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friendly with him. People told me about seeing you together. I also
suspected you had a little crush on him. I just hadn’t realized things
had…progressed. I don’t know how I missed it now. Sage looks a little like him,
doesn’t she?”
    “Do you think so?”
    “The mouth and her chin.”
    “She might look a little like him, but she’s very much her own
person.”
    “Absolutely.” Her mother leaned back a little and smoothed a
stray lock of hair away from Maura’s forehead. “Everyone will understand if you
need to leave. Go home to Sage. We can carry on without you.”
    She was tremendously tempted to do just that—the going home
part, anyway. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to sneak into her house,
crawl into her bed and pull the Storm at Sea quilt—the one she and her sisters
had made after her divorce—over her head and not crawl out again until the
holidays were over.
    Nothing new there, she supposed. She couldn’t remember a moment
in the past eight months when she hadn’t wanted to
climb into bed and block out the world. But she was a McKnight, and the women in
her family soldiered on, no matter what.
    She had managed to keep herself going all these months. She
could make it through this too.
    “I’m not about to let Jackson Lange ruin the book club
Christmas party for me.” She rose on legs that felt a little unsteady. Low blood
sugar, she told herself. All she needed was a truffle or something. “Let’s go
party. I think this evening calls for some of Alex’s famous spiked cider. I hope
she brought some.”
    “If I know your baby sister, I have no doubts of that.” Mary
Ella slipped an arm through hers and walked by her side through the bookstore
and back to the gathering.
    She might have predicted the reactions of her friends and
family exactly. Angie, her oldest sister and the second mother to the six
McKnight siblings, looked at her with deep compassion and concern. Alex, younger
than her by only a few years, gave her a look that clearly conveyed solidarity
against all males of the species. Claire—Alex’s best friend, who had always
seemed like part of the family and had made it official only a few weeks ago by
marrying Maura’s younger brother—acted typically solicitous, handing her a mug
of something, fragrant steam curling into the air.
    It was tea, not Alex’s cider, a Ceylon black with cinnamon,
clove and orange peels, but Maura figured she could build to the cider.
    They were just getting ready to start the annual gift-exchange
game, she realized, where everybody picked a wrapped gift and passed it either
left or right while someone—in this case, Janie Hamilton—said certain words when
she read a passage from a holiday book.
    “We saved a spot for you,” Claire told her. “Pass left when you
hear the word the and right when you hear and . What are we reading, Janie?”
    Janie held up a familiar Dr. Seuss book. “Sorry. My kids have
all the Christmas books in their rooms, which are a total mess until I shovel
them out. All I could find was How the Grinch Stole
Christmas. ”
    “My fave,” Alex said, stretching her feet out on a cushioned
ottoman.
    Maura took the empty seat and spent the next few minutes giving
an Oscar-worthy performance of someone enjoying herself as, with much laughter,
they passed the gifts back and forth, until Janie finished with the Grinch
carving the roast beast and everybody ended up with their final gift.
    To her delight, her prize was Charlotte Caine’s gift, a
beautifully presented bag of almond brickle from Charlotte’s store down the
street, Sugar Rush.
    “Thanks, Charley. Just what I needed!” She smiled, thinking how
pretty the other woman looked tonight in her white silk blouse and ruby
earrings, despite the extra pounds she carried.
    The distraction of opening presents gave her a much-needed
chance to gather her composure, so she was almost ready when Ruth finally
brought up what she knew was on everyone’s mind.
    “So