“How was Happy today?” she asked her niece.
“Happy was extra bad for Daddy today,” Ace declared gleefully.
“Oh, good,” Molly said, and they all shared a laugh that made Morgan feel, again, that deepening sense of family, of being part of a sacred circle. She had a sense of ease with Molly that usually she would not have with a person quite so quickly.
“I’m Morgan McGuire, Ace’s teacher,” Morgan said, extending her hand.
“Oh, the famous Mrs. McGuire.”
“It’s Miss. I can’t get that through to the kids. I’ve stopped trying.”
“Miss. Oh,” Molly said, and she turned and looked down to where Nate was taking the harness off the pony. Her eyes went back to Morgan full of soft question.
Questions that Morgan was thankful had not been spoken out loud, because she would have had no idea how to answer them.
There was something happening between her and Nate, there was no question about that. But it was ill-defined and nebulous. Were they becoming friends? Morgan thought it was something more. Possibly a lot more. But did he?
“Ace’s mom, Nate’s wife, Cindy, was my sister,” Molly said, leading Morgan through to the kitchen.
It could have been an awkward moment, but it wasn’t.
Molly laid her hand on Morgan’s. “We love him very much. We just want him back. Sometimes,” she mused, sighing, “I feel as if I lost all three of them.”
“Three?” Morgan said.
“Never mind. It’s a long story. And maybe it will have a happy ending someday. I could have sworn when I looked out the kitchen window a few minutes ago, I saw Nate smiling. A rare enough occurrence in the last two years, and even rarer after he’s had to deal with the pony!
“Oh. Here’s Keith, my husband. Keith, this is Morgan. Nate brought her out to have a sleigh ride with Ace.”
No mention of her true role in their lives, as Ace’s teacher.
“And how was that?” Keith asked her.
“One of the most deliriously delightful experiences of my life.”
He watched her for a moment, and like his wife, seemed satisfied.
Silly, to be so pleased that Nate’s family by marriage liked her. They hardly knew her.
Though that seemed to be a circumstance they were determined to change, because after Nate came in, stomping the snow off his boots, they were all invited to share the pot of chili that had been heating on the stove.
“Morgan?” Nate asked. “Does that fit with your schedule?”
Schedule? Oh, a woman more clever than her would probably at least pretend to be busy on a Saturday night. But somehow, there was no way you could play games with a man as real as Nate.
Or not mind games. Not flirting games. Other games? He proved to be enormously good at them.
Because after the feed of chili in the warmth of the kitchen, with banter going back and forth between the two men, there was just an expectation they would stay. The kitchen table was cleared of dishes and a worn deck of cards came out.
They taught her to play a game called 99 that she was hopeless at. But two late night’s in a row soon proved too much for Ace, and despite her winning streak at 99 she finally went and laid down on the couch and fell asleep.
And then the adults gathered around the fireplace, and Molly made hot rum toddies, though Nate refused and had hot chocolate instead.
Morgan wished she had refused, too. The drink filled her with a sense of warmth and well-being as the talk flowed around her. About the farm and the forge, the coming production of The Christmas Angel.
“Did you hear they were deciding who gets to go by a lottery system?” Molly asked.
Morgan confirmed that. There were only three hundred seats available in the auditorium, so the seats would be given away by a lottery system. But she told them that there would be a live feed to the community center and one of the local churches so that everyone who wanted could see it.
“And have they chosen the Christmas Angel yet?” Molly said, casting a worried look at her sleeping niece. “She’s called me several times about it. Tonight’s the first night I haven’t heard her mention it.”
“I understand Mr. Wellhaven will announce the choice at his welcome party. It’s a skating party at the pond, a week from tonight. He’s been sent video of some of the rehearsals.”
“I’d like it to be over with,” Molly said.
“Me, too,” Nate said. “I hate to think how disappointed she’s going to be.”
“Who knows?” Morgan said. “Maybe she won’t be disappointed. Maybe it will be her.”
Molly’s and Nate’s mouths fell open in equal expressions of shocked disbelief.
“Ace?” they said together.
“I’ve told all the girls they have an equal chance of being chosen.”
“But that’s not true,” Nate said grimly. “Ace can’t sing a note, and she doesn’t look like anyone’s idea of an angel.”
“Her singing has actually improved quite a lot under Mrs. Wellhaven’s tutelage.”
“She sings all those songs around the house all the time. I haven’t noticed any improvement.”
“Well,” Morgan said firmly, “there has been. And I think anyone with a little imagination could see she would make a perfectly adorable Christmas Angel.”
“I don’t want her getting her hopes up for something that doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of happening.”
It was the first grim note in a perfect day, so Molly quickly changed the subject, but the mood had shifted.
A few minutes later, saying goodbye on the doorstep, Nate cradling the sleeping child against his chest, it seemed to Morgan as if she had never had a more perfect day. She realized it was not the toddy alone that allowed her to feel this sense of warmth and well-being. It had only allowed her to relax into the feeling instead of analyzing it.
“Nate,” she said, as they drove through the snow, “it’s so nice that you still are so connected with them, with Cindy’s family.”
He shot her a surprised look. “Family is family. They became my family the day I married Cindy.”
Morgan shivered. She had always known he was a forever kind of man. Not like in her own family, where loyalties shifted with each new liaison. She could feel herself longing for what he represented.
Morgan realized tonight had been the kind of night she had always dreamed of.
A simple night of family. And connection. A feeling of some things not being temporary.
“I still think it’s nice,” she said.
“We had already lost Cindy. It would have just made everything so much worse if we lost each other. Ace is what remains, she’s what Cindy is sending forward into the future. I could never keep her from her aunt, from her mom’s sister.”
But Morgan thought of all the people—including her own family—that when something happened, like a divorce, that’s exactly what they did.
“When my mom and dad divorced,” she told him, “it was like my dad’s whole side of the family, including him, just faded away.”
“You didn’t have any contact with your dad?”
“A