2
The glitter of the night, the magic, falls over us as soon as we descend the staircase.
The ballroom remains empty most of the year, a hollow, cavernous room with high plastered ceilings, silk-paneled walls, and parquet floors. The room’s sole purpose is to entertain, and it always seems like a lonely housebound woman who only comes to life when friends visit. When people arrive, the ballroom blossoms and the gloom and the empty, cavernous feeling fly away, swept aside for the glee of a party.
There are sixty Nordmann fir and spruce Christmas trees lining the walls, one for each country where we have an official presence—Italy, Cyprus, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Singapore, Brazil, and more. They’re decorated in the Christmas traditions of each country, including, of course, ceramic models of our timepieces. The heady scent of spruce and fir teases through the room, mixing with cinnamon and allspice and gingerbread.
In fact, against the windows, a life-size gingerbread house reigns supreme. Outside the frosting-glazed house, a giant working timepiece resides over the gala. It’s crafted of silver spun sugar and shaped like the Chronomachen, our bestseller.
From the ceiling hang glittering snowflakes and boughs of mistletoe. Christmas lights twinkle from above like stars guiding wanderers home. A fairytale Christmas.
As we float down the steps I take it all in. I breathe in the evergreen and spice, feeling the heat of the room crackling from all the laughing, dancing guests, and take in the snapping excitement and the magic of it all.
“I never imagined it would be so beautiful,” Mila whispers, and over her bright red hair Daniel grins at me. He’s triumphant. A year of planning and prodding countless staff members and contractors and he has his niece’s awe-filled approval.
“What does it matter if this gala goes down in history or not?” is what his gaze seems to say. What does it matter, as long as Mila likes it?
“I promised you a dance, didn’t I?” he asks her as we descend the wide, curving stairs.
And then we’re caught up in the clamor of the orchestra, the tinkling of champagne glasses, and the robust cheer of a hundred voices mingling.
Mila is right. Daniel outdid himself.
While I’m a quick study at estimated growth, foreign-market strategy, long-term planning, contracts with suppliers and distributors, and import/export negotiations, Daniel is the brains behind our brand, our marketing, our cachet. We’re the best team because I’m most comfortable behind a desk, planning and combing through market projections, while Daniel shines out in the world, bringing our vision to life.
Of our sibling duo I’m the introvert, the thinker, while Daniel is the extrovert, the doer.
The day my mum dropped me on my dad’s doorstep and I met two-year-old Daniel was one of the best days of my life. I had all my possessions in a scuffed baby-blue suitcase—two tie-dye dresses, a tumbled moonstone, a stuffed bichon more gray than white, a pack of peanuts I was saving for when I was really hungry—and my dad sent me up to the nursery where Daniel and his nanny were.
I crouched on the floor next to him and thunked my suitcase down. It rattled loudly in the cavernous, wood-floored nursery. The room was austere, clean, and Daniel had the chubby-cheeked glow of a well-fed, well-loved child. Downstairs I could hear my mum telling my dad she was leaving me, just for a short time, while she found herself in Bali. There was yelling. Quite a bit of yelling.
Daniel’s blond fuzz of toddler hair glowed in the sunlight streaming through the window. His nanny, Brigitte, read a book about a mother rabbit always coming after her runaway son—never leaving him, always finding him, always loving him—and my lower lip wobbled.
That’s all.
But my baby brother, who had been staring at me with wide blue eyes, caught the tremor. He reached up with his chubby baby hand and softly patted my cheek.
My mum left. She didn’t find herself in Bali. Or in Kuala Lumpur. Or Jaipur. Or back home, on the Tor of Glastonbury. She never came back for me either.
But I didn’t know all that then. I only knew the little brother I’d never met was patting me on my cheek.
Meeting him was one of my best days ever.
I didn’t realize it at the time, of course, but we often don’t realize our lives courses have changed until years after the fact.
