Rowan Monaghan drifted down the familiar brick sidewalks of Pinebridge as if wandering through an old photograph, the kind faded at the corners from years of handling. A light snow fell in soft, lazy spirals, gathering along the storefronts he used to race past as a boy, back when Christmas Eve meant warm lights and open doors. The streetlamps began switching on as he walked, their glow exactly as he remembered: golden halos barely visible against the ochre of the dusky horizon. For a moment he could almost pretend nothing had changed. But memory had a way of warming the air and chilling the heart all at once, and Rowan felt the tug of both as he wandered, waiting for his mother to finish her shift, wishing he knew how to mend the years that had slipped away.
He checked his phone. No new messages. His mother would still be at the hospital, and given the time, would likely be there until well past seven. Christmas Eve for an ER nurse was rarely a courteously quiet night. When he was young, he’d wait for her by the living room window of their tiny house. He’d press his forehead to the glass, which was only slightly less cold than the small icicles hanging from the gutters, and try to guess from footfalls on the sidewalk whether his mother had finally come home. At that age, Pinebridge’s winter nights felt too wide, as though they were holding more silence than should be allotted at what should have been a joyous time of year.
Now, at thirty, he didn’t wait at windows anymore. He walked.
He passed the old bakery, the one that still made gingerbread men with googly-eye candy. It was run by someone new these days, but the sign was the same: a wooden plaque carved into the shape of steaming loaves of bread. Light glowed warmly through the front windows and spilled across the sidewalk. It made the snowflakes dance, momentarily bright before vanishing.
Two children hurried by him, one dragging the other by a mittened hand, both wearing coats a size too big. Their father trailed behind them with a paper bag of last-minute purchases and the weary patience of a man trying to preserve holiday cheer by sheer force of will. Rowan stepped aside to let them pass. He found himself smiling a little, then immediately felt slightly foolish for it.
At the end of Main Street, Rowan stopped. If he turned left here and went all the way up the walk, following the gentle rise framed by leafless but fully decorated old maples, he’d eventually reach the Ridley house. He could picture the porch light, warm against the snow, illuminating the wreath with pinecones the size of his fist, hung on the door by Mrs. Ridley (Helen to her friends). And there, head pressed against the windowpane, Maren’s silhouette could just be made out through the slight frost on the outside.
He did not turn left. He stayed where he was.
Standing there, the wind carried a thread of music to his ears, barely audible. It wasn’t until he heard the faint rise of voices, a mingling of young and old, high and low, that Rowan realized carolers must be out tonight. He glanced toward the town square. The sound was coming from that direction, like a steady pulse of warmth to help fend off the growing chill. The music tugged at him, gentle but insistent.
He walked toward it.
Pinebridge’s small town square looked just as it had when he was young: the old fountain wrapped in evergreen boughs, benches lightly dusted with snow, a scattering of families bundled in coats and scarves. A group of carolers stood near the fountain, their songbooks lifted toward the lamplight as the last glow of the setting sun retreated beyond the horizon. The harmonies floated across the space in soft waves, only slightly warbled by the increasing intensity of the falling snow.
Beside them stood a thin man with a well-worn book in his hands. His hair was nearly white beneath a wool cap, and he adjusted his stylish muffler so that his face was well-exposed. A half-circle of children sat at his feet in the thin snow, fidgeting, eager to hear what the man had to say.
The carolers finished their song, their breath pluming in the air. A smattering of applause drifted through the square. The man with the book cleared his throat. It barely made a sound, but was enough to turn everyone’s heads toward him, immediately paying attention.
“Well now,” he said, his voice warm and steady. “We’ve sung our carols, haven’t we? I think that earns us a tale.” Several children wriggled in evident approval. One boy bounced impatiently on his knees.
The man withdrew a pair of small, round spectacles from his coat pocket, put them on, then held the book up so that the crowd could clearly see it. Its cover, dark green cloth worn smooth at the edges, shimmered in the lamplight.
“I thought,” he said, “that tonight might be just the night for an old classic.”
He opened the book to the first page and began to read, his voice carrying nearly-forgotten words in an immediately familiar cadence:
“‘Twas the night before Christmas…”
Rowan’s breath hitched as his eyes closed.
In an instant, he was in the Ridleys’ living room again. He could smell the pine of the Christmas tree, sharp and comforting; hear the soft crackle of logs in the fireplace; sense the warmth of Maren’s father Thomas presence beside him on the couch. Maren, sprawled on the rug, would always begin by making faces at the rhyming couplets, only to end up mouthing them along by the poem’s midpoint. Mrs. Ridley would slip into the room with cocoa, passing mugs that steamed in the cozy firelight.
