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"The Heart's Harbor" in A Door County Christmas

By Cynthia Ruchti, Becky Melby, Rachael Phillips, Eileen Key

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Chapter 1
On any other person, swim goggles would have seemed out of place in the foyer of an elegant Victorian inn. But on innkeeper Lola Peterson, the effect was. . .
Amanda searched for the right word.
“Amanda Brooks! Welcome back.” Lola tilted her chin as if the bottom of the goggles offered a better view. She wiped her hands on her flour-dusted chef’s apron and approached the spot where Amanda stood, letting snow from her boots drip onto the entry rug.
Amanda felt the fine grit of sugar and flour in Lola’s two-handed grip and the irrepressible warmth of her smile. “It’s good to be here. Door County at Christmas—nothing more beautiful, except Door County any other season of the year.”
“It’s been too long, my dear.” Half-turning, Lola called, “Harland, get on out here. Amanda’s back.”
“Who?”
Lola’s husband didn’t remember her. The man whose
voice answered from somewhere in the back of the inn coped with two disadvantages—early hearing loss and way early
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short-term memory problems. The combo offered no hope Harland Peterson would recall someone like Amanda, someone he hadn’t seen for almost three years.
“It’s Amanda!” Lola shouted back. “You know, the one whose fiancé—”
Lola’s head whipped around to face the younger woman. Her dove-gray eyes widened, an effect heightened by the goggles and stemless eyeglasses duct-taped inside. “Sorry, dear.
No need to bring that up. Pre-holiday getaway?”
Choices, Amanda. You can choose not to react. “Can’t beat the off-season prices, Mrs. Peterson.”
A door creaked open and out flap-flopped a bib-overalled Harland Peterson wearing swim fins. Purple swim fins.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Peterson.” Amanda felt her smile muscles awakening from a too-long nap. “Going snorkeling, you two?”
“In this weather?” Harland held his stomach out of the way and gazed down at his footwear. “Oh, the flippers. Just wearing them so the wife doesn’t feel so odd.”
Amanda rolled her lips in and pressed them together to stifle a snicker.
“He means the goggles,” Lola offered. “They were his idea. Broke the stem on my glasses. Had to truck down to Sturgeon Bay to the eye center, but they haven’t got the same frames anymore, wouldn’t you know? Ordered new ones, but what am I going to do until they come?”
She adjusted the goggles to sit straighter. “So Harland
suggests we slap my old ones into the swim goggles like we did for our twenty-fifth anniversary when we took that trip to the Cayman Islands, which always seemed like a waste of time to me since we live in paradise already with plenty of water around. But you know Harland. Always an adventure brewing.”
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Despite their speed, the rush of words comforted like a mocha with whipped cream.
“So,” Lola said, tilting her head back again, “can I have Harland get your bags from the car?”
Amanda pictured the disturbing footprints a man in swim fins would leave on the snowy path where her car was parked. “I only brought one bag.” With the side of her foot, she nudged it.
“Hard to travel light in a Midwest winter.”
She was right. Sweatshirts and wool sweaters take up a
lot more room than the attire needed for a tropical holiday vacation.
Amanda wondered if her parents had struggled to stay within the weight restrictions on their way to Maui for the winter. Who spends an entire winter in Maui? Those whose daughters are independent, or make them think so.
Lola pressed her warm palms against Amanda’s cheeks. “I can’t tell you what it did to my heart when I heard you were coming back.”
“You know Chicago this time of year.” Amanda unwrapped the neck scarf that suddenly felt like a loose noose. “Hoopla. Holiday hoopla.”
Tilting her head to the side this time, Lola took Amanda’s scarf and jacket. “The lights along Michigan Avenue. Concerts. Theater. The store window displays. Walking hand in hand up the steps of the Art Institute. I always loved Chicago at Christmas.”
The view loses its luster when seen through the window of a cold, hollow apartment, Amanda wanted to tell her. Instead she said, “The quiet here has strong appeal.”
“Appeal. Yes.” Lola draped Amanda’s jacket over her forearm and nodded toward her husband, as if dismissing him to
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whatever had occupied him before Amanda’s arrival.
The smell of pumpkin something hung in the air. Pump-
kin and cinnamon and comfort. “I’m glad you had room for me in the inn. I’ve needed this.”
