Christmas on Honeysuckle Lane

Book 2: Oliver's Well Novel

by Mary McDonough

Genres: Family Life; Siblings; Holiday books; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Even in a town as picturesque and rich in history as Oliver’s Well, there’s something special about the Reynolds house on Honeysuckle Lane. Sturdy yet graceful, it’s where Andie, Emma, and Daniel Reynolds grew up - before they began to grow apart.

For Danny, this first reunion since their mother’s death is a chance for him and his sisters to relive cherished holiday traditions before finally settling their parents’ estate. But readying the house for sale proves no easy task when every piece of furniture and every moment together stirs up the past.

Andie, the oldest sibling, didn’t just leave home years ago, she left her young daughter too. Although she’s found success as a self-help author, coming back shakes her equilibrium. How can she presume to guide others if she can’t be honest with those closest to her, much less herself?

Middle child Emma struck out on her own instead of accepting her father’s offer to share his business. But now she finds herself wondering if it’s possible to start over.

The house on Honeysuckle Lane contains a lifetime’s worth of joys and dreams and its share of regrets too. This Christmas, it will be the place where Andie, Emma, and Danny come together to remember, laugh, fight, plan - and find their way forward as a family once more.

Originally published as The House on Honeysuckle Lane.

Release date: October 23, 2018

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 416

Sample

Emma Reynolds had turned forty-two in April. Her once bright blond hair had darkened in the past few years, and now there were natural streaks of white and silver threaded throughout. She glanced in the mirror over the dashboard and smiled. Her hair stylist had told her that plenty of women paid for the effect that in Emma’s case had taken place all on its own.

Emma suppressed a yawn and sat up straighter. It wouldn’t do to fall asleep behind the wheel. Still, she thought, opening her window and the moon roof to let the fresh late December air flow through the car, a nap once she arrived at number 32 Honeysuckle Lane would probably be a good idea. She had been at the office until ten the night before, and two nights before that she had been at her desk until almost midnight. Emma was proud of her career as a personal financial advisor and money manager, but time had stripped the bloom off the rose and there were days when she found it a serious chore to get out of bed, shower and dress, and leave her condo on Franklin Street, knowing what was in store for her once she got to her office near the corner of West Street and Church Circle.

A quick glance at her iPhone in its charger revealed that Ian had sent her a text. It would have to wait. For one, she didn’t make it a habit of using her phone while driving. For another, Ian Hayes was no longer a priority. Just the day before, she had finally ended their relationship. It had not gone well. She had gotten the feeling that Ian hadn’t really heard her. He hadn’t shown any anger or even puzzlement; he hadn’t tried to argue her out of her decision. Instead, he had been remarkably calm and collected. She had seen that behavior countless times before, his escaping (that’s how Emma saw it) into a deeply reasonable state of mind, almost emotionless but not cold.

With some effort Emma shook off the uncomfortable memory. She had more important and immediate things to think about, like what was waiting for her in Oliver’s Well. She felt slightly apprehensive about this gathering of siblings. She didn’t foresee any arguing over the sale or distribution of what was left of their parents’ estate; none of the siblings badly needed money. But Daniel had been so adamant about their all being together for this Christmas, as if their coming together was of life or death importance. Maybe that was overdoing it a bit. Still, her brother had made it clear he would not be happy taking no for an answer.

Not that Emma would have said no. She loved her brother and his family and hadn’t seen them since Rumi’s birthday back in June. And she hadn’t seen Andie since Caro’s funeral fourteen months ago; Andie had been on an extended book signing tour at the time of Rumi’s celebration. Emma and her sister kept in touch as best they could. Though Andie had a presence online, it was for her professional self, not for sharing intimacies with her younger sister. And Andie frequently traveled to places where cell phone service was spotty or simply not available. Besides, the last thing Emma wanted was to interrupt a visit to an ashram for study and meditation with relatively trivial concerns like the latest antics of the annoying president of her condo board.

If Emma remembered correctly she would soon be passing Holinshed Nursery; it was where her mother had bought most of her garden supplies through the years. Caro had kept a lovely garden, and Emma knew that Daniel had been doing his best to care for it since her passing, though he hadn’t much time to spare for watering, pruning, and planting.

