First Look: Season of Love by Helena Greer | An Excerpt

Noelle Northwood woke up the morning of Cass’s funeral to a pit of dread in her stomach and a crying hangover. It wasn’t as bad as the drinking hangovers she used to get, but it wasn’t great. She wasn’t ready to go to a second funeral for a second mother. Burying one in a lifetime had been plenty.

From the time she lost her parents to the day she’d shown up on Cass’s doorstep, she’d been adrift. Then Carrigan’s had opened its doors and heart to her. Noelle felt she and the farm belonged to each other. The trees were her salvation, and Cass had given them to her.

She wasn’t ready for this funeral, but she never would be, so she got dressed. She freshly buzzed her undercut and put on her carefully constructed Dealing with Funeral Visitors outfit, black slacks with a black button down, the sleeves worn long to hide her tattoos, in deference to the Orthodox side of the Rosensteins. Her tie and suspenders were black matte with embossed black stripes. It was a look Cass would have approved of.

On her way out the door, she patted the head of the elephant statue that sat next to her fireplace. Like much of the art at Carrigan’s, it was inexplicably decoupaged and covered in glitter, of unknown provenance, and decidedly odd. Noelle loved it very much.

In the kitchen she started laying out pastries and little quiches Mrs. Matthews must have spent all night baking. When Noelle found carafes of hot cocoa waiting on the kitchen island, she wondered how late Mr. Matthews had dragged his wife to bed. Today they would all three be walking the tightrope of having been family but not relations. Mrs. Matthews was handling it by making sure everyone was fed. Mr. Matthews was, Noelle suspected, handling it by fixing things that didn’t need fixing, and trying to make his wife rest. She would have to check on them, both. Along with Cass they were the chosen parents of her heart. She needed to make sure they weren’t left adrift this week.

The door to the kitchen swung open. A tiny woman who looked exactly like a very young Cass walked in, barefoot, wearing a puke-green reindeer sweater and leggings with a t-shirt wrapped around her head like a pineapple.

The woman blinked at her. Noelle blinked back, her mind racing. Who was this elf?

She must be a Rosenstein cousin Noelle hadn’t met yet. She was far too beautiful, far too early on this particular morning, for Noelle’s comfort.

Noelle saw the woman do a surreptitious perusal of her body, her eyes lighting in interest. She felt a little fizzle in her stomach. She would have absolutely sworn five minutes ago that the morning of Cass’s funeral was the last time and place on Earth she would ever feel a spark of interest in a woman, but that was before this elven person had walked into the kitchen.

“Is there coffee—” the elf asked, her voice still fuzzy with sleep.

At the same time, Noelle said, “I’m sorry, this is rude, but what on Earth are you wearing?”

The elf huffed out a little sound that could have been a laugh. “I’d just come back from a trip when I got the call about Cass, I left my house in a hurry. None of my clothes are even clean, much less suitable for sitting shiva,” she explained. “I took the sweater from my best friend. It used to light up, so I guess small blessings?”

“Very small. Hot cocoa?” Noelle offered, as the woman settled warily on a stool, looking behind her like she was bracing for something unpleasant.

The elf raised her eyebrows and scowled. “Is there…espresso…in the hot cocoa? Because otherwise, definitely no.” With her face scrunched up, she looked like a grumpy cat meme. Noelle found it oddly charming.

“There isn’t currently, but I think I can make it happen.” Noelle flipped a kitchen towel over her shoulder. Espresso, she could do. Espresso was mindless, and let her turn her back on the strange, interesting woman interrupting her grief.

“You’re my new favorite person,” the elf said happily, before laying her head on top of her folded arms. God, she was cute. Noelle told her brain to pipe down. This was a Rosenstein, here to mourn. She didn’t even know the woman’s name. She should be hospitable, and not a creeper, even if the elf had looked at her with stark interest.

“Bagel? Muffin? Croissant? I have about fifteen freshly baked carbohydrates available for consumption.” She pointed to a serving platter covered in choices. “Or, if I know Mrs. Matthews, there will be challah French toast in the dining room soon.”

“Are they from Rosenstein’s?” the woman asked, perking up. Cass’s family had made their money and reputation in a bakery that was now famous for traditional Jewish baked goods. Noelle had learned fast that all the extended family tree was fiercely loyal about their pastries.

She pretended affront. “Would they be anything else?”

“I will have a muffin now and also some French toast later.” The woman announced, as if she were deciding something of grave import. Noelle handed her the cup of hot cocoa containing two perfectly pulled shots of espresso, and an orange cranberry muffin.

The elf sighed happily. Noelle’s stomach flipped.

