They were back at the Inn, and the dining room was packed, the parlor was packed, the kitchen was packed - with sweater-wearing guests, each holding a plate of food up to their chins as they laughed and swapped stories.
Gretchen’s heart was bursting at the seams with contentedness. In the past two years, she’d endured her fair share of hardship. Her parents’ divorce. Almost a week of vagrancy where she’d been right there, upstairs sharing a twin bed with Briar while her mother and brothers slept next door, fitful and fearful and distracted. That was a ways before Greta and Luke got together and took on the Hickory Grove Inn. Before they hired Gretchen. Before this Christmas Eve.
Now here they all were—Maggie with Rhett and the three younger kids. Gretchen’s mama was happy as could be, living, loving, and doing hair out of her farmhouse kitchen like a regular southern-style stay-at-home mama.
Miss Fern and Stedman were re-settled in the Christmas House, which had officially become the Hickory Grove Museum. They worked it together. They did almost everything together. Happy and connected.
Miss Greta and Luke and little sweet Tabby in her swaddling quilt had found success running old Mamaw Hart’s bed and breakfast and living in her home, the innkeeper’s house.
Miss Becky and Mr. Durbin married and shared his house in town. During the days, he had his law practice and she her bookshop, The Schoolhouse. Theo was now just a year out of graduating. A year away from coming back home. Or close to it, at least.
And here she was, Gretchen. With Theo now. Again. Maybe forever? And with her dream within grasp. That was, so long as she could get Miss Liesel alone and pitch the idea she had bubbling in her chest ever since she realized she was staying in Hickory Grove. And she was making something of her barn. And she was doing everything she set out to do, all she needed now was a guide. And Liesel was it!
Somebody in the parlor clinked their glass with a knife, the shrill bell effect drawing the friends and bed-and-breakfast guests together in a thick crowd.
It was Coach Hart, calling the crowd in to explain dessert.
“We’ve got four dishes, and each one was handmade by a Hickory woman.”
The attendants laughed good-naturedly.
“Well, they were. And if I’ve remembered right, Maggie made the pecan pie. Fern the double chocolate chip cookies. Becky the bread pudding. And Greta the Christmas Crack, a Hart Family favorite, I might add. Dig in, everyone. Go on. Then we’ll all leave for the lighting within half an hour. Can’t be late to that.”
As he lowered his glass of eggnog and the crowd began to disperse back toward the kitchen buffet, the front door creaked open, the bells above it clanging jingle jangle to life.
“Speaking of late,” Theo whispered to Gretchen, and her gaze flew to the door.
Coach Ketchum ambled in, a nervous wince to his face as he drew the attention of those lingering around the edge of the foyer.
Gretchen smiled at him and took a step his way. “Coach Ketchum, glad you could make it.”
“Sorry I’m late. I—” he held up a casserole dish and peeled back one corner to reveal the burnt crust of something that looked vaguely like meatloaf. Then he dipped back through the front door and tugged in two oversized paper bags, corner market issue.
“No, no. Lots of us are still working on supper.”
Coach Ketchum gave a nod to Gretchen. “Theo, hi there. How’s school? Your mama was telling me just one year left. That right?”
“Yessir,” Theo answered. Though raised in an area where few youth ever used sir or madam, Theo had caught on quickly enough when he was in town.
“You know I intended to make my way to law school one day, too,” the older man revealed. As he said this, something cracked open in the façade of a teacher who Gretchen thought she had pegged. A small-town high school teacher by day. Football coach by night. Misspent youth being what it was, Gretchen, somewhere deep down, had always just figured him for a would-be athlete type. Someone who yearned for the good old days of locker-room hijinks and championship weekends.
“Law school?” Gretchen asked, her stare sliding to Theo. “Just like you.” When she looked back at the middle-aged teacher, she thought she saw him as Mark for a fleeting second. Rather than Coach or Coach Ketchum or Mr. Ketchum. She saw, well… Theo in him. And she wondered if that isn’t what could become of her boyfriend, too. A local teacher who coached to make ends meet or relive his glory days or whatever. But, then, Theo was no jock, and that had been a point of interest for Gretchen. A difference about him. Something that set him distinctly outside of Hickory Grove and in the greater world. Something that Gretchen liked about Theo.
“That’s right. I took the LSAT. Got a decent score, but by then I’d started student teaching, and—I just couldn’t see myself ever doing anything else.”
“You felt stuck?” Gretchen asked, dancing dangerously close to a personal line she had no right to cross. She wasn’t even asking for herself at this point, though. She was asking for Liesel. Another person who Gretchen considered to be, well, stuck.
“Not at’all,” Coach answered earnestly, jauntily, even. “I fell in love.”
Gretchen couldn’t help but let her eyes bulge. She’d known Coach Ketchum was married once, but it wasn’t something he spoke of. She’d died, that wife. And it had left its mark. Figuring the wife was what he meant, she nodded respectfully and murmured an apology.
“No, I mean with teaching. I worked at a Catholic School for years, you know. Loved it there. St. Agatha’s up north. I learned a lot about snow and a lot about God in those days. Then I met my wife, we moved here, and I took up locally. And that was just fine, too.”
Surprised that his love had more to do with his career than the woman he’d married, something tightened in Gretchen’s chest, like a cinch. Discomfort.
“I know what that’s like,” Theo cut into the conversation and wrapped his arm around Gretchen’s waist. She flushed and frowned at him. He smiled at her. “Realizing that as humans, we make plans, but then along comes God, turning them into paper airplanes on a breezy day.”
The room shrunk in on them, but Gretchen realized Coach Ketchum had left, and gone, too, were those other guests who’d been chatting between the foyer and the parlor. It was just Theo and she there, now. And his eyes were on her, intense and unmoving.
“Your plans are changing now, too?” she asked him, confused. Was he or wasn’t he going to Louisville? What? Was this all a game to Theo? Was Gretchen stupid to think they’d ever be anything other than a couple playing house?
“No,” he answered, his stare narrowing tighter on her, as he released his arm from her waist and moved both hands. Their hands found each other. “I’m going to Louisville. I wasn’t, before. When you ended things, I applied to the UofA, ASU, New Mexico—anywhere that wasn’t here. But then I did a lot of thinking and I remembered what you said.”
“What did I say?”
“You said you wanted to get of town, but not for good. That you’d stay here and open a business, and now look at you, Gretchen.”
“What?” She wished she could look at herself. She’d scarcely had time to put on makeup before Mass. Her reunion with Theo was unexpected, and her attention was split between that and finding Liesel and pinning her down before she could run off to Michigan without that quilting lesson.
“You’re opening a business,” he said.
At that, Gretchen frowned deep. “I mean,” she started, blinking, “I want to, but that doesn’t mean all that much.”
“But—”
“Theo. Gretchen.”
Liesel’s voice startled them both, but Gretchen saw Theo turn slightly pale. He cleared his throat and hooked a thumb at Miss Liesel. “I’ll um…” his eyes darted from Liesel to Gretchen twice, settling at last on Gretchen, whom he pecked on the cheek. “I’ll go get us each a slice of pie. Pumpkin, right?”
He knew her well. Her lips pricked into a smile and she nodded at him.
“I have an idea,” Liesel said to Gretchen when they were alone together.