Home for the Holidays
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Amie Denman
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22
CHAPTER ONE
THE SIGN IN front of the Christmas Island School said it all: Welcome Home. Camille Peterson had only been back inside the school once since her high school graduation, for her younger sister’s commencement ceremony. When she’d left the island seven years earlier, she’d had no intention of returning. But she’d chosen to come home after all, where memories were as thick as the fudge in her family’s candy store. Indulging in those memories was sweet up to a point, but too much left her feeling queasy.
“This is so much fun, all three of us together going to the school reunion,” Chloe said as she put her arms around Camille and Cara and took a selfie of the three of them in front of the school’s sign. Like everything else on the island, the school’s colors reflected the holiday theme—red and green with a reindeer for a mascot. “I’m framing this picture,” Chloe added.
Camille’s younger sister, Cara, shot her a look with a raised eyebrow and grin that pretty much said what they both knew about their oldest sister. Chloe was the sappy, sentimental one of the group, a total sucker for family heirlooms, island traditions and preserving flowers. Camille’s homecoming corsage was probably in a box somewhere at her parents’ house, but she had no intention of lifting that lid.
“Can we leave early if people start hugging and talking about how great high school was?” Cara asked.
Camille laughed. “I’m pretty sure that’s the point of reunions. No matter how we felt about school at the time, it’s a beautiful rainbow of memories now.”
Chloe frowned. “But it was beautiful. Everything about Christmas Island is magical.”
Camille noticed her older sister’s shiny eyes and guessed what was coming.
“Maybe I’m making a mistake by getting married and leaving the island,” Chloe said. She clutched Camille’s arm. “Do you think it’s a mistake? I mean, you left right after high school, but then you finally came back. Do you regret leaving?”
Laughter from inside the school’s gymnasium drifted out to them. Camille hadn’t wanted to come to the reunion and relive her high school days. Just thinking about the graduation ceremony where she’d smiled through a broken heart made her want to run back home. Except home on the island included her childhood bedroom, which looked the same as it had when she’d left for college. The ruffled pink bedspread and the hand-me-down dresser her mother had painted in cheerful colors to match the candy-colored curtains were still there, along with her ice skates and favorite childhood books.
If she was really going to stay on Christmas Island for good, she needed to get her own place. Camille made a mental note to look for a downtown apartment, perhaps one of the places over a storefront. She could feel better about her independence, even if she was taking over the management of her family’s business, if she went home to her own place without candy colors everywhere. Perhaps a nice gray color palette, she thought. Furniture and rugs in muted earth tones.
“Coming back was my choice,” Camille assured her sister Chloe. “And marrying Dan is your choice. You’re going to be perfectly happy on the mainland, and we’ll promise to make a big fuss over you whenever you come back to visit.”
“I’ll name one of my barn cats after you so I won’t forget you,” Cara added.
Instead of letting any tears slip down her cheeks, Chloe patted her eyes with a tissue and smiled. “Well, then, let’s party like we’re back in high school.” She linked arms with Camille and Cara and marched them toward the gymnasium’s door.
Camille put on a brave face for her sisters’ sake. They were allowed happy memories, and she wouldn’t take that away from them. Leaving had allowed her to force her feelings into a box. In the past seven years, Camille had come home only for important family occasions, and each time she’d visited Christmas Island, she’d looked over her shoulder, wondering when she was going to run into him.
She was back, but she was moving forward. And that meant controlling the crushing feeling around her heart whenever she saw Maddox May. She had to stop checking the rearview mirror for obstacles.
Would Maddox come to the all-class reunion? Would he expect to see her there? Both answers were probably yes. Everyone who’d graduated from the small island school came to reunions if they were in the area, and Maddox still lived and worked on the island. His circumstances had drastically changed, but that didn’t alter the mistakes he’d made in the past.
“Here we go,” Cara whispered to her. “I’m sticking to you like glue.”
“Thank you,” Camille said, her chest tight at the thought of Maddox’s betrayal.
“It’s a beautiful evening, and they have picnic tables set up outside the back entrance of the gym. We can escape out there,” Cara said.
