feeling that take-out wasn’t an option.
“Everything looks closed,” Georgie finally said, sharing his sentiments. The stretch of downtown Blue Harbor was dark, well, other than the overwhelming amount of twinkling lights.
Honestly! Thanksgiving wasn’t even over yet and they were already in full Christmas mode?
Wryly, he supposed the city was no different. He just hadn’t taken the time to pay it much attention. Besides, in the city, he was busy. The days blurred together. Whereas in Blue Harbor…everything was different.
He swept his eyes up the street again and over to his daughter, daring to hope that he’d be able to turn that frown around with the promise of a better day tomorrow, because he was clear out of options for tonight. Even the inns looked dark.
Trying his best smile, Phil said, “Maybe there’s food at the house.”
“Why would there be food at the house?” For a nine-year-old, Georgie was very perceptive. She paid attention, and she remembered everything. Something he should keep in mind from now on, or at least until she went back to her mother’s house.
“I thought you said that no one lives there,” Georgie pointed out. “That Great-Grandma and Grandpa hadn’t lived there for almost a year.”
Damn. She was right. He’d stupidly hoped that the grocery store would be open, but the only storefront with the lights on in all of downtown came from the holiday shop. Of all places.
He eyed it now. The converted Victorian home at the edge of Main Street that was crowded from the floor to the ceiling with tchotchkes and dust catchers. The woman who had worked there had been nice enough, though, meaning with any luck, she wouldn’t cause trouble. She was pleasant. Pretty, too.
He thinned his lips. Well. No need to go down that path. He was in town for a reason. And that reason was currently overshadowed by the fact that it was Thanksgiving Day, he didn’t have a turkey much less a slice of pie to offer his daughter, and against his wishful thinking, she wasn’t willing to part with these traditions.
He was failing. Day one of getting a little time with his daughter and he was already mucking it up, just like his ex-wife had always insisted he would.
“I’ll make you a big turkey dinner this weekend. Tomorrow, in fact,” he promised, remembering that the woman in the holiday shop had told him she was open the next morning. Surely every other store would be too. And restaurants, too, he thought, knowing that he wasn’t much of a cook, whereas Georgie’s mother was one step away from being an official gourmet.
Not that he’d had much experience appreciating her culinary efforts. Even when they were married, most of his dinners were business-related: with clients, or in the office, surrounded by take-out containers.
“You know how to cook a turkey?”
Shoot. She was on to him again. “We can learn together. Can’t be that hard, right?”
Georgie raised a single eyebrow. Her silence spoke her true thoughts on the matter, and he was fairly certain that they matched his own.
“It won’t be the same if we do it tomorrow,” Georgie eventually grumbled. “Just forget it. This is the worst Thanksgiving ever!”
“Well, now, I won’t say it’s the worst Thanksgiving ever,” he chided, pulling up a memory of one particularly disastrous holiday, and the last he ever spent here in this town. It was Thanksgiving, he was in his senior year of college, already accepted to a competitive MBA program by early admission, and his father had reluctantly agreed to a weekend in his small, Michigan hometown after Phil’s grandfather’s recent stroke. He had recovered well—that time. Well enough to tell Phil’s father exactly what he thought of him, and his priorities.
Phil had looked on, silenced, wondering if his father cared that they weren’t proud, knowing how badly that must have hurt, even if his father didn’t say anything in response.
They’d left that night. Before the timer had even popped on the turkey. They’d stopped at a pizza joint somewhere near the state border, his mother sipping her wine nervously, his father glaring at the table. That had been the last time that Phil had come to this town. It was also the last time that his father had ever spoken to his parents.
But that wasn’t a story for a nine-year-old. And from the looks of it, Georgie wasn’t interested in hearing it, either.
Right. Time for an executive decision. Usually Phil ate his turkey and mashed potatoes in a hotel in the city, if