Chapter 1
MARINA
M y first glimpse of Dasher, Minnesota, was through a haze of swirling snow.
My wipers were doing their best to carve out a semi-circle of clear windshield, and the wick, wick, wick sound wasn’t entirely drowned out by the Christmas carols playing scratchily through the speakers of my Subaru Outback.
As we crested the hill that looked over the town, the signal grew stronger. Mariah Carey’s voice came through louder and clearer, and I saw what looked like a bowl full of twinkling lights nestled in the tall, dark hills.
“Can you see it, baby?” I risked glancing in the rearview mirror to see if my daughter was still awake. In the dim backseat, I saw the whites of her eyes glimmering as she leaned to the side, trying to see out the windshield between the front seats.
“Wow,” she whispered sleepily. “Pretty.”
Pretty was an understatement. Dasher looked like a fairy tale.
The whole town seemed to be glowing, and as the road carried us into town, the interior of the car filled up with the warm golden lights.
Tollin had sent me postcards of the town, but I’d thought for sure that the photographer had put some sort of magical holiday filter on the negatives.
But now I saw that the postcards had shown the truth. Dasher really was as Tollin described–the cutest town you’ve never heard of.
“Are we going to live here?” Kylie asked from the back seat. She was holding her Elsa doll up to the window so that her wide, stitched-on eyes could see the town glide by, too.
“Yes, we are, baby.” I was glad to hear the awe in her voice.
She’d cried hysterically when we left Milwaukee.
She hadn’t wanted to leave her two sets of doting grandparents.
She hadn’t wanted to leave the only home she’d ever known.
She hadn’t wanted to leave daddy’s chair–the recliner she still had faint memories of Allen lying in when he was having a good day.
Her lower lip pushed out as we kept driving, leaving the glowing town in the rearview mirror.
“We’re going to be in a great little cabin,” I reminded her. “It’s not in town, but it’s really close. This is where you’ll go to preschool.”
“I want to live in town.” Kylie twisted as far as she could in her car seat to watch it recede. I turned left onto a smaller road, and then I took another left onto an unmarked road I would have never known was there if not for the glowing lines on the GPS.
“Mommy,” Kylie said warningly, like she was sure I’d taken a wrong turn.
“Don’t worry, honey.” I knew this was right because Tollin had told me what to expect. I could already see the Tinkerbell-green light that seemed to be glowing from the middle of the forest, but actually had an even narrower road that turned off this one.
The trees squeezed in like a tightly strung corset, then released us into the wide-open circle that had been wrested away from the forest and given to a small, squat cabin.
The narrow, unpaved road became a driveway, and I breathed a sigh of relief as my tires bit harder into the gravel.
So far, the car had handled the snow like a dream, but I didn’t want to push it too far.
Not when it was already two hours past Kylie’s bedtime and Tollin was waiting for us.
I pulled in next to her Chevy Tahoe and let my head fall back against the headrest. I didn’t want to exhale the noisy sigh of relief I felt building in my chest. It might clue Kylie in that Mommy wasn’t quite as confident as she pretended to be on this drive.
Behind me, she was already wriggling, trying to free her arms from the straps.
She couldn’t quite manage to undo the buckle yet, but she was getting closer.
“Mommy,” she complained as I continued to just sit there. If she’d known my eyes were closed and I was busy saying a silent thank you to the universe, she would have been more annoyed.
“I’m coming, baby.” But before I could undo my own seatbelt and get out, Tollin was yanking the back door open. Cold and snow flurried in, along with the bell-like peals of my best friend’s laughter.
“You’re here, you’re finally here!” she sang. She reached up between the front seat and the door to squeeze my shoulder enthusiastically, then turned her attention to Kylie.
“Beautiful Kylie, would you like me to free you from that wicked car seat?” she asked in a funny, sotto voice. Tollin was a preschool teacher, and she always spoke to children in this grave, whimsical way they seemed to love.
“Yes!” Kylie exclaimed. When she was free, she jumped out into Tollin’s arms.
Kylie was secure on Tollin’s hip when I finally got out, her arms locked around my best friend’s neck.