Lola blinked. “You have no idea how much.”
How could Lola—intuitive as she’d always been—know how desperately Amanda needed the comfort? “Pumpkin pie?”
“Bread,” Lola answered, slipping the neck of Amanda’s jacket over the porcelain knob on a branch of the antique hall tree. “Mini loaves. I’m baking ahead for the Christmas Tea.”
Amanda pictured a thick slice of warm pumpkin bread with a pat of butter melting into puddles on its surface. Real Wisconsin butter, not that heart-healthy pseudo-butter she’d thought a wise purchase.
“Hungry? You must have been on the road for five hours or more.”
Amanda followed as Lola headed toward the kitchen. “More than six. Construction.”
“This time of year?” Lola pointed toward a short hall. “I suppose they’re in a rush to finish roadwork before— Harland, what are you doing?”
He lay on the floor, arms spread, fins flopping, a class-clown grin on his face. “The backstroke.”
“Harland Troy Peterson, you get up and go make yourself useful. Don’t you have a project waiting on you? Now scoot!” Lola clapped her hands as if to shoo a puppy out of her flower beds.
He scrambled to his feet faster than Amanda imagined he could. “Where’s your sense of humor, Mama?”
“I have things on my mind,” she retorted, then glanced at Amanda. “And one of those things is getting some nourish11
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ment into this starving child.” She wrapped an arm around Amanda and the two squeezed past Harland while he decided whether he was coming or going.
If Amanda ever had a daughter, she’d “get some nourishment” in her rather than remind her how many calories were in a crouton.
Harland’s hall opened into the light-splashed sunroom. The view of Egg Harbor—its winter-crisped water sparkling like glitter on a Christmas card—stole her breath as it always did. “Oh!”
Lola directed Amanda toward a wing chair near the stone fireplace. “The harbor put on her fancy clothes for you. Fresh snow along the shore and on the shoulders of the trees always makes a postcard scene, doesn’t it? I imagine the watercolorists and photographers are out in full force today. You sit here, dear. I’ll get some tea and a little something to tide you over until supper.”
Amanda felt for the upholstered arms and lowered herself into the chair without taking her gaze from the harbor.
The waters of Lake Michigan—the same Lake Michigan that lapped against Chicago’s shore—ducked around the corner of the tip of Door County and formed the pool that now captured her attention. Technically, the waters of Green Bay.
From the direction of the kitchen came the sound of Lola singing a Christmas carol lullaby and fussing with something that clinked and clattered.
Amanda traced the wide, embrace-like curve of the shore that wrapped itself two-thirds of the way around the waters of Egg Harbor.
White-barked birch stood thin and stark against the dark folds of corduroy pines and cedars. Why did this view
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soothe in a way the city’s couldn’t?
Was it because here someone cared about her?
❄
The furnace kicked in. Amanda noticed. No other sounds competed for attention.
What was the quietest moment she’d known in her apartment in The Loop? Chicago could boast many things—arts, entertainment, architecture, business—but the word quiet hadn’t made it into any of the PR materials for the city.
In this inn, tucked around the corner from a village that had settled from its busy season like a grateful snow globe scene, sounds respected the difference. With its normal complement of tourists now back home fighting traffic and work schedules, Door County nestled into quiet like an overworked mom sighs when the last of the Thanksgiving dinner dishes slide into their spots on the shelf.
Ah. Quiet had returned home from the war.
Only locals in a tourist spot could fully appreciate the benefits of both. The summer flood-stage of bumper-to-bumper and elbow-to-elbow vacationers paid the mortgage and the electric bill so the locals—the privileged few—could live year around in the place where cedars, birches, water, orchards, limestone cliffs, and protected harbors linked arms.
Amanda leaned against one wing of the brocade chair to which she’d been directed and took a deep breath of quiet, which at the moment smelled like apple blossom soap. Oh,
to be a local.
She shook off the thought as Lola returned with a tea tray. Amanda rose, took the tray from her hands, and positioned it on the coffee table with the teapot closest to Lola and
the blue-white milk glass plate of muffins pointing her own direction.
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“What kind of tea?” Not that it mattered. Lola had yet to steer her wrong, on almost any life issue, including tea choices.
