Early on Christmas Eve, after four nights in a room that was too small and too drafty for someone whose role was evolving, I moved down the hall to an unlocked double with a cushioned window seat. Relocation was easy: I hung my orange sweaterdress and my brown velvet suit-the wedding, and now funeral, outfit-in the closet, and washed my inadequate supply of underwear in the chipped pedestal sink. I noticed that my new bed was rumpled but didn't give that detail much thought. Chambermaids were seasonal at the Inn; probably one of the waylaid wedding guests, wanting to be no trouble at all, had straightened the bedclothes a bit haphazardly before departing.

Within hours I learned that this pretty room with its lake view and its yellow chintz headboard was unlocked and disheveled for a reason, which revealed itself at midnight in the moonlit silhouettes of lanky Chip and bouffanted Gretel embracing at the foot of my squatter's bed. I watched as silently as they had tiptoed over my threshold, then snapped on my reading lamp and p.r.o.nounced calmly-relishing Gretel's imminent mortification-"Excuse me? Kids?"

Gretel managed to m.u.f.fle her scream and clamp Chip even tighter. He swore softly and broke free. "It's not what it looks like," Gretel sputtered. The loneliness and insomnia, she explained in her patronizing fashion, had driven them to a kind of waking sleepwalking. She had slipped away to the Inn, where there were longer hallways for pacing than in the Berry quarters, and they'd chanced upon each other outside this very door.

I wanted to say, Yeah, I caught a glimpse of that loneliness and insomnia practically poking through his pajama bottoms. Instead I said, "I understand. It's a terrible time."

"Yes," said Gretel, bridelike in a white peignoir set. "Exactly. The nights particularly."

Chip remained mute. He turned his attention to the k.n.o.b at the end of the drapery cord as if he were not a party to the discussions and not trysting with his mekhutonim. I propped myself up prettily with a second pillow and said-not out of charity, but to let them know the room was mine to give away-"Look, we're all adults. Why don't I go back to my old room and let you two have this one?"

Gretel, of course, couldn't allow me the last word. "Will you be moving back to this room tomorrow?"

"Gee, Gretel," I said. "Do you suppose that in a virtually empty hotel I could spend my last night in a deluxe room, and you and Chip could find another place to talk?"

"Oh," she said. "Probably."

I made a fairly elaborate show of packing my belongings, surveying the bathroom, and collecting my damp underpants from the towel bar. I murmured to Gretel as I left, my two dresses held high on their hangers as a curtain between me and Chip, "You're using something, I hope."

She stammered that if she understood my comment, then they certainly didn't need "something" for talking and consoling each other, no matter how it looked to me.

"Fine," I said.

She signaled to Chip that we girls needed a word alone: Two minutes? There, the bathroom would be fine.

"Tonight is Christmas Eve, the saddest, most horrible Christmas Eve in either of our lives," Gretel began as soon as the bathroom door closed, "which I know is not your holiday, but to us-"

I said, "You don't have to make up excuses for being with him, as if I wouldn't understand."

She looked perplexed. What didn't I understand-Christian tradition or popularity?

I tried again. "Do you think I've never felt the way you feel? Or is it that I need you to explain the meaning of Christmas?"

Her condescending smile faded. "I only meant that I hope you understand what's at stake here, because if we ever got caught by our parents-"

I said angrily, "You know, maybe they'd be upset for a good reason. Do you think this is a good idea?"

Gretel sagged. "We're desperate," she whispered.

"So you scouted out this room and set up a midnight rendezvous?"

"We spend time together here during the day," Gretel said. "So far, no one's come looking for us."

I didn't let her off the hook immediately. "How old are you?" I demanded.

"Twenty."

"And you think you can pull this off without getting anyone upset?"

"No one will know!" she cried.

I shrugged as if to say, I certainly hope you're right, little girl.

"You'll be very, very quiet going back to your room?" she coaxed.

I said, "I think your timing couldn't be worse, but if you're worried I'm going to squeal, then don't."

"You won't tell my brothers, either?"

"Why can't you tell them? They don't seem like the kind of big brothers who would beat up the man who seduced their baby sister."

"The man who loves their baby sister," she corrected, smiling to signal, woman to woman, that this was no garden-variety seduction: If things went her way, she could wake up engaged.

In the light, I could see the full effect of her getup: white chiffon, with satin ribbons crisscrossing her bosom for a Grecian-G.o.ddess effect. What kind of advance planning, I wondered, put such a trousseau item in the drawer of a college soph.o.m.ore?

