Gingerbread at Moonglow Read online

  Mist glanced around after closing the soap container and putting it up. Her wicker basket of fabric was filled to the brim with new scraps. And the collection of used books had grown over the past year, as well. This was not only because Michael Blanton was such as avid reader, but because Mist kept a variety of books in all the guest rooms. After all, on a vacation, someone usually absorbed with jobs, television and the often overwhelming commotion of life, might discover the magic of reading simply by having the luxury of free time. There were supposed non-readers in the world who loved to read, of that she was certain. They just didn’t know it yet.

  “Maisie’s here with the flowers,” Betty called from the end of the hallway. “What a spread you ordered this year! I’m running down to Marge’s for a few minutes.”

  “Tell Maisie I’ll be right out. And could you pick up some peppermint bark while you’re getting your caramels?” Mist asked, a knowing grin crossing her face.

  “How did you … oh never mind.” Betty laughed. Her caramel cravings were legendary. She almost always had a few in her pocket, as well as a stash in a front desk drawer.

  Before Mist closed the closet, she took the box with the doilies off the shelf again and hurried into each of the guests’ rooms and suites, leaving a doily or two on dressers and nightstands, all different but connected by the hands and heart of the woman who crocheted them. She’d finish with the rooms later. She returned to the front of the hotel, where she found Maisie in the hallway, three large buckets of flowers beside her and two butcher-paper wrapped groupings of greenery under her arms.

  “Oh, Maisie,” Mist sighed. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting even a little bit. You know I would have been happy to come down to your shop to pick everything up. Here, let me take those.” She lifted the greenery from Maisie’s arms and carried it into the café, where the open tables could be used for projects between meals.

  “I know,” Maisie said, following Mist with one of the buckets. “But I needed to get out of the flower shop, anyway. I’ve had such a rush of orders today, and I’ve had to turn many of them down. Four days before Christmas just isn’t enough time to get what customers want. I hate disappointing people.”

  “You’re not disappointing them, Maisie,” Mist said as she retrieved the other two buckets of flowers from the hall. “They are disappointing themselves by not planning ahead.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Maisie said, sitting. “And I always suggest other options, even if they aren’t exactly what they wanted at first.” She shifted in her seat, trying to get comfortable.

  Mist set the buckets down, gently pulled a chair from one of the tables, and positioned it opposite Maisie. She eyed it curiously from several angles. “That chair would look much better with feet on it, in my opinion,” she said. “Don’t you think so?”

  Maisie smiled as she propped her feet up on the extra chair. “Thanks, Mist. It does help to keep my legs up.” She leaned back, her usual work overalls snug against her expanding waistline.

  “Wonderful,” Mist said as she pulled a stalk from one of the buckets. “I wasn’t sure you’d be able to get the winterberry holly stems, but these are perfect.”

  “I ordered them from a farm back in North Carolina, along with the birch branches mixed in with the greenery. Great new resource. I’ll order from there again. I wouldn’t have found them if you hadn’t requested those berry stems. My usual vendors didn’t have any.”

  Mist sorted through the mixed flowers, growing more excited as she pulled each variety out of the buckets. “The white parrot tulips are beautiful, and I love the paperwhites. You even found red dendrobium – wonderful orchids, so different from the cymbidium we’ve used before.”

  “I was tempted to pick up some amaryllis,” Maisie said, “in case you wanted more red. But you did say you wanted the focus to be on white flowers.”

  “What you brought is perfect,” Mist said, placing the stems back in water. “We’ll have plenty of color with the gingerbread house. I want to keep the rest of the decorations lighter in tone.”

  “Oh, how’s that going? How many houses are you baking?” Maisie shifted her legs and settled back in the chair again.

  “Well …” Mist sat down, moving a slender branch of boxwood tips aside, and rested her hands on the table, one on top of the other. “There’s been a minor change in plans. As it turns out, we’ll only be decorating one gingerbread house.”

  Maisie looked confused. “How can that work? Only so many people can fit around one table.”

