watching my father struggle with the weight of decisions that would change all our lives. My only hope was that Kent Bancroft was a better man than his behavior this morning had suggested.
Because if he wasn’t, we were all going to lose everything that mattered most to us.
I had no idea what my future looked like. Where would Stacy and Brom go? My entire world was crashing down around me and all I could think about was Kent.
You better come back.