Time. Emma found it hard to believe that her mother had been gone for over a year. Last Thanksgiving she and Ian had stayed in Annapolis rather than travel to Oliver’s Well; they had been back only the month before to attend Caro’s funeral. And Christmas, too, they had spent at home, and while Emma sipped a classic whiskey sour and nibbled on spicy roasted almonds, she had given barely a thought to either of her parents. Thinking back on those two holidays, Emma realized the fact that her mother was no longer in this world hadn’t entirely registered with her until now. Now, in these final weeks before the second Christmas since Caro’s death, Emma felt her mother’s absence keenly. That they hadn’t been close for years didn’t diminish the fact that they had been mother and daughter, and that primary relationship could never be ignored.

It was odd, Emma thought, how something small or mundane could trigger a wave of strong emotion and nostalgia. Just the other day she had been walking along a street close to her home, and the sight of a Christmas wreath decorated with a velvety blue ribbon on a storefront had literally stopped her in her tracks. Her mother had decorated her Christmas wreaths with the same velvety blue ribbon. It was a moment before Emma could move on, tears in her eyes.

While Andie was probably expertly handling her mourning—she had the skills and the training to do so—Emma wasn’t quite so sure about Daniel. If his adamant invitation that his sisters gather for Christmas was any indication of his emotional state, he might still be feeling pretty raw. In fact, when she had last seen Daniel, at Rumi’s twentieth birthday celebration at the Angry Squire, he had seemed tense. Even Ian had noticed the change. Ian had gone to the party with Emma, of course. He had always enjoyed visiting the Reynoldses in Oliver’s Well, and they had always enjoyed being with him.

Emma closed her window and wondered how her brother and his wife would take the news of the demise of her relationship. Anna Maria would be supportive, and while Daniel wouldn’t want to see his sister stick around in an unfulfilling relationship, he could be awfully . . . What was the word? Old-fashioned? Whatever the word, the fact was that Daniel had married his first and only love and sometimes seemed to have difficulty understanding that not everyone was quite so lucky.

And Andie? Well, she would respond with her native gifts of sympathy and empathy. Emma deeply admired her sister; she believed that Andie deserved what success she had achieved as a writer and speaker, not that fame or money mattered to Andie Reynolds. She had always been of a self-effacing and generous nature, even as a child. Emma remembered Andie routinely giving half her lunch money to a boy whose family was known to be struggling, and she never failed to rush to the aid of an older person having trouble reaching a can from a high shelf in the grocery store or to open doors for mothers juggling a stroller laden with diaper bags, plush toys, and an antsy toddler. Emma smiled to herself. Her sister simply couldn’t help helping people.

Happily, Emma saw some of that generous nature in Andie’s daughter, Rumi, who from the first had been very loving with her younger cousins. Sophia was a sweetheart; at twelve she was already taller than her mother. Marco, a charmer and now ten, looked to have inherited his mother’s small stature, but you never knew what changes adolescence might bring.

Emma smiled. There, up ahead, just past Holinshed Nursery, was the town line. Oliver’s Well at last. Emma needed a big dose of small town charm after the year she’d had; she had been too swamped with work even to take a brief vacation. And the breakup with Ian, and before that, the long and difficult process of coming to terms with the fact that the break had to be made had taken its toll.

Instead of going directly to the house on Honeysuckle Lane, Emma decided to make a detour and visit one of her favorite places in Oliver’s Well, an old gristmill. Nettles Mill had been beautifully restored by the Oliver’s Well Historical Association, but back when she was young the buildings were still largely dilapidated. Emma used to ride her bicycle to the site, prop it against the remains of an old stone wall, and explore the property, losing herself in thoughts of what life must have been like for the people who had operated the huge stone grinding mechanism and who had lived in a few rough rooms attached to the mill building. Caro would have forbidden Emma to visit the old mill on her own; knowing this, Emma simply never told her mother where she was going.

Emma pulled her car into the visitors’ parking lot and climbed out. A volunteer member of the OWHA, bright red Santa hat on her head, was leading a group of visitors out of one building and toward a structure Emma remembered from her childhood as a pile of rubble. As she stood gazing up at the water wheel by the building that housed the original millstones, she thought about the last time all three Reynolds siblings had gathered for Christmas, five years earlier. Ian had danced attendance on Caro for the two days of their visit, and had spent far more time with Daniel than Emma had. At least I had time to talk with Dad, Emma thought. And even if their conversation had been mostly about business, at least it was conversation.

