The Mills & Boon Christmas Wishes Collection. Maisey Yates

       Chapter Twenty-Three

      The next day I worked for a few hours, updating social media, emailing our brides to thank them for attending the expo, and caught up on the accounts. I thought about how to get some more bodies in beds, so I created some discounted package deals and uploaded them to various travel websites.

      In the quiet of the office, I thought of Mom, and the sadness that consumed me at times that I could never share any of this with her. Why couldn’t she be who I needed her to be and vice versa? When I’d first come home, I’d imagined us sitting side by side in the office, dreaming up marketing campaigns, new events for our guests, and window-shopping for sumptuous furniture we’d buy when our funds were in surplus. Instead, the lodge was like a cuss word, and we avoided any talk of it.

      It was high time that changed. I grabbed my scarf from the coat hook, and wound it on, pulling on my coat, and donning a red knitted beanie. It took an age for the car to warm up in the freezing temperatures, but when it did, I took the drive very slowly indeed, slowing more as I drove past houses decorated to the hilt, inflatable reindeers blowing sideways in the bracing winds, and colored lights shining from windows. Wreaths decorated front doors, like a welcome home.

      Twenty minutes later, I pulled into Mom’s driveway, and shut off the engine. I rapped on the front door and got no answer. I called her cell, and she answered after the first ring. “Hello, Clio.”

      “Mom, I’m at your house, shivering in the porch. Where are you?”

      “I’m at Puft with Bessie. She needed a hand with some orders. Grab the spare key, it’s out back under the mat, and I’ll be home in about half an hour, OK?”

      “Thanks, Mom. See you soon.” I felt a real pang of surprise, and happiness. Normally Mom would have said she was out and that was that. To have her come home on my account was definitely a step in the right direction.

      After finding the key, I let myself in. The cottage was as pristine as ever, everything in its place and a place for everything, as my Aunt Bessie used to say, good-naturedly teasing Mom’s tendency to clean everything within an inch of its life.

      In the kitchen, I detected the faint smell of coffee. I rifled through the pantry to find some coffee beans. The one thing Mom always had in bulk was coffee. She might run out of food without much concern, but her coffee stash was always healthy. Finding the coffee, I pressed buttons on the machine, but it came up with an error code. I frowned, pressing more buttons, wondering what the little symbols meant. Being organized to a fault, I knew Mom kept all her kitchen-gadget instruction manuals in a file in the bottom drawer.

      Sure enough, there was the file, just like I expected. But underneath it was a leatherbound book. It was thick, embossed, and looked out of place in the drawer. Mom didn’t just leave things lying around. Kitchen things went in the kitchen and personal effects went in the office.

      Interest piqued, I flicked it open. It was a photo album. The hair on my arms stood on end – part fear she’d catch me looking through her private things, and part curiosity that I might find something I shouldn’t. The tiny book felt heavy in my hands, and my heart thudded in my chest. It was probably nothing, probably family photographs, and she’d mistakenly left them in this drawer.

      Surely she wouldn’t mind if I had a quick peek at my own family photographs? Didn’t I have that right, the most basic of things?

      I darted a glance over my shoulder, ears pricked for the sound of her car. I flicked the pages of black and white photos. The first picture was an old car with wide fenders, probably a classic by now. The second was a woman holding a baby. The young woman’s hair was curled gently around her ears. The dimples in her cheeks, identical to ones in mine. Mom. She wore a sixties-style dress.

      What I couldn’t miss was the big, beaming smile on her face as she gazed with wonderment at the baby in her arms. Whose child was it? I’d seen a picture of myself in Mom’s arms as a baby, and I knew this wasn’t me. This picture had been taken a long time before I was born. Mom was shiny-skinned and smooth-featured like a teenager. Youthful.

      I flicked to the next picture and my breath caught. It was Cedarwood. Beautiful Cedarwood like something out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. The fountain out front was surging water into the air, the cherubs on its base unable to catch each other for eternity. The lodge in the background, the tree-crested mountains behind. It was unmistakably the lodge, but in black and white it looked so different, so young somehow… as though now the years of being abandoned had aged the old place.

      The next photograph was Mom again, this time holding the hand of a toddler, her little bonneted head staring up at Mom. Who…? Just then I heard the crunch of gravel as Mom pulled into the driveway. Shoot! With my pulse thrumming, I closed the album and shoved it back in the drawer and with it the file of instruction manuals.

      Trying to calm the erratic rhumba of my heart, I pasted on a smile and smoothed down my hair before she came in, carrying a box of donuts.

      “Clio, hi.”

      I was sure my skin was flushed with the secret, and averted my gaze so she couldn’t read it in my eyes. I fought the urge to flee, my heartbeat still leaping in my chest, pumping so loud I was sure she could hear it.

      “Hi, Mom.”

      To keep my hands from shaking, I hunted in the pantry for the biscuit tin, thoughts still spinning wildly, making assumptions about Mom and the mysterious child who stared up at her like she was her world. Did I have a sibling? Was she a teen mom? So many questions buzzed around my head, and I tried to think rationally about what to say to her that wouldn’t make her clam up, and wouldn’t make it obvious I’d been snooping, even though it had been mostly innocent.

      For the life of me I couldn’t think of anything to say. How did you bring up something like that? Hey, Mom, did you have a child you forgot to tell me about? Was that child now an adult living in Evergreen? Someone I’d walked past a hundred times in the street and didn’t know?

      When it came time to question her, words failed me. I froze. And for the first time I really understood people telling me to leave it be. Because once the words were said, you couldn’t tuck them away again. I sat there for too long, silent. Wishing I had a crystal ball to guide me. Ask? Or not? Now I finally had some kind of evidence, although it was nebulous, courage failed me. I left with a lame excuse, giving her a loose hug, and rushed through the snow to my car. I just couldn’t do it.

      I drove sedately through the double gates of the lodge, seeing the place as it had once been, in the black and white pictures, and comparing it to now, in full color. And then, with the ghost of my mom as a teenager standing at the front, a small child searching her face, and now, bereft of anyone, rain soaking the spot.

      Inside, I went to my office, and sat heavily, trying to push