Winter Street

MARGARET

She wakes up with her daughter snuggled at her side. Margaret is filled with such joy, she nearly cries. Her career has come at an enormous cost, and the person who has suffered the most, she knows, is Ava. Ava was only six years old when Margaret and Kelley split and ten when Kelley moved to Nantucket. Margaret had considered keeping Ava with her in Manhattan-even at six, she demonstrated an exceptional musical talent, and the best place to develop that was in the city. But Ava would have been raised by housekeepers and nannies, whereas Kelley had given up everything to be a hands-on parent, and Margaret had reluctantly agreed that Ava would be better off with him. Still, six years old is a tender age for a girl to be separated from her mother. Margaret always told herself she was leading by example, building a legendary career. She had thought Ava would be a concert pianist or perhaps a rock star. But Ava likes teaching music on Nantucket, and Margaret is happy she is happy. Now she hopes that Ava will find true love, get married, have children, and be the mother that Margaret never was.

Ava opens her eyes, blinking rapidly in the way she used to when she was young, except now her eyes are smudged with makeup and she’s wearing a black velvet cocktail dress. The party the night before must have been a humdinger.

Margaret thinks about the captured convoy, and Bart. She has found herself in many delicate situations before, but nothing has quite prepared her for what to do here. She doesn’t know for sure that Bart was on the convoy; it’s just a gut feeling. However, her gut is nearly always right. Should she share her knowledge with Ava? With Kevin? With Kelley? If she’s wrong this time, she’ll never forgive herself. But if she’s right, everyone will hate her, despite the fact that she is merely the messenger.

She decides to say nothing. Once there is definitive news, military officials will contact Kelley.

“Mommy?” Ava says. “Are you real?”

“I’m real,” Margaret says.

She and Ava cling to each other and Margaret cries a little and Ava cries a little and Margaret can’t decide whether to feel heroic for being here or guilty for all the days she wasn’t here.

“I decided, since I couldn’t get you to Hawaii, that I would come here instead,” Margaret says. “I wanted to be with you.”

“Thank you, Mommy,” Ava says.

“And look!” Margaret says. She points to the nightstand. “I brought your paper angel.”

“Let’s hope she really is magic,” Ava says.

“How are things with Nathaniel?” Margaret asks.

“He doesn’t love me,” Ava says.

Deep breath. This happens, Margaret knows. You can give birth to a beautiful, perfect human being, but requited love isn’t guaranteed for her-or for any of us.

Margaret wonders for a second if Drake is feeling anything this morning. Did she hurt him by canceling? Is he heartsick?

Margaret kisses the tip of Ava’s nose. “Should we go make coffee?” Margaret wants to see Kevin, and Kelley. “Your father doesn’t know I’m here. Nobody does. I’m basically a stowaway.”

Ava clings tighter. “Don’t get up yet. Stay just mine for now, please?”

Margaret relaxes, then nearly falls asleep. She is exhausted in every way, just as she is every Christmas-physically, mentally, emotionally. For the first time in 360 days, her laptop is uncharged in the front pocket of her carry-on. When she stepped off the plane the night before, she found the secretary of state and his wife waiting for her. Margaret felt flattered by this-not only because it was the secretary of state, but because John and Teresa are friends from way back. Margaret interviewed him during his first run for senator, in 1984, when she was a graduate student in communications at NYU.

The secretary said, “Where are you headed?”

She said, “The Winter Street Inn. My ex-husband, Kelley, owns it.”

He said, “That’s right, that’s right. My driver will take you.”

“Wonderful,” she said.

Margaret has nothing packed that is even remotely appropriate for Nantucket in December, and so she borrows a T-shirt and sweatpants from Ava and pulls on her own pink Chanel cardigan.

Ava says, “I’m going to sleep a little while longer. The kids aren’t here, so it doesn’t matter.”

“What happened with Patty?” Margaret asks.

Ava gives Margaret a look. “He got himself in trouble, I guess.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“He’ll tell you himself,” Ava says. “He’s here.”

“He is?” Margaret says, and before Ava even makes a face, Margaret knows she sounds like a starstruck teenager. It is a long-held family complaint that both Margaret and Kelley favor Patrick. Margaret vehemently denies this, although there is something special about Patrick. He was the first, obviously, and his whole life has been a clinic in How to Excel.

He got himself in trouble. What could this mean?

Margaret bends down and kisses her sleepy daughter’s forehead; then she heads out into the hallway to find the rest of her family.

She walks toward the kitchen and the smell of coffee. She’s nervous, almost like she’s doing something illegal. Every other time she’s been at the inn, she’s had to deal with Mitzi’s wrath.

But Mitzi isn’t here, Margaret reminds herself. If Mitzi were here, Margaret would be in Hawaii. Margaret wonders if any of the guests will pop their heads out of their rooms to find Margaret Quinn roaming the hallway. Her photo is bound to end up on Twitter.

In the great room, Margaret is greeted by the tree, under which lie mounds and mounds of presents. The battalion of Mitzi’s nutcrackers lines the mantel; Margaret has only been to the inn at Christmas once before, a dozen years earlier, but she remembers the nutcrackers well. Her favorite is the gardener nutcracker, with his rake, watering can, and green overalls. Margaret runs her hand over the slanted top of Ava’s grand piano, and then, unable to help herself, she lifts the lid off of a glass apothecary jar and pulls out a piece of green, white, and hot-pink striped ribbon candy and takes a lick.

When Margaret enters the kitchen, Kelley is by himself, drinking coffee at the counter. Margaret feels a rush of what must be love-the kind of love one feels for a brother, perhaps, or a long-lost best friend. She knows the man so well, better than she knows anyone else on earth, including her own children, and yet she hasn’t lived with him in more than two decades and has only seen him fleetingly when she’s come to visit Nantucket in August, and every one of those interactions was supervised by Mitzi.

“Kelley,” she says.

He looks up and blinks.

“Are you real?” he says.

“I’m real,” she says.

Where to start? Where to start? They hug, long and hard. Kelley smells like himself, which is Irish on Irish-Irish Spring soap and Irish whiskey.

She pulls away first, as she always does-that much intimacy crosses some kind of line with Margaret, which in some ways caused the downfall of their marriage. Kelley always wanted more, closer, tighter-and Margaret wanted space and boundaries. She was afraid of intimacy, Kelley said. Margaret called it Retaining a Sense of Self. She never believed in two people melding to become one. She believed in self-sufficiency. After all, everyone dies alone.

“How’s Bart?” she asks gently. “Have you heard from him?”

“He texted when he left Germany,” Kelley says. “But I haven’t heard from him since.”

“When was that?” Margaret asks.

“The night of the nineteeth,” Kelley says. “I’m sure he’s either too busy, or the reception is nonexistent. I’m surprised I heard from him at all.”

Margaret’s heart feels like a vessel filled to the brim with some potentially toxic liquid. Is she going to spill it? She knows nothing for certain, and until the military gets in touch, there is no cause for alarm.

Her gut tells her otherwise.

But it’s Christmas morning, so she will ignore her gut.

“Is there coffee?” she asks.

“Yes! Of course!” Kelley jumps right into innkeeper mode, the consummate host. He fetches a cup of cinnamon-flavored coffee in a thick ceramic mug decorated with a raised set of crisscrossed candy canes, and then he presents her with a plate of dark-brown muffins.

“Pumpkin ginger,” he says. “I baked them myself.”

Margaret sips her cinnamon-flavored coffee, trying not to wince-she drinks espresso only, the more hot and bitter, the better-but it’s actually pretty good. She abandons her ribbon candy-it looks a lot better than it tastes-and takes a muffin, despite the fact that she never eats breakfast, and Kelley gives her a ramekin of honey butter. This is life at a bed-and-breakfast: the homey atmosphere, the fresh-baked muffins, the colonial decor of the kitchen. If she were being cynical, she would say it’s sort of like being suspended in a Thomas Kinkade painting, but she appreciates how cozy and rustic the room and the inn in general feel; it appeals to her childhood fantasy of Christmas. Margaret’s taste is generally sleeker and more sophisticated; her apartment in New York is spacious, and it has forever views across Central Park-but cozy it is not.

“So,” she says between bites of fragrant, moist, buttery muffin, “what’s up with our eldest?”

“Insider trading,” Kelley says. “He invested over twenty-five million in a leukemia drug he knew was going to score. He got word from one of his fraternity brothers and invested that guy’s money and everyone else’s… and it looks like he got caught. The SEC has been watching him, apparently, because of some other stuff.”

Margaret says, “Insider trading.”

Kelley nods, and they lock eyes.

“With the dissemination of information these days, I can’t believe that term even still exists,” Margaret says. “Isn’t it sort of like smoking pot? Too prevalent to effectively prosecute?”

“Apparently not.”

“Twenty-five million isn’t so much money,” Margaret says. She realizes her maternal instincts are overriding her moral compass. She, after all, has reported on Kenneth Lay and Enron, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and the big winner… Bernie Madoff. Until this second, she had liked nothing better than a good financial scandal. “I mean, it could have been much worse. I’m surprised the SEC even noticed.”

“They noticed.”

“It’s not our fault,” Margaret says. “So stop thinking that.”

“I’m not thinking that,” Kelley says. “Are you thinking that?”

“No,” Margaret says. But yes, she is. It’s the curse of any parent, isn’t it? When your child has a crack in his character, you feel responsible. Patrick was always such a straight arrow, an ardent follower of the rules. He loved rules.

“He’s thirty-eight years old,” Kelley says. “That’s when men get greedy. His kids are getting older, he starts thinking about how much boarding school is going to cost, then college. He wants a Jaguar; Jen wants a summer house on Cliff Road so they don’t have to keep staying here at the inn. Here’s an easy way for him to pocket five or six million himself, plus make a boatload of profit for his clients, who will then invest even more money with him. I can see where it would have been tempting.”

“He’s here?”

“Here,” Kelley confirms. “Jen took the kids to San Francisco.”

“Ouch.”

“And in other, happier news,” Kelley says, “Kevin is getting married. He proposed last night to Isabelle, my girl Friday. None of us even knew they were seeing each other. And she’s pregnant.”

“I know,” Margaret says. “I gave him five thousand dollars so he could buy the ring.”

Kelley gets a look on his face, and Margaret says, “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t make that face,” Margaret says. “Like I trumped you again, or like I’m always giving the kids handouts to make up for the fact that I almost never see them.”

“I wasn’t thinking that,” Kelley says.

“What were you thinking, then?”

“I was thinking, can you lend me four million dollars so I don’t lose the inn?”

“Are you going to lose the inn?” Margaret asks.

“I have to sell it,” Kelley says. “You’ll notice there’s nobody here? Not one paying guest at the Winter Street Inn on Christmas. The bed-and-breakfast market is all dried up on Nantucket. People can stay at the White Elephant or down the street at the Castle for about the same price, and I can’t compete. And this place has gobbled up all my savings. Now I’m nearly broke, and Mitzi left anyway, so I have no desire to prostrate myself at the foot of some loan officer to borrow against the equity. I’m sixty-two years old, and I’m all alone.”

“Stop the pity party,” Margaret says. “You’re not alone. You have the kids. And today, you have me.”

Kelley beams. “Today I have you! Would you like to come back to my bedroom and see my etchings?”

Margaret laughs. “The pathetic thing is that, yes, I would.”

“Really?” Kelley says, raising his eyebrows.

“I’m pretty lonely,” Margaret says. “And I blew off the man I was meeting in Hawaii so I could show up here and save the day.”

“Well, then!” Kelley says. He takes Margaret by the hand, but she breaks free.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” she says. She wants to use Ava’s bathroom to freshen up.

“Be quick,” Kelley says. “The kids are going to wake up eventually.”

The kids, Margaret thinks.

Is she really going to do this? Sleep with Kelley?

