The Christmas Cat on Maple Street

She came home to sell a house. She stayed because a cat kept bringing her the truth.Delia Sawicki puts a number on other people's worst days for a living. Nineteen years of fires, floods and hurricanes, and she has never once stayed for the rebuild.She comes back to Bright's Landing three weeks before Christmas with a plan that takes nine days: sell her father's house, settle him somewhere safe, and get out before anyone brings up the fire that took the town's opera house the winter she left.Then a stray cat with one folded ear takes up residence on her doormat.He will not come inside. He will not answer to any of the three names this town has given him. And he keeps bringing her things - a spool of old wire, a scorched fuse, a door nobody has opened in twenty-two years.The county will level the Ryba Opera House on the fifth of January. The man rebuilding it by hand is the man Delia left behind. And she is the only person in four counties who knows how to save it - if she is willing to say out loud what really happened that December, and to let the truth cost her the one thing she has finally started to want.A warm, snowbound novel about coming home, telling the truth late, and a cat who will not be moved.Small-town Christmas romance - second chances - found family - closed door - a heroine in her forties - a happy ending - a complete standalone