Chapter 15 Ivy
FIFTEEN
IVY
The morning I leave Chimney Gorge, it feels like the whole town shows up to watch me drive away.
Everyone except the one person I actually want to see.
Snow crunches under my boots as I carry my tote toward the square.
The sky is one of those clear winter blues that feels fake, like someone painted it on.
Banners from the Jubilee still hang over the street.
Lights twine the lampposts, faint in the daylight.
It smells like cinnamon, woodsmoke, and fried dough.
It smells like a place I fell in love with.
It smells like the place I got my heart broken.
Keely is the first to tackle me.
“Don’t go,” she says, flinging herself at me so hard my bag swings. “Stay and be our permanent content elf. We’ll pay you in cookies and emotional validation.”
I hug her back, laughing weakly. “Tempting. Very tempting. But my boss would probably notice if I stopped showing up and just…moved into the Peppermint Inn.”
“You’re a big city executive now,” she sighs, pulling back. “Creative Director.”
My brand-new title still feels too big, like a coat I haven’t grown into yet. “Something like that.”
Mayor Turner swoops in next, coat flaring, bells jingling at the ends of her scarf.
“You’ve given us a bumper year, darling,” she declares, gripping my hands. “Bookings are up, donations are up, and we already have inquiries for next year’s Snowflake Jubilee from three states over. You’ve put Chimney Gorge on the map.”
“I had great material,” I manage, forcing my lips into a smile. “You gave me a story to work with.”
She pats my cheek, eyes suspiciously shiny. “You come back anytime. Summer festival, fall harvest, special ‘Ivy Returns to Her Adoring Public’ parade. We’ll roll out the bells.”
“I’d like that,” I say quietly.
For a second I let myself picture it—coming back in summer, no snow, kids running through sprinklers in the square. Stopping by the stable. Seeing Rhett.
Except I’m not sure he’d want to see me.
That thought feels like ice water on an already bruised heart.
I scan the edges of the crowd. Volunteers. Families. Mrs. Hadley, wrapped in four layers and waving as if I’m boarding a ship.
But no tall, broad-shouldered mountain man in flannel.
No familiar scowl that I’ve learned hides things softer.
I already know he’s not here. I knew the second I walked into the square and didn’t feel his eyes on me. But a part of me keeps checking, like maybe he’s lurking by the barn, or back in the shadow of the gazebo.
He isn’t.
Keely follows my gaze, and her face softens. “He’s doing a fence check,” she says, like she wants to fix it for me and can’t. “Storm knocked over a section of the line up by the ridge. He left early.”
“Right,” I say, voice thin. “Of course. Important.”
Important.
Unlike goodbyes, apparently.
We make our way to my car. It’s already been scraped and warmed, windows clear, a to-go cup of cocoa waiting on the hood with a note from Lolly: Fuel for the road. Come back, sweet girl. —L.
I run my finger over the handwriting and swallow hard.
“Text me when you get home,” Keely says, hugging me again. “And send me pictures of your office. I want to see where you’re going to conquer the world from.”
“Deal,” I say.
Mayor Turner kisses my cheek, leaves a faint smear of red lipstick that Keely smudges away with a mitten.
Mrs. Hadley presses a smaller quilt bundle into my arms “for when the city gets too loud.” Someone shoves a bag of cookies through the open window.
Someone else tucks a tiny Chimney Gorge ornament onto my dashboard.
It’s a lot. It’s warm and chaotic and overwhelming.
It’s everything I ever wanted for myself…just not here, not yet.
“Take care of our PR elf,” the mayor calls as I slide behind the wheel.
Keely leans down, eyes earnest. “Come back,” she says quietly. “Even if it’s just for you.”
I nod, unable to speak past the lump in my throat.
I start the car. Wave. Smile. My face hurts. My chest hurts more.
As I drive out of the square, everyone waves like I’m in some kind of small-town royal procession. Kids jump up and down. Mrs. Flores blows me a kiss. Even the choir throws in an impromptu “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” as I pass.
I keep checking the side streets.
No Rhett.
He doesn’t appear on the road out of town either. Doesn’t materialize by a fence line or the hitching posts or the bend that looks back toward the square.
When Chimney Gorge finally disappears in the rearview mirror, it feels like someone closed a book in the middle of a sentence.
The drive to Saint Pierce is an hour and a half of me and my thoughts and Lolly’s cocoa, which goes lukewarm before I’ve made it halfway.
The trees blur past in shades of dark green and white. The sky stays stubbornly, stupidly clear. No storm now. No excuse.
