Kevin locks up the Bar and strolls out to Isabelle’s driver’s side window, his parka zipped to his chin, his Patriots sideline hat pulled down, his hands stuffed into his jeans pockets. He wants a cigarette. Normally, they would share one.
She looks pale and sick. He can’t believe how happy he is.
“So…,” she says, “ton père is a… mess.”
“Is he?” Kevin says.
“You do not sound like you care,” Isabelle says.
“I guess it hasn’t sunk in,” Kevin says. “Mitzi left.”
“Left with George,” Isabelle says. “Packed two valises, c’est tout. I wonder about ses couteaux… her… knives? She treated those knives comme des enfants, but I think she’s leaving them?”
“She’s upset about Bart,” Kevin says.
“Well, yes,” Isabelle says. “Évidemment. Her only child est à la guerre.”
Kevin experiences a rush of envy, along with annoyance. Bart joined the Marines after a string of spectacular screwups, and now he’s an instant hero. The way Isabelle talks about Bart with such reverence really irritates Kevin. She didn’t know him before. Bart is the same kid who stole three cases of beer and half a dozen bottles of Jim Beam out of the Bar while Kevin was working and then proceeded to get drunk with his moronic friends and do donuts on the airport runway until he crashed into the fence, breaking Lance Steppen’s femur and totaling the two-year-old LR3 he had borrowed from Kelley and Mitzi without asking.
“I don’t think it’s that dangerous over there anymore,” Kevin says.
“Four soldiers today,” Isabelle says. “Morts.”
“Dead?” Kevin says. “Really?” He doesn’t follow the news except for ESPN SportsCenter, but he knows Isabelle watches his mother every night at six o’clock, along with the rest of the country. Four soldiers killed-but that will never be Bart. Dad and Mitzi can worry all they want, but Bart has always led a charmed existence, and Kevin knows it will stay this way. Bart’s Humvee might roll over a land mine planted by rebel forces outside Sangin, but Bart will do a double somersault and land on his feet, unharmed.
“Yes,” Isabelle says. “Anyway, your father is walking in the house like a ghost, not talking, just floating and staring, picking up the sugar bowl, then setting it down. Opening the cabinet that holds les plats de Noël, then closing it. Mitzi did not prepare for the soiree tomorrow night. She must have been planning this and assuming Kelley would cancel. So I have been all day preparing hors d’oeuvres. I am going to order cookies from the bake shop. Your father says in secret that Mitzi’s cookies are…”
“Inedible,” Kevin says. He has a flashback to being a teenager, he and Patrick dropping Mitzi’s gingerbread men from their third-story bedroom window. They never broke, never even cracked. “So, is the party still on, then?” Kevin has a hard time imagining the Christmas Eve party happening without Mitzi. She’s always the mistress of ceremonies, in her short Mrs. Claus dress-red velour with white fur trim-and her high black-suede boots. Mrs. Claus to George’s Santa Claus-Kevin gets it now. He can’t believe his father has been so completely cuckolded.
“Oui,” Isabelle says. She frowns at him, and then she dissolves into tears.
He wipes her chin with his thumb. “Don’t cry,” he says. “Please don’t cry. It’s happy. It’s good.”
“I do not know what to do!” Isabelle says.
“Hey,” he says. “I’m going to help you.”
“I do not know what help you are thinking of,” Isabelle says. “I might be sent home, Kevin. With our baby.”
Just the word, “baby,” lights Kevin up. A baby, his baby, his and Isabelle’s baby.
She cries into her open palms. Kevin understands what he has to do. He has to ask her to marry him. He should get down on one knee right here in the parking lot. It would change everything. Her tears would dry up immediately.
But…
Many thoughts collide in his mind.
Propose! Ask Isabelle Beaulieu to be his wife! She is so beautiful, with her long blond hair, and she is so sweet and kind, hardworking and humble. In six months, his ardor for her has doubled and quadrupled. When he is at the Bar and she is at the inn, he thinks about her nonstop.
But…
He’s scared. Scared and scarred. There might as well be stitches in a jagged ring around his heart.
He has heard enough platitudes and received enough “words of wisdom” in regard to Norah Vale to last several lifetimes. It wasn’t meant to be; It’s for the best; They’re all bitches; Love stinks. Nothing makes his anguish over what happened with Norah any better. She broke his heart, trashed his dreams, and left him flat broke. She walked away with nine years of his life, ruined his chances for a college degree-twice-and demolished his faith in humankind.
No more women, he vowed.
Then along came Isabelle. The second he saw her smile, the instant he heard her lightly accented voice, he was a goner.
News of the baby, delivered first thing that morning, in a note slipped under his bedroom door, made him whoop like a rodeo cowboy.
“My family will be happy,” he says. “We’ll just tell everyone the truth: we fell in love, and now we’re pregnant.”
She cries harder, and Kevin climbs into the passenger side and pulls her into his lap.
A baby, he thinks.
He strokes her hair, and his heart soars. “We’ll keep living at the inn,” he says. “Just until we get on our feet. Maybe Dad will let us take the family suite on the third floor.”
“But what if I get sent back?” Isabelle says. “It is always a danger! And now that I am…”
“It’s okay,” Kevin says. “That’s not going to happen. I’ll make sure of it.”
“How?” Isabelle says.
He wants to say it. He nearly says it.
But.
MARGARET
Christmas Eve morning, she receives a text from Drake: All in.
A wave of relief, followed by excitement. Margaret had been steeling herself for a cancellation from him; she always likes to keep her expectations low to avoid disappointment-but Hawaii will be far superior with Drake along.
Buoyed by this good news, she packs four bikinis, two cover-ups, five sundresses, her straw hat, a copy of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, which she’s been meaning to read for months-and then, because it is Christmas, she carefully packs the paper angel that Ava made in second-grade Sunday school, back when Christmas was Christmas, back when Margaret was a mother instead of a national icon.
She calls Kelley and gets his voice mail. Then she calls Ava and gets her voice mail. The only people in America who don’t take Margaret Quinn’s calls are her own family. She thinks about calling the inn, but for some reason this intimidates her-probably because every other time she’s called that number, Mitzi has answered, and, as is to be expected, Mitzi does not appreciate hearing Margaret Quinn’s famous voice on the other end of the line. Now, though, Mitzi is gone (can this be true, really?), but even so, Margaret won’t call the inn. It’s Christmas Eve, and Kelley must be running at capacity, plus throwing that enormous party. If anyone needs Margaret, she supposes they will call.
After she packs, she brews an espresso and sits down at her computer. There are twelve more soldiers dead in Afghanistan. There is some kind of backlash or new order taking action; the U.S. has lost more soldiers in one week than we have since 2004. Margaret’s heart clenches as she scans the list. Not Bart.