Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Amelie
It was five fifteen when Amelie and Willa sold their last slab of fudge and began to clean up for the night.
Pascal had long since returned to the bed-and-breakfast to get ready for dinner, leaving Willa and Amelie in a state of confusion and fatigue.
They were worried about the upcoming meal “up the hill” and took extra care with each piece of equipment, eager to spend as much time cleaning as possible.
This contrasted with their childhood and teenage years, when they’d often rush through fudge shop cleaning tasks to hang out with friends.
“Remember how Dad would always make us clean the mixer, like, five times before we could leave for the day?” Amelie asked, standing over a jug of water and platters, sticky with fudge they’d sold.
Willa snorted. “I remember when we tried to mop the floor in three minutes flat and just made it messier. That was impressive, in a way.”
Amelie cackled. “I guess that’s how kids always are. Trying to get away with what they can?”
Willa swiped a rag over the counter, considering this. “Do you think we were especially bad kids?”
“What? No!” Amelie shook her head. “We were pretty good, I think. We never snuck out. We did our homework. We helped out at the shop.”
But Amelie thought she knew what Willa meant. Had what happened later—the fact that they’d left after everything—made them “bad kids”? Was this what Willa had stewed on for the past twenty years? Was this what Amelie was running away from?
Goodness, it was strange to be back. At the same time, it was the most natural thing in the world.
Willa and Amelie spent the next two hours reminding each other of various tasks that needed to be performed before they could be free for the night.
When they were finished, everything was sparkling clean, and the ingredients were prepped and ready for the following morning, when Amelie planned to return for another four a.m. session.
Although she didn’t dare ask, she was pretty sure Willa thought she was crazy for opening the fudge shop.
But at the same time, working with her sister today had been so soul-warming and beautiful that Amelie wanted to do it for the rest of her life.
She knew better than to think that would happen. She knew better than to hope.
More than that, she knew better than to ask that Willa come back tomorrow. She tried to gauge Willa’s expression to figure out where her head was at.
At seven thirty, Amelie and Willa returned to the bed-and-breakfast to change their clothes and get ready to go up the hill.
Pascal was already dressed, chatting with a seventy-plus tourist who was staying the week to “fall in love with Mackinac in the wintertime.” Pascal had discovered that the tourist could speak French, and they were flowing through a gorgeous conversation, one that Amelie couldn’t fathom.
She wondered if she’d ever learn French, if Pascal would ever be patient enough to talk to her.
She wondered what she’d do if she left Mackinac and never saw Pascal again—if she’d pine for these sparkling, snowy days and jazzy nights.
Once in her bedroom upstairs, she watched as Willa went through her clothes and selected a black dress to wear for the night.
It was the same one Amelie had wanted to wear, but she didn’t say so.
She wanted Willa to be comfortable. Willa put on a shade of lipstick and pressed her lips together, then sat at the edge of Amelie’s bed and looked at her shoes.
“I’m terrified,” she whispered.
“Me too,” Amelie agreed.
They couldn’t think of anything else to say. Amelie was worried that if they speculated what was waiting for them, they’d jinx it. Maybe Willa felt the same.
Minutes later, they met Pascal downstairs and strode into the indigo dark.
As though they were little girls again, Willa and Amelie held hands for a few minutes, crunching through the snow, until they spotted the house at the top of the hill.
Their hands separated. Amelie stopped walking, her breath catching in her throat.
Pascal continued to talk a mile a minute, telling Amelie and Willa a story about his childhood in France, about the baker down the road who’d always given him a free croissant, about his father, who’d been a failed baker and had to work in a factory down the road.
Amelie tried to focus on Pascal’s stories because she wanted to know him, wanted to understand him.
But faced with her own past, she struggled to hold empathy for anyone else.
How much of her past did Pascal already know?
When they reached the porch, Pascal didn’t hesitate before striding up and knocking on the door. In a flash, Grandma Mary opened it, delivering a delicious smile. “We thought you’d never make it! Oh, but we know there’s always so much to do at the fudge shop. Come in, Pascal. Come in, my girls.”
Amelie fell back into her grandmother’s hug, inhaling the smell of rose and lavender and something incredible, a dessert baking in the oven.
When she re-emerged from her grandmother’s embrace, she fell into her grandpa Jerry’s arms, her eyes smarting at how much older he looked.
After that were aunts, uncles, and cousins, all of whom said Amelie’s and Willa’s names over and over, celebrating them joyfully.
Everyone had gotten so much older. But everyone was just the same as ever, as though personalities could never shift.
“Welcome back!” their uncle Tommy cried, clapping Willa on the shoulder. “When we heard that you’d be coming to film a few commercials for us, we were floored. We didn’t think, you know…” He searched for their aunt Addison, his wife, who filled in the blanks.
“We didn’t think you even thought about Mackinac anymore,” Addison explained sheepishly. “But we were so touched when we learned that you were coming!”
“And now, both of you are here!” Uncle Tommy cried. “We’re so lucky.”
Amelie watched Willa like a hawk, searching for what she was feeling.
Although they’d had numerous laughs throughout the day, and Willa had stepped in when Amelie needed her most, there was still tension between them, proof of all that remained unsaid.
Amelie wished she could take all that pain between them away.
And she wished their family would calm down a little and not draw attention to all the time that had gone by.
Soon, Willa and Amelie were seated on the sofa, sipping glasses of red wine, with all of their family surrounding them, looking at them as though they were celebrities.
