Christmas at Carriage Hill. Carla Neggers

moved as a young woman, pregnant with their child, not knowing if her RAF pilot would ever return to her. Decades later, Duncan McCaffrey had traced his birth mother to Knights Bridge and bought her crumbling house when she moved into an assisted-living facility. Duncan had died suddenly, leaving his only son, Dylan, in the dark about Grace and Knights Bridge. Two years later, Dylan had arrived in Knights Bridge himself to sort out what was behind his father’s mysterious purchase of a property in the out-of-the-way little Massachusetts town. In the process, he fell in love with his Knights Bridge neighbor, Olivia Frost.

      Funny how life turns out, Alexandra thought as her driver continued down the narrow road to a classic center-chimney house with creamy clapboards and a cheerful blue front door. A hand-painted sign decorated with a cluster of blossoming chives announced they had arrived at The Farm at Carriage Hill. She knew from Olivia and Dylan it was the last house on the road, which had once led into the Swift River Valley towns but now dead-ended at a gate leading into the reservoir watershed and ultimately to the reservoir itself. The house was situated among established gardens and mature shade trees, their branches bare and gray with winter, and tall evergreens drooping with snow. Across snow-covered fields a hill—Carriage Hill, presumably—rose against the blue sky.