She brushes her teeth, applies the moisturizer that Roger claims can fix anything, smiles at her reflection in the mirror. She looks a decade older than she does on TV-no surprise there-makeup, lighting, television magic. Should she put on mascara or concealer? No. Kelley won’t care if she’s wearing makeup or not. He’s seen her after giving birth, for God’s sake-three times. And he always said that was the most beautiful she ever looked.

Sweet man.

So… she’s fifty-nine years old, and she’s about to have sex with her ex-husband.

Really?

Really. She’s old enough to have learned that sex is just sex, and at fifty-nine and sixty-two, desire should be treated like a rare and precious commodity. She’s also grateful that forgiveness and the passing of time have brought them to this moment.

She sneaks down the hall, toward the master bedroom-quickly, quietly, so as not to wake her children.

PATRICK

He wakes up with the headache of a lifetime, but someone has thoughtfully left a giant glass of ice water and a bottle of Advil by his bed. Patrick drinks down the water, and it tastes so good and so cold, and his body needs it so badly, that he decides to start his day feeling grateful.

He checks his phone. Four missed calls late last night from the temporary cell phone of Bucky Larimer and a text from that number that says, Dude, call me. A missed call from Gary Grimstead.

Nothing from Jennifer, which he can’t believe. They have never gone this long without speaking-not ever. He feels like his right side is missing. He can make it through anything as long as she is next to him. He closes his eyes and thinks about her. What is she doing right now? Well, it’s three hours earlier in California, so she’s sleeping. But maybe not. It’s nearly ten o’clock here, meaning seven o’clock there, so everyone is probably awake. The boys are opening presents from Santa Claus and from Grammie. Jennifer’s mother is wealthy and always too lavish; the boys might not even miss the ten million presents that remain under the tree in Boston, or the presents here for them on Nantucket. Jennifer will be drinking coffee, maybe with a splash of Baileys in it, trying to put on a brave face. They will go to the Park Tavern for brunch because Jennifer’s mother doesn’t cook. Patrick dislikes that part of the San Francisco tradition-who goes out on Christmas morning?

He resists the urge to call Jennifer. She probably won’t answer anyway.

He needs coffee, more water, food. He made it from Boston to Hyannis in forty-eight minutes, getting his BMW up to 110 miles per hour on Route 3, which probably would have landed him in jail sooner than he’s already going, but for the fact that the road was free of troopers. Patrick missed one ferry; then he started drinking at the Naked Oyster and missed two more ferries before finally getting on the seven o’clock. He drank Sam Adams on the boat, and then he walked up Main Street to the inn, stopping at Murray’s Liquors and buying and consuming a split of Taittinger champagne on the way. Once here, he was welcomed into the bosom of his family and offered a shot of Jameson.

Patrick stands up. He spent the night in Bart’s room, which is still filled with Bart’s paraphernalia, including a large purple bong-a bag of weed was easily found in Bart’s underwear drawer-car magazines, a poster of Lindsay Lohan on the wall.

Lindsay Lohan? Patrick thinks. He’s relieved Bart has joined the Marines. Anyone who publicly announces himself a fan of Lindsay Lohan needs straightening out.

Tucked into Bart’s mirror are ticket stubs from the Patriots-Broncos game this past October. Kelley probably took him up to Foxborough for it before he shipped out to Germany. Kelley was a good, involved dad like that for Bart.

Patrick steps out into the hallway, and he hears giggling. He turns around to see Kelley and a redheaded woman emerging from Kelley’s room.

Whoa! Patrick thinks. He squints at the redhead. His mind isn’t quite clear, but it looks like his mother. It is his mother. She sees him, and her mouth falls open.

“Are you real?” Patrick asks.

“I’m real,” she says.

KELLEY

He’s not sure how this happened, but Christmas is everything it’s supposed to be and more. To start with, Kelley makes love to his ex-wife. Mitzi was never interested in sex at Christmas-of course, now Kelley knows that’s because for the past twelve years, she was having sex with George.

The lovemaking with Margaret is easy and comfortable and familiar-you forget, but you never really forget. Kelley does the things that Margaret likes, and she does the things that he likes. Afterward, they lie next to each other, sweating and breathless, staring up at the ceiling.

“I read in Esquire magazine that sixty percent of American males over fifty fantasize about sleeping with you,” Kelley says. “But seventy-five percent fantasize about sleeping with Martha Stewart. I never really understood that. Maybe because she can cook?”

Margaret clobbers him with a pillow, and soon the two of them are laughing and wrestling and tickling each other. Margaret is ticklish behind her knees; her laughter soon turns to screams for mercy. Kelley stops because she is making so much noise. It’s a delightful, juvenile hour, the greatest gift he ever could have hoped for.

A big, happy reunion follows. Patrick sees Margaret first-he catches her coming out of Kelley’s bedroom-and he throws her over his shoulder and carries her out to the main room. Kevin and Isabelle wander out, and Kevin gives a whoop and picks Margaret up off the ground also.

She says, “I haven’t been picked up and thrown around this much since my cheerleading days at Michigan.”

Kelley says, “You weren’t a cheerleader at Michigan.”

“Let me have my fantasies,” she says.

“I thought that’s what I just did,” Kelley says.

Ava emerges from the back. She slept with Margaret the night before, but she looks grumpy now at having to share her.

Kelley lights a fire and enlists Kevin to make a batch of Golden Dreams. If they’re going to have a nostalgic Quinn Family Christmas, then they are going whole hog.

Kevin says, “I know you and Mom used to drink them, but I have no idea what goes into one.”

Kevin looks to Margaret. “What’s in a Golden Dream?”

Margaret is curled up on the sofa with a dazed look that Kelley hopes is postcoital bliss.

“Galliano, Cointreau, orange juice, and cream,” she says.

The woman forgets nothing, Kelley thinks. She is the smartest human being he has ever met.

Kevin nods. “On it.”

Ava says, “I dropped the ball on Christmas dinner. I ordered the rib roast, but I forgot to go pick it up. And now I’m sure the store is closed.”

“I picked it up yesterday,” Isabelle says. “They called with a reminder, so I went to get it.”

“Oh, thank you!” Ava says.

“In a little while, I’ll help you prepare it,” Margaret says. “Are we having Yorkshire pudding?”

“Of course,” Ava says. “And roasted asparagus and spinach salad.”

“I’ll do my hot bacon dressing for the salad,” Margaret says.

“What man in his right mind would rather sleep with Martha Stewart?” Kelley says.

They all drink and open presents. One person opens at a time-Quinn family tradition, so that it lasts longer. It’s admittedly easier to accomplish this without the grandchildren around. Patrick’s boys are ten-, eight-, and six-year-old weapons of mass destruction. The other person who never obeyed present-opening protocol was Bart. Even in his late teens, he would come down and rip open all his presents at once.

Mitzi never reprimanded him, of course.

The year they gave him a brand-new Jeep Sahara in metallic royal blue with a massive silver ribbon wrapped around it counts as the worst Christmas on record. Bart was thrilled; he was straight out of central casting, a seventeen-year-old kid jumping up and down, hooting and hollering, hugging Mitzi, hugging Kelley, saying Oh man, oh man, you guys rock! Ava, Kevin, and Patrick, however, had stared at the Jeep in disbelief. None of them had said a word, but Kelley heard their thoughts.

A brand-new Jeep for a seventeen-year-old kid who hasn’t made the honor roll since sixth grade, who smashed up the last car-Mitzi’s Volvo station wagon-so that all it was good for was the demolition derby, a kid who you know drinks and smokes dope. You’re giving HIM a brand-new Jeep, when none of us got so much as a new bicycle?

Kelley hadn’t wanted to give Bart the Jeep, but Mitzi insisted. She believed that if Bart was given something he really loved and treasured, he would take care of it, thereby learning an important lesson about responsibility.

Bart drove the Jeep into Miacomet Pond in June, and the water was brackish enough that the engine block seized.

Totaled.

Then, five months later, he did the number on Kelley and Mitzi’s LR3, busting a hole in the airport fence and breaking his best friend’s leg.

No wonder Kelley is going broke.

How can Mitzi possibly argue that Bart did not need the Marines?

The Christmas of the Jeep-two years earlier-Patrick, Kevin, and Ava gave Kelley and Mitzi the silent treatment all throughout Christmas dinner, leaving poor Jennifer to make chitchat with Mitzi, Kelley, and Bart. Oh, and George, Kelley remembers now; of course George was there. They all ate the goose Mitzi had prepared, which had been unusually stringy that year.

Kelley doesn’t want to dwell on the less-than-stellar Christmases of the past; nor does he want to beat himself up for his parenting mistakes. What parent doesn’t screw up every once in a while?

Patrick gets a tie and a biography of Alexander Hamilton.

Kevin gets a series of boxes within boxes that ends in an envelope of cash-five hundred dollars (in years past it has been a thousand dollars, but Kelley can only do what he can do)-and everyone laughs because this trick, presents nested like Russian dolls, is tradition. It’s followed by the requisite remembering of the year Kevin gave Patrick a box of extra-large condoms and Ava, only eleven years old at the time, didn’t know what they were.

Then it’s Kelley’s turn to open his gift from Margaret. It’s a small box; he knows what it is, as she gets him the same thing every year. In previous years, he’s opened his gift from Margaret privately, all by himself in the quiet of his bedroom, while Mitzi was busy with other things (busy with George, Kelley now realizes), because Mitzi does not appreciate that Margaret still sends him a gift.

“What can it be?” Kelley asks, and Margaret gives her low, throaty chuckle, known to all her faithful viewers.

It’s a beautifully tied fly, even more gorgeous than the ones from the past. Margaret once interviewed the foremost saltwater fly fisherman in the world; he lives in Islamorada, and now this guy makes one fly a year for Kelley. The fly is to go with the fly-fishing rod that Margaret bought for Kelley the last Christmas they were still together, back when they vowed to spend less time at work and more time having fun. Kelley had gotten Margaret a mask, fins, and snorkel, which he is certain she has never used, just as he has never used his fly-fishing rod.

But wait.

Not true.

He actually did use the rod once, on a warm, still day in September sixteen or seventeen years earlier, but he caught such hell from Mitzi about taking an entire afternoon to himself when they had a three-year-old and an inn under construction that Kelley never went fly-fishing again. Blissfully unaware of this, Margaret keeps giving him a fly every Christmas; he has a box of them in the back of his sock drawer. When viewed together, they are as colorful and exquisite as the crown jewels.

“Thank you,” Kelley says, and he leans over to kiss Margaret chastely, as everyone is watching.

Maybe in his retirement: fly-fishing.

Ava gets a sweater.

Patrick gets another tie.

Kevin gets new running shoes.

Kelley gets a whisk and a new potato peeler of good, sturdy Danish design.

Margaret has an envelope to open that is from “the kids” (meaning Ava procured it, Patrick paid for it, and Kevin signed his name to the card). It’s two tickets to see The Book of Mormon, tenth-row orchestra seats. Margaret claps her hands with delight and kisses each of the kids, and Isabelle too, and thanks them a dozen times.

“You do know you’re impossible to buy for,” Ava says.

Margaret beams. “This is just the perfect gift. And Saturday night-primo marveloso!” She really does look as happy-well, as happy as a kid on Christmas, even though she can go to any Broadway show on opening night and sit in the front row center.

“Who will you take with you?” Kelley asks.

Margaret shrugs. “Probably Drake, if he’s still speaking to me.”

“Drake?” Kelley says. He feels a pinch of jealousy. “Who’s Drake?”

“Friend of mine,” she says. “Pediatric brain surgeon at Sloan Kettering.”

“Slacker,” Kelley says.

Ava opens a sweater.

Kevin opens a subscription to Sports Illustrated.

Patrick opens another tie.

By the end of the morning, the pitcher of Golden Dreams is gone and the plate of muffins has been devoured. Ava plays some good, old-fashioned religious carols on the piano, and they all sing “O Holy Night,” “We Three Kings,” “The First Noel,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” Margaret has a rich alto that blends beautifully with Isabelle’s clear soprano. Patrick is the strongest of the men. Together they sound pretty good, Kelley thinks. Or maybe he’s just had one too many Golden Dreams.

