If Terri had come to this decision a few months ago, Laurel might not have dashed back to Middledip. Perhaps she’d have waited to see whether Rea and Daisy would need her at all, or whether Terri being nearby would have been enough.

She wouldn’t have met Grady again, falling for him and putting him in his current no-win position. She’d have missed out on a lot of joy … but also this intolerable sensation of looming loss.

Chapter Eighteen

As if the first day of Middledip Christmas Fair had been too successful, the second day fell flat. Grady could see why. Daisy wasn’t the only one who’d sold all of her stock on Saturday. With only the picked-over remains of knitted bobble hats and wooden toys to buy, visitors were spending more time in the coffee shop than around the stalls, and stallholders began to pack up early. The inches of sparkling white snow visible through the windows down one side of the village hall made everyone want to be outside.

He didn’t mind. His gourds weren’t cheap but he’d sold more than half what he’d brought, including five items to the woman with the shop who’d approached him yesterday. Remembering Laurel’s remonstrations about underselling himself, he’d refused to cut his prices any further than he had for the show and had expected the woman to fade away. Instead, she’d grinned and arranged to visit his workshop on a buying trip in the New Year. She’d invited him out to dinner, too, but he’d smiled and said he was involved with someone.

That ‘someone’ had been on his mind yesterday evening, even as he’d eaten an enormous Indian meal, sunk a few beers and caught up with old mates from his days as assistant manager at Port Manor Hotel, before he turned Grady Auto Art into a full-time job. He’d called her this morning but the arrival of a customer had made him cut the call short. Now, his heart skipped and his hands began to pack his remaining gourds into boxes. As the art show wouldn’t need to be dismantled until Monday evening, he was free to dump his boxes in his truck in the car park. Soon his boots were leaving prints in the snow that drifted down like white feathers as he strode away from the village hall, which looked as if it wore a woolly bonnet, and towards The Nookery.

The shortest route between the village hall and Great End was across the playing field. Suddenly, he felt the ghost of teenaged Laurel walking beside him, leaving behind the party lights and starting for home on a frozen evening. Faltering when she noticed the group around a bench but then refusing to be cowed. Spending the rest of her life wishing she’d turned back …