  “True,” Mist said. “But we won’t be using a table. We’ll be using a whole room, or a good part of one. You see, what happened was …”

  The front door opened, cutting off Mist’s explanation. Clive’s voice followed.

  “Just angle it toward the left, Clayton. That’s it. Now keep moving forward, a little more, there you go.”

  Maisie and Mist watched as Clive’s body appeared in the front entryway, followed by a large wood frame, followed by Maisie’s husband.

  Maisie’s eyes grew wide. “What on earth … Clayton? Is this what you’ve been helping Clive with the last few days? I thought you two were working on a gingerbread house model?”

  “Yep,” Clayton said. “And this is it, half of it, anyway.” He set the edge of the half frame down. “We’ll be right back with the other half.” He paused and turned toward Maisie. “Hi ya, sweetheart, lookin’ pretty.”

  Clive and Clayton left to make a second trip, leaving Maisie to look at Mist, eyebrows raised. “The other half?” she asked.

  “There was a slight mix-up regarding the dimensions,” Mist said calmly. She picked up a sprig of rosemary and inhaled, entertained by Maisie’s bewildered expression.

  Another door opened, this time the one leading from the kitchen.

  “Candy, anyone?” Betty said, her voice sing-song until she raised her eyes from the bag of candy and looked across the café into the entryway. “Oh my!”

  “Beautiful flowers, aren’t they?” Mist said impishly, knowing full well that Betty wasn’t referring to Maisie’s floral delivery.

  Betty continued into the café and dropped into a chair, not noticing the piece of peppermint bark that fell from her bag onto a seeded eucalyptus branch. “It’s big,” she said.

  “Four by four,” Mist said.

  “Four by four?” Maisie repeated.

  “Without the roof,” Mist clarified.

  “Without the roof,” Betty mused.

  Clive and Clayton shuffled and thumped their way through the front door again, bringing the second half of the house, which they set down next to the first.

  “We’ll be back with the roof,” Clive said

  “And the platform,” Clayton added.

  Maisie and Betty exchanged glances and both said, “The platform?”

  Ten minutes later, all the pieces were in the front hallway. Thirty minutes after that, they were attached to each other: four walls, a sloped, though shallow, roof and a low platform with wheels. Mist, Betty and Maisie moved furniture aside in the front room, and Clive and Clayton rolled their creation in.

  “It’s kind of big,” Clive said, scratching his head.

  “It is big,” Clayton agreed.

  “It’s so big,” Maisie said.

  “It’s bigger than big,” Betty said.

  Mist approached the framed house, peeked in its doorway, tapped its roof and walked around it twice. Finally she turned to face the others and clasped her hands, smiling.

  “It’s perfect,” she said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  To keep the ovens free for baking thirty-two large slabs of gingerbread, Mist replaced Moonglow Café’s normal, nightly gourmet meal with simpler fare, what might pass as lunch. When diners from town arrived, they found deluxe picnic offerings spread across the buffet: a tray of sourdough and multigrain breads, slices of honey-baked ham, turkey and roast beef, four types of cheese, hummus, avocado, tomato and crisp leaves of romaine lettuce l
arge enough to make wraps for those who preferred to avoid bread. Small bowls of pickles, jalapeno peppers, onions, and radish sprouts sat to the side. A bowl of fresh pineapple and a platter of dark chocolate coconut bars rounded out the meal.

  No one complained, and Mist was especially grateful that she could bake the twelve by twenty-four-inch cakes, along with a multitude of smaller rectangles to be used as shingles, through the dinner hour. The professional oven Clive had installed for the café allowed Mist to bake four panels at once. It would take many rounds of baking, but Maisie, a natural night owl, had offered to rotate some of the trays in at night, time when Mist usually painted. Her miniature paintings were selling well at Clive’s gallery.

  “What if some of these break when you move them from the racks?” Betty asked as she brought dinner plates into the kitchen to be washed.

  “Then we’ll fix them,” Mist said. “Life is full of broken pieces that we can fix.”

  “That doesn’t always work,” Clive said. He sat down at the kitchen island with a sky-high concoction that appeared to have every item from the buffet inside two slices of bread.