Emma felt an involuntary shiver run through her. That was all ancient history. Her mother and father were gone now. The slate was wiped clean. Strange that she would see their passing as events that finally allowed for a fresh start, but that was how it felt to Emma, like a release of sorts. In fact, since shortly after Caro’s death Emma had been feeling a stirring inside, a yearning for some essential change in her life. And she had been experiencing an emptiness that bothered her, a longing.

A longing for home? But what did that mean? Was home really an ideal to achieve, or was it only a place to which you could return for short periods of time before your heart told you to move on? A longing for love? That’s why she had finally ended the relationship with Ian. It hadn’t been love, not the kind that could sustain and nourish a marriage over the years.

Emma sighed and looked at her watch. With a silent good-bye to Nettles Mill, she got back into her car and continued on to the house on Honeysuckle Lane where, she knew, her brother would be anxiously awaiting her arrival.

Andie, born Andrea Jane, was forty-four years old. She had always been “a bit on the heavy side”—those were her mother’s words—built more like her father than her siblings were, both of whom tended to be tall and slim like Caro Reynolds. Her hair was dark and unruly, also like Cliff’s, and rather than struggle with blow dryers and straightening products, she simply tied it back in a ponytail or stuck it up with a big plastic clip. What jewelry she wore had meaning for her—a beaded necklace given to her by an elderly woman she had befriended on her first trip to Mexico, a silver cuff she had bought from a street vendor in India, the tiny gold and moonstone ring she had found half buried in the dirt close by the rim of the Grand Canyon. As for her clothes, Andie liked them to be colorful and, above all, comfortable. There were far more important things to be concerned with than tight waistbands and restricting tops.

Andie glanced down at her paisley ankle length skirt and pink and purple striped top and couldn’t help but smile. No, her mother, always impeccably and conservatively dressed, would find her daughter’s outfit sloppy and bohemian and she would say as much. But Caro Carlyle Reynolds was no longer here to approve or disapprove of her children, and that, Andie had realized with surprise, was still taking some getting used to. Just before she had left her home in Woodville Junction Andie had spent a fair amount of time meditating on the fact of her mother’s death and wondering about the answer to an important question she had never ventured to ask. Had her mother feared death or had she welcomed it? In her ill and weakened state had she longed for this life to be over and for whatever was to come to come quickly? “Without health life is not life; it is only a state of languor and suffering—an image of death.” Had Caro Reynolds agreed with the Buddha on this matter?

“Welcome to Oliver’s Well,” Andie read aloud. “Founded 1632.” Not far up the first turn off to the right was the Unitarian Universalist Church, where she had married Bob Dolman when she was just out of college. Andie was looking forward to seeing Bob; she thought they might be the only divorced couple in the country to consider each other dearest friends.

Still, Andie felt her stomach flutter with the proverbial butterflies. No matter how much time had passed and how much serenity she had achieved, going home to Oliver’s Well always caused a degree of unease. She wondered how Emma felt when she visited. Was she, too, haunted by the ghosts? Daniel was the only Reynolds sibling who had chosen to make a life in Oliver’s Well, and from what Andie could tell, he had chosen wisely for himself. If he was troubled by the past and its habit of lingering in the present, he hadn’t shared that trouble with his oldest sister. We three siblings are so different in some ways, Andie thought. United by DNA, but at times, not much more.

There, Andie noted, coming up on the left was the rambling old house in which Dr. Burton had lived and practiced family medicine until well into his eighties. Andie remembered as if it were yesterday the big jar of hard candies and lollipops on his desk. And she remembered how she had loved old Dr. Burton as if he were her grandfather. Who knew who occupied the house now? So much change, Andie thought as the house receded into the distance. So much we need to learn how to let go of.

The last time Andie had been back to Oliver’s Well was for her mother’s funeral. The compelling reason for this visit was her brother’s insistence on the whole family being together for Christmas. The butterflies took flight again in Andie’s stomach, a manifestation of her well-honed instinct for unhappiness, her own or someone else’s. She almost smiled as she wondered what people would think if they knew that Andie Reynolds—she had reverted to her birth name after her divorce—self-help author /speaker/respected guru and lifestyle coach (call her what you will), was momentarily overcome with good old-fashioned fear.

