A Christmas to Remember (Evergreen Hollow Christmas #3)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Margo Stoker couldn’t remember there ever having been a morning when she wasn’t excited to get to work.

She knew she was lucky in that regard. She’d spent her whole life so far, ever since college, doing exactly the job that she’d hoped to do. She’d finished a double major in journalism and photography, landed a killer internship in New York, and then gotten an excellent job at a magazine just outside the city, in New Jersey. She had an apartment she loved, a fulfilling job, and woke up every day excited to find out what it would hold.

There were things that bothered her, of course. Things she tried not to think too hard about, because she knew she was fortunate in so many respects. She’d always been good at that—at staying positive.

Which was why, today, she felt justified in letting herself fall apart just a little.

The day had started out fine. She’d gotten up at seven a.m., the way she always did, throwing on leggings and a long sweater with a graphic of an old Polaroid camera on the front, getting in a series of quick morning stretches while her coffee brewed. She’d drunk it with a heavy helping of creamer standing over the counter while shoveling bites of a bagel and cream cheese into her mouth between sips, swapped out the leggings for jeans and her Docs, grabbed her leather messenger bag, and hurried out to where her trusty Subaru was parked.

She’d been driving the same car for ten years, and it had yet to fail her. All-wheel-drive in New Jersey came in handy, especially this time of year, and if she needed to take photos anywhere within driving distance, the car could take her anywhere she needed to go. It often had. She liked to mix things up in her life—her outfits, her hairstyles, her grocery options for the week—always feeling a little restless and in need of trying new things, but her car and her camera were her two standbys. Neither had needed replacing in years, and she knew she could rely on them.

Change was good, and variety even better in her opinion, but a girl needed to have a couple of things she could count on.

As she drove, merging onto the highway and turning the radio to a Christmas jazz channel, she mulled over her work for the day. She’d been excited all weekend to get into the office, even spending a few hours going over some notes at home while she caught up on TV shows. She had a great scoop on some fossils that had recently been discovered in the Caribbean, and she was itching to show what she’d found to Richard, her boss. She was pretty sure no one else had covered it yet, and she wanted this assignment. She’d only just gotten back from Egypt a week ago, but she thought she wouldn’t mind spending the cold winter months somewhere tropical one bit. She’d grown up in a cold climate, and she’d made it a personal goal to spend as many winters somewhere warm as she could manage.

Richard was always pleased with her work, and he usually gave her the assignments she wanted. She felt confident that this wouldn’t be any different.

She pulled into the parking lot of the magazine’s building, fishing her building pass out of the center console and grabbing her bag. The parking lot was thick with snow, not all of it completely plowed yet, and she shivered as she stepped out into the cold. She already missed the dry heat and sand of Egypt, and she was eagerly anticipating the possibility of crystal white sands, humidity, and tropical drinks at the end of every day.

A lot of the time, her job didn’t really feel like work at all.

She hurried into the building, dropping her bag at her desk and shrugging off her coat and gloves. She hadn’t even had a chance to sit down when she saw Richard walking toward her, and she beamed at him, hurrying to meet him.

“Morning!” she said brightly. “I have something I want to show you if you have a minute.”

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you as soon as you got back, Margo. If you’ll come into my office for a minute?” He gestured toward the glassed-in room, and Margo frowned. He sounded oddly serious, but this time of year could be stressful for everyone. Or maybe he had an assignment for her already, and it was one he knew she wouldn’t like. A piece that required her to go somewhere even colder, like Russia. Or Antarctica.

She shivered, hoping she was wrong as she followed him into the office.

“Sit down, please.” Richard smiled, but she thought it looked tight around the edges, a little forced. “How was Egypt?”

“Hot. Much better than here.” Margo sank down into a chair, looking at him curiously. “What’s going on?”

He let out a slow breath, sitting down in his own leather chair behind his desk. “I have some bad news, Margo. It’s the worst time of year to have to tell you this, I know, but I really have no other options. We’re downsizing the company, and having to make significant cuts to staff. And unfortunately, you’re one of the staff members that we’re going to have to let go.”

She wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. It was the buzzing in her ears, maybe, that made her think he’d said something else. He couldn’t possibly have said she was being fired .

“What? Surely you don’t mean…”

“I’m sorry, Margo.” He did sound genuinely sorry. But she still couldn’t believe it.

She’d heard through the grapevine that the company was struggling. There had been a few internal emails among the other staff that she’d seen while she was in Egypt, recently, that she probably wasn’t supposed to have been cc’d on but hadn’t been able to keep herself from reading.

But she was sure it was just an overreaction, that someone had heard about the difficulties and were blowing it out of proportion. She’d been sure that the company would pull through, and it would all be fine.

But it seemed like she’d been too wrapped up in her work to realize how bad things had really gotten.

“So that’s it?” She bit her lip, feeling the sudden urge to cry. She hadn’t cried in ages, but she could feel the heat behind her eyelids, threatening.

Her pitch for the article about the fossils was crumbling before her eyes. Her sunny winter spent in the tropics doing her job, the thing she loved best, was vanishing. Her everything was falling apart. Her whole life was her job because she genuinely loved it. If she’d ever been married to anything, it was her work as a journalist. She’d thrown her all into it, for fifteen years of her life.

And now it was over. Just like that. She was being shown the door—politely, but still the door, nonetheless.

“I’m really sorry.” Richard stood, and she could see that there wasn’t going to be any drawn-out conversation over it. “You’ll get a severance package, as will everyone affected by the layoffs. It’ll be as generous as we can manage, given the circumstances. I know being laid off during the holidays is terrible. Believe me, if there was any other way…”

“I know.” Her voice sounded hollow to her own ears, as though she was speaking down a hallway. “I understand.”

