“No.” It wore a green-and-white striped cap and carried an even tinier teddy bear. She looked up, straight into her best friend’s annoyed glare.
“Bailey-”
“Give me a break, Trin. I don’t like Christmas. I don’t like the store.” Though she’d given in to pressure once again and agreed to stay until the morning of the twenty-fifth. Her mother wanted her to have Christmas Eve dinner with the family and there was her half brother Harry to consider too. He’d be back home and eager to tell all of them about his college experience.
Trin stalked toward the kitchen. “The whole town will be upset about the store changing hands…if it even stays a store at all. Word gets around fast, you know. I bet some people at the party tonight will already have heard about it.”
Wincing, Bailey followed. She’d hoped to be hours away before that news hit Coronado. Mrs. Mohn might come after her with a bedpan. “Surely not. I don’t think my mom and Dan will say anything right away.”
“What about Finn?”
“What about him?” Bailey inspected the trays of cookies lined up on the counter. She wasn’t going to feel bad about that either. Both of them had gone into their fling eyes-open. That it was ending now…it was nothing more than they’d both expected.
Of course yesterday morning in her bed…She’d wanted a memorable last time with him, but it had been like nothing she’d expected or ever before experienced. His heart had beat like a drum against her back; it had been like her heartbeat. Their heartbeat.
“Is Finn going to let you run away again?”
“You mean is Finn going to wave good-bye as I head home like I intended from the day I drove back into town?” She recalled the cool expression on his face when she’d dropped that little bit of info in his grandmother’s kitchen. “I think he will.”
“Well I’ll just ask him,” Trin said, as she peeled plastic wrap off a plate of fancy-cut sandwiches.
Bailey clutched Adam tighter to her chest, so that he made a sleepy bleat of protest. “Did you…did you invite Finn here tonight?” She’d managed to avoid him since the French toast the day before. Maybe he was ducking her too, but because she’d spent all her time at the store today, even coming straight to Trin’s without a stop on Walnut Street first, she didn’t know.
“Yup.”
Bailey pasted on a calm, upbeat smile. Why not? She was calm. Upbeat. Her trip to her childhood home couldn’t have ended any better.
She should be feeling on top of the world.
It was closing in on midnight and Trin and Drew’s party was winding down. Telling herself her lowering spirits were just postparty letdown, Bailey volunteered for leftovers duty and busied herself in the kitchen. In a lower cabinet, she found two shelves full of jumbled plastic containers.
She looked up as Trin’s footsteps clacked on the tile floor. “I know we’re all grown up when I see you have a full complement of Tupperware. But something tells me this isn’t one of the areas you’ve baby-proofed.”
Trin didn’t laugh. Bailey didn’t either, as three words echoed in her head. She stared back down at the disorganized plasticware, so different than the by-size and by-color stacks in her own cupboard in L.A. All grown up. Finn had whispered that in her ear. Finn, who had never showed up at the party.
“Bay…”
Her gaze shifted back to Trin. The Christmas cheer was gone from her best friend too.
Bailey stood so quickly, her head spun. She shot out a hand to catch the lip of the counter and steady herself. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”
“You know how news travels fast around here.”
“Sure.” Seventy-five hundred households. Seven point four square miles. Nosy. Cozy.
“Somebody just heard from their babysitter who heard from her mother who heard from another friend…” Trin glanced over her shoulder, then grimaced. “I know why Finn didn’t come tonight.”
Foreboding trickled like a tear down Bailey’s spine. “Why?”
“His grandmother’s been terminally ill for months and this morning…this morning she passed on.”
Bailey’s face must have been so blank that Trin felt the need to be even clearer. “Bay, Mrs. Jacobson died.”
Bailey Sullivan’s Vintage Christmas
Facts & Fun Calendar
December 22
The Yule log goes back to pagan times. A special log was cut and burned during the winter festival to ward off evil and to bring safety to the home and its inhabitants for the coming year.
Chapter 22
Bailey drove directly to Hart’s. It was the same as the first time, sticky floor, loud music, muscled, clean-cut young men and the much-smaller number of decorative females. As the door closed behind her, from somewhere by the pool tables a male voice yelled out “Hooyah!” and three other guys beat their chests in response.
Neither the hooyah-er nor any of the chest beaters was Finn.
“He’s not here,” Tanner said, suddenly appearing by her side, causing an approaching young man with a prominent Adam’s apple and a full bottle of lite beer to veer off.
“You heard…?”
He nodded. “He called this morning. After breakfast, Mrs. Jacobson decided to take her usual rest. When he went to check up on her an hour or so later, she’d died in her sleep. All things considered…”
Bailey swallowed the lump in her throat as she thought of the lady who had been her next-door neighbor all her life. They’d shared French toast the morning before. And a hug. She was glad for that last moment even though she hadn’t know it was good-bye.
She’d always been lousy with those anyway.
Her throat felt thick and she swallowed again. “You said Finn called you?” He hadn’t contacted Bailey. Even if he didn’t know her cell phone number, he could have reached her through the store.
“Yeah.”
“But he hasn’t been by tonight? I tried calling the house and no one answered. I figured he was here.”
“Oh, he wouldn’t come here.” Tanner shook his movie-star hair.
Bailey frowned. “Why not?”
“He knows that I wouldn’t serve him any liquor unless he’d talk first.”
“Well surely that’s good, the talking, I mean,” Bailey said. “He’s got to be feeling-”
“That’s the whole problem, Bailey,” Tanner put in. “That’s Finn’s whole problem. He doesn’t want to be feeling anything at all.”
She didn’t waste any more time in the bar. On the sidewalk outside, she hesitated a moment, thinking through her options. Finding Finn wasn’t the issue-that had to be done. But where to look first?
“You’re Finn’s friend,” a voice from the shadows said.
Bailey jumped, then swung toward the stranger stepping into the light over the bar’s door. The young woman had long, straight dark hair, exotic eyes, and coltish legs in tight, bleached jeans.
She held out her hand and gave a winsome smile. “I’m Desirée.”
Ah. Desirée, sometimes referred to as Desirée al-Maddah, sometimes Desirée Bryant, depending upon whether the press was describing the celebutante as the daughter of her Middle Eastern prince of a father or as the daughter of her famous model mom. Bailey shook her cool hand. “I’m Bailey Sullivan. I recognize you from the, uh, kiss.”
The younger woman grimaced. “Don’t mention it to Tanner, will you? And don’t tell Troy you’ve seen me here, okay?”
Which reminded Bailey she had yet to see Finn and he shouldn’t be alone. “It’s nice meeting you, but I have to go now.”
“You heard about Mrs. Jacobson?”
“Yes.” Bailey hesitated. “By any chance, you wouldn’t happen to know where Finn is, would you?”
“Well, I-”
The bar door swung open. A male voice growled through the night air. “What the hell are you doing here again? Haven’t I already told you to get lost?”