“Pathetic,” she said to Fluffy, curled in a ball on the corner of the desk.

Elsie knocked on the door and walked in. “Pathetic,” she said. “Everyone’s downstairs trimming the tree, and you’re up here looking like death warmed over.”

Maggie smiled. She could always count on Elsie to jolt her out of self-pity. Elsie was brutal but effective. And there’d been a lot of times in the past months when Elsie had kept her going with scoldings and hugs and hot soup.

“To night’s the Christmas party,” Elsie said. “Does your dress need pressing?”

Maggie shook her head. Her dress was fine. It was a little big on her, but the style allowed for that. She wasn’t sure she cared anyway.

Laughter carried up the stairs with the smell of pine and spicy cider. Hank’s parents, his Aunt Tootie, Slick, Ox, Ed, Vern, Bubba, and their wives and girlfriends were downstairs, helping with the tree.

If she were a good wife, she’d be down there too. She’d used the same tired excuse of working on her book to steal away to her room. No one knew the book was done, much less sold.

Lord, what had become of her? She was a coward, she thought. She wasn’t able to face other people’s happiness. Especially now that it was the Christmas season. This was a time for family. A time for love-and Maggie was loveless. Tears trickled down her throat. Hormones, she told herself, swallowing hard.

Elsie shook her head and sighed. “You’re so hard on yourself,” she said. “Why don’t you let yourself have some fun?”

Because if she gave in just a tiny bit, her resolve to leave would crumble like a house of cards, Maggie thought. Skogen wasn’t going to change. Hank’s father wasn’t going to change. Bubba wasn’t going to change. Just as her mother and Aunt Marvina weren’t going to change. And the most painful truth was that Maggie wasn’t going to change.

She didn’t belong in Riverside and she didn’t belong in Skogen. If she wanted happiness, she was going to have to go searching for it. Surely there was a place where she would be accepted and feel comfortable. Surely there was a town out there that offered a compromise between dumpsters and apple trees.

“I’ll have fun to night,” Maggie lied. “I’ll just work a little bit more, and then I’ll quit for the day.”

“Everyone misses you,” Elsie insisted.

They didn’t miss her. Maggie knew that for a fact. She could hear the laughter. She could hear the conversation that bubbled between old friends and family and never included her. For months now life had gone on in the farm house, and she hadn’t been a part of it. Hank had gone from the baseball team to the football team to the hockey team. The cider press had been delivered and was operating, and the pie factory was close to becoming a reality.

“No one misses me,” Maggie said. “They’re having a perfectly wonderful time without me.”

“Hank misses you,” Elsie said. “He looks almost as bad as you do. He laughs, but his eyes don’t mean it. You’d see it too if you weren’t so stuck on your own misery.”

Maggie wondered if what Elsie said was true. She knew part of her wanted it to be so. She knew that there was a scrap of hope she hadn’t been able to completely smother. Her love for Hank smoldered deep inside her. She couldn’t extinguish it no matter how hard she tried. It burned constantly and painfully. Every day she faced the unpleasant realities of her predicament and exerted every ounce of discipline she possessed to do what she felt was best for herself and for Hank, but the dream remained.

Deep in her heart she knew she hadn’t held to the agreed-upon six months through any sense of honor. It had been that damn dream that had kept her in Vermont.


For weeks she’d been dreading the Christmas party at the grange hall. It was the one social event she couldn’t possibly avoid. Now that it was at hand she felt numb and exhausted even before the ordeal began.

She sat on the edge of her bed with her bathrobe wrapped tightly around her. Her hair was still damp from the shower; her toes were pink from the hot water. A depressing lethargy had taken hold of her. At least she wasn’t in one of her emotional moods, she thought. Lately she’d been succumbing to crying jags. No one knew. She cried quietly with her face stuffed into her pillow. She cried late at night when everyone else was asleep.

There was a soft rap on her closed door. “Maggie, can I come in?”

It was Hank. Probably wondering why she was so late. She should have been dressed half an hour ago, but she couldn’t seem to finish the task. “The door’s unlocked.”

He wore a dark suit with a white shirt and red tie, and the corner of a red silk handkerchief peeked rakishly from his breast pocket. The sight of him made her heart feel like lead in her chest.