Then Hannah walked in.

“Oh! I’m so glad you’re both here. My first best friend and my forever best friend.” Hannah draped an arm over the elf’s shoulder. “Noelle, this is my cousin Miriam. Miri, this is Noelle, the farm’s manager, my number one best ever person.”

The flip in Noelle’s stomach turned to a dive.

The elf was Miriam Blum. Miriam—the woman who had abandoned Carrigan’s and broken Cass and Hannah’s hearts—was in their kitchen, looking beautiful and vulnerable and devastated, making Noelle want to wrap her up in a blanket. She’d thought this day couldn’t suck more.

“I have to go deal with the cousins, Miri,” Hannah said, already walking back out the door, “but please don’t feel you need to talk to them before coffee. I’ll leave you in Noelle’s very capable hands.”

Noelle could read Hannah’s face, and it said, ‘Please take care of her right now, I have too much else to deal with.’

Hannah was an Organizer.  She’d been running the Christmasland Inn for years, taking care of Cass as her health declined, and organizing all the Christmas Festival events. She was an unstoppable force with a clipboard and color-coded spreadsheets. If Hannah was delegating, it was because she was desperate for an assist.

For Hannah, the best friend she’d ever had, Noelle would continue to be pleasant to this woman. But Noelle had seen how the residents of Carrigan’s pined quietly but inexorably after Miriam, continuing to speak of her glowingly all these years after Miriam abandoned them, and she wasn’t interested in getting close to her. She had enough heartbreak for a lifetime, without chasing more.

“What are you doing awake?” she asked, her voice colder than it had been. She couldn’t believe she’d been flirting with Miriam Blum. “Didn’t you come in late last night?”

Miriam took a long drink before she said anything, not seeming to react to Noelle’s change in tone. Noelle waited, resting an elbow on the counter, popping a mini quiche into her mouth.

“I heard my mom is here,” Miriam finally managed.

This did not answer the question of why Miriam was awake, but it did bring up several more questions.

“You knew she was coming, right?” Noelle didn’t know all, or even most, of the story of Miriam’s mysterious long absence, but she knew something had happened with her father. Ziva, Miriam’s mother, was Hannah’s dad’s sister. She sometimes came to family events, though rarely with her husband, whom Cass and the extended Rosensteins all hated.

“One is never prepared for Ziva,” Miriam said, draining half of her gross chocolate coffee in one gulp. When she pulled the t-shirt off her head a cascade of curls fell out. They were mesmerizing.

Noelle tried to avoid thinking about how soft Miriam’s hair would be to touch. “Your dad isn’t here. Your mom said he’s not coming,” she said, taking a guess at what Miriam was so wound up about.

Miriam’s entire body deflated into the stool. So Noelle had been right. What the hell had her father done to make her hold herself like prey hoping to go unnoticed by a predator, at the hint of him?

Never mind. This woman was not her problem.

As if she’d been summoned, Ziva’s voice filtered into the kitchen. Miriam sighed, pushing off the stool, her shoulders slumped. Noelle followed her out to the dining room, curious against her better judgement.

Ziva Rosenstein-Blum swept into the nearly empty dining room in her athleisure clothes. Her hair was up in a high ponytail, perfectly straightened. Her yoga pants were designer. Her eyebrows were newly microbladed.

“Miriam,” Ziva said without preamble, “I stopped to get you a dress for the funeral, so you don’t have to rip up one of Hannah’s.”

Noelle noticed that Ziva and Miriam did not touch, and that neither mentioned Mr. Blum. She’d met him a couple of times, but he never deigned to notice her. He mocked Cass’s tendency to collect lost souls (never in front of Noelle, whom he considered The Help, but to Hannah, who told Noelle everything), calling Carrigan’s the Island of Misfit Toys. He spent all of his short visits looking itchy, as if the entire Adirondacks were an ill-tailored suit.

Mr. and Mrs. Matthews appeared from their apartments off the kitchen to embrace Ziva. Complicated though their relationship seemed to be with the Blums, it stretched back before Noelle had been born, a family with a hundred thousand memories tying them together, whether they wanted it or not.

But she wouldn’t let Miriam, who had been gone for a decade, make her feel like an interloper. Everyone else might be happy to welcome the prodigal daughter back into the fold, but she had no happy memories of Miriam and no reason to make space for her. This place was hers. Ziva and Miriam would leave after the seven days of shiva while Noelle and Hannah would stay and try to get through their first Christmas without Cass, and everything would be… well, not normal, not ever again.

But at least there wouldn’t be beautiful careless women in ugly sweaters asking her for cups of coffee.