“Lemon drop.”
Amanda met the tea spout with the lip of her Blue Willow cup. “Smells divine.”
“Half the joy of a good tea is its aroma.” Lola served her guest, then herself. She added a twist of lemon peel and a generous dribble of honey, then drew the cup to her chest as if she intended to wear it as a pendant.
The sunroom was different than Amanda remembered it from previous visits. The white wicker furniture had been replaced by a scattering of small tables and Windsor chairs except for the sitting area on this, the south end of the room. Starched white tablecloths with doll bed–sized antique quilt overlays were topped with protective glass.
In the center of each table reigned a candlestick made from stacked teacups and saucers. Charming.
“Do you serve breakfast in here now, rather than the dining room?” Amanda imagined winter guests shivering at the tables near the endless stretch of windows as snowflakes
skittered across the icy bay.
“Depends on my mood. And my guests.”
Lola sipped her tea then replaced the cup on its saucer tucked close to her breastbone. “My book club meets here for lunch on Wednesdays. High tea every Thursday afternoon at four. Bible study in the evening. Bridal showers. Baby showers. Neither the room nor I are idle for long.”
Amanda smiled. Who worked harder than Lola Peterson? And with as much grace?
Lola toed the heel of one shoe—something Scandinavian-looking—and slipped her foot out, then did the same with the other.
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Grunting with the effort, she plopped her feet onto a free spot on the coffee table and crossed her ankles at the pumpkins. Autumn-themed socks. Pumpkins and apples and maple leaves splashed against a black background. Socks with an individual pocket for each toe.
Wiggling the piggies that went to market and those that stayed home, Lola sighed so deep the tea in her cup sloshed like a wind-whipped wave in Egg Harbor. “I’ll miss the Christmas Tea this year.”
“What? No, you can’t!”
Lola worked kinks out of her ankles. “It’s become quite the production.”
“It already was three years ago when you had me help with the prep work.”
Lola’s expression shifted, a small course correction. “I could have used you every year since then.”
Amanda’s throat tightened. Serving others had been outdistanced by survival instinct after Todd interrupted the minister’s sermonette to say he couldn’t go through with the wedding.
She’d failed at every task but self-pity for a while. Even now, a memory would slap at her and remind her she didn’t fully have her land legs back yet.
She made her own course correction and rewound a few sentences of their conversation. “What do you mean, you’ll miss the Christmas Tea? You are the Christmas Tea, Lola.”
“No one’s indestructible.”
“Pardon?”
“Indisputable.”
Amanda lifted her teacup to cover the giggle forming behind her teeth. The warm, lemony liquid calmed her enough to offer, “Indispensable?”
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“That, too.” Lola swung her feet to the floor and leaned forward. She planted her teacup on the tray, wiped her mouth with a napkin, and said, “I’m not indispensable.”
“Of course you are!”
“That’s not what the State of Wisconsin says. And my own heart. It’s my civic duty to serve on that jury. Tea or not.”
Wasn’t there a selection process during which the attorneys determined a juror’s suitability? What would they say about swim goggles and pumpkin socks?
“I report tomorrow morning.”
“What about Harland?”
“Oh, honey.” Lola looked beyond Amanda’s shoulder. “He’s. . .he’s going with me. He’ll stay with his brother while I’m out of commission. That should create a story or two.”
Amanda hadn’t unpacked. Hadn’t even checked in, officially. No need for that now. The Heart’s Harbor Victorian Inn would temporarily close its doors in the morning.
Lola’s loss of income and the threat of canceling the annual Tea with its legacy of elegance and camaraderie for the invited locals were dwarfed by Amanda’s disappointment.
Not only would she miss out on a few days of respite from the thrumming of Chicago’s holiday pulse, but she’d be forced to return to an apartment she still resisted calling home.
Get a grip, Amanda. This is Lola’s livelihood at stake. You? You’ve known disappointment before. You should be used to it.
Stocking-footed, Lola padded across the painted floorboards to the small white rolltop desk near the door that connected the sunroom to the Inn proper. She picked up an open Bible, glanced at the page, hugged the book to the spot where her teacup had rested moments before, then returned it to the desk surface and retrieved a half-sized three-ring binder from the desk drawer.
