Read Chapter 32: The Unspoken

The sifting of snow against the dining room windows had become a kind of lullaby over the past three days. Maren stood at the host stand, running her finger down the reservation list, though she already knew it by heart. Twelve guests for the New Year’s Eve tasting menu. A full house. Arthur had left two days ago for what he called "a long overdue journey," promising to write from wherever the road took him, and Julian had seen him off at the door with a handshake that lingered a beat too long into an embrace.

Across the room, Julian was stacking firewood beside the hearth, his back to her, sleeves rolled to his elbows. He had been quiet since his father left—not cold, just contained. They had fallen into an easy rhythm, her in the kitchen, him at the front desk, exchanging brief pleasantries in the hallways like two people who had agreed, without ever saying so, to keep the surface perfectly smooth.

The door swung open, letting in a gust of frozen air and a woman stamping snow from her boots. Lily looked smaller than Maren remembered, bundled in an oversized coat with a knitted scarf wrapped to her nose. For a moment, neither of them moved.

“You said to come,” Lily said, muffled.

Maren stepped around the host stand and pulled her sister into a hug that was stiff at first, then slowly softened, like thawing ground. When they pulled apart, Lily’s eyes were wet.

“I made up the blue room for you,” Maren said. “It has the best view of the meadow.”

Lily nodded, unzipping her coat. “That’s Mom’s favorite room.”

The words hung there. Maren swallowed. She hadn’t told Lily about the letters, about what their mother had done with Nora’s words, and she wasn’t sure she ever would. Some truths had edges too sharp to pass between sisters who were still learning how to hold each other again.

“It’s a good room,” Maren said simply, and picked up Lily’s bag.

---

New Year’s Eve arrived with a sky the color of hammered pewter and a forecast that promised more snow by midnight. The dining room glowed with candlelight, the tables draped in linen that Maren had ironed three times. She moved through the kitchen like a conductor, plating duck breast with a juniper reduction, spooning silken parsnip purée in precise arcs. The rhythm of service was a steady comfort, muscle memory from a decade of city kitchens, but here the air smelled like pine and baking bread instead of grease and desperation.

Lily stood at the pass, watching her work with a glass of wine in her hand. “You look happy.”

Maren paused, a plate in her hand. “I look sweaty.”

“Same thing, for you.” Lily smiled, and for a moment she looked like their mother had in old photographs, before the disappointments had settled into her face. “I mean it, Mare. This place suits you.”

Maren set the plate down. She almost said it—*Julian makes it feel like a home*—but the words caught in her throat, wedged there beside the secret she still carried. She wasn’t his sister. She knew that now. But knowing and saying were different things, and every time she thought of speaking, a voice in her head reminded her of the risk. Of how easily everything could shift between them.

“Thanks, Lil,” she said instead, and slid a plate toward the window.

---

The dinner service ended at eleven. Guests drifted from the dining room to the parlor, where a fire crackled in the stone hearth and mulled wine steamed in a silver pot. Lily had gone to bed early, citing jet lag, though Maren suspected she simply needed space after so many years apart. Maren stood in the doorway of the parlor, wiping her hands on a towel, watching the soft chaos of contented strangers.

Julian appeared beside her, two glasses of mulled wine in his hands. He offered her one.

“You were good tonight,” he said. “Really good.”

“We were good.”

He inclined his head in acknowledgment. “I helped with the inventory.”

“You alphabetized the spice rack.”

“It was chaos. Someone had oregano where the basil should be. I fixed it.”

She laughed, and the sound surprised her—open and unguarded in a way she hadn’t allowed herself around him since the letters. He was watching her with a look she couldn’t name, half smile, half something deeper, and she felt the familiar pull of the current between them.

“Come here,” he said, nodding toward the doorway that led to the front hall.

She followed him, curious, and stopped short. A sprig of mistletoe hung from the chandelier above the reception desk, tied with a red ribbon. She had hung it herself two weeks ago, in the rush of Christmas preparations, and forgotten it.

Julian stopped beneath it, turning to face her. His eyes were dark in the dim light, and he was close enough that she could smell cedar on his coat and the faint hint of wine on his breath.

“I’m not much for tradition,” he said quietly. “But I’ve been standing in that doorway for an hour, waiting for you to walk past.”

Maren’s heart knocked against her ribs. “You planned that?”

“I planned to be standing here. The rest is up to you.”

She stepped closer. The space between them narrowed to a breath, and she could see the faint line of worry at the corner of his mouth, the way his jaw tightened as he waited. She thought of the letters, of all the complications they had survived, of the simple fact that he was here, and she was here, and the snow was falling outside the window like the world was holding its breath.

She leaned in.

The front door burst open, and a gust of wind and laughter spiraled into the hall. A group of guests in snowshoes stumbled in, cheeks flushed, goggles pushed up on their foreheads, talking over each other about the trail conditions and the incredible light on the ridge.

“Perfect timing, you two!” one of them called, gesturing at the mistletoe. “Did we interrupt something?”

Julian stepped back smoothly, a practiced smile sliding into place. “You interrupted a very serious conversation about plumbing.”

The guest laughed, and the group drifted toward the parlor, shedding snow and chatter. Maren stood frozen beneath the mistletoe, her face warm, her pulse still loud in her ears.

Julian turned to her, his smile softer now, almost apologetic. “Maybe the universe has opinions.”

“Maybe it’s just bad luck and bad timing,” she said, and she meant it as a joke, but the words came out heavier than she intended.

He reached out and touched her sleeve, just briefly, the brush of his fingers against the cuff of her sweater. “I’ll be here tomorrow. And the day after that. The mistletoe doesn’t expire.”

She laughed, a little breathless, and let him guide her back toward the parlor. In the doorway, she paused and looked back at the hall. The mistletoe swung gently in the draft from the open door, a small green promise.

---

The guests finally retired near two in the morning, leaving Maren and Julian to douse candles and stack glasses in the kitchen. They worked in companionable silence, trading plates from counter to dishwasher, the only sound the low hum of the refrigerator and the whisper of snow against the windowpanes.

“You should go to bed,” Julian said, drying his hands on a dish towel.

“So should you.”

“I’m not tired.”

She studied him. In the pale light of the kitchen, he looked younger somehow, the sharp lines of his face softened by exhaustion and the hour. She thought about asking him to stay, about saying the words that had been building in her chest for weeks. But the moment stretched, and the silence filled with everything unsaid, and she let it pass.

“See you in the morning,” she said, and was surprised by how steady her voice sounded.

“Goodnight, Maren.”

She walked toward the stairs, and at the landing she paused, looking back. He was still standing in the kitchen doorway, watching her, one hand resting on the frame. He raised his hand in a small wave, and she returned it, then turned and climbed the stairs.

The blue room door was closed when she passed it. She paused for a moment, her hand on the doorknob of her own room, and listened. After a moment, she thought she heard her sister crying softly inside, the sound muffled by the old walls. Maren hesitated, then continued to her room and closed her door silently behind her. Lily would talk when she was ready. Maren had learned that patience was the only thing that worked on fear.

She sat on the edge of her bed, the weight of the evening pressing on her shoulders. The mistletoe still hung in the hall below. Julian would be there tomorrow. She had told herself the same thing a hundred times since Christmas, as if repetition could make it true.

But she still went to sleep with his name on her lips, unspoken, like a prayer she hadn’t finished writing.