He grinned at the alarm on all our faces. Jack’s laughter filled the silence. “I’m just kidding. We’d never feed you a cow we named. The ribs were courtesy of an unmarked cow from the back pasture. She was ready to go. It was her time.”
A few bouts of ruckus laughter filled the room, interspersed with soft, undecided chuckling. I decided to eat my mashed potatoes first.
“I’m kidding. Alright, we’ve got something special to tell you about. When my wife, Sandy, and I started taking over this week of Christmas, we began to notice a theme. It became all about the kids. Which is wonderful. But we didn’t want parents to just be here, watching their kids experience the magic of Christmas. We wanted this place to bring back a little magic for them, as well. So, a few years ago, we came up with an idea. This will be the third year we’ve done our Christmas bingo, and it’s been a hit every time.”
He held up a card. “Here’s how it works. Everybody will get a bingo card. In fact…” He looked around the room until he spotted his wife. “Sandy! Would you come grab this stack of cards and start passing them out? You all probably met my better half, Sandy, when you checked in, but just in case, she’s the woman who knows all the things, if you ever have any questions.” Sandy bowed theatrically before she reached the stage and took the stack of cards he handed her. “Thank you, my dear. Alright, on the cards are twenty-four things—plus a free space—for you to do during your week's stay. The cards are all the same. It’s more like a choose-your-own-adventure bingo. There is an adult version and a child version. Most overlap, so you can do things together as a family, but the adult version has a handful of extra events, for reasons I’ll tell you about in a second.”
“We are so doing that.” Chloe’s eyes sparkled with excitement.
“Have fun,” I retorted.
Her face scrunched, and she looked like she was about to say something but was interrupted by Jack.
“Alright, for the adults, there’s a small prize for anybody who gets a bingo. That means five squares in a row in any direction. As soon as you get a bingo, bring your card to the lodge for your prize. Same with the kids. But if you get a blackout–that’s every square crossed off and completed–before the Christmas dinner on December 25th, your card will be entered to win an all-expense-paid trip for two on a cruise to Mexico this winter. For a whole week.”
A small gasp overtook the crowd. That even had my ears perking up. New England winters were long and dark…a winter trip to somewhere sunny with a beach had all of us interested. When a bingo card made it down to our table, I took one, though only out of curiosity. Most of the card was full of simple Christmas activities, things that were easy to do with kids, like sledding, building a snowman, or decorating a gingerbread house. But my eye caught on the more problematic squares: polar plunge, mistletoe kiss, milk a cow by hand, barn dance, etc. I leaned back in my seat, having seen enough. I’d just save for ten years and pay for my own vacation like a respectable adult.
“Now,” Jack was saying, “I’m going to ask my lovely wife to send around our calendar of events. Most of the activities on this list are available through the lodge. For example, we always host a barn dance at some point during the week. We’ll have several gingerbread house and Christmas cookie competitions. We can show you how to roast a chestnut by the fire. And we’ll have sleigh rides to the big hill for sledding. Keep your calendar handy, and getting a bingo will be pretty easy. Blackout…now…that’s another story. There are a few things you have to do on your own. And some things–looking at you, polar bear plunge–sound pretty terrible.” He did an exaggerated full-body shiver that made the crowd laugh.
Jack leaned down toward the audience, cupping his ear toward somebody who had yelled a question. He repeated it into the microphone. “Polar bear plunge is where you go from the hot tub to a full jump into the pond behind the lodge, and then back to the hot tub. There’s a hot tub located just behind the lodge with a convenient pathway straight to the pond.”
If it was the pond I noticed on my drive in, it was completely frozen over. I shivered just thinking about it. Jack went on, explaining a few more of the rules while I stirred the mashed potatoes on my plate. I had no desire to make this week any more of a “thing” than it already was. My body had to be here, but that didn’t mean I had to engage more than necessary. Now, thankfully, with the whole boyfriend bit, I wouldn’t have to do any of it. I patted my lying little self on the back for that one.
“Hey, hot guy, 5:00,” Chloe whispered across the table. She was seated facing the buffet table behind me while I was facing the stage.
“If that’s Glenn, I’m going to kill you.”
“He looks like he might work here. Holy cow. He looks just like Jack. That’s got to be his son. Look at him.”
“What? No! Stop being so obvious!”
“Our table's out of butter.”
“What?”
She threw me a salty grin. “He clearly works here. I’m going to ask him for more butter. Be right back.”
Before I could stop her—not that I could have done anything to stop her except fling myself across the table to grab her arm—she scampered off. Kill me now. I refused to look behind me. I had a boyfriend, for crying out loud.
Okay, I heard it, but still.
While I sat there, painfully unaware of what she might be saying to the poor man, I kept myself busy being a docile mother figure to Chloe’s monstrous three-year-olds. Jack seemed very comfortable with a microphone in his hand and began sharing a few corny Christmas jokes. I picked up my fork only to put it back down again, then wiped Ivy’s face with a napkin. What was taking Chloe so long? Was she getting his number? Heaven forbid, was she going to point me out to him?
From across the table, Ben nudged my foot, pulling me out of my panicked musing. “Um, is there a reason my wife has been talking to some mountain-man version of Bradley Cooper for the last five minutes?” he asked, his eyes plastered somewhere behind me.
I stilled. I was tempted to ignore him as he was probably just trying to be funny. But the Bradley Cooper part had me casually scanning the room before darting a quick glance behind me by the doorway. Chloe was standing with her back to me, talking animatedly to a man wearing a flannel shirt with his arms folded. A Bradley Cooper dressed in flannel? But upon closer inspection, the celebrity lookalike in question looked an awful lot like—
A gasp, quick and painful, shot out of me as I blinked my eyes a few times, wondering if I was dreaming. Because there was no way—NO WAY—this could be happening right now. The world was too big for a coincidence this horrible.
And yet…
The man dressed in red flannel rolled up to his forearms, jeans with just enough holes that the teenage guys would think he was one of them, and a stupid gray beanie on his head, was none other than Miles Taylor.
SEVEN
“It's delightful when your imaginations come true, isn't it?”
L.M. Montgomery - Anne of Green Gables
A few things hit me at that moment. First: Jack Taylor was a charismatic delight of a person, but he clearly sucked at getting to know someone. Other than inquiring into what I did for a living, he hadn’t asked me anything of value about my personal life during our little tractor ride this afternoon. Not even where I lived. We could have figured all of this out before I ever reached the lodge, which would have left me plenty of time to fake a horrific stomach virus. I could have been in my car driving home as we speak.