  “Good thing you have a big mouth on occasion, dear,” Betty teased. “It’ll help you tackle that sandwich.”

  Clive gave Betty a friendly swat as she left to collect more dishes, and then turned back to Mist. “Last time I broke something – a pitcher an artist friend made for me a long time ago – I had a tough time fixing it. I glued it back together, but it looked funny afterwards.”

  “But it worked, didn’t it?” Mist said.

  “Yes, I guess so. I still use it.” Clive took a hearty bite of his sandwich and contemplated Mist’s statement while chewing.

  “Fixing things doesn’t always mean they’ll be the same as they were before,” Mist said. “Imperfections add variety — in objects, in people, in many things. Sometimes, it’s even fine for things to remain broken.”

  “If you say so, Mist.” Clive bit into a dill pickle, resulting in a snap that made Mist smile.

  “Do you think that pickle will taste worse, now that it’s no longer whole?”

  Clive looked at the pickle with mild curiosity. “No, I suppose not.”

  “Well, there you go,” Mist said. She removed four trays of gingerbread from the oven, set them aside to cool and replaced them with four waiting trays.

  “I’ll get the next four,” Betty said as she returned to the kitchen. “And I’ll clear the remaining dishes.

  “Maisie offered to help, too, to give me some time to paint,” Mist said.

  “Good,” Clive piped up, pickle finished. “You’ve got an order from a husband and wife who want two of the winterberry paintings.”

  “The order from yesterday?” Mist asked.

  “No, a new one.” Clive stood and carried his plate to the sink.

  “All right,” Mist said. “I can do four tonight.” She looked at Betty. “Thank you for taking over the baking. It sounds like I’d better get to work.”

  “You know I’m happy to help,” Betty said, shooing Mist out of the kitchen.

  A short walk down the back hallway took Mist to her room, a peaceful space without the plumage of holiday décor that decked out the rest of the hotel. Simple furnishings filled the room, along with an easel and rack of paints. In one corner, a stack of cartons held small, framed canvases, approximately four inches by four inches, each one blank and waiting for an artist’s handiwork. These would become miniature paintings to hang in Clive’s gallery, to spruce up the hotel or simply to be given as gifts.

  Mist changed into a favorite nightshirt – soft blue flannel with a moon and star print – and picked four frames from the waiting supply. Setting them on a side table near the easel, she added two more. People seemed to like the winterberry scenes, and she might as well create extras while she had the correct paint on her palette.

  Brush in hand, Mist set to work, first creating a backdrop of blue on each canvas, and then carefully adding dark, slender branches with bright berries in varying tones of red. Each painting was slightly different, yet all followed the same pattern, an image Mist visualized in her mind. This year, she’d taken to adding a touch of silver leaf to the winterberry paintings, just as she’d begun including gold leaf in a popular angel and cloud design. The paintings shimmered under the gallery lights and were an immediate hit with customers. The demand for her paintings had nearly doubled over the previous year, and that didn’t even count larger custom orders, which had also become more frequent. She was pleased for Clive since word had spread that he had more than sapphires and jewelry to offer. She was pleased, too, for the customers and the paintings, because she felt each painting she created would find a way to the person who most needed it.

  In general, Mist’s subjects were sweet and light, often whimsical in nature. Winter paintings featured — aside from the winterberries and angels — such images as evergreen trees with pine cones, vintage sleighs and old-fashioned toys peeking out of a wooden chest. Spring and summer paintings tended to be brighter: a striped beach chair with the ocean in the background, a cluster of wildflowers tied with a purple ribbon, a sailboat under a ray of sunshine. Autumn brought fall colors into play: a trio of aspen trees in burnt orange and gold foliage, a cornucopia of fruit and nuts on a weathered tabletop.

  Mist loved all the seasons, but her favorite was winter. Colder weather and snowy landscapes soothed her, and hot mulled cider warmed her heart as much as her body. In addition, the Christmas holidays afforded her a chance to work her own kind of magic on those around her, as well as on herself.