She didn’t, not really. But she wanted to be out of that office, which suddenly felt small and cramped, like it was closing in around her. She wanted to be alone, so she could think. But first, she had to wrap up any loose ends that needed to be done before she packed up her things for the last time.

This might be her last day at the magazine, but what she would leave behind would be the result of her whole life’s work so far. She didn’t want to finish off her last assignment sloppily just because she knew she wouldn’t be coming back.

It took her all day to finish those last items on her to-do list. She’d planned, this morning, on having them done in an hour or two, on polishing the last lines of the Egypt article and sending the final draft over to Richard, and then waiting on pins and needles to hear his reaction to her pitch about the fossils. But instead, the work that should have taken her no time at all crawled by, because she couldn’t focus. She couldn’t concentrate.

There was no plan B for her. No backup. Why would she have ever needed one, when she’d never planned on doing anything else?

She hadn’t planned on looking for work at another magazine. There had been no reason to. Richard was always happy with her articles, she always loved her assignments, and she’d always felt fulfilled. She hadn’t thought about what she would do in a situation like this because… well, she’d just never thought about it. She’d been happy, and she’d never been the type to plan for a rainy day when it always felt like the sun was shining.

Now, she guessed she was paying for that. She could just imagine what her older sister Caroline would have to say about her lack of foresight. Nothing positive, that was for sure.

She had no idea what she was going to do.

When the last of her things were packed up, she said goodbye to her colleagues, promising to keep in touch even though she knew that no one probably would. They were all bad at seeing each other outside of the office, no matter how many lunches or happy hours they tried to coordinate.

Everyone who worked at the magazine was always in different places at different times, flung across the globe, in too many different time zones to even organize a video call for a digital happy hour. She didn’t think that inability to schedule a time that worked for everyone was going to change just because some of them were unemployed now.

She handed in her building pass to Richard, nodding as he explained that he would send her severance check in the next couple of days, and asked if she wanted it to go to her home address. She didn’t have any idea where else he would send it, so she kept nodding.

It hit her, as she did, that she was going to be home for the foreseeable future. For Christmas. Home for the holidays didn’t sound all that good when her apartment was more like a hotel room than a home.

That hit her all over again when she walked in her front door, tossing the keys down on the kitchen counter that was only a few steps from the foyer. She never bothered to really look at or think about her apartment, but she stood there for a few long seconds, looking at it with fresh eyes.

The plain, almost empty countertops except for a coffee maker, because she was rarely home long enough to bother with learning to cook, and she got takeout most of the time when she was. The furniture that she’d haphazardly bought from IKEA when she’d moved in because it was cheap and serviceable, and why did she care how it all looked when she rarely saw it?

There was nothing cozy about her home, she realized. No throw pillows on the couch or soft blankets to cuddle under when she watched TV. Her bookshelf had a smattering of books on it, ones that she’d bought to take along with her on flights, but that was all. No candles. Those cheap white blinds on the windows instead of curtains. And she knew what she would find once she went into the bathroom or bedroom. It would be more of the same.

Whatever shampoo and bodywash she’d grabbed off the shelf at the grocery store to keep at home, since most of the time she lived off whatever was available at hotels—or, in rougher places, travel-sized bottles that she threw into her luggage. A plain duvet and pillows she’d grabbed when she moved in, more IKEA furniture. The place was neat and clean, but there was nothing homey about it.

It definitely wasn’t a place to crash.

She went to the fridge, pulled a Chinese restaurant flyer off it, and dialed the number. One order of sesame chicken and crab Rangoon later, she rummaged in her fridge for one of the beers she’d bought when she’d gotten back into town, trying to ignore the fact that the only things in there besides that were the cream cheese she’d gotten to go with her breakfast bagels, creamer, and some ketchup and mustard bottles bought ages ago, along with a bottle of flavored seltzer water.

I don’t have a home, she thought glumly as she popped the cap off her beer and retreated to the couch to wait on her takeout.

It had never bothered her before. The whole world had been her home. She didn’t need a plush apartment or matching throw pillows when tomorrow she could be in Spain, the week after that in London, and three months later in Morocco. Home was wherever she was sent, and she had always felt like it made her special, that she could be comfortable anywhere. She liked that about herself, that she could be happy living out of a suitcase, putting down roots for a little while and then pulling them up again to replant herself somewhere new.

Except apparently this was the one place she couldn’t feel at home. Her own apartment.

Maybe not the only place.

The thought popped grimly into her head as the knock came at the door to let her know that her dinner had been delivered. She went and collected it, bringing it back to her coffee table to eat, but she didn’t have much of an appetite. Not even the scent of her favorite comfort food could entice her to eat after the day she’d had.

She flicked on the TV to the first channel that came on, wanting to distract herself. But the channel it had been set to was playing It’s A Wonderful Life , and she immediately felt her spirits sink.

A rush of sadness and a hint of desperation washed over her as the black and white images flickered on her screen, as Jimmy Stewart talked about lassoing the moon. She could remember this movie being on in the background a dozen times while she and her sisters had made Christmas cookies when they were younger.

It was their mother and Caroline’s favorite movie, even though Nora preferred How the Grinch Stole Christmas , and Margo had always liked Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer . She hadn’t watched the movie in years, but she could still have recited every line. It brought back a flood of memories instantly, from a time when she was completely unafraid and before her heart had been shattered into a million pieces.

In that moment, she found herself making a snap decision. She hadn’t spoken to her sisters in months, and her mother in at least that long. But she decided as she watched George Bailey try to sweet talk Mary, that she was going to go back to Evergreen Hollow for a few days. Not through Christmas. She had no intention of staying that long. But she knew she didn’t want to be where she was right that second. And it would give her time to decide where she wanted to spend the holiday.

A little time to regroup. That was all she needed.

And then she would be fine.