Page 1 of For Never & Always

Hannah, Age 7

Hannah Rosenstein was seven when she made her first Big Life Plan: never be separated from Blue Matthews.

The travel trailer that Hannah’s parents called home was bumping down a dirt road somewhere in the badlands of Montana. Hannah tried to let herself be lulled by the motion. She was supposed to be sleeping in the back loft bunk, her parents driving through the night to meet a filming deadline on the other side of the dawn. Instead, the pale glow of her cheap flashlight lit the tiny nook just enough to read the xeroxed, stapled newsletter she’d smuggled to bed: theCarrigan’s Christmaslandcircular, several months out of date because it had taken a while for it to be forwarded from their PO box.

Hannah’s parents—documentarians whose lives were all over the world, wherever there was a story they felt compelled to tell—might have called the trailer home, but to Hannah, her real home was in the Adirondacks, at Carrigan’s Christmasland. Her dad’s aunt Cass owned Carrigan’s, which was both a tree farm and Christmas-themed inn—an admittedly eccentric career choice for someone in a Jewish family, especially one that made a very comfortable living running a chain of bakeries. Hannah’s parents used Carrigan’s as a base when they needed to stop somewhere for a while, celebrate the High Holy Days with family, or when Hannah simply got too miserable traveling.

Blue got to live at Carrigan’s all year, because his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Matthews, were the handyman and cook there.

It wasn’t, Hannah knew, exactly her parents’ fault that she hated traveling and only wanted to stay in one place, go to school, make friends, but it wasn’t exactly not their fault, either. She wished she loved what her parents loved, but she couldn’t.

She smoothed a hand over the cover of the Carrigan’s newsletter, the black-and-white print on the front showing Cass, in a turban and swing coat, posing next to a pine tree. She had already read the descriptions of the upcoming events a dozen times. Even if she hadn’t, she had the Carrigan’s calendar memorized. In the back of her head, whatever was going on, wherever they were in the world, she always knew what they would be doing if they were at Carrigan’s, with Blue.

She loved everyone there, Cass, Mr. and Mrs. Matthews and the twins, Blue’s younger brother and sister. And her cousins who sometimes visited with her, especially Miriam. But if she were really honest with herself, Blue was the reason she couldn’t stop thinking about Carrigan’s. He was the only person who always made sure she was having fun.

In the envelope with the circular had been two other pieces of paper: an airplane napkin with Cass’s neat block handwriting and a Polaroid with Blue’s wild scrawl. The airplane napkin was an old habit of Cass’s—she wrote on them when she was flying, tucking them away to send whenever she remembered, often finding them in coat pockets and putting the notes into the mail a year or three after she’d originally penned them.

The Polaroid was not of Blue. It was of a soufflé Blue had baked. She was proud of him, she knew he’d been working on the recipe, but she wished he’d sent a letter with it, or anything to make her feel more like she was there. She barely had any pictures of him and she hadn’t seen him for months. Who knew how much taller he was now?

Blue was her best friend, but he was a terrible pen pal. He was always busy. He was always up to shenanigans that were more interesting than writing letters. She, Blue, and her cousin Miriam were a trio when they were all together. They were the ones who’d given him his nickname. His real name was Levi, and when they were little, the girls thought it was funny that he was named after blue jeans. They were all the same age, and they all needed friends. (Technically, Blue was almost a year older than her, but for part of the year, they were all the same age, which was what counted.)

So, the dream team of Hannah, Miriam, and Blue was born. Blue was reckless, Hannah planned everything, and Miriam could turn anything into a scheme, a project, art. Miriam had ideas, Hannah handled logistics, and Levi had no fear.

When they were apart, she was logistics for nobody. She hated it. Her real life blipped on when the trailer drove through the gates of Carrigan’s, then back off when she left, and she was always waiting while everyone at the farm was having their real lives all the time.

