“Not while you’re still married,” she said, honestly.

Ziva nodded.

Miriam wanted to process the end of her engagement and the future she’d envisioned in Charleston as well as the conversation she’d just had with her mother, but Carrigan’s kept distracting her. They were in the thick of the Christmas Festival now. It seemed like most of New York had shown up to get their trees. Miriam had trouble believing their business had declined by half, although Hannah assured her it was true.

There was so much to prep needed to make the guest rooms ready that Miriam wondered what they would have done if she weren’t there. In between it all, she and Hannah tried to fit in brainstorming sessions about Carrigan’s All Year, often during walk and talks or while changing linens. Who would they contact about hosting drag balls? Which area rabbis needed to know they were available for b’nai mitzvah parties? Should they take a break in August or offer day camps for kids who needed some wilderness time before school started?

She met with Elijah and Jason, who were the beating heart of Advent’s social scene (such as it was), about what events people would show up to. She fielded crisis calls from her Old Ladies with one hand while updating cost analyses with the other. She was nonstop from dawn to midnight, and in between, she should have been sleeping.

But when she lay in bed at night, all she saw was Noelle.

In stolen moments, Miriam tried to make art. Her Instagram was full of pine trees, instead of the anything she actually sold to make money. She tried setting up at a back desk in the library but ended up reading. She tried making a space in an unused storage room in Noelle’s work shed, but Noelle kept appearing there, sexy and annoying. Her ass was very distracting.

Miriam finally landed in the barn, setting up a worktable next to the reindeer pens, with a lot of half-finished concept drawings spread out on top. She told herself it would be different if she had all her pieces from Charleston. Then she could finish work she’d already planned. Those items were in limbo, because they’d been stored behind Tara’s house while Miriam worked on the warehouse renovations. Tara wouldn’t let professional art movers onto her property to pack anything for shipping. Miriam couldn’t hold that little pettiness against her.

So, Miriam told herself, she was also in limbo—but she knew it was an excuse. The inn had no shortage of weird, junky antiques, and neither did the surrounding towns. She was just missing her spark.