Time for You to Come Home for Christmas

For the second Christmas in a row, Boston bank employee Katherine Moss has decided that she and her preteen son Will won't go back to the military town of Provincetown. Virginia, her hometown, for the holidays. The memories are still too strong there of her now-deceased husband, musician Tyler Moss, who like many in Provincetown was once in the military but was killed in a traffic accident two years earlier. Kat and Will don't talk to each other about Tyler, each wanting to shield the other from the painful memories associated with his death. Not returning home is also despite Kat once having dreamed about taking over the family business, Winter's Pastries, a bakery where she and Tyler spent much of their time together when they were dating. At the last minute, Kat changes her mind, feeling it is indeed time to go home. Upon their return to Provincetown, Kat discovers that not only is the annual Christmas Snowball Dance still happening, but also that Tyler's former band-mate, Maggie Rhodes, has resurrected their trio with someone she found by posting an ad through the VA Centre to fill in for Tyler as they perform at the dance like the trio had done in the past. The hired musician is Jack Sutherland, a vet like Tyler whom Kat and Will had earlier met on the train to town, he having never set foot in Provincetown before but had been summoned by an unknown friend. The human connection made between Kat and Jack, the first for Kat since Tyler, is punctuated with Jack's true mission in Provincetown: to return a memento to someone he met only briefly years ago and never knew a name, only that the person saved his life.—Huggo