She still had a small smile on her face as she looked around, but as she took in the starkness of the white landscape and the impenetrable black forest that surrounded us, her big blue eyes filled with trepidation.
It was funny–the shape and color were entirely her father’s, but that expression was entirely mine. I wished sometimes that I could switch her genetic gifts. She would have been better off settling for my gray eyes in exchange for Allen’s easy-going, it’ll-all-work-out outlook.
“It’s very dark,” she said to Tollin, her voice lowered confidentially like she didn’t want me to overhear.
“Not inside,” Tollin whispered back. “Come see.”
I grabbed one of our suitcases from the trunk and followed them up the front path.
It was a sweet little log cabin right out of a Dasher postcard.
It had a steeply pointed roof that was already layered with white snow and three dormer windows wearing their own little blanketed hats.
Tollin had found it for us, and I’d bought it based only on the pictures and her recommendation.
It’s a fixer upper, ‘rina, but it’s the cutest thing you’ll ever see in your life .
The previous owner had rented it out on AirBNB, advertising it as the perfect Christmas cottage.
When Tollin pushed open the front door and stood back to let me go in first, I saw that it really was.
Just like the pictures of the town, the images she’d sent me hadn’t exaggerated the charm of the place.
Maybe the plush red couches and plaid armchairs with strands of silver and gold thread shot throughout might be a little much in the summer, but it fit the Christmas theme perfectly.
There was a fire already burning in the red brick hearth, and the whole room smelled like pine needles and cinnamon.
“A Christmas tree!” Kylie shrieked from behind me as Tollin carried her in.
“Oh, Tollin,” I breathed as I spotted it. It was tall, reaching nearly to the ceiling. “You didn’t have to do that.”
I’d already asked her to do too much. She had been my proxy in Dasher, dealing with the intricacies of buying the cabin, sorting out Kylie’s preschool registration, arranging for the utilities to transfer over into my name. And now she had gotten us a Christmas tree.
Tears of gratitude stung in my eyes as Kylie rushed over to stand in front of it, her small hand outstretched like she was approaching a new dog.
If not for the tree, she might have asked where Daddy’s chair was going to go in this overstuffed room, or she might have cried from the sheer absence of anything from our old home.
Allen’s chair was in storage for now, but I’d sold off the rest of our old life when Tollin told me the furniture from the cabin was included in the sale.
It had felt easier that way, like maybe I could give away some of the pain with it.
I didn’t know the exact calculus of grief, but maybe if I sold the kitchen table I’d cried at every morning for nearly a year, my heart would feel a little lighter in the morning.
I had done it recklessly, thoughtlessly, not realizing how attached Kylie was to everything.
This Christmas tree might have been all that stood between us and a flood of tears when she saw that we had a new kitchen table, a new couch, and a new life.
“Oh, stop it,” Tollin said, putting an arm around my waist and leaning her head into mine. “I told you that I’d do anything to get you to move here. This was nothing. A few calls, a couple signatures, a trip to a Christmas tree farm.” She snapped her fingers. “So easy.”
Maybe it was for her. She’d always moved through life so effortlessly.
I was still grateful, though. Especially when I carried Kylie’s suitcase into her little room off the kitchen and saw that Tollin had set up her big girl bed already.
I’d figured she’d have to sleep with me until I got around to it.
“That wasn’t me,” Tollin said, following me in with a box of Kylie’s stuffed animals. “You know how I am with tools. I unboxed it, tried to understand those silly little drawings, then hired your neighbor.”
“My neighbor?” I glanced out the window at the inky blackness that surrounded the cottage.
She gestured vaguely toward the wall. “He lives that-a-way, a little less than a mile. Nice guy, but don’t expect him to drop by for a cup of tea or anything. He keeps to himself.”
That didn’t sound bad at all to me. I’d come to Dasher in part to get away from everyone.
It wasn’t just my possessions that seemed to have soaked up the grief that surrounded me since Allen’s death.
It was people, too. It was in their eyes, their smiles, their kind gestures.
It was well meant, but ultimately unwanted.
“Then we’ll get along fine,” I murmured, and began unboxing Kylie’s stuffed animals. New house, new bed, new life.
Just what I wanted.