“Play ‘Silent Night,’ ” Kelley says.

“I will later,” Ava says. “Right now, Mommy and I have to cook.”

Margaret and Ava go back to the kitchen to prepare the standing rib roast, and Isabelle and Kevin snuggle up on the sofa. Patrick is subdued; he plops into the big armchair and starts reading the biography of Alexander Hamilton that Kelley got him. Patrick checks his phone every time he turns the page. Kelley is sure he’s waiting for Jen to call. It’s Christmas-she will call, right? No matter what Patty has done, a man deserves to talk to his children on Christmas.

This gets Kelley thinking about Bart, which threatens his good mood. He sits in front of the fire. Bart has only been out of communication for six days, and what else would Kelley expect? He’s fighting a war in Afghanistan. Still, Kelley worries. Bart is nineteen, a child still; he’s only been shaving for four years and driving for two. He has done drugs and deflowered virgins and seen the band Kings of Leon something like fifteen times, but he is by no means worldly.

Where are you, Bart? Kelley wonders. What are you doing?

Thinking about Bart leads Kelley to thinking about Mitzi. What is she doing this Christmas? Does she miss Kelley? Miss the other kids? Miss the inn? Miss her nutcrackers? Miss her carolers? There are at least half a dozen presents for her under the tree from Kelley: the Eileen Fisher sweater she asked for, a platter shaped like a scallop shell, a pair of Alexis Bittar earrings, a gift certificate for a manicure and pedicure, and this year’s ornament-a silver ring containing a needlepoint replica of the Winter Street Inn, exact down to the flower boxes and pineapple door knocker. None of the gifts are extravagant-he doesn’t really have the money anymore to be extravagant-but they’re thoughtful. He knows that all Mitzi really wants for Christmas is for Bart to be safe.

He decides, for several reasons, to call her-the most convincing reason is that it feels like the right thing to do. It’s Christmas, and she’s his wife.

My love feeds on your love, beloved.

He will never stop loving her. He thinks of Mitzi wearing a peach dress at his brother’s funeral, Mitzi lying in the bath with her hair piled on top of her head, curled tendrils framing her face.

He dials her cell phone, figuring he’ll end up leaving a message-she’s terrible when it comes to answering her cell phone-but she picks up on the first ring.

“Kelley?”

“Hi,” he says, casually, almost cheerfully. “Merry Christmas.”

“Oh,” she says. “Thanks? Merry Christmas to you, too.”

“Where are you?” he says. He realizes he never asked George yesterday where they were staying. He supposes he thought they might be sleeping in the back of the 1931 Model A fire engine.

“I’m at the Castle,” she says.

“The Castle” is their name for the behemoth luxury hotel that summarily stole all of Winter Street’s business. The building is opulent and beautifully appointed; it has a pool, a bar-restaurant, a spa, and a state-of-the-art fitness center. Kelley can’t compete with that. People love amenities. Amenities trump home-baked muffins and four-poster beds any day of the week.

“You got a room at the Castle,” Kelley says. He is close to hanging up. He might feel more betrayed about Mitzi’s staying at the Castle than he does about George.

“It has no soul,” Mitzi says. “Just like we always thought.”

Of course it has no soul! Kelley thinks. He can’t believe she is paying money to stay there. And he does not appreciate her use of the pronoun “we.”

“Have you heard from Bart?” he asks. This is all he really needs to know.

“No,” she says. “Have you?”

“No,” he says.

They sit on the phone for a second in silence. He is terrified about the safety of his son; Mitzi must be a thousand times worse.

“Listen,” he says, “would you and George like to come for Christmas dinner?”

Mitzi starts to cry. This comes as no surprise; she cries at AT&T long-distance commercials.

“I’d love to,” she says. “Oh, thank you, Kelley! You have made my Christmas! What time should we come?”

“Come at five,” Kelley says.

“We’ll be there,” she says.

AVA

As far as Christmases go, it isn’t too bad. Her father has bought her cashmere sweaters from J.Crew in three colors, and her mother has gotten her a diamond circle necklace that is, without a doubt, the best gift of Christmas, and, furthermore, it is now the most beautiful and glamorous thing Ava owns. She wonders where she will ever wear it. It’s too fancy to wear to work at Nantucket Elementary School, and when she and Nathaniel go out, they go to places like the Bar and the Faregrounds, neither of which is an appropriate place for a diamond circle necklace. If Nathaniel ever takes her back to the Wauwinet, she supposes she can wear it. And when she goes to visit Margaret in Manhattan.

Ava gently removes the necklace from the box and tries it on, looking in the hallway mirror.

She starts to cry.

Her mother is standing behind her in the mirror, and Ava can see how strongly they resemble each other, but even that doesn’t cheer her.

Margaret says, “You don’t like it?”

“I love it,” Ava says, but her tears keep falling. What girl doesn’t love diamonds? And yet it isn’t the kind of diamond she wanted this Christmas. She wanted to be Isabelle-a girl whose boyfriend loves her so much, he surprised her with an engagement ring. The only person she identifies with is Patrick-his facial expression closely resembles her own. He has good reason: he has been abandoned by his wife and children. Ava’s boyfriend has gone home for the holidays, which doesn’t mean a thing-nobody has even asked where Nathaniel is-except to Ava. To Ava, it means she is unloved, unlovable, unwanted, undesirable.

Then she thinks about Scott Skyler, and her face grows warm. If Scott were here right now, she might let him kiss her again, maybe in her bedroom, lying on her bed with Scott on top of her.

Margaret says, “Now, there’s a smile. That’s what I like to see.”

Ava waits until noon before she checks her phone. She only has a few moments, because her father wants her to play carols-(“I will in a little while,” Ava says, “but no ‘Frosty,’ no ‘Silver Bells’… and absolutely no ‘Jingle Bells.’ ”)-and then she and Margaret must start making dinner.

She closes her bedroom door and takes a sustaining breath.

Nothing from Nathaniel. No missed calls, no texts. She even checks her e-mail, in case he lost his phone or dropped it in his wassail.

She plops down on the bed. She hates herself, hates the weak, groveling, infatuated-beyond-all-reason center of her being. Her core is made of Nathaniel jelly. She is 100 percent sure that if she asks Margaret, Margaret will say she has never been this far gone over a man before-not over Kelley, certainly. And any other boyfriend Margaret has ever had is eating his heart out right now.

She calls Nathaniel because she can’t not call Nathaniel. He answers on the first ring. His voice is chipper, as if he has been awake for hours.

“Hey there,” he says. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas to you,” she says. She tries to match his jovial tone; he sounds like he’s wishing the mailman a Merry Christmas. “Whatcha up to?”

“We’re still opening presents, believe it or not,” he says. “At least, I am. I just got home a little while ago.”

“Home?” Ava says. “From where?”

“From the Cabots’,” he says.

Cardiac arrest. Ava is going to die.

“You slept there?” she says.

“I passed out in the den,” Nathaniel says. “Nobody even knew I was there until I popped up in the middle of their Christmas morning.”

“Oh,” Ava says. She has a hundred questions, among them: how did he end up in the den downstairs? He was down there drinking with Kirsten, it was safe to assume. “What, were you down there drinking with Kirsten until late?”

“It must have been late,” Nathaniel says. “I’m not sure what time I zonked.” He has a casual and open tone in delivering this news, as if nothing about it should give Ava pause.

“I called you at eleven o’clock,” Ava says. “Your phone was off.”

“Huh,” he says. “That’s weird. I mean, it wasn’t off, but there’s no reception in anyone’s basement around here, so my phone probably just acted like it was off.”

“Ah,” Ava says. “Well, you said you’d call at nine, and you didn’t.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I ended up hanging out.”

Ava is silent, and so is Nathaniel. In the background, Ava can hear the high-pitched, happy screams of Nathaniel’s nieces and nephews.

Finally, Nathaniel says, “Hey, so, how’s Hawaii?”

“I didn’t go,” Ava says. “There’s… a lot of stuff going on around here. So my mom just flew here instead.”

“That’s cool,” Nathaniel says. “Your mom’s there? Staying at the inn? How’s Mitzi handling that?”

“Mitzi ran off,” Ava says. “With George the Santa Claus.”

Nathaniel laughs, not because he finds what she just said completely absurd, but, Ava thinks, because he suffers from selective listening and he’s laughing in an attempt to humor her so he can get off the phone and enjoy his family.

“Wow,” he says, confirming her suspicions. “Funny.”

She says, “Well, I’ll let you go.”

“Hey!” he says, suddenly finding new energy. “Since you’re home, you can open my present.”

“Your present?” Ava says. Her heart resuscitates. “What present?”

“I dropped it off at the inn before I left on Tuesday,” he says. “I gave it to Isabelle.”

“You did?” Ava says. “That was thoughtful.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I wanted you to be able to open it.”

“Thank you,” Ava says.

“All right,” he says. “Well, text me and let me know how you like it.”

“I will,” she says.

“I should go,” he says. “Do you have plans for the rest of the day?”

“Dinner at five,” Ava says. “Mom and I are cooking a standing rib roast.”

“I can’t believe your mom is there,” Nathaniel says. “It probably seems normal to you because she’s your mom, but to me it just seems really… I don’t know… cool.”

Ava crosses her eyes. She doesn’t want to hear it.

“I’ll talk to you later,” she says.

“Oh, okay,” Nathaniel says.

She pauses, waiting for him to say it first, but he never says it first.

“I love you,” she says.

“Yep. Love you, too,” he says, and they hang up.

Phone call: unsatisfactory, Ava thinks. If she lets herself dwell on what happened late last night in the “den,” then it’s really unsatisfactory. But her pain and angst are ameliorated by the anticipation of Nathaniel’s present.

Ava marches out to the main room. Kevin and Isabelle are lounging on the sofa; Isabelle’s eyes are closed. Kevin is stroking her hair.

“Is she asleep?” Ava whispers.

Kevin nods.

Crap. Ava sits on the ottoman, waiting for Isabelle to wake up so Ava can ask her where the present from Nathaniel is. There is nothing wrapped left under the tree except the gifts for Jennifer and Patty’s kids. Ava tries not to feel peeved that Isabelle never told her such a present existed; possibly Nathaniel asked Isabelle to keep it a secret.

What would a desirable present from Nathaniel be? Since he’s not here to give it himself, Ava knows it’s not a diamond ring. Any other jewelry would be good, especially earrings made by Jessica Hicks, who is Ava’s favorite. Something Nathaniel made himself would be wonderful-a finely crafted wooden box with secret drawers where he might, someday soon, hide her diamond ring. Or a custom frame that holds a picture of the two of them-maybe the photo they took on her birthday that night at the Wauwinet. Ava has never looked happier in her life, she doesn’t think, than on that night. Also acceptable would be concert tickets for a date in the spring or summer, something they could look forward to together; double points if it is Yo-Yo Ma or Charlotte Church or Beyoncé, all of whom are favorites of Ava’s.

Isabelle’s eyelids flutter open, and Ava pounces like a starving animal.

“Isabelle,” she says. “Did Nathaniel drop off a present for me? Do you know where it is?”

Isabelle’s eyes are unfocused. She blinks, rubs a hand across her lower abdomen, and Kevin tightens his grip. The sight of them together like this is still hard to process. For the past six months, Isabelle has been working at the inn like a French Cinderella. Ava has seen her cleaning rooms at seven in the morning and preparing for breakfast at nine at night. Ava did once happen across Kevin and Isabelle eating bowls of chocolate ice cream together in the kitchen in the middle of the afternoon, before Kevin left for his shift at the Bar, but Ava thought nothing of it.

Isabelle’s voice is scratchy. “Yes,” she says, and she smiles. “It is in the front closet. Nathaniel say surprise you.”

The front closet! Ava thinks. She hops to her feet.

