Last Vermont Christmas

Spread across the country, the three adult Marvin sisters are convening on the family home in Woodstock, Vermont for a two week Christmas gathering as they have traditionally done. Tradition is a big part of the family, especially around the holidays. Widowed now for three years, the eldest Megan, an executive chef, and her adolescent daughter Ivy will be flying in from their home in Austin, Texas, where they moved for Megan's now deceased husband's James' job, they probably staying in Woodstock otherwise despite the greater professional opportunities for Megan herself in Austin. While Megan likes what she does, she doesn't much like the owner of the restaurant where she works, although she is not mentally yet prepared to open her own restaurant. Middle sibling Bethany, a lawyer, has led what she considers a fairly bump-free, conservative life, she and her college professor husband George driving in from their home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Bethany is in the early stage of her first pregnancy, about which she will tell the family at an opportune time in the course of the two weeks. And the youngest Audrey has not told either of her sisters that she is not only no longer at college in Nashville, Tennessee pursuing a music degree, but that she had moved home penniless a few months ago, now getting odd jobs performing while she tries to figure out how truly to make it as a singer. She even had to sell her guitar for the bus fare back to Vermont. All their news gets placed on the back burner when their parents, Daniel and Peggy Marvin, inform everyone that Daniel is not only retiring from his job as a teacher, but that they are selling the house and moving into a condo in Arizona. While Audrey openly opposes this move - she enlisting their longtime neighbor Brandon, who is secretly in love with Audrey himself, to take subversive action for a sale not to occur - Bethany believes it's none of their business what their parents decide to do, with Megan quietly accepting the decision despite being the one the most steeped in family traditions, which means Christmas in that house. Things get more complicated when they all learn that one half of the partnership that has placed an offer on the house is Megan's high school sweetheart, Nash, who himself only recently moved back to Woodstock after living most of his adult life in southern California. The only reason Megan and Nash broke up is that he at the time didn't want to stay in Woodstock, while Megan had every intention to stay. Nash and his business partner in this purchase, the real estate agent Lane Castle, for who he has been doing renovations on some of her other listings, plan to flip the property after making the necessary upgrades. There is an immediate attraction between Megan and Nash all over again, and even though Ivy likes Nash and wants her mother to find happiness, Megan isn't sure if she can both overcome the thought of James, who she considered her soulmate, to move onto possible love with another man, and their current life situations being located on other ends of the country. Their relationship and the house purchase may be two sides of the same coin, with one affecting what happens with the other. Written by Huggo