Camille smiled. Her younger sister was the perfect opposite to her older one. Chloe loved crowds, while Cara preferred quiet island trails. Camille was always somewhere in the middle. She considered joining a small group of classmates at a table decorated with the school colors, or else getting back on the family golf cart and speeding away. Being in the middle and always seeing both sides of every story had been a useful skill as a history major, but it was also part of the delicate landscape of coming home and navigating relationships.
“Hey,” Camille heard someone call. It was Violet, owner of a clothing boutique and the island’s fashionista. She waved at them from beneath red and green streamers.
Chloe stopped to look at a display of yearbooks laid out in a long line, and Camille and Cara made their way to Violet’s table.
Violet scanned Camille’s outfit as she walked over to the table. “Nice. Flattering, but effortless. Perfect blue with your gorgeous blond hair.”
Camille laughed. “It was the only thing in Chloe’s closet that wasn’t a pastel color. Borrowing clothes from my sister is one of the fun things about moving back home.”
Violet made room for Camille and Cara on her bench seat. Camille was sure these were the same tables that had been rolled into and out of the gym to serve school lunch when she’d gone to school here. She pushed away the memory of waiting for a special someone to walk through the gym doors for lunch every day. Even if Maddox showed up now, there was an ocean of water under the bridge for them. Ice-cold water.
“Your sister Chloe might need a new wardrobe for her life on the mainland. Being a candy girl is great here on Christmas Island, but it might have limitations elsewhere,” Violet said with a smile. “I could help her out if she comes by my shop. I have some beautiful fall colors in stock.”
Camille laughed. She’d gone through a time in junior high when she resented being called a candy girl. Her family owned a thriving candy and fudge business on Christmas Island, and her childhood memories were wrapped in the sensory experience of kitchen heat and chocolate aromas. The three Peterson daughters somehow became known as the candy girls, especially when their mother dressed them in colors that made them look like gumdrops. When Camille left the island for college, she’d started dressing in gray and black. Finally, her roommate had suggested that Camille try some jewel tones with her blond hair and fair coloring.
Tonight Camille wore a sleeveless sapphire-blue dress with low-heeled black sandals. Looking around the school gym where so much had taken place in Camille’s life, she was glad she wore a sophisticated cocktail dress. She wasn’t a girl anymore, even if she vividly remembered volleyball practice, study halls, school dances, lunchroom talks with her friends and graduation.
Chloe joined the group and squeezed into a seat next to Camille. “Nothing new,” she said, nodding toward the high school friend she’d been chatting with.
“Not surprising, since you just saw her yesterday when she brought her daughter into the candy store,” Camille said. At twenty-seven, most of the ten people Chloe had graduated with had partners and families. She’d be joining the married couples soon. Camille’s graduating class had a few married members, but at twenty-five, it also included singles like Camille and Violet, not to mention the guy who had once kissed her behind the bleachers.
“If we’re very lucky,” Cara said, “some island visitors will crash the party and we’ll have someone new to talk to instead of the same boys we grew up with.”
Violet and Camille nodded, but Chloe shook her head. “That’s not the point of a reunion.”
Camille snorted. “Every day on this island is a reunion.”
“True,” Violet said with a laugh. “Just walk down the street or hop on the ferry and boom, you run into someone you know.”
Camille winced. She tried not to think about the ferry that served Christmas Island.
Two brothers owned and operated the service, but only one of them had broken her heart right outside on a bench under an oak tree.
“I’ll get us drinks,” she said. Camille spun around to head for the bar without asking what anyone wanted, and that was when she saw Maddox May entering the gym.
He hadn’t changed much. A bit more filled out since high school, a layer of confidence in the way he moved. She’d seen him a dozen times since she’d returned at the beginning of summer, but somehow seeing him back in the high school setting where they’d fallen in love was a gut punch.
She turned back around, and she knew from her friends’ faces that they’d seen Maddox, too.