So, Daniel dances with Mila while I watch from the edges of the parquet dance floor.
She dances twice with Daniel, and three times with Max. She twirls around the ballroom, her white tulle skirt puffing around her like the snowflakes spinning in the sky outside. Her cheeks are pink and her eyes bright. The orchestra conductor, sensing her glee, leads a rousing version of the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.”
I weave between guests: Vincent from Swiss National Bank (shall our families plan a ski day this winter? Verbier?); Arne, the former mayor, and his wife, Mellisande (have you seen the new zoning proposal?); Phillipe, a competitor in the luxury watch market (sly comment about leather supplier superiority); Jean, a curator at The Musée d’Art et d’Histoire (angling for an invitation to view our private art collection).
And then, Mila finishes dancing and gorges herself on a plate of strawberry and pistachio macarons stacked like a Christmas tree and dabbed with flecks of edible gold. She drinks from a crystal goblet filled with spiced cider and pins a sprig of holly in her hair.
And finally, Annemarie, her nanny, leads her upstairs for a sleep filled with dreams of dancing, Christmas lights, and macarons.
And now it’s nearing midnight and I’m wrapped in Max’s arms, spinning around the dance floor to the orchestra strumming out “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”
Daniel left ten minutes ago, leading a gorgeous, lanky blond out a side door, his hand on the crook of her back. He’s thirty, unattached, and cat nip for all women, age one week to one foot in the grave.
Sometimes I worry he won’t find someone who appreciates him for who he is, especially when his face is always plastered all over the media, but he tells me not to big-sister him.
“You’re thinking hard,” Max says, smiling.
He’s right. I give him an apologetic smile. “Mila loved the gala. Did you see her expression when the snowflakes fell from the ceiling?”
He studies me, taking in my dance-flushed cheeks. “The snow was beautiful. Almost as beautiful as you.”
I glance quickly at Max. He shrugs and turns me around the dance floor.
The gala is quieting. At midnight everyone will filter out the door, into the cold night. Their breath will puff white in the darkness, and then they’ll climb into their cars and wind back down the drive. Max will join them, back to being my old friend and not this stranger who seems intent on . . . something more.
As I swallow, wishing Christmas were here already, and then the New Year, Max’s gaze shifts to the ruby and emerald necklace resting on my collarbone.
“Do you like it?”
I nod. “Of course I do. Mila said she helped you pick it out.”
He smiles. He softens when he smiles. Usually his hard-planed face is austere with a wry light tinting his brown eyes. His expression is often hawkish and determined, reminiscent of his Roman ancestors crossing the Rubicon. But with his smile the hawk turns into a dove. Gentle and offering a peaceful retreat.
“I admit, I may have asked her for a bit of advice.” He smiles so openly that I don’t even object when he pulls me closer.
His black tux is well-fitted, custom-tailored, and winter-sleek. The gloss matches the high shine of his black hair. Like me, his family has been here forever. But unlike mine, his was first in gold and then in diamonds and then in jewelry. The Barones have been here as long as the Abrys. Which is one of the reasons why Max and I get along so well.
We’ve been friends since my dad’s funeral, when he made a joke about all six of my dad’s ex-wives weeping in front of the chateau, saying in French, “They’re like Henry the Eighth’s wives, except they all survived. A bit morbid, isn’t it? How many of them lived again? I can never remember English history.”
“Divorced, beheaded, and died. Divorced, beheaded, survived,” I said, eyeing my mum sobbing over a handful of rose quartz.
“Wow. Very nice. Who was he to you? Not anyone important, I imagine. Half the people here are just clamoring for a handout in the will.”
“Really? What would you want? If you got a handout.”
He thought about this for a moment, staring up at the gray stone walls of the chateau hunched under the heavy gray sky. “I’d ask for that brass umbrella stand in the entry. It’s hideous, and I could hide all sorts of important items in it. Diamonds, documents, my passport. No thief would ever suspect it on account of its ugliness.”