  Time stood still, yet flew by, whenever Mist escaped into art. Finally, pleased with the six miniature pictures, she put up her paints and cleaned her brushes, and left the finished pieces to dry. Quietly, she tiptoed back down the hall, cautious to not wake Betty.

  Maisie was just turning off the lights when Mist stepped into the kitchen. The smell of gingerbread filled the air, and twelve more sheets of siding for the house frame stood finished, the last batch of four just starting to cool.

  “Thank you, Maisie,” Mist said. Though spoken quietly, her words startled Maisie. This was a common reaction to Mist’s unusual manner of walking softly. People rarely heard her approach.

  “I was just heading out,” Maisie said, flipping the lights back on. “But I did bake four extra sheets, plus you have the first four I put in, and the ones Betty made before that.” She waved a mitten-clad hand in the direction of the cooling gingerbread.

  “Wonderful,” Mist said. “And the oven is still warm?”

  Maisie nodded. “I turned it off a few minutes ago, after that last batch came out, but it’s still warm.”

  “I think I’ll do one more batch, then,” Mist said, setting the oven to the proper temperature again. “I want to go over tomorrow’s arrivals, anyway.”

  “Betty mentioned that all the guests are coming in on the same day, right? I hope they don’t all show up at the same time.” Maisie leaned against the kitchen doorway, fully bundled up in winter outerwear.

  Mist walked over to Maisie and gently guided her to the front hallway. “Don’t worry. Guests will arrive when they arrive, and Betty and I will be fine.” She picked up the registration book and cradled it against her chest. “However, I will worry about you if you don’t go home and get some rest. Both of you.”

  “Thanks,” Maisie said, hugging Mist. “Call me if you need anything. I’ll be at the shop all day.” She pulled the faux-fur hood of her jacket up over her head and left.

  Returning to the kitchen, Mist checked the preheated oven and slid four more trays of gingerbread in to bake. Making herself a cup of chamomile tea, she sat at the table and opened the registration book.

  The room assignments hadn’t been difficult this year. Since some of the guests had stayed at the hotel before, Mist was familiar with their preferences. Clara would want Room Sixteen, with its light, airy feel and view of the back courtyard. Her new gentleman friend would stay in t
he room next door, per Clara’s firm instructions. Mist had prepared both of those rooms already, putting a favorite Christmas quilt in Clara’s room, and an assortment of old train engines and cabooses in the other accommodation. Clara had mentioned her friend had a passion for model railroads. Mist paused to double check his name. Andrew.

  Professor Nigel Hennessy had been a guest before, but only on his own. Now that he would have family with him, the small room he’d stayed in before wouldn’t work. She’d assigned a suite of rooms that she’d used the year before for three sisters. This would allow the professor’s family to be close, yet have some space from each other.

  Mist continued to examine the list of names and room assignments. The room with the extra alcove would be perfect for Greta and Rolf Weber, who were traveling with their two newly adopted children, Hanna and Jo. Mist noted the crossed-out “e,” a result of a second conversation with Greta Weber, which clarified that both children were girls. ‘Jo’ was short for Josephine.

  This left Michael Blanton’s room, which was located right at the top of the stairs. He’d stayed in that room the year before and had requested it again. Mist felt a light flush creep up her neck as she remembered his most recent email. He’d indicated the same room would be smart, as he wouldn’t disturb other guests if he stayed up late. He wouldn’t need to pass their rooms and disrupt their sleep. Though Mist knew he often spent evenings in front of the fireplace, reading, she also hoped they’d have some time to visit. They’d grown closer over the last two Christmases. But, then again, Mist reminded herself, life had a way of changing unexpectedly. She couldn’t predict the direction their friendship would take any more than she could predict a smooth flow of arrivals the following day.

  Mist closed the book and returned it to the front desk. She checked the gingerbread sheets in the oven and, finding them ready, pulled them out and turned the oven off. Setting the coffee to brew in the morning, she turned out the kitchen lights and retired to her room. There was only one more thing to do at this point: get a decent night’s rest to prepare for the busy day ahead.