“No,” Margaret says. Her eyes flood with tears. Drake reaches for her hand.
“Can you call the kids and tell them?” Mitzi asks. “Patrick and Ava? Kevin was here just a little while ago, so he knows. But would you call the other two for me, please?”
“I think it should come from you,” Margaret says. “You’re his wife.”
“You’re their mother,” Mitzi says. Margaret hears a familiar hardness in her tone. It’s back to their old territorial war—who is what to whom. “I need you to do this for me, please. Just call and tell them they have two days, three at the most, if they want to see him.”
“Yes, okay,” Margaret says. “I’ll call them. And Drake and I will leave tomorrow night after Drake’s last surgery. We’ll drive through the night if we have to.”
“Thank you, Margaret,” Mitzi says, and she hangs up.
Margaret will call Ava first, she decides. Ava can drive up to Nantucket with Margaret and Drake tomorrow night if she wants.
Then Margaret gasps. Austria!
Oh, sweet child, she thinks.
She dials Ava’s number.
KELLEY
Sight gone now in both his eyes. Hearing gone in one ear. He can make noises but no longer speak. He sees his mother, Frances. His brother, Avery. A kid with Popeye biceps and a Southern twang sticks out a hand and says, Nice to meet you, Mr. Quinn. I’m Centaur.
Centaur? Kelley says. That’s your name?
The kid vanishes.
Kelley is very tired.
Is it Christmas yet? Kelley wanted to make it to Christmas. But Kelley would also like to be granted permission to let go.
Mitzi’s voice. “George bought the inn, sweetheart. He paid the full listing price. He says we can stay as long as we want. He says he won’t change a thing. He and Mary Rose are going to keep it just like it’s always been. Isn’t that good news?”
George? Kelley thinks. Who is this George person who bought the inn?
Then he thinks: Oh. George. Kelley has some vague protest, but he can’t possibly articulate it.
He punched George once, right in the kisser. George had deserved it.
George will do a great job of running the inn, Kelley decides.
Mitzi’s voice. “Potter is on the phone. He has something he wants to ask you.”
Mitzi sounds coy. Who is Potter? Harry Potter? Kelley made it through the first book only.
“I’ll give him your blessing,” Mitzi says. “Our blessing.”
Is it Christmas yet?
He feels someone rubbing his feet. Lara, not Laura.
Kevin’s voice. “I love you, Dad.”
A tiny, soft hand on his cheek. Genevieve!
Isabelle says something in French. Kelley remembers the puzzled look on Isabelle’s face seconds after Kelley found Mitzi and George kissing in room 10.
George is buying the inn.
Mitzi’s voice. “It’s December twenty-first. The winter solstice,” she says. “It’s the shortest day of the year. It’ll be dark by quarter past four. So dark, so early.”
Mitzi touches his face. “It’s okay, Kelley,” she says. “We are all going to be okay.”
It’s permission, he realizes. He can let go.
It’s the winter solstice.
Do you know what the best thing about the winter solstice is? he wants to tell Mitzi.
After today the days will get longer.
AVA
Both her mother and Mitzi give her a pass. By the time she gets to Nantucket, Kelley may well be unconscious. He’ll never know if Ava is there or not. She should go to Austria like she planned.
“Your father would want you to be happy,” Mitzi says.
Kelley may never know, but Ava will know. He’s her father. Her spirit sinks at the thought of missing Austria, a place she has always wanted to go at the most magical time of year with the man she loves. Potter is still on the plane. She will call him in the morning and tell him she won’t be joining him.
In the morning she has a text from Potter that says: Landed safely. Checking into hotel and crashing. Ava tries calling him, but she gets his voice mail. She calls the hotel, and they put her through to the room but there’s no answer. He must be sound asleep.
She sends a text that says: My father has a day or two left. I have to go to Nantucket tonight. I love you.
And then she sends a second text that says: I’m so sorry.
Ava goes to school to teach. Her mother and Drake are leaving the city at seven o’clock, but Ava doesn’t want to wait that long. She books a five o’clock flight to Boston and squeezes herself onto the last flight from Boston to Nantucket on Cape Air.
Austria will always be there, she thinks. She feels bad about abandoning Potter at Christmastime, but he is a good person; he will think she’s making the right decision. Potter’s parents were killed in a car accident; he never got to say good-bye.
She tries not to think about Potter or Austria or Kelley or a world without Kelley; she doesn’t respond to any of the texts between Patrick, Kevin, and Bart discussing travel plans. She focuses only on logistics: Uber to JFK, the hour-long flight from JFK to Boston, the walk through Terminal C to gate 27, home of Cape Air. Ava has an hour before her flight to Nantucket. She can finally relax.
Wine, she thinks.
She sees an empty chair at the bar right next to gate 27.
“Is anyone sitting here?” she asks the guy on the neighboring stool.
He turns. They lock eyes.
Not happening, she thinks.
“Ava,” he says, and he gives her that familiar wicked grin.
It’s Nathaniel.
“What?” she says. “Are you…?”
“I’m going back to Nantucket for Christmas,” he says. “My parents are taking everyone skiing in Tahoe, but I fell off a ladder this fall and tweaked my back, so I can’t ski. Plus, I can only take four or five days away, so I thought I’d just go back home. Hang at the brewery the whole time, probably. See some friends. In fact, you know who I’m supposed to see tomorrow night is your old friend Scott Skyler.”
“Scott?” Ava says.
“I said I’d help him serve the holiday dinner at Our Island Home, then we’re going out drinking.” Nathaniel arches his eyebrows. “You could come!”
No, thanks, Ava thinks.
“We could surprise Scott. I show up, bring you along. He’ll flip. You know that other chick, the English teacher? She really put him through the wringer. She’s sixteen kinds of crazy.”
“Roxanne,” Ava says.
“I’m meeting him at five tomorrow,” Nathaniel says. “Early bird special and all that. I can pick you up.”
Ava signals the bartender and orders a glass of wine. “I’d love to,” she says. This isn’t remotely true. The last thing she wants to do is climb aboard the same old merry-go-round with Nathaniel and Scott. Ava can’t believe they’re friends now, friends who make plans together! “But I can’t. My father is very, very sick.” Her wine arrives in the nick of time, because Ava feels tears building and the last thing she wants to do is cry in front of Nathaniel, thereby giving him reason to comfort her. She clears her throat. “I’m going home to say good-bye.”
“Good-bye?” Nathaniel says. “Is he that sick?”
Ava nods. “Brain cancer. He’s got… a day or two left, I guess.”