“Just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again.” Andie firmly believed this process of shedding was necessary; problem was that too often the past dug in its claws and refused to be thrown off without almost superhuman effort. And here was a good example, Andie thought. Six months earlier she had missed Rumi’s twentieth birthday celebration due to a long-standing commitment to her publisher. Since then she had sensed from Rumi a slight coldness. Well, maybe coldness was too strong a word. It might be more accurate to say that the usual easy way they had with one another seemed a bit forced; instead of being her warm and bubbly self, Rumi seemed reserved. Hopefully, coming face to face would allow them to regain their happy intimacy. Andie knew she wasn’t the most conventional mother in the world; she also knew that she truly loved her child.

“Here we are,” Andie murmured as she turned onto Honeysuckle Lane. She had spent most of the first twenty some odd years of her life on this street. It was all so terribly familiar. There was the Burrowses’ house on the left, a thorn in the side of the more “respectable” homeowners, who didn’t approve of the family’s lackadaisical ways or their less than diligent upkeep of house and property. And then, a bit further on and across the way, was the perfectly kept home of the Fitzgibbon family, well-known and respected in Oliver’s Well, and once, friends of a sort to Cliff and Caro Reynolds.

And then, just up ahead, number 32 Honeysuckle Lane. Like most of the other houses on the block, it was a handsome, mid-nineteenth-century white clapboard two-story structure with black shutters and a large central chimney. Andie pulled into the drive in front of the house in which her mother had breathed her last. And there was her brother, standing at the window, waiting. Daniel Reynolds. The Keeper of the Flame. With a silent prayer for strength, Andie got out of the car and, grabbing her bag from the backseat, walked briskly up to the front door.

“What time is it, Dad?” Marco asked.

“Ten minutes after ten,” Daniel told his son, looking at his watch. It had once belonged to his father and had come to him after Cliff’s passing. Daniel only took it off when he showered.

Marco frowned. “Why don’t I have a watch?”

“You can have my old one if you want.”

“Nah,” Marco said after a moment’s consideration. “I like to ask you what time it is.”

Daniel smiled and ruffled his son’s thick dark hair. Daniel had turned forty at the end of August, though sometimes lately he felt as if he were half again as old. Maybe that was the result of the long hours he put into the business. Maybe it was also due to the stress that resulted from trying to be the best husband and parent and, once, son he could be. His medium brown hair was beginning to thin, and there were lines around his mouth caused as much by frowning as by smiling. He was still as slim as he had been in college, and that was entirely due to the Carlyle genetics. Life as a professional chef wasn’t exactly conducive to, as his mother might have said, “maintaining one’s figure.”

Anna Maria, Daniel’s wife, had also inherited the “slim gene.” At five feet one inch tall she was a whopping ninety pounds, with exuberant dark curls and bright brown eyes. Though she complained about her hair being impossible to manage and about not being tall enough to reach the uppermost cabinets in their kitchen, Daniel knew she didn’t care one whit about her appearance. Anna Maria focused on the important things in life, like her family. For example, just the day before she had asked Daniel what he expected from his sisters’ visit; she was concerned he was gearing up for a showdown of sorts.

“Why should I be expecting a showdown?” Daniel had asked.

“Because,” she said, “you seem unhappy. I know you, Daniel. I can tell when you’re feeling stressed.”

He had roundly denied feeling stressed, certainly not about his sisters. “I think it’ll be great, all three of us together at Christmas for the first time in years.”

“Visions of a Norman Rockwell holiday dancing in your head?” She hadn’t said it mockingly.

Daniel had shrugged. “Yeah, why not?”

But the truth was that he had been unhappy for the past months. The house and all it contained, both tangible and intangible, had become a drain on Daniel. Caro had left the property to all three of her children equally, but Daniel, as the local one and the trustee of the estate, had been the person keeping it in perfect order, paying bills and seeing to essential repairs. He glanced over his shoulder to the painting above the mantel of the fireplace. It was an oil portrait of his parents, done years ago by an artist in Westminster. Cliff and Caro were dressed formally, Caro seated in a high-backed armchair, Cliff standing a bit to the side, his hand resting on his wife’s shoulder. Both looked properly dignified. Daniel knew that his parents had paid dearly for the portrait, and to be fair it was a good likeness, but for some reason he couldn’t name, the painting had never appealed to him.

