One December Night

One December Night 

A Whisper Shore Christmas Story

By Melissa Tagg

© Copyright 2014, Melissa Tagg.

This e-short is a work of fiction. Names, characters, dialogue, and incidents are from the author's 

imagination. Any resemblance to real events or to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Cover design and layout by Jones House Creative 

Pennilynn Baxter answered the phone at 4:57 p.m., right when she should've been turning off the library's last light and locking the door for the night.

At 5:18, when she should've been changing into the cocktail dress that'd cost a week's paycheck, she instead threw an overnight bag into the back seat of her sensible little Honda and checked her gas gauge. Good, enough to get to Whisper Shore.

And now at 6:56, when she should've been saying yes to Graham Forrester as he slid a ring over her finger, she stood in front of the two-story Victorian she used to love in the town she used to adore.

And pretended to be brave.

The house stared her down from behind shuttered windows, its rickety front porch stretching like a toothy smirk. Moonlight glinted off the snow that capped the roof and traced the porch railing.

"Penn, I know I said to call and tell me all about it after Graham proposed, but I didn't mean right after."

Penn blinked at the sound of Ellie's voice over her phone--their second call of the night. Only this time Penn was the one with news. And not the news her childhood friend expected. The old-fashioned streetlamp casting a glow over the curb buzzed and flickered overhead.

She closed her car door, then thought again, reopened it, and reached for her ice scraper. Wind tangled through the hair that'd slipped free from her barrette. "Ellie--"

"You're calling me from the restaurant restroom, aren't you? Are you looking at your hand in the mirror? Literally for weeks after Tim and I got engaged, every single time I walked past a mirror--"

"He didn't propose." The streetlamp blinked once, twice, then dark settled around her.

"He didn't." Her friend's voice fell flat, disappointment lurking around its edges. Understandable, perhaps, considering the holding pattern that was Penn and Graham's relationship. "This is getting ridiculous. After two years of dating--"

A laugh pushed out as Penn moved away from her car, ice scraper in hand, and started down the sidewalk to the house, snow crunching underfoot. "He didn't propose because he didn't get a chance, Ell. I couldn't go out to dinner after that call of yours."

Ellie's elastic pause pulled taut before she snapped the question. "Where are you right now?"

Penn burrowed her chin into the high collar of her belted brown coat and stopped at the bottom of the porch steps. "You wouldn't be using that disapproving schoolteacher tone if you didn't already have a good idea."

"You came all the way up to Whisper Shore? Tonight? It's been snowing all day."

"I'm a Michigan native. I was driving in snow before I had my first crush." On a real person, that is. She'd fallen for Gilbert Blythe the first time she read Anne of Green Gables at age nine.