My Own People Betrayed Me at My Engagement Barbecue, So I Took the Hill Back novel · Chapter 15 of 24
Chapter 15: Weihnachtsmarkt
The Weihnachtsmarkt filled the Marktplatz with wooden huts and strings of white lights.
It smelled of cinnamon and hot wine.
It was the second Saturday of December, and every family in Gillespie County stood in the cold with a paper cup.
A choir sang on the stage by the Nativity.
I walked in on Cade's arm in my father's hat and my mother's good wool coat, looking for my cousin.
Britta was not at any of the huts.
She was not by the choir or the roasted almonds or the big fir tree in the middle of the square.
Cade's hand slid inside my open coat and settled on the small of my back, over my sweater.
His thumb found a gap between my sweater and my jeans and pressed on bare skin.
I walked three huts down with that thumb moving in slow circles against my spine.
I forgot what I was looking for.
"Don't stop walking," he murmured.
"Then stop doing that."
"No."
At the front of the stage stood a single chair draped with a blue ribbon.
A card was tucked in the ribbon in my aunt's handwriting.
The card said Mathilde.
The choir was singing Stille Nacht.
Every head in the front rows turned toward the empty seat and then toward me.
I understood it in one look.
My aunt had told the whole market that I was coming to bless the baby.
She had saved me a chair to do it from.
She was not here to watch it happen, and she had not needed to be.
"Britta isn't coming," I said.
"No," Cade said.
"This is Mama's idea of a family reunion."
I walked up the aisle between the rows.
I took the card out of the ribbon and read it.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Own People Betrayed Me at My Engagement Barbecue, So I Took the Hill Back are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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