Christmas in Evergreen Tidings of Joy - Nancy Naigle Page 0,71

lap. If it hadn’t been for that one bump, they might never have met.

He typed her a text.

I’ll be in the city tomorrow. Lunch?

The daunting dot-dot-dot in the little gray box below his text made him nervous.

It disappeared, then started again. What had changed her mind? How was she going to respond? Why had he sent it at all?

He put his phone back in his pocket. He was nervous enough about the interview. Why had he added a chance to meet with her while he was in the city on top of it all?

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Katie sat at her desk. The sounds of the city filled the room, even from here inside her apartment. The honks, hollers, the rumbling diesel of a city bus, and a siren.

The other day, she’d moved her desk right into the living room in front of the windows overlooking the busy New York streets below. If she was going to be a full-time author, by golly, why not take over the biggest room in the place? It had the best view, and the best light.

The night she’d come back home from Evergreen, she’d found a new confidence from her mother’s words as they’d decorated the Christmas tree together. It’d been the first time Katie had heard her mother really sound like she was excited about Katie working on another novel. That had been empowering.

While in Evergreen, Katie had been so focused on that assignment for the magazine that she’d completely missed that her new novel was already being mentally created, even though she hadn’t started an outline or plotted the story.

And although Mom was crazy about the characters, as she called them, Katie knew those people as friends, and they wouldn’t be the heroes and heroines in her novel. No doubt some quirks and experiences would sneak their way into the book, but what she’d gained through those experiences with them was so much bigger.

She now had a true appreciation for small-town community, and an understanding too about how the same problems in city life still happened in those little towns. There were different ways to handle problems, and at the end of it all, each person was on their own special journey.

The people still loved, lost and fought for what they believed in. They told stories of triumph over tragedy. Second chances. New love found its way into old friends’ hearts. The simplest things all around us every day went unnoticed, then rediscovered at just the right time. Those things would inspire others.

She felt armed with the experience to write such stories now.

She’d tucked a copy of the article she’d turned in for the magazine into a file folder. It had a purpose. A single step on her journey, and every single one, even the ones that felt like stumbles, held importance. The folder sat right next to the inch-thick stack of rejections she’d received on her first book when she’d sent it out on submission. She’d printed every single one of those heartbreaking emails to remind her. Humbling, yes. But a necessary step in the process.

Mom had been an engaged listener as Katie had shared every detail about her trip. They’d had afternoon breakfast at their favorite restaurant, the one with the pancakes, and while shopping, Mom had purchased an advent calendar for her as a joke.

Katie poked the cardboard perforated edge of the window number twenty and withdrew the tiny chocolate. There was no way for Mom to have known how perfect the snowman theme was after her stay in Evergreen. This little cardboard advent calendar might be my favorite present of the year. A new tradition.

Mom had meant it to be a substitute for missing the rest of the advent calendar in Evergreen, and the thought had landed sweetly on Katie’s heart.

She tucked the piece of overpriced chocolate into her mouth, letting it melt on her tongue. Suddenly, she wished that chocolate was between two graham crackers with an ooey-gooey overheated marshmallow around the fire pit at Barbara’s Country Inn with someone special. Ben.

As had become her writing ritual since she’d come back, she lit the candle at the corner of her desk. She’d had to sniff about a dozen holiday-scented candles before she’d finally found the one that smelled just like the trees at Henry’s Christmas Tree Farm. It smelled so close. If it snowed in her apartment from the terpenes, she wouldn’t even mind.

She settled in at her keyboard, opening the file to her as-yet-untitled Christmas novel and began typing,