“I’ll come with you,” Cara said as she hopped up and smoothed her red dress. “And help carry the drinks.” Cara looped an arm around Camille and spoke quietly to her as they walked toward the bar. “We’re in the same old place, but you’ve changed, he’s changed, everything has changed. Don’t feel weird about it.”
Camille nodded and absorbed her younger sister’s excellent advice. Her older sister, Chloe, always put drama and romance at the front of the line, so she would probably be advising Camille to rekindle the old flame. The only thing Camille wanted to breathe new life into was her family’s business. She’d come home to take it over now that Chloe was leaving, and she was going to transform Island Candy and Fudge and make its name and products known far beyond the small island where she’d grown up.
She was leaving the past behind her, even if she was back at home in her childhood bedroom. To move into the future, she wouldn’t be dwelling on how the business used to be run, and she certainly wouldn’t waste a tear on a lost high school love.
MADDOX MAY HAD come to the Christmas Island all-class reunion for only one reason: his brother, Griffin, had made him. The whole town was talking about them, and Griffin thought showing up at gossip central would help dispel the rumors circulating about the brothers’ newfound wealth. Everyone knew their aunt had given them millions. Flora Winter wanted to enjoy seeing the May brothers use their inheritance, so she’d given them half of the money along with the deed to her island mansion a few months earlier.
The May brothers had known it wouldn’t be long before island talk caught up with their windfall. They’d tried to keep it quiet, but the rapid expansion of their downtown ferry dock had perked up the ears of local gossips. Maddox’s ex-wife had also blurted the news to a friend on the island, and the secret had spread like the aroma of fudge mixed with lake air across Christmas Island.
“At least not every single person in the room stared at us when we walked in,” Griffin said. “That’s good news.”
Maddox didn’t find that comforting. The one person whose opinion interested him had deliberately turned away when she saw him. Camille Peterson’s long blond hair fell down her back and contrasted with her vivid blue dress. She was even more beautiful at twenty-five than she had been at eighteen, when she left the island.
He wished he could recapture their easy friendship...their love...from that time, but she’d been furious with him and had refused to speak to him throughout that summer after they graduated. He’d deserved it, and apologizing hadn’t been enough. It probably never would be.
“You should have brought Rebecca,” Maddox said. “She always seems to know what to say in awkward situations, and she can probably explain about the money better than we can.”
“She’s not on the island,” Griffin said. “I took her over on the early ferry today.”
“I assumed you’d want her here at the reunion with you.”
“She’s driving to Chicago to clean out her apartment for good and bring her stuff back so she can move into the Winter Palace.”
“It’s nice that Flora has such faith in her, and we’re darn lucky she’s going to manage our money for us.”
“Very lucky,” Griffin acknowledged with a smile.
Maddox was happy for his brother, who’d accidentally found true love mixed in with a massive financial windfall. The summer that had just ended had been tumultuous, but Griffin and Rebecca Browne seemed made for each other. Now Rebecca had one floor of Flora Winter’s island mansion all to herself to live in, and she’d been given permission to use the mansion’s library as her office. She’d be available with her financial and business knowledge to help them expand their island ferry and hotel business. Griffin would soon be vacating his small downtown apartment and moving into the Winter Palace, too, taking the upper floor with its bedroom, den, luxury bathroom and expansive deck for himself.
Maddox would feel left out if he hadn’t inherited their childhood home, which he was already planning to upgrade and expand. He wanted to turn it into a home where his son would have the childhood he deserved. When they were kids, he and his brother had visited the Winter Palace on holidays and special occasions, and his son would grow up doing the same. There was no place on earth with the freedom and safety of Christmas Island.
“So what’s our strategy?” Griffin asked. “Splitting up and answering questions honestly without saying more than we have to or just grabbing the microphone and making an announcement?”
Maddox laughed. “And what would you say?”
Griffin scrubbed a hand over his short hair. “Man, I wish Rebecca was here. I’ve known everyone in this room all my life, but it’s weird having this major thing hanging in the air.”