The front closet is used only for guests of the inn. It holds five matching umbrellas from the Nantucket Golf Club, a black coat someone must have left last night (or, possibly, the year before-Ava never opens the front closet, and she doubts anyone else does either), and Ava’s present, wrapped in shiny red paper!

It’s bigger than a bread box. Ava’s heart thuds with worry; she remembers that good things come in small packages. She picks it up, a rectangular package, about two feet long and a foot wide. She shakes it; there is movement. She heads through the main room, toward the back of the house.

“Carols, Ava, please!” Kelley says. “We’re all ready.”

“In a minute,” she says.

In the box from Nathaniel is a pair of dark-green Hunter rain boots with matching fleece socks. Ava holds a boot in her hand. Rubber rain boots. This is her Christmas gift.

“Ava!” her father calls.

Ava throws one boot across the room, then goes out to play the carols.

PATRICK

One thirty, eastern standard time, ten thirty on the West Coast. Jen and the kids will be finished opening presents but not yet headed to the Park Tavern. He should call, despite his shame. She must be thinking he isn’t at all the man she married.

Just then, a call comes in from the disposable cell phone of Bucky Larimer. Patrick wants to throw his phone into the fire, but instead he stands, opens the front door, and steps out into the cold day to take the call.

“What?” he says.

“Man, thank God you finally answered,” Bucky says.

“What,” Patrick says, “do you want?” There is a way in which he can see this whole thing as Bucky’s fault; certainly the plan was created at Bucky’s instigation: he was the one who pulled Patrick aside and said he had a handle on a sure thing and asked if there was any way Patrick could help him capitalize on it. Patrick is guilty of being too weak to resist-and then, of course, of taking the poor decision to the $25-million level.

Bucky says, “I confessed.”

“What?” Patrick says.

“I turned myself in.”

“And you turned me in,” Patrick says.

“Well,” Bucky says, “by default, yes.”

“What exactly did you say?” Patrick asks.

“I told them what happened,” Bucky says.

“Who is ‘they?’ ” Patrick asks.

“The feds.”

“You named me.”

“Man, I had no choice.”

“What exactly did you say?”

“That I told you about MDP, told you it was headed for FDA approval, and you asked me if I wanted to invest some money on my behalf in exchange for the information.”

“Whoa!” Patrick says. “Wait a minute! That is NOT how it happened.”

“What isn’t?”

“You asked me if I would invest for you in exchange for the info.”

“No,” Bucky says. “It was the other way around.”

“It was NOT!” Patrick shouts, and his voice is so loud that every house on Winter Street seems to shimmy on its foundation.

“Anyway,” Bucky says, “I just wanted to let you know what was up.”

“What’s up,” Patrick says, “is that I am headed to jail because of you! And I have a wife! And three kids!”

“I know, man,” Bucky says. But Bucky doesn’t know. Bucky doesn’t have so much as a steady girlfriend. At the reunion, he was hitting on the hot women from their graduating class, all of whom were married. That alone proves the man has no scruples.

“Answer me this,” Patrick says. He has gone outside without a coat, and he’s freezing.

“What?”

“Are you going to jail? Or are they taking it easy on you because you sold me out?”

“Well,” Bucky says.

That’s all Patrick needs to hear. He hangs up the phone.

He screams an expletive at the quiet Nantucket street. Luckily, he thinks, Winter Street is only three houses long, and the other owners are summer people.

He calls Jen. What does he have to lose now? His life is over. He will lose his job and go to jail, and he will be lucky if he goes to jail for insider trading and not first-degree murder, because he seriously wants to KILL Bucky Larimer.

Please, he thinks. Please, Jennifer, answer the phone.

He gets her voice mail almost immediately. He wants to throw his phone down the street, but instead he leaves a message.

“Baby, it’s me.” He swallows. “I’m in big trouble, bigger than maybe we thought on Tuesday. I’m on Nantucket, at the inn; I’m drowning here without you. Call me, please. I need to hear your voice. I need to talk to the boys.” He swallows. “I’ve been having some pretty dark thoughts… anyway, please call me.”

“Patrick?”

Patrick hangs up the phone and turns around. His mother is standing in the doorway.

“Are you okay, honey?” she asks.

Patrick hasn’t talked to his mother about any of this because he didn’t want to ruin her Christmas. He was happy to see her, but having her here also puts a finer point on his shame.

He shakes his head no. She closes the door behind her and comes down the front walk toward him, even though she’s only wearing sweats she borrowed from Ava and a pair of Kelley’s Irish-knit socks.

“I messed up, Mom,” he says.

She puts her arms around him. “Your father told me, sweetheart.”

He starts to cry. He has cried more in the past two days than he has in the rest of his life combined. “I really messed up. And Jen is gone. She won’t answer my calls, and I don’t blame her. It’s going to be in the newspapers. It’s going to publicly humiliate her and the kids… and you.”

“Oh, honey,” Margaret says. “Please don’t worry about me. I’m a grown-up. I can handle it.”

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Patrick says. “I let you down, I let everybody down. One idiotic decision, and the whole house of cards falls.”

“I’ve seen it again and again and again,” Margaret says. “John Edwards, Tiger Woods, Eliot Spitzer, Lance Armstrong, A-Rod, Mark Sanford, Arnold Schwarzenegger-the list goes on and on. People are fallible, Patrick. People make bad decisions every second of every day. Do you want my advice?”

“Yes,” Patrick says. He expected advice from his father the night before, but, although his father was empathetic, he offered little in the way of practical help.

“Hold your head up high, admit what you did wrong, apologize, and accept your punishment.”

He nods. “Okay.”

“I have the name of a very good lawyer,” she says. “The best. And he owes me a favor.”

“Okay,” Patrick says.

Margaret hugs him again. “I know it feels pretty awful right now. But your father and I know you’re not a bad person. We love you unconditionally.”

“Okay,” he says.

“Do you know what ‘unconditionally’ means?”

He nods, but he wants to hear it anyway.

Margaret says, “It means no matter what.”

KEVIN

Margaret and Patrick are out in the front yard, and Ava is in her bedroom, so it’s the perfect time to ask.

“Dad?” Kevin says. “Since Isabelle is pregnant and everything, we were wondering…”

Kelley leans forward, his hands tented. He says, “Yes?”

“We were wondering if…” Kevin can’t quite figure out how to say what he wants to say, despite having rehearsed it.

“If we can take over running the inn,” Isabelle says.

Kelley laughs. “Where were you twelve years ago?”

Kevin isn’t quite sure how to respond to that. Twelve years ago, he was still married to Norah, living in their cottage, working at the Bar.

“Isabelle already knows how to run the inn,” Kevin says. “And I can learn.”

“I’m selling the inn,” Kelley says.

KELLEY

He actually forgets about his conversation with Eddie Pancik the night before until Kevin and Isabelle ask if they can take over the running of the inn.

“I’m selling the inn,” Kelley says, and for the first time ever, it isn’t just an idle threat. As soon as Eddie Pancik and his wife, Grace, walked into the party, Eddie was upon Kelley. First he gave Kelley a dozen organic eggs, which was not an insubstantial gift. Mitzi insisted on buying eggs from Grace Pancik, and they sold for eleven dollars a dozen, another reason Kelley is going broke. Kelley then thought to broach the topic of selling the inn with Eddie, but, as it turned out, Eddie had seen Kelley’s Facebook post. FSBO. $4M.

He really is Fast Eddie.

Eddie said, “Are you serious about selling this place? Because I know someone who would be interested.”

“As an inn?” Kelley said.

“No,” Eddie said, “as a private home.”

This felt a little funny to Kelley. The house was built in 1873 by a grocer, but it had been operated as an inn since the turn of the century. Kelley and Mitzi had always honored this history. Even as they did their renovation, they were determined to preserve all the interior historical elements. If Eddie Pancik sold it as a private home, walls would be knocked down and cathedral ceilings installed; it would become one more showstopper of white bead board and custom-painted floors.

But-Kelley is too broke to be a preservationist.

“Call me on Friday,” Kelley said to Eddie Pancik. “I’m serious. I’d like to sell it as soon as humanly possible.”

Kevin and Isabelle appear thunderstruck at Kelley’s pronouncement.

“Where are you… we all… going to live, then?” Kevin says. “If you sell it?”

“When I sell it,” Kelley says. “It’s happening. Someone is already interested.” The kids are looking at him like he just gobbled down the last potato before the famine, and it dawns on him that he’s basically just evicted Kevin and fired Isabelle-and on Christmas Day, no less! When they are so happy about their own news!

“We’ll buy something else,” Kelley says. “Something smaller for me, and maybe I can help get you kids set up with something of your own.” He throws the “maybe” and the “help” in there to emphasize the conditional nature of his offer. Because, although he feels guilty about dismantling their lives in one fell swoop, Kevin is thirty-six years old and still living at home. Isabelle is a smart cookie; once she marries Kevin and gets her green card, the sky is the limit. It’s a tough stance for a parent, but what the two of them may need is a kick in the ass, right out the door of this inn, so that they are given sufficient impetus to go out and improve their lives.

Still, the expressions on their faces are difficult to ignore.

“It will be fine,” Kelley says, hoping this is true. “Everything will be just fine.” And with that, he heads back to his bedroom and his computer so he can e-mail Bart.

MARGARET

After she and Ava stick the standing rib roast in the oven and trim the asparagus and wash the spinach, Margaret checks her phone.

She has one text, from Drake.

It says: I can’t believe how much I miss you. Will you marry me?

She laughs! Proposed to, at the age of fifty-nine, by text message! My, how the times have changed.

Probably because she is with Kelley now, floating in some kind of nostalgic bubble with him, she instantly remembers when Kelley proposed.

New York City, May 18, a year in the last millennium. Kelley was about to graduate from Columbia Business School, but Margaret had one more semester at NYU before she got her master’s in communications. They were so poor-when they had been dating for six months, Margaret gave up her room in the NYU dorms to save money and she moved in with Kelley uptown. They cooked pasta during the week and treated themselves to pizza and a movie on Friday nights and Chinese delivery on Sundays. Margaret got the occasional job doing voice-overs for WQXR, and when those checks came in, she and Kelley blew them on shows at CBGB or something fancier, like dinner at Tavern on the Green or drinks at the bar at Beekman Tower.

On May 18, however, Kelley had just gotten a job offer from Prudential Securities, a job that paid nearly six figures a year-but Margaret didn’t know this yet. On May 18, Margaret was at jury duty, a fate worse than death, because that week in May was absurdly, unseasonably hot, and the air-conditioning in the courthouse was on the blink, and Margaret didn’t have time for jury duty! She had papers and exams, and she was trying to get an internship at the local CBS affiliate.

On May 18, Margaret emerged from the courthouse sweating and irate and dreading the interminable subway ride from the bottom of Manhattan to the top.

There was a man dressed in a black suit and white shirt on the steps of the courthouse, holding a placard with her name on it: Margaret Pryor.

Margaret was confused. He looked like one of the chauffeurs who pick up fancy people at the airport.

Margaret said, “Are you looking for me?”

“Yes, miss,” he said. “Follow me.”

Margaret didn’t want to follow a strange man. For all she knew, this was an abduction. Margaret had a friend at NYU, Leo, who was somehow related to John Gotti.

Mob, Margaret thought. Or possibly something worse? Possibly one or both of her parents had died, and her wealthy aunt Susan had sent this driver?

She tentatively followed the man in the black suit to a white stretch limousine waiting on the street.

Mob.

The back door opened from the inside, and Margaret felt a luscious blast of real air-conditioning.

She poked her head in and gasped. Kelley sat in the back, wearing his ripped khaki shorts and a Meat Loaf T-shirt. He had a bottle of champagne on ice and a dozen roses wrapped in cellophane.

“What…?” Margaret said.

“I got the job!” he said.

Margaret climbed into the limousine, kissed Kelley, and congratulated him profusely. Then she began sucking on an ice cube.

