Sheila nodded. “You need to spend this Christmas at home.”

“I don’t know that I need to. And I don’t want to leave you—but I feel like something…I don’t know, wants me to.”

“Which is why I called the Realtor.”

“You did?”

Sheila nodded, and wheeled across the kitchen, toward the office door, with a quick glance back at Will, the new short-order cook. He met her eyes and there was…something.

Holly lifted her brows. “Was that—?”

“Office, Holly,” Sheila said. She’d opened the door, and held it now, waiting. So Holly obediently went inside.

“The old place is empty,” Sheila told her. “It’s in rough shape, being that it’s been empty for twelve years, but it’s habitable, barely. If you want to go up there for a day or two over the holiday, I think you should. You haven’t been back since the accident. Maybe…maybe it’s time.”

“But you’d be alone for Christmas. And we always do Christmas together. For Mom, you know. And—”

“We can do it up separately just as well. And I won’t be alone.” She said it with a meaningful glance at the doorway, which was still open. Will was whistling as he flipped flapjacks and smiled at her in a certain way.

Holly blinked and shot her aunt a look.

“Hell, I have MS. I’m not dead.”

Holly smiled from ear to ear. Her aunt really did embrace life, in every possible way. She loved that about her. It reminded her of the way Mom had been. The way she was herself. It must run in the female line.

“I could take part of the decorations up with me,” Holly said, mulling it over as she thought it through. “It would be kind of cool to decorate the old house like Mom used to. Even if it is in rough shape.”

“I think she’d like that. The power will be turned on, a fresh tank of LP gas hooked up when you arrive. Key in the mailbox.”

“You—you really did talk to the Realtor, didn’t you?”