And Rowan, small, awkward, uncertain, had felt, for reasons he didn’t fully understand at the time, like he belonged.
Thomas Ridley was the one who’d made space for him. That first Christmas in Pinebridge, his mom working late, Maren had invited him to spend the first part of Christmas Eve with them, at least until his mom got home. So he’d gone over there, but wasn’t sure what to do with himself. He wound up standing somewhere in between the front of the Christmas tree and the fireplace, his hands thrust into his pockets, not really knowing what Christmas Eve was actually all about.
“Come on, lad,” Thomas had murmured, shifting to give Rowan a spot on the couch. “No sense perching there like a bird on a wire.”
The memory struck with its familiarity. He felt it in his chest, sudden and sharp.
He had forgotten how the original book looked, until now. Green cover, gold lettering faded around the edges, the spine soft from decades of use. Maren had once dropped it on the hearth, probably his second or third Christmas in Pinebridge. Rowan remembered the little nick on the corner. Eventually, years later, the book had fallen apart altogether. Thomas had held the pieces in his hands and shaken his head with fond resignation.
“Guess that’s what happens when you love something a little too hard.”
Rowan blinked back to the present as the storyteller reached the final lines.
“…and to all a good night!”
The crowd applauded. The children hopped up, shaking snow from their coats. Parents tugged mittens back onto impatient hands. The carolers began to gather their things. Rowan remained where he stood, feeling the last chord of the memory thrumming in his chest.
He could find that book for Maren. He should find that book for Maren.
Not the original, of course. The Ridleys’ copy was long gone, but one as much like it as possible. Old. Soft-edged. Lived-in. Something that carried the quiet gravity of winters past. Something that could say everything he hadn’t been able to tell Maren.
I remember your dad. I remember sitting in your home. I remember being part of something good.
The idea arrived with such clarity that it startled him.
He took a step backward, away from the crowd. The storyteller snapped the book shut and tucked it beneath his arm. For a moment, just a moment, he glanced in Rowan’s direction. The man’s eyes were shadowed beneath the brim of his cap, but they seemed gentle, knowing, in a way Rowan couldn’t quite place. Rowan turned away before their gazes could meet fully.
The square emptied slowly, leaving only footprints that were beginning to fill in as the snow became more insistent. Rowan stood for another moment, letting the air settle around him. Then he walked on.
Page Turners, the local bookshop, was closed; the sign in the window clearly said so. Still, Rowan stopped in front of it and peered in. The shelves were still lit. A stack of children’s books, some old, most not, sat arranged in a neat display. A glance was all it took to confirm his intuition: the book he was looking for was not the sort that regular stores kept in stock.
Snow gathered on his coat collar. Rowan brushed it away and let out a slow, uneven breath. Maybe he should go back toward the hospital instead; his mom’s shift would end eventually, and she’d ask where he’d been wandering in the cold.
The memories evoked by the recitation lingered, though… the warmth of the Ridleys’ living room, the look of the book, the timbre of Thomas’s voice. And beneath that memory, deeper and quieter, lay everything he had avoided since the funeral he hadn’t attended.
He should have been there.
The thought came with its usual bite. He deserved it.
He crossed the street, brushing snow from his collar again, and drifted toward a narrow lane between the old bakery and a stationery shop. He didn’t remember the lane being there, not as a child, not as a teenager, and downtown Pinebridge was the sort of place where everything stayed exactly where you left it. Yet tonight, the space yawned quietly, a slim corridor of warm lamplight and deep shadow. Halfway down the lane was what appeared to be the entrance to store Rowan hadn’t heard of. A sign with aged brass lettering above the door read Morrow & Reed — Antiquarian Curios. He’d walked this way a hundred times, maybe more, but he had never seen that sign, never noticed the way the windows tucked themselves back from the street, their displays dim and inviting, like an unspoken secret.
A faint glow spilled from within, soft, golden, its warmth offering proof against the cold. Rowan hesitated at the mouth of the lane, listening to the hush of the snowfall and the distant hum coming from those dwindling out of square. He wasn’t sure why the sight of the little shop made something in him loosen, like a knot pulled gently free, but it did. Before he could talk himself out of it, he took a single step forward, toward the old-fashioned door with its burnished brass handle, wondering how a place he had never seen could feel like it had been waiting for him.
