Lakeshore Christmas by Susan Wiggs Page B

late tonight, and I’m all by my lonesome.”
    That was Janet for you. Her younger sister was the baby of the family. Though she was as loyal and loving as a person could be, she was never happy in her own company. She’d gone from her college sorority house to marriage, and was already expecting her first child.
    “It’d take me an hour to get there, Jan,” Maureen said. Janet and Karl had moved closer to the city to make his commute shorter.
    “There’s no snow in the forecast.”
    It always bothered Maureen that she was the default sister. When anyone in her family needed someone to be instantly available, Maureen was the one they called.
    They didn’t call Meredith, the oldest. Meredith was a doctor in Albany. She was always on duty or on call and at any given time, she was considered too busy to bother. Renée, the next oldest, had three kids, which meant three thousand reasons Renée could never be the go-to girl. Their brother, Guy, was, well, a guy, reason enough to leave him be. That left Maureen, the middle sibling. She was the one they called when they suddenly needed something—companionship, an errand runner, someone to chat with on the phone, a babysitter.
    Here was what drove her crazy—not that she was the one they called, but that they assumed she never had anything better to do.
    “We could get takeout and watch goofy old holiday movies,” Janet wheedled. “Come on, it’ll be fun. You remember fun, right? Fun is good.”
    “What?”
    “I said—”
    “Never mind. I’ve got something I’m doing tonight,” she told Janet.
    “Really? What’s going on? Do you have a date? Oh, my God, you have a date,” Janet exclaimed without giving Maureen a chance to respond. “Who is it? Walter Grunion? Oh, I know. Ned Farkis. He ran into Karl on the train and asked about you. Oh, my God, you’re going out with Ned Farkis.”
    Maureen laughed aloud. “I’m glad you have my evening all figured out for me. Ned Farkis. Give me a break.” Ned was a pharmacist’s assistant at the local Rexall. He’d asked her out several times, and she’d never said a clear no, but she never said yes, either. Then she felt guilty about her scorn, because she knew there were guys out there—many, many guys—who had exactly that kind of opinion of her— Maureen Davenport? Give me a break.
    “Seriously,” she said to Janet, “I’m meeting Olivia. We’re going to the church to help construct the nativity scene.”
    “Oh. I didn’t know you were on that committee, too.”
    “I’m not. Not officially, anyway. But since I’m working on the pageant—”
    “I get it. Today the pageant, tomorrow the world.”
    “Very funny. You could join us,” she suggested.
    “Us?”
    “The volunteers at church.”
    “It’s kind of a long drive for me,” Janet said.
    Yet she’d been perfectly willing for Maureen to drive it. Maureen tried not to feel exasperated. “Have a nice night, Janet,” she said.
    “Sure will. Love you!”
    Maureen was blessed to belong to a family where everybody loved each other. Her parents had been college sweethearts who made their home in Avalon because itwas a place of natural beauty, a place where they wanted to have lots of kids and raise them surrounded by small-town safety and the richness of nature. All five of their children still lived in or near Avalon.
    This was not to say life for the Davenports had been easy. Far from it. Her mother had died of a virus that went straight to her heart. Stan Davenport, a high school principal, had been left with a houseful of kids. Maureen was just five years old when it had happened. She remembered the livid pain of loss, a memory as stark as an old photograph. Meredith had cried so hard, she’d made herself throw up, and Guy had turned their mother’s name into an endless string of tragic sobs: “Mama. Mama. Mama.” Their father had sat at the dining room table with his head propped in his hands, his shoulders shaking, Janet and Renée