that fateful night and extinguished that bright, cheerful light.
She had spent the first year after his death in limbo, lost and grieving for the future they planned to build together. Six months ago, she had decided the time had come to emerge from that cocoon of pain and begin figuring out the rest of her life with her son.
As soon as she made that decision, a hundred different things came at her, telling her it was time to make a new start and to do it before Christopher started grade school.
She had started making lists of all the possible places they could go. As she and Kevin had already researched Austin, moving there seemed the logical choice. It was scary and overwhelming and exhilarating, all at the same time. She still wasn’t sure if she was making the right decision, but the alternative was complacency and even stagnation.
“I always worry about what signals I might be missing because I’m too busy to pay attention,” she said now to Winnie.
The older woman nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly. I’m so glad Lucy asked you to come help me. We’re going to have such fun. Now, have you ever made a pumpkin pie?”
She had tried once, but Kevin had always preferred pecan pie like his grandmama and mama used to make.
“I’m not an expert at it, but I’m more than willing to learn.”
Winnie’s laugh sounded more like a cackle.
“I like your grit, honey. Let’s do this, then. I like to gather all my ingredients and measure them all first, like they do on cooking shows. That way if I’ve run out of ginger, I don’t have to run to the neighbors in a panic halfway through the recipe. They call that mise en place.”
“That’s a funny word,” Christopher said from the table. He tried to repeat Winnie’s phrase in an exaggerated French accent that made the older woman laugh.
“Close enough. Why don’t you finish your cinnamon roll, and you can help your mother find everything she needs for the pie?”
She could do this, Abby told herself. She was already tackling much harder challenges in her life than making a simple pie.
* * *
Ethan dreaded holidays.
Oh, he didn’t mind the actual celebrations themselves. It was hard to live in a place as relentlessly festive as Silver Bells and actually hate the holidays. But as someone who worked in the hospitality industry, he knew holidays could be headaches for a hundred different reasons. Supply chains, staffing issues and overall guest satisfaction, to name a few.
By two on Thanksgiving, he had put out as many fires as he could. Everything else could wait until the next morning, he decided.
He walked down to the lobby and was surprised to find José Navarro at the concierge desk, talking to a guest.
“I didn’t expect to see you working today,” Ethan said when their conversation finished and the guest left satisfied. “Are you running the concierge desk these days in addition to managing our three hotels in town?”
“Pinch-hitting. We’re shorthanded with the holiday, and I just sent Stacey Delacorte home to have dinner with her family.”
That was one of the reasons José made such a great operations manager—and also why Ethan planned to some day make him the chief operations officer for the entire hotel group. He cared about each employee and wanted the best for him or her.
José was an invaluable partner. Together, he had helped Ethan expand the Lancaster brand into new markets. Ethan missed his leadership and his business acumen, though it was now focused closer to home running the company’s flagship hotel and ski resort along with two smaller properties in town.
“What about your own family? Shouldn’t you be with them? I don’t want to get on Sofia’s bad side.”
“Who does?” José said with a laugh. “No worries. My mother would never blame you for anything. You know you’ve always been her favorite.”
He adored José’s entire family. He could even admit now that at one point in his youth, he had been jealous of the loving, squabbling, hectic normalcy of it. He had loved hanging out there during visits with Winnie and Clive.
“Don’t worry about it,” José went on. “My sisters are at their in-laws’ today, so we’re doing our family Thanksgiving celebration over the weekend. And my mom and Rodrigo are heading to Holiday House shortly for dinner with Winnie.”
“That’s right. I forgot they were on the guest list. Winnie is stubbornly insisting she’s still doing Thanksgiving, despite a broken wrist and a sprained ankle.”
“She and my