I scoffed. That ugly umbrella stand was a wedding gift from my mum. “Don’t you have a safe?”
He shrugged. “What’s the fun in that? I bet old Abry kept the family jewels in that stand. What would you angle for if you were in the will?”
I thought about it for a moment. I already knew what I was getting. The family business, near bankruptcy. I was also eight weeks pregnant and in over my head.
But what would I want if I were just clamoring for a handout?
“There’s a watch that went missing years ago. It was the first timepiece Adolphus Abry ever made. I’d ask for that.”
Adolphus Abry is my renowned ancestor and founder of the family business.
Max whistled. “Big ask. Not for mere hangers-on and acquaintances like us. Who was old Abry to you anyway? Family friend? Business associate? Are you seeking charity for a just cause? It makes a difference in what you’ll get. He was a cantankerous old goat.”
I lifted my eyebrows.
Apparently, Max didn’t hold with not speaking ill of the dead.
“I’m the cantankerous old goat’s beloved daughter.”
Max stared at me, mortified. He was twenty-six at the time, the same age as me, and he’d take over his family’s worldwide jewelry conglomerate the very next year.
“I’m sorry. Forget we met. Forget I said anything. Oh, one of those wailing banshees is your mother? Is that right? Now I’m truly sorry.”
I couldn’t tell if he was saying sorry that he’d insulted my mum or sorry that Buttercup was my mum.
At that I laughed. It was the first time I’d laughed since Daniel called to say Dad had died of a heart attack.
The next week I couriered Max the umbrella stand with a red ribbon and a card that said, “For your family jewels, from the old goat.”
Two months later, with a small baby bump, I ran into Max at a charity concert. He looked at my bump, looked at the expression on my face, and then said, “Are you on your own?”
I lifted my chin. “No. I have my brother.”
“You can have me too.”
At my look, he said, “As a friend.”
And so we’ve remained friends for almost nine years.
But as he reaches up and carefully sweeps a loose tendril of hair behind my ear, I know Max doesn’t want to be friends anymore.
“Max. I can’t?—”
“Don’t,” he says, shaking his head and pulling me closer.
His brown eyes flash with worry and I can feel the vulnerability in him. It’s rare that he shows that, so I relax into the steps of the dance and the soft sigh of the music.
I’m comfortable in his arms. I always am. He’s not quite six feet tall, lanky. He always wears a gold ring studded with a large ruby on his right ring finger, with the family’s crest imprinted on the gold. He twists it when he’s nervous. Long ago his ancestor was beheaded during the French Revolution. The daughter of the beheadee escaped la Terreur, met up with a Barone, and married him. The Barone business adopted the crest as their own.
Like Daniel, Max is always showing off his wares to the world. He always has a new pair of cufflinks at his wrists, gold or platinum or silver, a diamond-studded tie pin, or a sapphire and diamond wristwatch. But unlike Daniel, Max isn’t my brother, and apparently, he doesn’t want to be just friends.
Across the ballroom, the spun sugar timepiece reads 11:48 p.m. The Christmas Eve Gala is near its end.
“You don’t have to say yes or no,” Max says, looking out over the gala. Looking everywhere but at me. “But I wanted you to know, sometime in the past year, or maybe the past nine years, I’ve developed?—”
“Max, please. I know what you’re going to say and I don’t want you to say it.”
He looks back at me then, his mouth pressed into a firm line. He carefully watches my expression.
“I love you,” I tell him. “As a friend. I’ve always loved you as a friend. Please don’t ask anything more of me. You know I can’t?—”
“Can you say that absolutely? Without a doubt?” He leans close, and I’m reminded of the days we’ve sailed on the lake together, of him helping Mila learn to ride her bike, of the nights we sat side by side and worked late into the evening with a carton of takeout between us, without talking, just being.
