Elin Hilderbrand - Winter Stroll

Jennifer and Kevin announce that they’re heading into town with Jaime and the baby. Jennifer asks Kelley to check on the older two boys-but when Kelley pokes his head into their room, they are completely absorbed in their video game.

Isabelle starts working on the rooms. Kelley goes down to the laundry to push through the sheets and towels. Ava comes down to check on him. She looks rumpled and distressed.

“How was your caroling party?” Kelley asks.

“Oh,” she says. “It was fine.” Her tone of voice indicates that it was anything but.

Kelley starts folding the towels, warm from the dryer. “Just fine?” he says.

“Not really fine,” she says. “This woman named Roxanne who teaches at the high school broke her ankle on the cobblestones and she was Med-Flighted to Boston and Scott went with her. And he’s going to miss the party tonight. So it looks like I’m your date.”

“Great!” Kelley says. There had been one second when he’d actually thought of bringing Mitzi as his date. He would like nothing better than to think of George sitting at the hotel alone while Mitzi got all dolled up to go out with Kelley. But going with Ava is a far superior idea.

He can’t believe he even considered taking Mitzi.

Except that he misses Mitzi.

But… she’s only here for the weekend.

And Ava looks less than thrilled at the prospect of attending the party with her dad.

“Don’t look so down,” Kelley says. “I dry-cleaned my tux.”

“It’s not that,” Ava says. “I’m just disappointed that Scott isn’t coming. This woman isn’t even a particularly close friend of his, but she didn’t have anyone else to go with her and Scott volunteered.”

“Ah,” Kelley says.

“And,” Ava says.

“And?”

Ava gnaws her lower lip. “I bumped into Nathaniel last night.”

“Nathaniel?” Kelley says. “Really? I thought he moved.”

“He’s building a house on the Vineyard,” Ava says. “But he’s back.”

“Oh,” Kelley says. “How was it seeing him?”

“Weird,” Ava says. “It was… I don’t know… a lot harder than I thought it would be.”

Kelley nods. He knows exactly how Ava feels.

The rooms are finished by one thirty. Margaret and Drake have headed into town. Kevin returns from town and the baby goes down for a nap. The inn is quiet except for the piped-in carols: “Away in a Manger,” “I Saw Three Ships.”

Kelley goes in search of his grandsons and finds all three now plopped in front of the TV with controllers in their hands. The stealing of cars has been replaced by something that looks even more nefarious.

“What is this game called?” Kelley asks.

“Assassin’s Creed,” Pierce says. “Wanna play, Grandpa?”

A video game about assassination: It’s the end of society, he thinks. Then he feels like a grandfather. His own grandfather had thought the Beatles were the end of society-and now Paul McCartney is a knight. He’s tempted to run for Coolest Grandpa of the Universe and just sit down and play, but with Patrick in jail what these boys need is a father figure, not a friend to sit down and join them in murder.

“Hey,” he says. “I’ve got some time. What do you say you turn this off and I teach you how to play cribbage?”

“No thanks,” Barrett says.

“Come on, guys. You just can’t waste the day playing video games.”

“We like video games, Grandpa,” Jaime says. “Besides, I’ve already had my non-screen time for the day. I went with Mom into town.”

“Pierce?” Kelley says. “Barrett? You two owe me some non-screen time.”

The older two boys do not respond. They don’t even blink . As Kelley is deciding how much of a hard-ass he wants to be, the phone rings at the inn. Kelley has to run down the hall to pick up the landline. He has a feeling it’s news about Bart.

“Mr. Quinn?” says a young, unfamiliar male voice.

Bart, Kelley thinks.

“Yes?” Kelley says.

“This is D-Day, the bartender at the Starlight? I have Mrs. Quinn here? She’s pretty drunk? I asked if someone could come pick her up and this was the number she gave us.”

“Mrs. Quinn?” Kelley says. “We’re talking about Mitzi, right?”

“Right.”

“And she gave you this number?”

“Actually, she gave me your cell number first, which I tried, but nobody answered. Then this number.”

“My cell phone?” Kelley says.

“Yes.”

Kelley pictures D-Day, the bartender at the Starlight. His real name is Dylan Day; Kelley and Mitzi have known him since he was a kid. Now, of course, he’s grown up; he has a beard, a full sleeve of tattoos, and he wears a fedora. He was a few years ahead of Bart at school, and the last time Kelley grabbed a beer at the movies, D-Day had asked about Bart.

“I’ll be right there,” Kelley says.

“Thanks, Mr. Quinn,” D-Day says, with audible relief.

Mitzi is standing on the curb in front of the Starlight bundled in her coat and scarf when Kelley pulls up. D-Day is standing next to her, even though his presence is probably required inside. Both Mitzi and D-Day are smoking.

Smoking? Kelley thinks. What has happened to his wife?

He rolls down the window of the used Pathfinder they bought after Bart crashed the LR3 a few years earlier.

“Mitzi,” he says.

She throws her cigarette to the ground and squashes it with the heel of her clog, then climbs in the car.

“Thank you, Dylan,” Kelley says.

“No prob,” D-Day says. “Thinking of you guys.”

Kelley bumbles over the cobblestones, takes a right in front of the library, then another right onto Water Street. There are people everywhere, crossing the road indiscriminately, swinging their shopping bags. On Main Street, the Victorian carolers are stationed in front of the Blue Beetle, so there’s a huge crowd. Kelley has to be careful or they’ll soon be singing “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.”

When he is safely on the other side of town-he will have to go out of his way-he says, “Mitzi, what’s going on?”

She lets her head fall against the window. “I’m having a hard time.”

“You’ve started smoking?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says. “It helps.”

Kelley has no idea how intentionally filling her lungs with tar can help, but he reserves judgment. He smoked himself back when he worked the futures desk at J.P. Morgan. He smoked a pack a day-only at work, Margaret would not have tolerated him smoking at home-and he remembers how nicotine granted him a few moments of what he now thinks of as fierce focused calm. Maybe it’s the same for Mitzi, or maybe she just likes acting out.

“And what’s with the middle-of-the-day drinking?” Kelley asks. “Drinking so much that Dylan Day had to call me. That’s humiliating, Mitzi, right? We’ve known Dylan since he was in braces. And why did you have him call me? Where’s George?”

“George met a woman last night on the Holiday House Tour,” Mitzi says. “He took her to lunch today.”

“What?” Kelley says, and he laughs. Is George really that much of a player?

“I’m sure it’s perfectly innocent,” Mitzi says. “But the point is, George needs normal interpersonal relations. He’s tired of my anxiety, he’s weary of my sadness. He doesn’t get it. Bart isn’t his son.”

“No,” Kelley says. “He’s not.”

“George barely knew Bart. Who was Bart to George but a pesky kid, the one always getting in trouble until you shipped him off.”

“Mitzi,” Kelley says. It has only taken them three minutes together to get sucked into their same old arguments. “I did not ship Bart off. He wanted to go.”