I replay last night’s talk with Rhett on repeat.
The way he wouldn’t look at me when he told me he’d been wrong.
About starting something with you.
The way he said my quiet like it was a person he’d chosen instead of me.
The way he shut down every option I tried to offer before I could even fully articulate it. Like he’d already had the argument with himself and decided for both of us.
I keep hearing my own voice calling him a coward.
I keep hearing his silence afterward.
At some point, I realize I’m gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles hurt. I force my fingers to relax, one by one. My breath evens out.
Was it really nothing to him?
Did the cabin mean nothing? The stove, the socks, the way he tucked the quilt around me, the way he told me about Iraq like he was handing me a piece of himself he never shows anyone?
Was I just… a storm detour?
Heat burns behind my eyes. I blink it back. The last thing I need is to start crying on a mountain road.
“You’re not doing this,” I tell myself, voice thin in the quiet car. “You’re not turning this into ‘you were never enough.’”
Logically, I know he felt something. I saw it. In the way he looked at me. In the way he touched me. In the way his hands shook when he talked about his friend and let me hold that grief with him.
But logic and heartbreak don’t always share a brain.
By the time the outskirts of Saint Pierce appear—a familiar gas station, the billboard advertising a local plumber’s holiday special, the line of brick buildings that gives way to my neighborhood—I feel…hollow.
Like I left the soft, messy part of myself somewhere between the sleigh and the square and came back with just the packaging.
I park outside my apartment building. The world is back to its normal noise: cars, distant sirens, someone arguing cheerfully on a balcony about Christmas lights. My building smells like takeout and cleaning supplies and the faint perfume of my neighbor’s incessant incense.
I lug my bags and quilt and emotional baggage up the stairs.
Inside, my apartment is exactly the way I left it—tiny, tidy, the little faux tree on the side table still half-decorated from when I rushed out to get to Chimney Gorge. A mug with cold latte residue by the sink. A stack of mail fanned out on the counter.
No wood stove. No blankets that smell like smoke and pine.
Just me.
I set everything down, kick off my boots, and stand in the middle of my living room like I don’t quite remember how to be here.
My phone buzzes.
MELANIE: I heard the mountain didn’t eat you. Call me. I have news.
A tiny spark cuts through the fog.
I flop onto my couch—smaller, lumpier, significantly less Rhett-y—and hit call.
“Hey,” I say when she picks up.
“IVY GARLAND.” Melanie’s voice bursts through the speaker, full of joy and something else that sounds suspiciously like awe. “You survived the blizzard and the small town and the grumpy man?”
I make a sound that wants to be a laugh and misses. “Define ‘survived.’”
“Oh no,” she says immediately. “We are absolutely circling back to that. But first—you are not allowed to be sad yet, because I have a story.”
“Hit me,” I say, pushing my hair back and tucking my feet under me.
“You know how I told you Lucas showed up at the baby store?” she starts.
“The universe apparently hates subtlety, because I ran into him again when I was ordering Chinese. Literally. The baby…well, he ended up taking me to the hospital. It was all fine. Braxton Hicks. Anyway, he took me home and I decided I wasn’t going to keep… you know. The secret. So I told him.”
“Told him what?” I tease, even though I know exactly what she means.
She huffs. “That he’s the father.”
A smile flickers. “How’d that go?”
“Well, he stared at me like I told him he’d won the lottery and a meteor was about to hit him simultaneously,” she says. “Then he asked why I didn’t tell him sooner, and I cried, and we argued, and then… he stayed.”
“What.”
“Yeah.” She laughs, a little breathless. “So picture this: blizzard starting to rage outside, me with soaked jeans and contractions five minutes apart, and Lucas realizing in real time that he’s in love with me and also about to be a dad. I’m leaving out a ton, but that’s the gist.”
My chest squeezes—but this time in a good way.
“Is the baby okay?” I ask. “I mean—you. Are you okay?”
“We’re both okay,” she says softly. “Lucas got me to the hospital. He didn’t leave my side once.
He cut the cord. He cried more than I did, honestly.
And when they put the baby on my chest…” Her voice wobbles.
“I told him I wanted to name him Everett. And Lucas just—lost it. In a good way. In a ‘this is everything I didn’t know I wanted’ way. ”
Tears prick my eyes, but they’re different from the ones that threatened on the mountain. Warm. Happy. “Mel…”
“I know,” she says. “He’s perfect, Ivy. Ev’s got this little dimple already and the longest fingers. Lucas keeps insisting he’s going to be a jazz pianist or a surgeon.”
I laugh. “Of course he does.”