Page 36 of The Christmas Lodge
Lacy took the album and began perusing the pictures, trying to hide how the images of her father and grandfather felt like a knife to the heart. All of these photos of them smiling with strangers she didn’t know, all when they had abandoned her and her mother. How many nights had she cried herself to sleep as a little girl, missing her father so much she could barely breathe? Anger flared through her and she slammed the album shut. Emma and Colette jumped a little, stunned by her reaction.
Lacy found it hard to speak around the burning lump in her throat. “If they were doing so well with their businesses, why didn’t they ever reach out to me? Harv and Nicholas left me and my mother alone to fend for ourselves! And all those businesses they ‘helped’? I’m sure they were using business dealings just as shady as what led to my father’s bankruptcy in the first place.”
Emma leaned forward, reaching for Lacy’s hand. “Oh, my dear, how you must have hurt for so many years…”
Emma’s tenderness almost broke Lacy, and a tear slid down her cheek. Almost angrily, she swiped it away. “I became stronger because of it. I just don’t understand how they could be so selfish and abandon a little girl like that.”
“But they didn’t,” Emma said softly, waiting until Lacy met her gaze. She squeezed Lacy’s hand. “Nicholas tried over and over throughout the years to contact you, to tell you the truth about what happened. You see, I’m afraid you never got the full story, and I’m afraid no one ever told you that they didn’t go bankrupt because of any dishonest business practices.”
Lacy swiped away another tear even as her chin trembled. “How can that be? My mother told me that my entire life.”
“Because she was angry,” Emma whispered. “We can never know why she could not forgive your father for going bankrupt, but you need to know that he and Nicholas were not dishonest men. And I meant it. Nicholas tried so very many times to contact you, but your mother must not have told you.”
Lacy dropped her head into her hands, her mind whirling with the implications of this new information.
No. It can’t be. She refused to accept it as true.
“That’s impossible,” she finally said, her voice ragged.
Emma patted her knee. “Nicholas wrote to you so many times, and he has a box he left for you. It’s here in the house and I’ve been looking for it. The only problem is that it's locked, although Nicholas assured me that you would be able to open it. He said he left you a key.”
Lacy looked at Emma through watery eyes, Emma’s image distorting through the teardrops that almost blinded her. “No, he never left me a—”
She stopped speaking abruptly as a long-buried memory came floating back to her. When she was just a little girl, she remembered that one year for her birthday, Nicholas had presented her with a necklace on which hung a beautiful and ornate key. She had worn the key necklace proudly for years, rubbing it and studying it when she felt lonely, but after he and her father had left, she had never worn it again. Could it really be that Nicholas had handed her the key to this box so many years ago?
“Ah, so you do remember,” Emma murmured. “My dear, I will do all I can to remember where the box is and present it to you. I just know that it will change everything.”
Lacy wrapped her arms around her middle as though she could hold herself together and a spark of hope blossomed in her heart, a spark that she thought had died for good when her heart had been broken as a little girl. Opening her heart again like this, daring to hope that she had not truly been abandoned, could be foolish. What if she was just setting herself up for more heartbreak?
Bravery,she reminded herself.Bravery and an open mind.
“I want to believe you,” she finally said. “But I need to see what’s in that box first to understand.”
“And that is why I shall not rest until I find it. I promise you that.”
Lacy nodded. She realized that she wanted to know more about this man she had spent so many years hating. Almost shyly, she asked, “Can you tell me more about Nicholas?”
Emma smiled. “With pleasure. Let’s see… Nicholas used to throw the most magnificent parties every year on Christmas Eve. Oh, if only you could have seen them.”
Emma’s eyes were alight with joy as she spoke of the music and dancing, the enormous Christmas tree in the front parlor, the rooms packed with townspeople, the garlands twisting around the grand staircase. In spite of herself, Lacy felt herself becoming wrapped up in the magic of it all.
“They were the grandest parties, and everyone looked forward to them. There’s a reason he was called St. Nick, you know,” Emma said, nodding. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give to see the old place like that again…”
Emma continued reminiscing, but Lacy barely heard her. Instead, her thoughts were off and racing. Emma’s simple pronouncement had given Lacy an idea…
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
Derek forced himself not to sprint down the street the way he wanted to, keeping his legs moving at a rapid speed-walk instead. After a couple of days of radio silence from Lacy—he hadn’t talked to her since he’d dropped her off at Emma’s house—she had finally reached out that morning, asking if he could meet up for lunch at Frosty’s Shack.
She’d said she needed to discuss something important with him, and the clipped tone of her text exuded the urgency of her message.
Of course, he’d texted back right away, telling her that he would meet her then, but that he was also free before if she needed him. She’d said lunch would be fine, and he’d had to accept her answer. With no further information, but thrumming with nerves about what could be wrong, the minutes until their planned lunch had seemed to crawl by.
Pushing open the door of the cafe, Derek searched for Lacy almost frantically, his breath caught in his throat. After the glaring brightness of the sun reflecting on the snow outside, it took his eyes a moment to adjust to the softer light within Frosty’s Shack. Lacy looked up from her perch in a cozy corner booth and raised a hand in greeting.
To Derek’s surprise, her eyes were alight with excitement, and her air was one of focused, yet not frantic, energy. Confused, he made his way toward her, fighting to control his breathing, which had been coming in little puffs by the time he’d made it to the restaurant.
“Lacy, you’re all right?”