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Extending the notebook toward Amanda, she returned to her wing chair and said, “Here’s what you’ll need.”
“For what?”
“To run the inn in my abstention.”
Amanda gripped the arm of her chair. “Your absence?”
“That, too.”
❄
Amanda trailed Lola into the inn’s massive maple and granite kitchen. “You can’t be serious! I don’t have any experience running a bed-and-breakfast.”
Lola didn’t break stride on her way to the commercial-grade stainless steel refrigerator/freezer. “You’ve been a guest here how many times?”
“Six. Maybe seven. That hardly qualifies me to—”
Lola yanked on the freezer handle, and the door opened to reveal an array of neatly stacked plastic containers so precisely organized they would have made California Closets jealous.
“Peanut butter fudge. Spritz cookies. Bacon-wrapped water chestnuts. They’ll need crisping in a hot oven before serving.”
Lola pointed to her button-sized date pinwheels and mini-cheesecakes, raspberry tarts, crab-stuffed mushrooms, Door County Cherry Nut breads, and miniature Swedish meatballs. “It’s all recorded there in the procedure mandible.”
Amanda braced herself against the kitchen’s center island. “Lola, stop. I can’t do this. You have to be here. I only planned to stay until the weekend when—”
Lola folded her arms across her chest as if waiting for Amanda to come to her senses.
“You have a procedure manual for your Christmas Tea?”
Lola closed the freezer door with a nudge from her hip. “Jordan wants me to get it computerized. That boy of
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mine should have considered becoming an efficiency expert instead of a landscape designator. Not that he isn’t good with shrubs.”
“Designer. If we could get back to the issue. . .” Something tightened in her stomach. “I can’t run an inn.”
With a tsk in a voice a notch softer, the older woman reached across the island, gripped Amanda’s hands in hers, and said, “You know how to serve and how to love people whether they love you back or not. That’s all there is to it.”
Amanda searched Lola’s eyes for a hint she was ready to admit it was a spoof, a “gotcha” ruse, a hidden camera practical joke. Nothing but sincerity returned her stare. “All there is to it? That, and a two-inch-thick notebook of instructions.”
“Mostly helpful hints. Menu list. Traffic flow for the buffet items. Phone numbers. Information for ordering more invitations if necessary.”
“Invitations!” Amanda leaned back on her heels.
“Already delivered. Harland took them up to Fish Creek to mail them. He likes their postmark.”
“How could you even think about relinquishing something as legendary as the Heart’s Harbor Christmas Tea to someone like me?”
Lola’s smirk crinkled her mouth, cheeks, and eyes. “Since when did the Lord ever use someone supremely qualified for any task He assigned? If I read my Bible right, He used shepherd boys and tax men and a woman who ran a fabric store that only sold purple cloth, if you can imagine. Talk about specializing.”
“I have a job. Had a job.” Her argument screeched like a train derailing.
Lola stepped back and twirled once with one hand raised heavenward. “Layoff couldn’t have come at a better time.”
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“I have a—” Amanda stopped short of finishing with the word life.
“Jordan will help you, although. . .” Lola’s eyes widened behind the goggles. “Bless him, sometimes he can cozy up to an Autumn Glory sedum easier than he can an inn full of guests.”
“Jordan’s here?” Amanda’s mind raced to the foyer of the inn where an almost life-sized portrait of the Peterson family told passersby that Harland and Lola were proud of their only child.
And no wonder. God must have been very pleased with Himself when He finished sculpting that face.
“Drove up yesterday.” Lola beamed. “He’s staying at the Landmark since you’ll be innkeeping for the next three weeks and it wouldn’t be proportionate for him to be here at night.”
Which part of that statement should she refute first? “Not appropriate?”
Lola snatched a Honey Crisp apple from the pottery bowl on the island. She buffed it on her sweater sleeve and took a noisy, crispy bite while motioning for Amanda to grab an apple, too.
She turned down the suggestion. “You assumed I’d say yes?”
“Dear girl, we’re both in a desperate place. Seems ideal, doesn’t it? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have packing to do while you’re unpacking. I was told the jury might be equestrian.”
What? A twelve-person jury of horse-lovers? Equestrian?
A cold, clear realization hit. Oh, no! Amanda swallowed hard. Sequestered!

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