With a small sigh Daniel turned back to the window. If one of his sisters wanted the painting—and that would probably be Emma—she was welcome to it. It was high time for the siblings to make a decision on the future of the house and its contents—and, as Daniel saw it, the future of the family.

“Dad, when are Aunt Andie and Aunt Emma getting here?” Sophia asked. Daniel hadn’t heard her come into the room. Unlike her brother, Sophia moved with grace.

Daniel smiled at his daughter. “When they get here.”

“Dad!” she protested. “That’s not a real answer.”

“They said they’d be here sometime this morning. Travel is unpredictable, Sophia. Flights can be delayed and cars can break down.”

Sophia sighed. “I wish they’d show up so the Christmas season can start. You know I’m impatient.”

Daniel laughed. “You don’t get that from me.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, very seriously, “I do.”

Daniel watched as his daughter ran off toward the kitchen where Anna Maria was monitoring the cookies that had gone into the oven about ten minutes earlier. From the wonderful aroma in the air, the cookies were doing just fine.

Marco now had his nose pressed to the glass. “You’ll steam up the window,” Daniel said.

Marco moved back an inch or two and with his forefinger drew a heart on the glass where his nose and mouth had been. “But now I’ve got a heart,” he said.

And in his son’s simple reply Daniel saw an affirmation that he had chosen wisely for his life. After college in Arlington Daniel had gone to California to earn an associate degree with a major in culinary arts from the CIA. While there he had also taken a certificate program in wine and beverage studies. Why not? The campus was in the glorious Napa Valley. His plan had been to go home to Oliver’s Well after completion of his studies and pursue a career in cooking. And then he had met Anna Maria Spinelli in the lobby of the old-fashioned movie house in Westminster; they had both gone to see a screening of Casablanca.

To say it was love at first sight wouldn’t be far off. There was an immediate physical attraction followed by the discovery of a shared love of food and family and the realization that they truly enjoyed being together, whether it be watching movies on Netflix or sitting quietly side by side on a bench in Oliver’s Grove, the town’s park, or experimenting with recipes. Anna Maria was close to her large family, still living in her hometown of Nichols-borough, and wanted her children—those she hoped to have—to benefit from the presence of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. Daniel thought that a wise idea. A life in Oliver’s Well would suit him just fine.

They were married eight months after their first date and moved into a charming little house on the outskirts of town that had been gifted to them by Anna Maria’s great-aunt and great-uncle. There was a small but manageable mortgage, and if over time the house proved to be a bit tight for a family of four, they were happy there and in the end that was everything.

Together Daniel and Anna Maria had started a small catering business called Savories and Seasonings. For a time they struggled, but they never wavered in their dedication and desire for success. They borrowed money from parents and the bank, worked hard, spent ridiculously little on extras, paid back the loans as soon as possible, and learned as they went along. Bonnie Eckman, a resident of Oliver’s Well who had once worked as a personal chef as well as a caterer, generously gave Daniel and Anna Maria advice and encouragement. It was a while before they had enough money to convert their garage into a licensed commercial kitchen, but once they did, the business really took off. Now, a year after Caro Reynolds’s death, Savories and Seasonings was firmly in the black with a roster of regular clients to which several new ones were added each season.

“Dad!” Marco’s still high-pitched voice cried, making Daniel flinch. “Here comes Aunt Emma!”

Daniel watched as his sister pulled into the driveway in the car she kept spotlessly clean and perfectly maintained. Anna Maria appeared at his side and put a hand on her husband’s shoulder.

“You okay?” she asked.

Daniel turned away from the window and smiled. “Yeah,” he said. But inside he felt not so certain.

“Emma’s already here,” Daniel told her as they went inside the house that had been their parents’ for so many years. He closed the front door, on which someone—maybe Anna Maria, Andie thought—had hung a large pine wreath decorated with the same velvety blue ribbon Caro had favored, in honor of the Christmas season. “She’s upstairs getting settled.”

Andie smiled. “The shiny Lexus in the driveway was a hint.”

“Right. Well, I’m glad you’re here. How was the trip?” he asked.

Andie glanced at the tall and stately grandfather clock that had stood in the living room at number 32 Honeysuckle Lane for as far back as she could remember. “Long but uneventful,” she said, noting the time.