"Chip is so miserable," she confided, "and I think this will make him happy. I mean, as happy as he can be, considering Robin. And even though it looks as if we're rushing into this, if you think about it, we've known each other our whole lives." She offered me a chummy smile and a half-hug. "Thank goodness it was only you."

We heard a knock, then a pathetic "Gretel?" from the bathroom.

"You'd better let him out," I said.

I dreamed that Robin and Nelson's wedding went on in the cathedral where my sister was married. Behind the altar, a cellarlike pa.s.sageway led to my father's store, where the immediate families plus me reconvened for a sit-down meal. There was no joy or laughter. Something we couldn't name was wrong.

I had learned that no matter how much warmth had been generated in the kitchen the night before, the emotional temperature reset itself to bleak by morning. I was up before anyone else, flipping banana-walnut pancakes and frying bacon in honor of Kris's birthday. As always, he appeared first; he needed a shave and was wearing wrinkled summer clothes, as if he'd exhausted his clean laundry and dug these out. I told him to find a table and close his eyes.

I shut off the dining room lights and set his pancakes down with a flourish. One pink birthday candle flickered in a star-shaped pat of b.u.t.ter, which was centered in a wreath of green and red gumdrops.

"How'd you know?" he asked.

"Nelson mentioned it to Stan."

"Who's Stan?"

"The butcher at Foodland."

Kris cut a neat triangle from the stack. I said, "Aren't you going to blow out the candle?"

He chewed the large bite and said, "Delicious. And, no, I look better in candlelight."

"But the b.u.t.ter's melting."

He pushed the candle a centimeter deeper.

"No wish?" I said.

He shook his head almost imperceptibly.

I said softly, "May I?"

He blinked, waiting.

"May today be as ... decent as it can be," I said. "And may future birthdays not remind you of Christmas nineteen seventy-four."

His knife and fork didn't move.

"Kris?"

He mumbled an apology and rushed out of the room. I dropped into the adjacent chair and reflexively burst into tears-for Robin, for Kris, for me on my fifth day as mourner without portfolio, for a Christmas that was sadder than I could have imagined, even in a gloomy off-season hotel. After a minute or two, I heard footsteps behind me.

"Do you believe?" Kris asked, trying to be jocular, his eyes red-rimmed and his voice unsteady, "that in this century parents would name their Christmas baby after Kris Kringle?"

I sat up straighter and said-in the same spirit of ignoring what had just happened-"It could be worse. Kris is a nice name."

"The choices, as they saw it, were Nicholas, Noel, or Kris." He sat down and replaced his napkin on his knees. "The first was rejected as sounding too Italian. 'Noel,' while unmistakably Christmasy, was eliminated for being the name of a famous h.o.m.os.e.xual-"

"They told you that?"

"Not in so many words. They said the only other Noel they'd heard of was Noel Coward, and they wouldn't want people to think I was named after him. So it came down to Kris." He closed his eyes for a long few moments, then blew out what remained of the candle. He opened his eyes and said, "Sorry."

"For what?"

"You were holding up better than everyone else put together-and now look what I did."

I said, "It wasn't you. Any little thing would have set me off. It was overdue. We both were."

Kris exhaled and rubbed his face.

I said, "And then there's me-named after a dead teenage aunt." We forced bleary smiles.

He picked up his fork and knife. "You're joining me, aren't you?"

I didn't think I could get pancakes past the lump in my throat, but I said yes. Did he think I'd let him eat alone on this of all days? I took a few steps toward the kitchen, but stopped to say, "Anyone would be depressed when his birthday falls the day before his brother's fiancee's funeral. You don't have to try to be cheerful just because I stuck a candle in your breakfast."

He said, "I wish I were that unselfish. I wish I could say it was all for Robin. But it's not. What got to me was-" he stopped, then gestured: the plate; the effort; me. "I wasn't expecting a thing from anybody."

I touched his shoulder. He hunched it upward until my hand was pressed to his unshaved cheek. It seemed a brave act, and one that deserved addressing.

Jeff arrived after lunch, on furlough from Mary Hitchc.o.c.k Hospital. We'd been told he was consumed by the belief that if he had driven faster or slower by three seconds-hadn't stopped for that yellow light at the Jack in the Box, or hadn't pa.s.sed that horse trailer on Route 84-the deadly, swerving Chrysler would have missed his sister.

Accompanying him was his girlfriend, Bonnie Valluzzi, who had not been romantically entrenched enough to be invited to the wedding, but had rushed to Jeff's bedside the minute she'd learned of the accident and spent two nights sleeping in the nurses' lounge. Reportedly, she had been inspired to switch her major to nursing as soon as she could transfer to a four-year college, to forgive the wedding snub, to retract the breakup it had provoked.