Maddox knew exactly what it was like to have something unresolved lingering over him like a cloud. Should he approach Camille directly and make pleasant conversation, as if he hadn’t destroyed her trust and then married someone else? He was trying to teach his son to be truthful with himself and others, but laying the truth at Camille’s feet seven years ago hadn’t bought him any mercy.
A projector flashed images on the far wall of the gym, a row of fluorescent lights turned off to enhance the colors. The cash bar was set up near the slideshow.
Camille was at the bar with her sister Cara, and their backs were to Maddox and Griffin. The image changed from a 1970s graduation picture to a far more recent photo. A picture of students reading a play aloud in English class. He remembered the moment the picture had been taken. He’d read the part of Romeo, and Camille had played Juliet. It was early in their junior year, and they’d been lifelong friends. For a moment, Maddox was right back to being sixteen going on seventeen.
Camille stood across the room, reading from a green textbook. The sunlight streamed in behind her, illuminating her blond hair. Her lines were about the sea and how it was deep and boundless, and his thoughts wandered to the lake outside until he realized Camille was staring at him with a curious expression before she’d quickly glanced back down at the book and delivered her lines about love. “The more I give to thee, the more I have.”
She hadn’t looked back up from the book, but he’d known those words were for him, not Romeo. He remembered the stark emotion of realizing that he was in love with Camille. Did she remember the shock of that revelation, too? Were those memories tangled up with their reading of the Shakespeare play just as they were tangled with every other high school association for him?
He saw Camille’s head turn toward the slideshow and he knew the moment she saw the picture, too. Her shoulders stiffened, and her hands closed and opened as if she were trying to grab hold of something...or else let it go.
He’d ruined the end of their senior year, and he was pretty sure he’d destroyed Romeo and Juliet for her, too. The years Camille had lived away from the island had softened his guilt, but having her back to stay meant they had to find a way to reconcile. It was an opportunity he’d never believed he was going to get.
“Drink first?” Griffin asked. “Unless you think it’s too crowded at the bar.” Griffin nodded toward Camille and Cara Peterson.
“I think it’s a good start,” Maddox said.
He strode to the bar before he had time to change his mind. He couldn’t keep avoiding Camille. They were adults now. Wasn’t it time they had an honest conversation about what had happened? It wouldn’t change the past, but it might make it easier to live with.
Cara Peterson balanced a tray with four drinks, and Camille was digging through her purse as Maddox walked up.
“I’ll buy,” Maddox said.
Camille looked up. “No, thank you.”
“I want to,” he said.
Camille hesitated, and he could almost see her deciding how to handle him. She’d kept him at arm’s length all summer and had been just on the cool side of civil when they’d been tossed together in social situations. They hadn’t spoken about what happened seven years ago.
Despite his resolve to find a peaceful way to move forward and share the island, Maddox felt a rush of heat around his heart. Maybe it was being back where their first love had begun. Was it possible that his feelings for Camille had gone dormant but had never actually died? Did she feel the same way?
It was too dangerous to think about. He had his son to consider, and playing with fire wouldn’t make him a very good role model.
“Is my brother holding up the line?” Griffin asked as he took the tray of drinks from Cara. “I’ll carry these for you while Maddox pays.”
Before Maddox could object, Griffin walked off with Cara. Cara shot Camille an apologetic glance, and Camille gave her a little nod. Her younger sister was right. Everyone had changed, and that high school betrayal was a long time ago.
Camille hesitated for a moment, as if she was wavering between letting Maddox buy her drinks and being stuck longer alone with him if she handled the transaction for herself.
“Thank you,” she said politely in a tone she might use for someone she’d just met. With a glance at the wall where the picture of them as star-crossed lovers had been a moment ago, she turned and walked back to her table without ever looking directly at him.
Griffin returned as the bartender put two glasses on the counter. “I saw Jordan and Mike at a table outside,” he said. He picked up his drink and waited for Maddox to follow suit. “We’ll start with a friendly crowd where we can practice dodging questions, but I’m kind of glad the cat’s out of the bag. There are no secrets on this island,” Griffin said.
As Maddox walked past the table where the Peterson sisters sat with Violet and some other friends, he thought about how right his brother was.