Hank Mallone would never want for female companionship, she thought. Once she was out of the scene, women would be flocking to his doorstep. He was sinfully handsome and in a few years he would be wealthy. The contracts for his pies and cider were pouring in. After the first of the year when the pie factory opened, Skogen would be at a hundred-percent employment thanks to Hank.

He sat beside her on the bed and placed a small paper-wrapped box in her hand.

“It’s customary in my family to give a gift on the night of the Christmas party. When I was a little boy, my parents always gave me a special present just before we left. It would be something I could take with me. A pocketknife, or a pair of red socks, or Christmas suspenders. And my dad would always give my mom jewelry. I know this is hard to believe, but in his own way, my dad is actually quite romantic.”

She hadn’t expected this. Wasn’t prepared for it. In the last two months they’d barely spoken, and she harbored a secret fear that he finally wanted her to leave. He’d stopped trying to make conversation, stopped finding excuses to touch her, stopped trying to coax her from her room.

And now he’d given her a gift. She didn’t know what to make of it. She held it in her lap to keep her hands from shaking, but she wasn’t entirely successful. Emotions too long held in check were tumbling to the surface, making it difficult to think, making it difficult not to smile.

For months now she’d treated him badly. And how had he responded to that? He’d bought her a gift!

He sat quietly watching, seeing the confusion in her face, seeing the pain mingling with a sudden infusion of unexpected joy. He’d been waiting for this moment for months, knowing that even if her book wasn’t finished, even if all feelings for him were gone, she’d have to give him this evening.

He drew a shaky breath while she stared at the box. He hadn’t been sure she’d accept it. He wasn’t even sure she’d open it. Now that he saw the range of emotions play across her face, he knew things would work out.

He pulled her onto his lap and cuddled her close to him.

“I haven’t wanted to bother you these past months. I know how hard you’ve been working on your book.”

She thought she owed him an honest reply. “My book is done. It’s been done for a little over a month now.”

He understood her reasons for not telling him. She’d been using the book as an excuse to remain aloof. He’d suspected as much. He hadn’t heard any computer noises lately. The slight hurt, but he struggled not to let it show.

“Can you tell me about it? Is it good?”

Maggie laughed softly. It was an odd question. It was like asking a mother if her firstborn daughter was ugly.

“I’m not sure if it’s good, but it’s sold. I’ve kept my promise. Aunt Kitty’s diary will be published in book form.”

He gave her a squeeze. “I always knew you could do it.”

She liked the sound of pride in his voice, and it triggered a surge of pride in herself, bringing the first rush of excitement over her success.

“I wasn’t that sure,” she said. “I still can’t believe it.”

She was smiling. First with her mouth, then with her eyes, then every vestige of sorrow vanished. It was as if the sun had suddenly come out in all its blinding glory. Maggie Toone wasn’t a woman who took easily to unhappiness.

She remembered the package, and her fingers fumbled with the wrapping paper. “I love presents!” she said. “I love surprises!” She opened the box to find a pair of diamond stud earrings. “Oh!”

He pushed a curl behind her ear so he could see her face more clearly. “Do you like them?”

“Yes! Of course I like them. They’re beautiful. But…”

“But what?”

She slouched against him, some of the old tiredness returning.

“I can’t accept these. This isn’t the sort of present you give to a…” She searched her mind for the appropriate word, but couldn’t find one that defined their relationship. “Friend,” she finally said. “This isn’t the sort of present you give to a friend.”

“It’s the sort of present I give to my best friend.”

“I thought Bubba was your best friend.”

“Bubba is my second best friend.”

She thought he’d given up, but he’d only been lying low. She had to give him something for tenacity. And she had to admit-she was pleased. The dream was dancing around inside of her. She couldn’t control it.

“It isn’t going to work,” she said. “Skogen hasn’t changed.”

He looked confident. “It’ll work. It was never necessary for Skogen to change. You just haven’t seen it yet. You haven’t figured it out.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I was just like you. I had to get away. Trouble was that for a while my problems kept following me. That’s because you can’t run away from your problems. You only end up with the same problems in a new location.

“Then one day I was sitting in a crummy hotel room in Baltimore, and I realized I’d grown up. Somewhere along the line I’d sorted things out. My identity wasn’t dependent upon the people around me. I didn’t need my parents’ attention or approval. I didn’t need to be the class clown or the macho stud or the star quarterback. I just needed to do things I found personally satisfying. Like studying about agriculture, and improving my granny’s apple orchard.