“I can’t believe you got a limo!” she said.

Kelley popped the champagne. “I only got it to drive us home,” he said. “So we’d better drink this fast.”

But as it turned out, they had one stop to make before they reached their squalid apartment uptown. The driver pulled up in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was where Margaret and Kelley had first met.

“Oh,” Margaret said. She didn’t want to be a spoilsport, but she wasn’t in the mood for the Miró exhibit or the Temple of Dendur.

Kelley pulled a box out of the pocket of his disintegrating shorts and presented her with a small but sparkling diamond.

“Marry me,” Kelley said. “Please, please, Margaret, marry me.”

Margaret smiles at the memory. Their kids call it the Quarter-Pounder Proposal, because it’s heavy on the cheese. Proposed to in a white stretch limo by a guy wearing a Meat Loaf T-shirt, offering roses he bought at the Korean deli? But what Margaret has never been able to explain to their kids is how sweet and earnest Kelley was on that day. She and Kelley were young, they were poor-but with their prospects improving-and they were in love. The air-conditioning had felt so delicious, the ice on her tongue, divine.

Kelley could teach Drake a thing or two, Margaret thinks.

AVA

As she and Margaret prepare the standing rib roast and the rest of the meal, Ava tells her mother about the gift of Hunter boots with matching socks.

“Matching socks?” Margaret says. “Maybe I’ll get a pair. Do you remember how when it snows in the city, the slush puddles up, and you step off the street corner and almost drown?”

“You can have mine,” Ava says. She sighs. “Nathaniel doesn’t love me.”

“It’s not the most romantic gift,” Margaret says.

Then Ava tells her mother about kissing Scott in the kitchen. Ava has been thinking about the kissing more than she thought she would. She finds herself checking the clock, wishing for time to move more quickly so that Scott will get here. She wonders if Scott will be brave enough to kiss her again; she worries he won’t be. If she wants to kiss him, she might have to instigate it.

But she doesn’t tell her mother this. What she says is: I was pretty drunk last night, and I let Scott Skyler kiss me.

Margaret says, “Scott Skyler, your assistant principal?”

Ava nods.

Margaret chops the woody ends off the asparagus. “I never did have an affair with any of my bosses,” she says. “I’ve always felt proud of that.”

Ava says, “I’m pretty confused.”

Margaret says, “I’m not a relationship expert. Clearly. But I’ve dated a lot of men since your father and I split, and, in my experience, the more you push a man away, the more fervently he comes after you. If I were in your shoes, I would call Nathaniel and tell him it’s over.”

Ava would no sooner break up with Nathaniel than she would set her piano on fire.

But then, as she and Margaret cut the stems off the fresh spinach and crisp the bacon for the hot bacon dressing, and as Margaret makes cranberry-thyme butter for the snowflake rolls (she did a segment on The Chew with Rachael Ray, and look what she learned!), Ava thinks to herself, What if I did?

He passed out in Kirsten’s den? He didn’t call because he decided to hang out? He gave her rubber rain boots for Christmas? If Ava stays with Nathaniel, things will never improve. It will always be her chasing him. Does she want that?

No, she does not.

When she and her mother are finished in the kitchen, Ava goes into the bedroom to call Nathaniel.

He answers on the first ring. “Looking good, Billy Ray,” he says sleepily. She must have woken him up from a nap. He’s tired because he barely slept the night before. Still, Ava is temporarily derailed by the vision of Nathaniel entangled in the covers of his childhood bed, and so she plays along.

“Feeling good, Louis,” she says.

“Whatcha doin’?” he asks. “Did you have a nice Christmas? Did you like your present?”

“The boots?” she says. “Very practical, thank you.”

“You always wear little ballet shoes, even in the rain and snow,” he says. “And I worry about you. I don’t want you to get sick. I need you around.”

She says, “Yeah, well, about that.”

“About what?” he says.

“About needing me around.” Ava takes a deep breath. “Listen, this isn’t working out for me.”

“What isn’t?” he says. “Are you mad because I came home?”

“This relationship,” Ava says. “You and me, me and you, us together-it isn’t making me happy.”

“Because I came home. Because you think I came back to see Kirsten, which I did not. I mean, she’s an old friend, and she’s at a low point, but I can’t help her, and I’m certainly not going to rekindle any kind of romance with her. That was over long ago, and over is over, especially in this case.”

Ava’s heart relaxes at those words, and she nearly abandons ship. Nathaniel hasn’t talked this frankly to her about his emotional state, ever. But Ava is on a mission here, and once she’s on a mission, she won’t be derailed.

“This isn’t about you and Kirsten,” Ava says. “This is about you and me. I need more-more love, more affection, more intimacy, more of a sense that we have a future.”

“What do you mean by ‘future’?” Nathaniel asks. “Do you mean you want to get married?”

He makes it sound preposterous, as though marriage were the equivalent of running the Boston Marathon backward or enrolling in clown school.

“That’s how the human race has made it this far,” Ava says. “They marry and they procreate.”

Silence on Nathaniel’s end. She has scared him to death. She is right to proceed. Instead of feeling like all her blood is pooling at her feet, she feels empowered. She’s wasted nearly two years of her precious twenties swimming in a pool of unrequited love.

She says, “Scott Skyler has been around a lot the past couple days. Last night he wore the Santa suit, since George stole Mitzi away from my dad.”

“So… what?” Nathaniel says. “This isn’t about Kirsten, after all? This is about Scott? I’m well aware, Ava, that Scott is crazy about you. But I thought you were immune to that.”

Ava considers telling Nathaniel about kissing Scott, but that seems cruel. She says, “I want to be treated like someone precious. I want to be someone’s beloved. I never feel that way with you, and it dawned on me at some point today that I’m never going to feel that way with you, ever.”

“Ava,” Nathaniel says, and it sounds like he’s pleading. She figures this is a good way to leave it.

“Good-bye, Nathaniel,” she says, and she hangs up.

MARGARET

She bumps into Kelley in the hallway of the back house. It’s still very strange, wandering around the inn-and especially the owners’ quarters-like this, since it has always been verboten by Mitzi.

“I should probably shower before we eat dinner,” she says. “Which bathroom should I use?”

“Use mine,” he says.

Margaret thinks he might proposition her again-and she would be a willing accomplice-but Kelley looks morose.

“What’s wrong?” she says. “Are the Golden Dreams wearing off?”

“I just e-mailed Bart,” Kelley says. “Wished him a Merry Christmas. He hasn’t answered my last two e-mails or the past three texts. Do you have any idea how unnerving that is?”

“No,” she says. “I have no idea. None of our children went to war. I’m sure it’s perfectly awful.”

“Awful,” Kelley says. “There have been double-digit deaths over there this week. I purposely haven’t checked the news today because it’s Christmas, and I just… can’t.”

Margaret gnaws on her lower lip. If ever there were a time to tell Kelley about the missing convoy, it’s now. But the number-one ironclad rule of broadcast journalism is to make sure your news is true. She’s fairly certain a convoy holding forty-five soldiers has been overtaken by insurgent nationals, but whether or not Bartholomew Quinn was on that convoy, she can’t possibly say. Giving partial information to Kelley at this point will cause him anxiety of unknown proportions and will ruin his Christmas.

And yet, Margaret feels like she’s lying.

“We have a saying at CBS,” she says. “No news is bad news-but that’s strictly a network perspective. In your case, no news is good news.”

“I worry,” Kelley says. “These god-awful scenarios go through my head.”

“You’re his father,” Margaret says.

“He’s so young,” Kelley says.

“I’m praying for him,” Margaret says. “And I will continue to pray for him until he’s safely home.”

“Thank you,” Kelley says. “I’m happy to hear that Margaret Quinn still prays.”

“All the time,” Margaret says. She reaches out and squeezes his arm. “Well, I’m off for the shower.”

“Is it wildly inappropriate to admit that I’d really like to join you?” Kelley says.

“Borderline inappropriate,” she confirms. But she’s not surprised. The opposite of death, she supposes, is sex.

“So is that a no?” Kelley asks.

“Bring your own towel,” Margaret says. “I still don’t like to share.”

PATRICK

Kevin says, “Have you seen Mom and Dad?”

“No,” Patrick says. He’s pretending to read, but really he’s staring at the face of his phone, trying to send one of the most difficult texts of his life.

“It’s so weird to even say their names together like that,” Kevin says. “And I know this is going to sound nuts, but I think there’s something going on between them.”

“Confirmed,” Patrick says. “I saw the two of them sneaking out of Dad’s bedroom. They had definitely been going at it.”

Ava plops down on the sofa next to Kevin and Isabelle. “How are we supposed to feel about that? Our divorced parents are having a fling. Does anyone have the manual for How to Deal with Completely Screwed-Up Family Situations?”

“I would choose to be happy for them,” Isabelle says.

“I’m happy for them,” Kevin says.

Ava sighs. “I broke up with Nathaniel.”

“You did not,” Kevin says.

“I did,” she says. “Just now, over the phone.”

“Was it the boots?” Kevin asks. “Because I’m clueless, but even I know that boots are a sucky present.”

“The boots are symptomatic of a bigger problem,” Ava says. “I am not Nathaniel Oscar’s great, passionate love. I’m just not.”

Patrick stands up. He doesn’t want them to think he’s a heartless bastard, but he has actual problems. Forget that he has committed an egregious white-collar crime for a second. He didn’t just break up with his boyfriend/girlfriend. His wife of fourteen years walked out on him, taking his three sons away from him on Christmas. He can’t get any of them on the phone. He called Jen’s mother’s house and nobody answered. He, for one, is thrilled his parents are getting it on, because at this point it looks like Jennifer will ask him for a divorce, and Patrick’s only glimmer of hope is that twenty years from now, he and Jen will reunite in a similar manner.

As Patrick heads back to the owners’ quarters, there’s a knock at the door, and Patrick whips around. It’s Scott, the assistant principal. He’s wearing jeans, a tweedy jacket, and a red Vineyard Vines tie printed with bluefish wearing Santa hats. It’s the very same tie Jennifer bought Patrick to wear to the Everlast Christmas party.

Every part of Patrick’s body hurts.

Ava jumps up from the sofa to greet Scott.

Well, Patrick thinks, Nathaniel was easily replaced. And once Patrick goes to jail, he supposes he will be replaced as well.

Jennifer and the boys. How is he supposed to live without them?

Patrick locks himself in Bart’s room; Lindsay Lohan stares him down. He composes a text to Gary Grimstead: I won’t ruin your holiday, but a full confession will be forthcoming tomorrow. You have my most humble apology, man. I got tripped up. But I will do everything in my power not to take you down with me. Peace, PQ

He hits Send. It goes. It’s done. He will lose his job, accept his lashings from the press; he will go to jail and serve his time.

He feels a big, fat bong hit is in order. He fills Bart’s purple glass bong with fresh water and packs in some weed from the bag in Bart’s top drawer. It’s been a long time since he’s done this (not really: just since that trip to South Beach with the Playboy models, none of whom he so much as talked to, by the way).

He holds the smoke for as long as he can, then releases it.

Ahhhhhhhhh. His mind-set realigns almost immediately. Leave it to Bart to have some really choice drugs.

Patrick walks back out to the main room, thinking he will stare at the tree until he falls asleep; his mother will awaken him when dinner is ready. The aroma of the meat roasting is insane!

There’s a knock at the front door-another knock? Patrick tightens the belt of his bathrobe. It’s probably not a bad idea to pursue getting dressed at some point, especially since soon enough he will be wearing an orange jumpsuit. This thought strikes him as hilarious, and he starts giggling.

Ava opens the front door and-Ava screams. Happy? Sad? Scared? Patrick can’t tell.

Happy!

Jen and the kids walk in.

Whaaaaaaaaat? Patrick slaps himself in the face: Wake up, wake up! But it’s real; they’re here! Pierce wraps his arms around Auntie Ava, the two of them being favorite friends, and Jen ushers in Barrett and Jaime. Jaime comes barreling toward Patrick-Jaime the baby, the little guy. Patrick scoops him up.