I was silently celebrating the absence of parents at the table and my rightful role as carver and server. The Fifes had stayed in their room, believing that Jeff needed a few hours with the young people, and the senior Berrys had driven to Brattleboro to visit Karl's father in a nursing home. We drank beer from the gaudy Germanic stein collection and sang "Happy Birthday" to Kris, with Gretel harmonizing. Even Chip and Jeff joined in, smiling from time to time. Gretel, like a mole for the older generation, proposed we say grace, but Nelson killed the idea. "Grace? That's just what I feel like saying these days-thanks, G.o.d."

Kris stood and said, "Well, then, I'm going to make a speech." After a deep breath and an exaggerated exhale he said, "Today, friends and relatives, is my twenty-third birthday. As we all know, I've had better." He raised his stein, looked directly at me, and said, "But, still, I'm grateful for who is here."

Nelson said, on the downswing of everyone's hoisting, "Quite the toastmaster, Kristofer. Hope you were going to do better than that as my best man." Instantly, Kris reached across to squeeze Nelson's shoulder. "Buddy," he said softly. "I promise. Someday."

We ate the ham, a Grand Marnier sweet potato souffle, a wreath of steamed broccoli with cherry-tomato ornaments, shoestring onion rings in a milk batter from Alice's Restaurant Cookbook, and a three-layer chocolate birthday cake. As I stood over the ham, ma.s.saging the Inn's best knife against its carving stone, I apologized for what might be seen as an inappropriately festive meal. My words, I knew, were unnecessary because I had discovered in my five days of consolation cooking that life went on: Gretel seduced Chip; Bonnie Valluzzi switched her Christmas plans and her major; Nelson received guys from high school, who arrived looking terrified, as if their parents had forced the sympathy call, then left having played boisterous hockey on the lake.

"It's Christmas," said Gretel in her headmistress fashion, "and it's Kris's birthday. You did a lovely job with the food and the presentation." She turned to address the newcomers, Jeff and Bonnie. "Natalie's a professional chef."

Bonnie said brightly, "Here?"

I said, No, I was just helping out.

"Where do you work?" she asked.

I said I'd quit my job the month before and would be looking for another post as soon as I returned to Boston.

"My dad has a restaurant in New Haven," said Bonnie. "Valluzzi's."

"It's pizza," said Jeff.

"I could give you his number. He knows a lot of restaurant owners and could make some calls."

"Thanks," I said, "but I'm going to exhaust the Boston possibilities first."

"My dad has an inn in Vermont," said Kris quietly.

I didn't answer him directly, but smiled as if it were a stray, rhetorical compliment. Of course I had thought about the hole in their lineup, the unmentioned job of head chef in high season, and had decided it would be a terrible mistake. I couldn't relax around Ingrid, and the food that pleased her would never please me. With these ingredients, these recipes, I had stopped auditioning for the role, stopped thinking about cuisine with roots along the Rhine. Tonight I was the executive chef instead of the visiting hand in the kitchen, and within the limitations of a huge smokehouse ham, I had cooked the way I'd been taught.

After dessert and coffee, the members of the party excused themselves in twos. Bonnie said she'd take Jeff upstairs, along with plates of this unusual and original food for his parents, and water for everyone's pills. Gretel said she'd get Chip settled and would return in about forty-five minutes to help with the cleanup.

" 'Get settled'?" Kris repeated. "What does that mean, exactly?"

Chip, for once, answered first, avoiding my knowing stare. "I need my leg elevated, and I can't do it without help."

"And it's really, really hard for him to fall asleep, Kristofer," Gretel said, in a tone that p.r.o.nounced her brother the least sensitive man in New England. "I read aloud to him and it lulls him to sleep."

"You never do that for me," her oldest brother said.

"I'll do it," cooed Kris, with a few comic strokes to Nelson's brow.

"Poor Gretel," I said. "Having to explain herself to a panel of brothers."

Apparently, it took more than one midnight mediation session to turn Gretel into my ally. She took Chip's good elbow and guided him between the vast number of empty tables, away from her inquisitors.

"Good night," we called in a chorus, gaining only a toss of Gretel's stiff hair and a raised hand from Chip.

"You don't suppose ..." Nelson began, as soon as they were out of earshot.

"I'd bet on it," said Kris. "Tonight's the night. Or else she'll have to work it out long-distance."

I said, "Unless she's already worked it out."

With that I turned my attention to collecting silverware, knowing I had their full attention.