Pascal was in the armchair to the right of Amelie, cracking jokes that everyone laughed at.
It seemed like Pascal was not just a child of the island, but that Amelie’s family had more or less adopted him.
Her grandmother and grandfather obviously adored him, and her aunts and uncles doted on him, asking about his bed-and-breakfast and inquiring about a woman he’d previously been seeing.
“That’s long over! I’ve moved on,” Pascal said of the woman. Amelie’s heart stirred, wondering what kind of woman captivated Pascal and why it hadn’t worked out.
The fact that Amelie and Willa’s father, Frank, was nowhere to be found in the crowd was a surprise.
Amelie searched the shadows, both eager and frightened to see her father’s face.
This was his house, after all, the house where Willa and Amelie had been raised.
It was decorated just as it had been when they were children, with the same art on the walls, the same refrigerator, and the same chairs.
The only differences were found in technology, a larger television, and a laptop on the desk in the corner—no landline phone.
Finally, after Pascal had cracked everyone up in the family with another anecdote, Willa spoke. “Do you need any help with dinner?”
Their grandmother looked horrified. “No, darling! No help at all. We know how hard you’ve been working all day at the fudge shop.
Pascal called us and said that both of you were back behind the counter, and we just lost it.
It’s why we arranged this big dinner. We’re so happy.
” Grandma Mary beamed. “But we’re waiting on your father, I’m afraid.
He said he’d be ready soon. In fact, Pascal, would you mind checking on him? ”
Pascal was already on his feet, moving toward the staircase.
Amelie stood, clutching her chest. If she had to guess, it seemed likely that Pascal had helped her father a great deal, that he’d been the son her father had never had.
I should have been here. Guilt filled every square inch of her heart.
She crept to the base of the staircase, trying to peer up through the shadows.
But suddenly, Willa was there beside her, her face stony. With her lips an inch from Amelie’s ear, she muttered, “I think we should go. I’m not up for this.”
Amelie felt the air deflate from her lungs. She heard creaking on the floorboards upstairs and the coaxing from Pascal.
“You know why we left,” Willa said, her nostrils flaring.
“I can’t believe I let myself get dragged up here.
I can’t believe I got swept up.” There was sweat on her upper lip, and her eyes were darting from left to right, as though she were tracing through old memories and finding ghosts everywhere.
Amelie’s heart thudded. She felt herself drop back into Christmas of 2006—nearly twenty years ago.
She felt the pain and the darkness and the torment, as though she carried it with her always.
She cupped her own elbows and grimaced. Maybe Willa was right.
Perhaps they needed to go before their father showed his face.
But suddenly, here he was on the staircase, his arm thrown over Pascal’s shoulders as they made their way down.
Immediately, Amelie’s heart shattered. The man before them was old and rickety and gray-faced, his limbs long and crooked, his clothes hanging off him as though he were a scarecrow.
Amelie took a tentative step back, her hand on her heart.
Immediately, most (if not all) of the rage she’d had for her father fell away.
This man was an older man, a broken man.
He couldn’t even get down the stairs himself.
It fell into place. This was why her father had had to close the fudge shop. He was tremendously ill.
She wondered if this was why the Christmas Festival Committee had tricked Willa into coming back to film their commercials. It was crafty, the sort of thing an islander would come up with.
Willa and Amelie backed up toward the foyer, watching as their father came slowly to the first floor. Pascal talked enthusiastically the entire time, as though to take their father’s mind off the fact that he couldn’t really get around. This was the magic of Pascal, Amelie knew.
But their father couldn’t keep his eyes off his daughters. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, he used both hands to grip the railing and stood in stunned silence. All of the Caraway family members were equally as quiet, waiting expectantly, as though fearful of what would happen next.
Well, everyone was quiet except for Grandma Mary, who always knew just what to say.
She strode forward, all breath and power, and said, “Son, your daughters worked all day at the fudge shop. They worked tirelessly and sold out. After that, they spent two hours cleaning up and prepping so they can do it all over again tomorrow. What do you think about that? You taught them well, didn’t you? ”
Amelie didn’t like the way her grandmother was talking to her father, as though he was too ill to fully understand. Her father’s legs quivered beneath him. It was clear he needed to sit down, but didn’t want to acknowledge it.
Amelie dared a glance at Willa, who was, as ever, difficult to read.
Finally, their father extended one of his arms. It shook out beside him like a tree branch in winter. “My girls,” he whispered. “I thought I would never see you again.”
Suddenly, Amelie couldn’t resist it. She no longer cared what happened, nor did she want to be angry with him, and she no longer wanted to carry this pain.
She fell forward and into her father’s arms. “Dad,” she said.
“Dad, it’s so good to see you.” He was quiet, sniffing. Tears fell down his cheeks.
Amelie assumed that Willa would hang back.
She assumed that she wouldn’t forgive their father so readily, because Willa was stronger, sturdier than Amelie.
But a moment later, Willa joined them, tucking herself into their father’s arms. For a long time, the twins stood there, in their father’s embrace, crying quietly.
It was ages before Grandma Mary announced that they needed to sit down for dinner, or else it would get cold.
When their hug broke, Amelie tried to catch her sister’s eye, but Willa wouldn’t look at her. It was as though all this emotion, all this family love, was too much for her. Amelie prayed it wouldn’t chase her away.