A December to Remember - Softcover

Bayliss, Jenny

 
9780593422243: A December to Remember
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593422244 ISBN 13: 9780593422243
Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

Three bickering half sisters.

One unique antiques shop.

The coziest holiday season of their lives.

Wildly different half sisters Maggie, Simone, and Star have hardly seen one another since their sprightly summers at Rowan Thorp, their eccentric father Augustus’s home. Known for his bustling approach to the knick-knack shop he ran, Augustus was loved by all and known by none, not even his daughters.

Now, years later, the three estranged women are called upon for the reading of Augustus’s will and quickly realize he's orchestrated a series of hoops through which they must jump to unlock their inheritance—the last thing any of them want to do. But Maggie and Star desperately need the money. And who would Simone be to resist? 

Through hilarious goose chases, small-town mishaps, and one heart-warming winter solstice celebration, love, hope, and reconcilation is in the air, if only the three sisters can let themselves grasp it.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

A former professional cake baker, Jenny Bayliss lives in a small seaside town in the UK with her husband, their children having left home for big adventures. She is also the author of The Twelve Dates of Christmas, A Season for Second Chances, and Meet Me Under the Mistletoe.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1
Present Day

Maggie, Simone, and Star's father had died as he'd always wanted to: quietly and without ceremony, in his beaten-up van in the middle of a forest in the Italian Alps. His age, like the rest of him, had always been an enigma, though it surprised nobody to learn that he had died just shy of his ninety-sixth birthday; Augustus was one of those curious beings who seemed always to have been old and yet equally never to have aged.

In a handwritten note found tucked into his breast pocket, Augustus had bid farewell to his three estranged daughters and assured them that he had enjoyed a long and happy life, the memories of which he would carry with him into the next world.

The very existence of the note had broken Star's heart. Maggie, the eldest of the three, had called her discordant sisters as soon as she'd received the news of their father's passing.
 
"But that means he knew he was going to die," Star, the youngest, had sobbed over the phone.
 
Maggie, who as firstborn was unwillingly cast in the role of materfamilias, tried her hardest to push conviction into her voice. "Not necessarily. He might have carried it around in his pocket for years, just in case," she soothed.
 
"Dad never planned a thing in his life." Star sniffed loudly. "He was a free spirit. No, he knew he was going to die, I know it. It's too sad. I can't think about it."

Simone, the middle of the North sisters, had been less demonstrative in her grief upon receiving Maggie's phone call, but Maggie could hear the shake in her voice.

"Was he-was he alone? When it happened?" Simone had asked.

"I believe so, yes. But the doctor I spoke to assured me that he died peacefully in his sleep. That's something to be thankful for, isn't it?" It was hard to put a positive spin on the death of a parent, even one who had been absent for most of their lives, but she was giving it her best shot.

"I suppose so," Simone had said. "I mean, I know we weren't close for the last twenty-odd years, but even someone as careless with people as he was ought not to die alone..."

"He wanted it that way. No fuss. Just him and the mountains."

Though it was the truth, saying the words didn't bring Maggie peace.

***

The funeral took place on a bleak Tuesday in November; the fat rain and black pregnant clouds felt fitting for the occasion. Despite the weather, the whole of Rowan Thorp village had turned out to honor the man known affectionately by the locals as “The Wizard of Rowan Tree Woods.” Augustus had been roguish and charming and quite frankly a randy old bugger who was adored as much for his sparkling manner as the trouble he caused.

At the front of the church a large picture of the man in question rested on an easel: long white hair pulled back into a plaited rope, a beard to match, a devilish grin, and bright green eyes that twinkled with mischief. His collection of jaunty waistcoats, which he always wore beneath an old tweed jacket, only added to his disheveled country squire image and made him irresistible to any who crossed his path.

Word of his passing had brought a flood of mourners from across the globe, wanting to pay their respects to the man who had been so loved by all and yet known by none-not least his three daughters.

"I thought only royalty got this many flowers when they died," said Joe as he helped Maggie lay out the hundreds of bouquets and wreaths that had been delivered to the church ahead of the service. "I've seen postmarks from as far as Alaska. One of them says it's been sent from a rainforest!"

"My dad was a well-liked man," Maggie replied, standing and stretching out her back.

"Some of these note cards are borderline soft porn."

She smiled. "Like I said, well-liked."

"What did he actually do when he was off on his travels?"

"Played his lute, read tarot cards, seduced women. He used to take some of the rowan wood from his woods out back and whittle it into love spoons and forest animals."

"To sell?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes he gifted them. Really, he did it for the love of it. It was a way of meeting people; who could resist coming to talk to a man playing a lute and whittling in a purple nag champa-scented van?"

"No wonder they called him a wizard."

"I think you two would have got on well. He had a twinkle about him," she said fondly. And then she added, "A twinkle that dazzled so you couldn't see his failings until he had hightailed it out of town."

"What do you mean?"

"Being with Augustus was like existing inside a bubble: magical and perfect. And then he'd disappear, and you'd be left cleaning up a soapy mess."

Despite being a self-styled bachelor, in his twilight years Augustus found himself father to three daughters from three very different mothers. His role in their lives was for the most part transient. But for four weeks of every summer, he would have his daughters to stay with him at his flat above North Novelties & Curios.

"That must have been confusing when you were kids," Joe said, up to his elbows in floral arrangements.

"Not really. You don't question that stuff when you're little. That was just how our family worked." She thought for a moment. "I think I naturally felt it a bit more than my sisters, because they lived in different parts of the country, so for them it was another holiday event like Christmas or Easter. But I lived in the same village as my dad and still only had the same level of contact as they did. We had those four blissful weeks a year and then next to nothing."

"Isn't that a bit..." He hesitated as though trying to find a word that wouldn't be disrespectful to the dead man in the picture beside him. "Cruel? To withhold love like that?"

Maggie's old defenses-spring-loaded and activated if touched-jerked up. "He loved me. He was away most of the time, so it wasn't like he would see me on the street and blank me. I think in his own way he was trying to keep things fair between the three of us." She chewed the inside of her cheek as she remembered how Simone and Star were so jealous of her living in the same village as their dad. "To this day they don't believe that Augustus was as absent for me as he was for them." Or how much more his absence stung, she didn't say. How it crushed her to see the light on in his window and know that her dad was just across the street and yet completely unattainable; it was a tough lesson in emotional self-sufficiency she'd had to learn far too young.

Joe was looking at her like he'd just read a transcript of her thoughts. But he was wise enough to steer the conversation away.

"And your mum?" he asked. "How did she feel about handing you over to your dad for a month every summer?"

"I think she was pleased that I got that quality time with him, even if it was only for a few weeks a year. She used to say she saved up all her boring jobs, like sorting out the accounts and deep cleaning the house, for when I wasn't there. But she went away too, to visit her sister and see old friends. It was a nice break for her. She was a single working mum; how many get a month off a year?"

"You mean to tell me Verity's dad doesn't take her on holidays?" he asked with mock innocence.

Maggie snorted out a laugh and reached across the flowers to swipe at him. She had two children: Patrick, who had turned twenty in the summer, and ten-year-old Verity. Verity's dad-an attractive, unreliable man with a host of emotional hang-ups-had left the scene before Maggie's baby bump was even showing. Theirs had been a short-lived relationship of pure convenience. She might have been desperate enough to have sex with him, but she wasn't stupid enough to think he was partner or parent material. She'd told Joe all this months...

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Verlag
G.P. Putnam's Sons
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593422244
ISBN 13 
9780593422243
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
399
Kontakt zum Hersteller
G.P. Putnam's Sons
https://www.penguin.com/putnam/

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USA
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