When she was a grown-up and she got to decide where she lived, she was never going to leave Carrigan’s again. Then she would be real all the time. And she was going to redesign the advertising because what was Cass thinking? It was so out-of-date. She was going to get Carrigan’s Christmasland with the times.

And she would never go weeks or months without seeing Blue again.

Chapter 1

Levi

It had been four years and change since Levi Matthews had last crossed the threshold of Carrigan’s Christmasland, demarcated by giant filigree wrought-iron gates and by, he’d always suspected, some kind of boundary magic that allowed the pocket dimension of his wayward home to exist slightly out of sync with the outside world. He’d left right after Rosh Hashanah, when the apples were ripening and the woods were leaking the last of summer through their fingers. It was spring now, Passover week, the birdsong a cacophony on the old state highway up to the farm. He lifted his face to feel the sun as he turned his motorcycle off the road and drove up to the gates.

He’d expected to feel a rush of resentment at the sight of the wrought-iron twinC’s, the symbol of Cass Carrigan, who was—or had been—the soul of Carrigan’s Christmasland. The woman had presided like an empress over this place where he’d grown up, where his family lived but that had felt as often like a prison as like a home. He’d both never meant to stay away this long and never meant to come back. No single thing in his life was as fraught with complications as his feelings about Carrigan’s, unless it was his feelings about Hannah, and it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.

What he felt instead was a bone-deep sense of readiness as he rode onto the grounds. It was time. He’d gone out into the world, to find and prove himself, destroying the thing that mattered most to him in the process, and he had done it. He’d made himself into something.

He was coming back as a man with a rising career and a sense of self he could never have found in this stifling old inn. He was ready to show everyone who he’d become—well, almost everyone. Cass Carrigan was dead six months now. He’d never be able to show her she’d been wrong about him.

The farm was beautiful against the icy bright sky of the early April day, one hundred sixty acres of evergreens nestled up against Adirondacks National Forest, spread out behind a rambling old Victorian inn squatting picturesquely at the back of a big front lawn. He didn’t follow the drive to the front porch, with its big carved wooden doors that led to the foyer and reception desk. Instead, he turned toward the back of the house. To the servants’ entrance.

He kicked off the bike he’d borrowed from a chef buddy, because his had been left here when he fled and was now probably long sold. He moved to roll it into the shed behind the kitchens where his dad kept the lawn mowers, but the doors pushed open before he could, a familiar gray head following.

When their eyes met, Levi dropped the bike and his dad dropped the wrench he was holding.

His dad stood looking at him, wary, as if Levi were a feral cat and he was afraid if they got too close, Levi would hiss and run away again. He’d earned that. He’d always been a prickly little shit. He might wish things were different between them, but he had only himself to blame. Just pile his relationship with his dad on the mountain of things he should have done differently.

Levi needed to make the first move, wanted to take away the distance in his dad’s eyes, but he was lost.

“Dad,” he said. His father nodded, as if in acknowledgment.Yes, for better or worse, I’m your dad.Both of his parents were outdoorsy sixty-something silver foxes who looked ten years younger than they were, a matched set out of a Lands’ End catalog, but his dad was holding himself a little more stiffly than Levi remembered.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen his parents’ faces in four years. They’d video chatted, and his mom loved Instagram. Since Cass’s niece Miriam had moved home last fall, she’d been featuring his parents regularly on Blum Again, Miriam’s popular Instagram account for her antique upcycling business. Levi combed through every picture she posted for a glimpse of his parents and his younger twin siblings.

He’d seen them, but it wasn’t the same.

His parents were the backbone of Carrigan’s, the unit that kept the whole thing ticking along. Mr. and Mrs. Matthews to everyone else, Ben and Felicia to each other, together with Cass, they hadbeenCarrigan’s for forty years. His mother was the head of the kitchen, his father the jack-of-all-trades, maintenance supervisor…His title changed, but he Fixed Everything. He also managed to be Dad to his own kids and every kid who wandered in off the street.

---