“Daddy!”

He’s Daddy once again-oh, thank God! Tears start building up behind his eyes, but he can’t cry in front of his children. He is big, strong Daddy-Daddy, Master of the Universe. He cannot cry, but, wow-man, is he grateful.

Ava is good, she is brilliant; Patrick will never say a negative word about her again, because she herds the kids over to the Christmas tree, saying, “Guess what, guys, Santa stopped here for you!” This gives Patrick a moment of reunion with his wife.

“Jen…,” he says.

She slips quietly into his arms, right where she belongs. Haven’t they always marveled at how perfectly they fit together?

She buries her face inside his bathrobe. “Have you been smoking?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says. “I did a bong hit in Bart’s room. I was feeling… pretty low.”

“God,” she says, “I want a bong hit. Later, though, when the boys are asleep.”

He squeezes her tighter. They are always on the same page. “I missed you so much,” he says. “I nearly died from missing you.”

“We didn’t go to California,” she says. “I got as far as the Hilton at Logan. We spent a couple nights there, which the kids hated. So this morning we went back home and opened presents, and I ate the rest of the caviar, since it was open…”

The caviar, he thinks. He has so many things to be sorry about.

“Then, in the bathroom, I saw the bottle of Vicodin. I’m so glad you didn’t do anything stupid.”

“I did do something stupid,” he says.

She puts a finger across his lips, and then she kisses him. “Let’s talk about it later,” she says. “Right now, I’m just happy to be with you.”

Patrick wants to throw her over his shoulder and carry her back to Bart’s room to show her how happy he is. But at that moment, Kelley and Margaret emerge from the owners’ quarters, both of them freshly showered.

“Grandchildren!” Margaret cries with unmitigated glee.

“Your mother?” Jen asks. She runs a hand through her short, dark hair, and Patrick knows she is wishing for lipstick.

“Long story,” Patrick says.

“Where’s Mitzi?” Jen asks.

But he’ll have to explain later, because the room is suddenly a three-ring circus, with kids laughing and wrapping paper flying in the air and Kelley saying, “I didn’t think this day could get any better.”

Patrick marvels at how one of the best feelings in the world is finding something precious that he thought was gone forever.

KELLEY

We’re all on the same page, right? No one is to treat Mitzi any differently than they ever have. There is to be no judgment. Everything happens for a reason.

Kelley doesn’t want to get into the particulars, but, suffice it to say, he isn’t blameless in this.

Yes, Dad, fine, Dad, gotcha. We know, Dad.

Kelley looks pointedly at Isabelle. Ironically, she’s the one he worries about the most.

“We’re on the same page, right?” he says.

“Right,” Isabelle says.

Margaret holds her palms up. “Don’t look at me,” she says. “I like Mitzi.”

“Liar,” Kelley says.

“I do!” Margaret insists.

Mitzi and George arrive at five o’clock on the dot. They both look uncomfortable, bordering on nauseated. George is wearing a lavender argyle sweater that seems like it might have been a Christmas gift from someone-Mitzi?-who hopes George loses thirty pounds in the near future; the cashmere strains over George’s belly and barely meets the top of his pants. Mitzi is wearing a sage-green velvet dress (an Eileen Fisher, Kelley knows, that retails for $375) and a jaunty red suede fedora.

A hat! On Mitzi! A hat George must have made and Mitzi must have gamely agreed to wear to Christmas dinner hosted by the man she has been betraying for twelve years.

“Nice hat!” Kelley says. He kisses Mitzi on the cheek. “Merry Christmas. I’m glad you came.”

“Thank you for having us,” George says. He hands Kelley a gift bag containing a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black.

“Thank you, kind sir!” Kelley says. He hands the bottle off to Kevin, who whisks it to the bar.

Mitzi hands Kelley a present. It’s a book; he knows which one. He’ll save it to open at the dinner table, in case there’s an awkward silence.

Patrick and Jen greet Mitzi, Ava says Merry Christmas, then Scott and Isabelle say Merry Christmas and Joyeux Noël, then Kevin offers drinks. Everyone puts in an order for something stronger than normal.

Mitzi says, “Do you have any white wine, Kevin?”

Kevin raises his eyebrows. “Wine?”

Kelley says, “You’ve been gone two days, and suddenly you drink wine?”

“It’s Christmas,” Mitzi says. “I sometimes drink wine on Christmas.”

“You never drank wine on Christmas,” Kelley says. “You never drank wine, ever. Unless, of course, you drank it in George’s room?”

George says, “If you have white wine, Kevin, Mitzi would like a glass.”

Oh, George, so gallant, making Kelley look like he’s picking a fight.

Mitzi says, “Have you heard from Bart?”

“I have not,” Kelley says. “Have you?”

“No,” she says.

As far as Kelley is concerned, they have nothing else to say to each other. Wow-he is angrier than he thought he’d be.

George says to Scott, “How’d it go as Santa Claus?”

“Great,” Scott says, grinning.

“Scott was a natural,” Kelley says. “I hate to tell you this, George, but you’ve been replaced. Happens to the best of us.”

“Daddy,” Ava says.

Right, Kelley knows. He gives everyone else a lecture about being pleasant, and he alone is acting abominable.

At that moment, Margaret pops out of the kitchen wearing Mitzi’s Christmas apron, featuring a silk-screened Rudolph with a red sequin nose. “Merry Christmas, everyone!” she sings out.

Kelley has no need for further jabs, because he has just unveiled his secret weapon. The look on Mitzi’s face is PRICELESS. There is horror and jealousy wrapped up in complete shock.

Kelley would dance a jig if it were not so indelicate.

Mitzi turns to Kelley with icy-hot eyes, then back to Margaret. “Hello, Margaret.”

“Hello, Mitzi,” Margaret says. She sails over and embraces Mitzi warmly. The woman has the grace of a queen, Kelley thinks. “Merry Christmas. Today must be bittersweet for you, with Bart away. Please know I’m keeping him in my prayers.”

“Oh,” Mitzi says. “Thank you. Yes, it’s been… difficult. Christmas morning at a hotel, everything topsy-turvy.”

Well, whose fault is that? Kelley thinks.

Kevin arrives with Mitzi’s wine and a whiskey, rocks, for both George and Kelley. Margaret, Ava, and Jennifer are drinking champagne. Patrick, Kevin, and Scott have vodka martinis. Isabelle has seltzer.

“I’d like to make a toast,” Kelley says. “To all the members of the Quinn family who are present, and to the newest addition.”

“Hear, hear,” Kevin says, and he kisses Isabelle.

“What addition?” Mitzi says.

But nobody answers.

They are seated for dinner. Kelley takes his usual place and Margaret sits at Kelley’s right, which is where Mitzi used to sit. Next to Margaret are Patrick, the three boys, Jennifer, Scott, Ava, George, Mitzi, Kevin, and Isabelle, who is next to Kelley.

Isabelle says to Mitzi, “Ton chapeau. Your hat.” She makes a motion indicating Mitzi should take it off.

Mitzi looks flustered and embarrassed, and Kelley’s heart goes out to her. She never wears hats and hence is unaware that hats are inappropriate at the dinner table.

Kevin pours a nice pinot noir for everyone at the table who is drinking, which again seems to include Mitzi.

“Something smells delicious,” George says.

“Standing rib roast,” Margaret says. “That’s what we used to have when the kids were growing up.”

“And Yorkshire pudding made with the drippings,” Ava says.

Again, the look on Mitzi’s face is priceless. She may be drinking wine, but Kelley will bet a pretty penny she won’t eat beef or anything made with “drippings.” Just the word “drippings” is probably enough to send Mitzi to the hospital for a month.

Everything about the present situation delights him.

When everyone is seated, he reaches out, encouraging them to hold hands for the blessing.

He says, “O Lord, we thank you for the meal before us, lovingly prepared”-pause, let Mitzi consider-“and we are grateful for all of the family and friends assembled at this table. We also remember, O Lord, the ones who are not at this table tonight, especially our beloved Bart, who is overseas, defending our freedom. Please, Lord, keep Bart safe from bodily harm and let him know he is in our thoughts and prayers. Let us take a moment of silence to pray for Bart.”

Silence.

MARGARET

She’s squeezing Kelley’s fingers so hard, she’s surprised his fingers don’t break. Please let Bart be okay! Not on that convoy! Her most recent memory of Bart is from eighteen months previous, when Bart’s senior class came to New York City. Margaret offered the class a guided tour of CBS studios, with herself, “Bart’s stepmother,” as their guide. Bart texted her before the class arrived, saying, “I told everyone you were my stepmom, okay? Hashtag avoidconfusion.”

Margaret laughed and laughed at this. She is something of a reverse stepmother to Bart, the first wife of his father, the mother to his half siblings. Why isn’t there a term for this relationship? Surely, there must be thousands of instances. Maybe because an actual relationship between a woman and the child of her ex-husband is so rare?

Margaret has always been fond of Bart. He has characteristics of Kelley’s that her own kids do not-Kelley’s aquiline nose, his golden hair, his sense of mischief. Bart got in a lot of trouble growing up. But then, so did Kelley.

The day Bart came into the studio, Margaret was as motherly as possible; she kissed him hello, she tousled his shaggy hair (all shaved off now, she supposes), she teased him about his excellent grades, or lack thereof. He had glowed from all her attentions, and at the end he hugged her and said, “Thanks, Mmmmmm.” She hadn’t been sure if he meant to call her Margaret or Mom.

“For you,” she said. “Anything, anytime, always and forever.”

His grin, both sweet and wicked, was all Kelley.

She misses him, she who honestly barely knows him. How must everyone else feel?

AVA

Ava is chastened. She has been so busy fretting about her relationship with Nathaniel that she hasn’t had two seconds left over to think about Bart.

She and Bart used to be… so close. When he was born, Ava was ten years old; she would push him in his stroller, pretending he was her baby. He had soft, chubby cheeks and blue eyes and blond chick fuzz on top of his head. He was a living doll.

When Ava was a teenager, the thrill of taking care of Bart wore off a little. She was always called on to babysit him, and when she turned sixteen and got her license, she was enlisted to drive him and his pesky friends all over the island. Did she complain?

Yes, she complained. She called him a spoiled brat. Mitzi never punished him, he was never held accountable for his actions, and as he grew older, his actions became more and more atrocious. He started smoking at fourteen. Ava caught him and his friend Michael, each with a cigarette, in the back parking lot of the high school. She turned him in to Mitzi, who cried and blamed herself. Bart hosted enormous parties at Dionis Beach with beer he stole out the back door of the Bar. He crashed three cars in eighteen months, he got caught repeatedly with marijuana-by Kelley and Mitzi, by the high school principal, by the police-and he broke and entered a summer house in Pocomo one weekend night in February when he and his derelict friends were bored.

But Ava doesn’t want to spend her moment of silence running down Bart’s rap sheet. What a person does isn’t the same as who a person is. Bart is charming, fun loving, mischievous, and magnetic. Bart is her little brother, and Ava needs him to be safe.

ISABELLE

Dear Lord, please keep Bart in the palm of your hand. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

KEVIN

He has been having a great Christmas, the best of his life, perhaps. He remembers Eric Metz giving away money he could most certainly use. This is for Nantucket Hospice, Eric said. They made things so much easier for my mom at the end.

Grace, Kevin reminds himself.

He prays for Bart-Bart, man, stay well, stay safe, stay strong, be smart, not reckless, don’t take any unnecessary risks, Mitzi needs you, man, and so does Dad.

Kevin has been convinced that Bart wears a Teflon shield, that everything slides off him, but right now, Kevin becomes aware that, wherever Bart is, he is probably scared and more than a little lonely.

We’re thinking of you, man.

