2

      It was Black Friday, a big day for retail in Icicle Falls. For Ella O’Brien that made two black days in a row. How different this Thanksgiving had been from the year before.

      Not that her mother hadn’t tried to make it special. Mims had hauled Ella over the mountains to Seattle for an overnight in the city, and on turkey day they’d eaten their holiday dinner at a high-priced restaurant. Surrounded by strangers. Well, except for Gregory, Mother’s longtime friend and fellow fashionista, who had a condo on the waterfront.

      Ella hadn’t invited the thought that came to her as they were eating, but it had come, anyway, making an unwelcome fourth at the table. This is pathetically different from last Thanksgiving with your in-laws. Correction: former in-laws.

      That had been a typical O’Brien celebration, rowdy and exciting, especially for a woman who’d always wanted brothers and sisters. Mims, who had been included, kept a superior distance while grown-ups and children alike had worked up an appetite by running around in the woods playing capture the flag. After dinner her mother-in-law (ex-mother-in-law, darn it) had helped her figure out a tricky knitting pattern.

      And later, when it was time for dessert, Mims the fishaterian learned that the slice of mincemeat pie she was enjoying was a hunter’s version with moose meat added to the sweet filling and had to make a dash for the bathroom.

      There’d been no bathroom dash this year. And no Jake. That was fine with Ella. Really. Mims was right; she was better off without that skirt-chasing, irresponsible, overgrown child. And her life would be perfect once she didn’t have to see him every day.

      But she missed his mother and his sister and brothers. It had been fun to have someone to call Mom.

      She’d never called her own mother Mom. Instead, she’d wound up mimicking Mims’s fashion-model friends and calling her Mims. Ella had never gotten the full story on that nickname, beyond that fact that it had something to do with her mother’s fondness for mimosas. Oh, and a tycoon and a yacht. Her mother had never wanted to be Mom, anyway. That was simply too unglam. And Lily Swan brought glamour to everything, including motherhood. So that was how it was growing up and that was normal, and that was what Ella told her friends whenever they asked why she didn’t call her mother Mom.

      And when they asked why she didn’t have a daddy, she recited the Swan party line—a girl didn’t really need a daddy. She’d sure wanted one, though, and had watched with longing when she saw other little girls riding on their daddies’ shoulders or getting taken out for ice cream.

      When she’d married Jake and gotten a father-in-law it was the world’s best bonus.

      Jake’s dad always greeted her with a hug and a “How’s my girl?” He checked the air in her tires and whittled little wood raccoons for her to put on her mantelpiece in the living room. Mims had pronounced them tacky but Ella loved them because every time she looked at them she could see her father-in-law’s big, smiling face.

      “We’re so sorry to lose you,” Mom O’Brien had written in a sweet card after Ella and Jake broke the news. She’d been sorry to be lost. Too bad a girl couldn’t shed the husband but keep the family, she thought as she turned the sign hanging on the door of Gilded Lily’s to Closed.

      She was tired—working with people all day could be exhausting—but it was a good kind of tired, she decided as she started to add up the day’s receipts. From now until New Year’s Eve the shop would be busy. Gilded Lily’s was the closest thing Icicle Falls had to a Neiman Marcus or a Nordstrom. It was owned by her mother but Ella managed it. She loved pretty clothes and she loved helping her customers find a special dress for that special occasion, whether it was a party or a prom, as well as all the accessories to enhance it. There’d been a lot of enhancing taking place this Black Friday.

      Now the business day was over and it was time to go home. Home is where the heart is. There’s no place like home.

      Bah, humbug.

      She stepped out into the brisk mountain air and locked the door behind her. Winter darkness had settled in for the night and downtown Icicle Falls was a-twinkle. Christmas lights decked out the trees in the park and the potted fir trees nestled against the shops, and red ribbons adorned the old-fashioned lampposts that ran along Center Street.

      Every weekend there would be a tree-lighting ceremony, and the skyscraper-size fir in town square would come to life with hundreds of colored lights, making the winter village scene complete. With its mountain setting and Bavarian architecture, Icicle Falls was like an animated postcard, quaint and charming—a perfect setting for a perfect life. Except Ella’s life wasn’t so perfect these days; it was like a dress that no longer fit.

      It didn’t take her long to walk the half mile from the shop to her two-bedroom Craftsman-style cottage on Mountain View Road. Her dream home. In the summer she’d put two wicker rockers with plump cushions on the porch, and she and Jake had sat out there on warm weekday nights. She’d work on her knitting with their Saint Bernard, Tiny, lazing at her feet, while Jake serenaded her on his guitar. Last Christmas she’d taken great satisfaction in stringing colored lights and cedar boughs along the porch, while Jake had strung lights along the roofline—a team effort.

      Ella sighed at the memory. She’d thought she’d have that house for life, had envisioned raising a family there or, once Jake became a famous country star, keeping it as a vacation home.

      Her mother hadn’t shared the vision. “You shouldn’t buy a house so quickly,” Mims had cautioned when they first looked at it. “You’re both young and you don’t even know if this marriage will last.”

      “Of course it’ll last,” Ella had insisted. “Why wouldn’t it?”

      Her mother said nothing, just pursed her lips like a woman with an ugly secret. How had Mims known things wouldn’t work out with Jake? What early warning signs had she seen that Ella hadn’t?

      Whatever she’d seen, she’d kept it to herself, and to show her support (once the decision was made and the papers were signed), she’d given them a gift certificate to Hearth and Home to buy a new couch, saying, “Really, Ella, you can’t decorate in Early American Garage Sale. What will people think?”

      “Maybe they’ll think we’re happy,” Ella had suggested.

      Mims had ignored that remark. “Go look at the couches at Hearth and Home, baby. You’ll find one you love, I promise.”

      Ella did find a couch she loved, and Mims heartily approved of the brown leather sofa with the carved mahogany accents that Ella picked out. “You have wonderful taste,” she’d said, and then added, “In most things.” Translation: your taste in men is questionable.

      “Really, darling, you can do so much better,” Mims advised when Ella and Jake started getting serious. “Sleep with him if you must, but for God’s sake don’t saddle yourself with him for life.”

      What kind of mother told her daughter stuff like that? Lily Swan, that was who. Mims hadn’t felt the need for a husband, so Ella supposed she thought her daughter would see the wisdom of her choice and follow suit. “Men are fun, but not necessary,” she’d once overheard her mother say.

      How much fun had Mims had with Ella’s father? And what had happened to keep them from becoming a family? That, like her mother’s