He sees my hesitation and presses, “Fiona.” He whispers my name. “What if we try? What if I take you to dinner? What if I bring you flowers? Can you say absolutely that I can never make you happy? Can you know for certain that someday I can’t be the one?”
I grip the warm sleeves of his tuxedo jacket, the fabric slick against my fingers. I’m so close to Max that I can see the quick beat of his pulse in his neck. His nervous swallow.
I don’t want to hurt him.
But I don’t want to hurt myself either.
I take a breath, his cologne, an earthy, sanded wood smell, mixing with my Christmas vanilla-and-spice. There’s a stinging at the backs of my eyes.
Max has always been my friend. He’s always been just a friend. As reliable as the changing seasons.
I shake my head. Try to focus on the steps of the dance and the music weaving around us.
There are still dozens of people here. Large clusters of groups portioning off, couples dancing, business deals brewing over champagne and cranberry tarts.
Max’s expression turns hawkish again, his austere coating back in place. “This wasn’t the right time. I’m sorry.”
No.
“Max. I?—”
I’m cut off by a sharp, high-pitched scream.
The scream breaks through the noise and slices through the ballroom.
Then there’s the shattering crash of a dozen champagne glasses smashing to the floor.
The orchestra fumbles, cellos slide to silence, and violins screech to a halt. A cymbal ricochets and quiets.
I yank out of Max’s arms, searching for the woman who screamed.
Max tugs at me. “Fi. Stay behind?—”
He’s seen something I haven’t.
He’s trying to push me behind him.
But truly, there isn’t enough time. It happens in an instant. Like the champagne glasses sliding from the silver tray and smashing against the wood floor. Once the fall has begun there’s no way to stop it.
You can’t rewind time.
I blink as Mellisande and Arne dive to the side.
My skin runs cold as Phillipe stumbles and slams to the floor.
I falter and feel a thick, halting heartbeat knock against my ribs as Jean’s glass of champagne slips from his fingers and shatters.
Max grabs my hand. “For god’s sake, someone stop?—”
It’s too late.
There’s a small woman. She’s wearing a bulky black winter coat, the hood is pulled tight. Fur lines her face and obscures her features.
The only thing recognizable is the gun.
It’s compact. Black. Aimed at me.
“It’s Christmas Eve. Remember, it’s Christmas Eve. Tell them it’s Christmas Eve.” She says this and she sounds as if she’s trying to impress the fact on me. As if she’s speaking to me, and only me.
And then the boom of the gun.
Max dives in front of me and I slam to the ground, buried beneath him.
There’s a crack. A crash.
The intense jolting pain of a thousand Christmas bulbs shattering in my chest and piercing my lungs.
I drag in a gasping breath.
Max rolls off me, his face white, eyes wild. His hands roam me, checking to see if I’m hurt.
“Fi? Are you all right?”
There’s a roaring. A strange whining noise in my ears. It drowns out the shouts and cries of the people running toward us.
I stare up at the snowflakes floating above. They really do look real. Daniel did a wonderful job. I remember the look on Mila’s face when she first saw them, and I smile.
Then I look down at myself. At Max’s hands running over my velvet crimson dress.
“You’re all right. You’re all right,” he murmurs.
But then the blood that was seeping into my dress spills to the floor. And he realizes at the same time as I do that my dress and my blood are the exact same color.
“Don’t be scared,” he says, yelling behind him for Dr. Gaertner, a surgeon—is he still here? “Don’t be scared,” Max says again, clutching my hand.
His grip is tight, as if he’s the one who’s afraid.
“I’m not scared,” I say, my mouth horribly dry. There’s an ache building in my head and a numbness racing down my limbs. It feels like it does when you slide into Lake Geneva on an early spring day. Too cold.
“I’m not scared,” I say again. I look down at my dress and frown. “It’s only, I really liked this dress. It was one of a kind.”
Max’s face clears of emotion.
And then I slide into oblivion.
I don’t dream.