Andie headed for the den, located at the rear of the first floor; its windows overlooked the backyard and patio, once the scene of Caro’s famous Labor Day cocktail party, at which she would serve her guests dainty canapés and frosty gin and tonics.

“Where are you going?” Daniel asked.

“I’m staying in the den,” she told him.

Daniel looked confused. “But I made up the bed in your old room,” he said. “I thought you’d want to stay there.”

Andie smiled. “Thanks, Danny, but I prefer the den. I’ll find some sheets and make up the couch.”

Andie continued on her way. Obviously, she thought, dropping her slouchy bag onto the carpeted floor of the den, Daniel didn’t know that whenever she visited her parents’ home she bunked down here. She simply couldn’t bear to stay in her childhood bedroom. The room that she had shared with baby Rumi after her divorce. The room that had witnessed her suffering through the final months of a cruel and debilitating postpartum depression.

At times Andie still felt embarrassed by what she initially had considered the flaws of character that had manifested at that point in her life, even though the flaws—not flaws at all, she had come to see—had to some degree been brought about by her misguided attempt to live a life someone else had planned for her. A life that she, Andie Reynolds, was not meant to live.

And Andie’s authentic life did not include marriage or full time, hands-on parenthood. Rather, it meant a life of study and prayer, of meditation and writing, of trying to help as many people as she could to achieve a degree of spiritual awareness and inner peace. She hadn’t intended on becoming a popular and fairly famous spiritual advisor and teacher, but that was exactly what she had become. With courage and determination Andie had learned to humbly embrace her gifts; to share those gifts with others was her greatest joy.

For the past ten years or so, Andie had considered herself a Buddhist, though not exclusively so. She admired and tried to live by the Eightfold Path and to follow what practices she had found personally meaningful and helpful in her work with others, such as regular meditation and the following of ethical practices. She held to the Three Marks of Existence—impermanence, suffering or disquietude, and the not-self. She believed in the wisdom of avoiding the extremes of permanence and nihilism, of inherent existence and nothingness. And these were only some of the ideas she tried to share with those who wanted to listen.

Once Andie had found sheets in the downstairs linen closet and hastily put them on the couch, she left the den and went to find the family. They were, of course, gathered in the kitchen. The hearth, Andie thought, was always where people gathered, no matter how small or primitive it might be.

“Emma,” Andie said, going to her sister. “It’s been too long, and yes, I know, it’s been my fault.”

“Not your fault, Andie,” Emma said, returning her sister’s hug. “Just life getting in the way of itself.”

“That’s a creative way of putting it!” Next Andie turned to her sister-in-law. “It’s so good to see you, Anna Maria. You look wonderful. Positively glowing.”

Anna Maria laughed and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “That’s because I’ve been standing over a hot stove for most of the day!”

“Oof!” Andie tottered under the assault from her niece and nephew.

“Hi, Aunt Andie!” Sophia cried, hugging her fiercely. Marco tugged on her arm. “Come see what we’re doing!”

What Daniel’s children were doing was decorating cookies at a small table set up near the rear of the kitchen. There were at least eight or nine tubes of icing and plastic containers of colored sugar and sprinkles piled on the tabletop. “Did you help bake them?” Andie asked, suddenly remembering as if it were only yesterday the many times she and Emma had helped their mother bake Christmas cookies and pans of spicy gingerbread. She felt a wave of sadness, the intensity of which surprised her.

“Yup,” Marco said. “I stirred the batter.”

“And I added some of the ingredients,” Sophia said. “You have to measure really exactly when you’re baking. That’s what Dad says.”

Andie smiled. “Your father’s a smart man.” She joined the other adults, sitting at the main table. Anna Maria was pouring coffee from a press pot, and Andie gratefully accepted a cup. “So, Danny, what do you need from us?” she asked.

Andie had phrased her question carefully. Since Daniel had first pressed his sisters to come home to Oliver’s Well for the Christmas holiday, it had been clear that he needed something more than help sorting through the credenza and taking old clothing to the charity shop, though what that something was Andie still didn’t know.

Daniel didn’t answer his sister’s question. Instead he took a few sheets of paper from a glossy folder and distributed them around the table. “I’ve made a list of suggestions for what we might do together as a family this holiday season.”

Emma smiled as she looked down at her paper. “A snowman-building contest? In this neck of the woods? How exactly does that work?”

“It’s artificial snow,” Daniel explained. “It?