“Oh! I’m so glad you’re both here. My first best friend and my forever best friend.” Hannah draped an arm over the elf’s shoulder. “Noelle, this is my cousin Miriam. Miri, this is Noelle, the farm’s manager, my number one best ever person.”

The flip in Noelle’s stomach turned to a dive.

The elf was Miriam Blum. Miriam—the woman who had abandoned Carrigan’s and broken Cass’s and Hannah’s hearts—was in their kitchen, looking beautiful and vulnerable and devastated, making Noelle want to wrap her up in a blanket. She’d thought this day couldn’t suck more.

“I have to go deal with the cousins, Miri,” Hannah said, already walking back out the door, “but please don’t feel you need to talk to them before coffee. I’ll leave you in Noelle’s very capable hands.”

Noelle could read Hannah’s face, and it said, “Please take care of her right now, I have too much else to deal with.”

Hannah was an Organizer. She’d been running the Christmasland Inn for years, taking care of Cass as her health declined, and organizing all the Christmas Festival events. She was an unstoppable force with a clipboard and color-coded spreadsheets. If Hannah was delegating, it was because she was desperate for an assist.

For Hannah, the best friend she’d ever had, Noelle would continue to be pleasant to this woman. But Noelle had seen how the residents of Carrigan’s pined quietly but inexorably after Miriam, continuing to speak of her glowingly all these years after Miriam abandoned them, and she wasn’t interested in getting close to her. She had enough heartbreak for a lifetime, without chasing more.

“What are you doing awake?” she asked, her voice colder than it had been. She couldn’t believe she’d been flirting with Miriam Blum. “Didn’t you come in late last night?”

Miriam took a long drink before she said anything, not seeming to react to Noelle’s change in tone. Noelle waited, resting an elbow on the counter, popping a mini quiche into her mouth.

“I heard my mom is here,” Miriam finally managed.

This did not answer the question of why Miriam was awake, but it did bring up several more questions.

“You knew she was coming, right?” Noelle didn’t know all, or even most, of the story of Miriam’s mysterious long absence, but she knew something had happened with her father. Ziva, Miriam’s mother, was Hannah’s dad’s sister. She sometimes came to family events, though rarely with her husband, whom Cass and the extended Rosensteins all hated.

“One is never prepared for Ziva,” Miriam said, draining half of her gross chocolate coffee in one gulp. When she pulled the T-shirt off her head, a cascade of curls fell out. They were mesmerizing.