PATRICK

Patrick has spent the past nineteen years being a mentor and a role model for Bart, but no longer. Now, the tables have turned-Patrick is the screwup and Bart is the hero, and who would have ever predicted that?

Before Bart left for Germany, he spent the night with Patrick, Jen, and the kids in Boston. Jen made roast chicken and potatoes and a banana cream pie, because it’s Bart’s favorite. After dinner and tucking in the kids, Patrick and Bart walked over to Silvertone and had a couple of drinks. Patrick told the bartender, Murph, that Bart was shipping overseas with the Marines, and with that, the fact that Bart was nineteen was ignored, and the first round was on the house.

Patrick said, “So, are you nervous?”

“God, no,” Bart said. “I’m pumped.”

“It’ll be good for you to get off the island,” Patrick said.

“Yeah,” Bart said. “I think Mom and Dad have finally run out of patience with me. And I don’t want to go to college, not right now, anyway. I’d party my ass off, flunk out, come home to Nantucket, and work as the first mate on some fishing boat the rest of my life. The Marines, man, it means something. Defending our country, our freedom, so people like you can go out and make millions of dollars each day.”

Patrick had laughed. They had done a shot of Jameson together with Murph, they had played some Kings of Leon on the jukebox, they had arm wrestled, and Bart had won. They had stumbled home arm in arm. Patrick experienced brotherly feelings he’d never had with Kevin, probably because he and Kevin were so close in age, raised as twins, or as two halves of the same person-the go-getter and the slacker, the perfectionist and the one who liked to half-ass things. Bart looked up to Patrick instead of resenting him, as Kevin did, and that felt good.

Patrick sighs. He thinks, Be honorable, wherever you are, Bart. Do the right thing instead of the easy thing.

KELLEY

Amen,” he says, and he squeezes hands with Margaret and Isabelle.

Margaret and Ava serve dinner: the standing rib roast, the Yorkshire pudding, roasted asparagus, spinach salad with fresh mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, and hot bacon dressing, snowflake rolls with cranberry butter.

Mitzi, Kelley notices, takes only asparagus and a roll-and then, on second thought, another roll and a small serving of salad.

Kelley wants to introduce a nostalgic topic of conversation, and the first thing that pops into his mind is the genesis of this family. The way he met Margaret. The kids all know this story-he used to tell it every Christmas-but Isabelle hasn’t heard it, and neither has Scott or George; nor have the grandchildren.

“My first Christmas in Manhattan,” Kelley says, “I was so poor.”

“Oh boy,” Ava says. She slugs back some wine, then feeds him the next line. “How poor were you, Daddy?”

“Well, I was putting myself through business school at Columbia and living in a university-owned apartment with four roommates.”

“And one disgusting bathroom,” Margaret says. “It was, what, forty years ago? And I can still picture it.”

“You’re getting ahead of me,” Kelley says. “I haven’t met you yet.”

“But you’re about to.”

“But I’m about to, yes,” Kelley says. He sips his wine and cuts into his perfectly cooked roast beef. It’s rosy pink, and the Yorkshire pudding is high and light and flecked with chives. He squints at Margaret. “I still don’t understand that thing about Martha Stewart.”

“What about Martha Stewart?” Jen asks.

“Just tell the story, please,” Margaret says.

“So, anyway, I was too poor to go home to Perrysburg for Christmas, and my brother, Avery, decided at the last minute to go to Key West with Marcus. Which left me alone in the city. All my roommates went home. We had a sad little wreath on our door, but nobody felt like spending money on a tree. So basically I was looking at a Christmasless Christmas. I was looking at Chinese takeout and bad TV.”

“Sad,” Isabelle says.

“It was sad. But-never one to feel sorry for myself-I became determined to feel the holiday spirit, and so I took the crosstown bus to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the Angel Tree.”

Ava nudges Scott. “Ask him what that Angel Tree is.”

“What’s the Angel Tree, Mr. Quinn?” Scott asks.

Kelley says, “It was a twenty-foot tree on display in one of the galleries that was decorated with angel ornaments. The angels were all different sizes and colors, and they were made from different materials-felt, velvet, metal, straw, wood, cloth, stones, feathers, beads, gold, jewels, you name it-hundreds of different angels on this tree. I got to the museum an hour before it closed on Christmas Eve. Back then, the museum was free with a ‘suggested donation’ of five dollars. I had five dollars, but I needed to take the crosstown bus home, so I gave the staff member two dollars, but she said since it was late and it was Christmas Eve, I could go in for free.”

“Lucky you,” Ava says.

“Lucky me,” Kelley says. “But not because of the two dollars. I was lucky because the gallery with the tree was empty, and it was dark except for the lights on the tree, and a song was playing. ‘Silent Night,’ my favorite carol.”

“But the gallery wasn’t really empty, Daddy, was it?” Ava asks.

“No,” Kelley says. “It wasn’t.”

“It wasn’t?” George says. He’s leaning forward over his own loaded dinner plate (he has no problem eating beef, Kelley notices). He’s engrossed in the story; next to him, Mitzi sits with her hands in her lap, her sad little dinner untouched. She has heard this story before, right? He must have told her at some point how he and Margaret met, but probably not in this much detail.

“It wasn’t empty,” Kelley says, “because Margaret was there.”

“I was sitting on a bench, staring at the tree,” Margaret says. “And Kelley asked if it was okay to sit next to me.”

“We didn’t speak,” Kelley says. “Didn’t say a word. We sat and watched the tree and listened to the carols, and then the guard came up and told us the museum was closing. We stood up and walked out together.”

“And your father asked me if I wanted to go get hot chocolate,” Margaret says. “And I said yes.”

“And because I still had five dollars, I had money to pay for it!” Kelley says.

Margaret says, “And that’s why, when Ava brought home her paper angel ornament from Sunday school in second grade, it was so special. In fact, I brought it with me last night.” She pulls the paper angel out of her pocket like a magician.

“Look at that!” Kelley says. “I remember when Ava made this. I can’t believe you still have it!”

“I’ve had it a long, long time,” Margaret says.

“That is a good story,” Isabelle says.

There’s a clatter at the other end of the table. Mitzi has dropped her knife and fork onto her plate.

“Well,” she says, “that was a lovely stroll down memory lane. I’m sure you and Margaret have been scheming about all the possible ways to humiliate me.”

“Humiliate you?” Kelley says. “That’s rich.”

“Why is she even here?” Mitzi asks. “She hasn’t come to Nantucket for Christmas in years. She’s too busy and too important to spend the holidays with her own children.”

“Watch it,” Kelley says.

“I can’t believe you’re defending her,” Mitzi says. “I can’t believe you’re letting her sit at this table, in my chair. I can’t believe you let her cook beef, in my kitchen!”

“Well,” Kelley says, “there are a lot of things I can’t believe either. But at least I am adult enough to play through. I am man enough to have invited you and George here for dinner because you had nowhere else to go.”

“My suspicions all these years were right,” Mitzi says. “You still loved Margaret all the years we were married. You never loved me, and you never cared for Bart.”

“Hey, now,” Patrick says.

George puts a hand on Mitzi’s arm. “Calm down,” he says. “You’ve been drinking.”

“Of course I’m DRINKING!” Mitzi screams. “Kelley called up Margaret Quinn, the most famous woman in America, so the two of them could make me feel like a common whore, when the fact of the matter is, I’ve been lonely in this marriage for years and years!”

“Mitzi,” Kelley says, “please stop. There are children present.”

The three kids don’t seem interested in Mitzi’s soliloquy, however. Pierce is playing with his new iPad under the table.

Jennifer says, “They’re finished. Boys, you may be excused.”

“Yes,” Mitzi says. “I’d like to be excused as well.” She stands up and sets the fedora back on her head. “I’m going to the ladies’ room.”

“Powder room,” Kelley says.

Mitzi vanishes.

“Well,” Ava says, “I like the story of the Angel Tree.”

“So do I,” George says. “And, you know, you have a beautiful family. I’ve always thought that.”

“Thank you,” Kelley and Margaret say together.

“Does anyone want seconds?” Margaret asks. “Look at all the beef!”

“Sandwiches tomorrow,” Kevin says.

Kelley eats dinner, trying to savor it. Maybe it was insensitive to tell the Angel Tree story? Okay, yes, it was, but he didn’t tell it to ruin Mitzi’s night. Okay, maybe he did tell it to ruin Mitzi’s night, but doesn’t she deserve it? A little bit?

The food is so delicious, he can’t believe it. He wonders if Margaret made dessert. He noticed that Mrs. Gabler brought a plum pudding. Would Margaret be able to whip up some of her hard sauce to go with it?

His vision of sugar plums is interrupted by Mitzi, who storms back into the dining room. Her face is as red as her hat. She is holding something up in her hand, something shiny. She is shaking it.

“Look what I found next to your bed!” she shouts.

Kelley opens his mouth to protest. Did he or did he not tell her to use the powder room? But did she listen? No. No, she marched right into the master suite. Possibly she was after the remaining inch of her organic hairspray. She doesn’t like to waste anything, and she might have worried that Kelley wouldn’t recycle the bottle properly.

Margaret gasps. Under the table, her hand grabs Kelley’s knee.

Kelley squints to focus on what Mitzi is holding in her hand.

“Margaret’s watch,” Mitzi says, “was on your bedside table.”

Everyone at the table is rendered silent.

Margaret says, “I’ll take that now, Mitzi, please. I didn’t realize I left it there.”

“You must have taken it off before you slept with my husband.”

“Mitzi…,” George says.

“That hideous watch!” Mitzi says, rattling it like a castanet. “I see you wearing it on the news. It ruins your already ugly outfits.”

“Mitzi!” Ava cries out. “Honestly! You sound like you’re ten years old.”

“Wait a minute,” Margaret says, “are you the one who writes the blog about me? Are you Queenie229?”

“I hate this watch because I know who gave it to you,” Mitzi says.

“I gave it to her,” Kelley says.

“Yes,” Margaret says, “after Ava was born. That was long before he met you, Mitzi; there’s no reason for you to feel threatened.”

“Except that you wear it every single night on the national news as a signal that you still love him! It’s always sickened me! And it further sickens me that you showed up here and crawled right into bed with Kelley only a scant day after I crawled out!”

At this, both Patrick and Kevin stand up to defend their mother’s honor, but Margaret is hung up on something different.

“Are you Queenie229?” she asks Mitzi.

Yes, Kelley thinks. “Queenie” for Roller Disco Queen of King of Prussia, PA, and 2/29 is Mitzi’s birthday. Leap Day.

Mitzi says, “Not everyone in America loves you. Not everyone in America thinks you have impeccable style.”

“Well, I’m glad I know it’s you,” Margaret says. “Although trashing your husband’s ex-wife anonymously in a blog is a move I would have thought was beneath you. It’s tasteless.”

“That’s it!” Mitzi says. “I’ve had it. I’m not going to stay here while you insult me. George, we’re leaving.”

George stuffs a large piece of roast beef into his mouth and takes one more snowflake roll before he stands up. “Yes, dear,” he says weakly. It sounds like he and Mitzi have been married fifty years.

Kelley pulls out the present from Mitzi and quickly opens it. It’s a Barefoot Contessa cookbook; Mitzi gives him the newest one every year.

“Thank you for this,” he says. He holds the book up like a librarian at story time, showing everyone the cover.

“Oh,” Margaret says, “I love the Barefoot Contessa, and I know her. Ina Garten. I can introduce you, if you like.”

“I’ll tell you what’s shameless,” Mitzi says. “Your name-dropping is shameless!”

“I for one would love to meet the Barefoot Contessa,” Isabelle says.

“You!” Mitzi says. “I saved you, Isabelle. You would have been sent home long ago if it weren’t for me. But you have taken her side, too.”

“It isn’t about sides,” Ava says. “She’s our mother.”

“And you were our stepmother,” Kevin says.

“Merry Christmas, Mitzi, George. Good night,” Kelley says. He does not stand up, however. He is going to sit and finish what’s on his plate, and he may even have seconds.

Mitzi and George leave the dining room, but Kelley waits until the front door slams shut before he resumes eating. He meant to tell Mitzi that Eddie Pancik will be listing the inn, but that can wait until after the holidays.

He smiles at Margaret. “What are you doing on New Year’s?”

“I’m broadcasting from Times Square,” she says. “Wanna come?”

AVA

She and Scott offer to do the dishes between dinner and dessert. Everyone else tops off their glasses and heads out to sit by the fire.

“I never really understood the term ‘family circus,’ ” Ava says, “until the past two days.”

“I like your family,” Scott says.

“You’re insane,” Ava says.

“Yeah,” Scott says. “I know.”

But actually, Scott is the sanest person Ava knows. And, in addition to having superhero shoulders, he has the biggest, sweetest heart. She remembers when Scott came into her classroom as she was trying to teach twenty-two fourth graders how to play “Annie’s Song” on the recorder. It was cacophony, to say the least. Scott interrupted the class, pulling Ava aside to tell her that Claire Frye’s mother had been killed. Ava had stared at Scott in horror, willing herself not to cry. He squeezed her hand and said calmly, “I’m going to bring Claire to the office now. Her father is waiting.”

Ava watched Scott lead Claire from the classroom, his hand lightly on her back, his posture ramrod straight, his eyes showing nothing but kindness and some man-of-steel internal strength.

Later that day, Ava swung by Scott’s office. He was at his desk, holding his head in his hands. He didn’t move when Ava came in, and for a while she watched him, wondering if he’d had to witness the moment when Claire Frye learned her mother was dead.

Scott said, “God, I hope I never have to do anything like that ever, ever again.”

Only now does Ava remember how she had, in that moment, loved him with every cell in her body.

Now there is the other thing eating at her, the new sexual energy between them. The magnetic attraction. She still doesn’t understand how it just appeared out of nowhere. She held Scott’s hand under the table through a good part of dinner, and even the hand-holding was a turn-on.

She says, “I broke up with Nathaniel.”

“You did not.”

“I did. I called him and ended it.”

Scott swallows. “Not… because of me?”

“Not because of you, no. Because of me. I’m sick and tired of chasing after something that’s never going to happen.”

Scott nods once; she can see him trying to understand. “But you still have feelings for him.”

“Yes,” Ava says. “But that doesn’t matter. I’m finished.”

“Really?” Scott says.

“Really,” Ava says. She gives Scott’s tie a tug, and before she knows it, she and Scott are kissing up against the sink, next to the half-loaded dishwasher, and the water is running.

She stops him. “Let’s finish here,” she says, “and go to my bedroom.”

“Okay,” he says, breathless.

The dishes get done very, very quickly after that.

Ava leads Scott down the hallway, to her bedroom. She lies on the bed and pulls Scott on top of her. They make out like teenagers for what feels like an hour. Out in the main room, Ava hears her mother announce that dessert is ready-plum pudding with hard sauce. Ava loves plum pudding with hard sauce, and she knows her father will be making his famous Irish coffees-but nothing in the world right now is sweeter than being with Scott.

As he runs his hand up her sweater, her phone rings. She catches the display out of the corner of her eye. NO, it says.

Nathaniel.

Scott says, “Do you have to answer that?”

“No,” she says.

Ava stops Scott somewhere between second and third base. It’s not that she doesn’t want to keep going; it’s that she wants something to look forward to.

“Okay, right,” Scott says. He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself. “It will be better if we wait.”

“Just not too long,” she says.

After a while she tiptoes to the kitchen to snag two dishes of plum pudding for herself and Scott-she hopes there is some left-and she overhears her parents in the kitchen, talking.

Margaret says, “You don’t have to sell the inn. I could either lend you the money to keep it going, or I could buy it outright and you could run it.”

“Kevin wants to run it,” Kelley says. “Kevin and Isabelle.”

“Do they?” Margaret says. “Would that be a bad life for them?”

“I can’t let you buy the inn, Maggie,” Kelley says. “You’ve already done too much as it is.”

“What have I done?” Margaret asks. “I showed up, is all. And I was long overdue for that.”

Ava strolls into the kitchen. “Hello, parents,” she says. “So, are you two getting back together, or what?”

They both laugh. Ava gets two dishes of plum pudding and douses them with her mother’s luscious hard sauce. She asks Kelley to make two Irish coffees.

“This may come as a shock,” Ava says, “but since we’re all being honest, I’m entertaining a guest in my room.”

“Scott is lovely,” Margaret says.

“We just want you to be happy, sweetheart,” Kelley says.

Ava takes dessert back to her room on a tray, thinking, Sell the inn? Well, it’s time, probably, that she found her own place to live.

But still… sell the inn?

She and Scott gobble down dessert, and then they turn on the TV to watch It’s a Wonderful Life while drinking their Irish coffee.

Then they must have both fallen asleep, because Ava wakes up to someone knocking on her bedroom door.

“Ava!” It’s her mother. “Ava, are you in there?”

Ava stands up, collects herself, and opens the door. “Hi, what is it?”

Her mother mouths something, but Ava is too bleary-eyed to make out what it is.

“What?”

Margaret leans in and whispers, “Nathaniel is here.”

Ava blinks. “Here?”

Her mother nods vigorously.

Nathaniel is here.

Ava turns to look at Scott. He is passed out cold in her bed. Ava tiptoes out into the hallway, closing the door gently behind her.

Nathaniel is in the living room, chitchatting with Kevin, listening to Kevin and Isabelle’s big news, admiring Isabelle’s diamond ring.

“Wow, that’s great!” Nathaniel says. “I’m really psyched for you guys.”

“Thanks,” Kevin says.

Nathaniel sees Ava and breaks into that heart-stopping grin of his, the same one he gave her the day he met her.

“Hey, baby,” he says.

She will not succumb.

She says, “Let’s go to the kitchen.”

“Or your room?” he says.

“No.”

“Wow,” he says. “You really are mad.”

She strides into the kitchen but finds Kelley in there, cleaning up dessert and making fresh muffins for the morning.

“Hey, Ava,” he says. Funny look. “Hey, Nathaniel.”

“Mr. Quinn,” Nathaniel says. “Merry Christmas.”

“And to you,” Kelley says.

Ava can’t believe it is still Christmas. This is the Christmas that never ends.

She says, “Well, we can’t talk in the kitchen, so we’ll have to talk in the dining room.”

“Or your room,” he says.

“No,” Ava says.

“Or we can go to my place,” Nathaniel says.

“Negative,” Ava says.

“Wow,” Nathaniel says. “Where did you get that necklace? Did Scott give you that necklace?”

“None of your business,” Ava says.

“Did Scott give you the necklace, Ava? If he did, then this makes sense. I mean, one guy gives you rain boots, one guy gives you a diamond necklace…”

Ava sighs. “It’s from my mother.”

“Oh,” Nathaniel says.

“Let me be clear,” Ava says. “I’m not mad. I’m just finished.”

“You don’t love me?” he says.

“Whether or not I love you doesn’t matter,” Ava says. “It’s over. I’m tired of waiting around for you to treat me the way I want to be treated. Love me the way I want to be loved.”

“You want what, exactly?” Nathaniel says. “You want me to get down on one knee and propose? Fine, I will.” He sinks to the ground. “Ava Quinn, will you marry me?”

“You don’t mean it,” Ava says.

“I do so,” he says. “I love you. I am probably guilty of taking you for granted, but the flip side is that loving you is so easy. Being with you is comfortable. You’re normal and cool, there isn’t any drama, you don’t ask me for things, you let me be me. When I went to Seattle this fall, you didn’t bat an eye, you didn’t complain or call me selfish-and I was being selfish, and I was a jackass for not inviting you along, but I needed to get away, alone, and you got it. You get me. I love you, Ava. Now, will you marry me?”

Ava feels like she’s breaking in half. Nathaniel is saying all the right things, and it is true that she loves him. But something isn’t right. She doesn’t want to be comfortable, like a sweater or a dish of vanilla pudding. She wants something better than that.

“Ava,” Nathaniel says. “Please. I want you to be my wife.”

Ava teeters. She wobbles. This is her heart’s one desire for Christmas coming true. Coming true after all.

Suddenly, Scott appears in the doorway of the dining room. His hair is mussed, and his tie hangs loose. Ava thinks of how he came rushing out of the parking lot without a winter coat just to check on her. How he stopped by the Bar to take her home. How he looks at her and she feels like she is the most beautiful, desirable woman in the universe.

“No,” she says to Nathaniel.

“Oh, baby, come on!” Nathaniel says.

“No,” she says. “Now get up, please.”

“Ava,” he says, “I know you want this.”

“I don’t,” she says. “Please stand up.”

“Nathaniel,” Scott says, suddenly sounding like Assistant Principal Skyler, “stand up.”

Nathaniel’s head swivels around. He sees Scott, and recognition comes into his eyes. He gets to his feet.

“I’ll walk you to the door,” Scott says.

MARGARET

Kevin and Isabelle go to bed first. Isabelle looks utterly exhausted, the kind of exhausted only known to pregnant women in their first trimester. She kisses Margaret on both cheeks and thanks her for the wonderful dinner. It’s the first meal she’s managed to keep down in weeks, she says.

“I’ll take that as a sign that my future grandchild likes my cooking,” Margaret says.

Jennifer takes the kids upstairs to one of the rooms at the inn and puts them to bed. Patrick follows behind her, but first he stops to give Margaret a long hug.

“I’ll give you Hollis Chambers’s number in the morning,” Margaret says. “I’ve always got your back.”

“I know you do, Mom,” he says.

“You’re my golden boy,” she says.

“But not anymore,” he says.

“Oh, honey,” she says. “Yes, you are. Forever you are.”

Nathaniel leaves, and then a little while later, Scott bids everyone good-bye.

Margaret says to Ava, “Are you okay, honey?”

Ava sits down at the piano and starts to play “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night,” very softly. The fire crackles, the tree shimmers. Kelley is laid out lengthwise on the sofa, his feet in Margaret’s lap. She thinks she sees snowflakes out the window. It would be a nice way to end Christmas, with a light, pretty snowfall. Maybe Margaret can take the kids sledding tomorrow.

She stands up and goes over to the window to check.

Yes, snow!

Ava says, “This one is for you, Daddy.” She starts to play “Silent Night.”

Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright

Margaret sings into the cold window; her breath fogs up the pane.

Round yon virgin mother and child, holy infant so tender and mild

Kelley says to Margaret, “So, Maggie, how long do you think you’ll stay?”

Margaret pulls the paper angel out of her pocket and presses it to her chest. This time with Kelley has been magical. She has spent the last twenty-four hours in a state of delirious happiness, and they brought closure to certain issues-they are the best of friends, and they will always love each other. Who knows, they may even decide to be buried together. But when Margaret replays Ava’s question, So, are you two getting back together, or what?-Margaret thinks, No. It will never work out. The same thing will happen. Margaret will become absorbed in her work, and Kelley will resent it.

Sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.

Margaret’s phone buzzes, which startles her. She hasn’t had a text all day except for the marriage proposal from Drake.

Would it be so bad to marry a surgeon? she wonders.

She checks her phone. The text is from Darcy. It says: Bart Quinn was on that convoy. He and the 44 other soldiers have been officially announced missing. I’m so sorry. You may already know this. Family is being notified presently.

Margaret stifles a cry just as a phone rings in the house.

Kelley says, “That’s weird. No one ever calls the landline. Maybe it’s Eddie Pancik with a buyer.” He stands up.

No. Nononononono! Margaret thinks. Not on Christmas! Missing, not dead. But still… missing. Missing!

Tears blur Margaret’s eyes, but she doesn’t want Kelley’s peace of mind shattered one second sooner than it needs to be. She intercepts him on his way to answer the phone. She gives him a kiss on the lips and looks straight into his blue eyes.

“I’ll stay as long as you need me to,” she says.