—Jean
Prologue
THE CAR JOLTED ONTO THE ROAD IN A SOFT GLOW OF LIGHT, sliding a little over the ice-packed snow. Mike gave Bella a dirty look from his position in the front passenger seat. One of his hands curled around the shoulder strap of his seat belt, dark brown on black, dimly lit by the dashboard lights. “Do you always have to drive like that?”
“Better a few minor bumps than a speeding ticket, O Lead-Footed One,” Cassie reminded him from the back seat of the old VW Beetle. “As I recall, you cost us an hour’s delay and just under a hundred dollars, the last time you drove.”
“Whereas you refuse to learn how to drive,” Bella quipped, glancing at her companion through the rearview mirror. Cassie’s fingers were busy with a wad of saffron-orange yarn and a golden crochet hook, her attention on her task and not on the road ahead. She looked over at Mike and smiled. “Don’t worry, Mike. We only have another two miles to go. Besides, cars are much more comfortable than camels. Be grateful we’re living in the modern era.”
A light in the distance made Mike crane his head that way. “Look, a small town. Probably with a motel. Why can’t we ever stay at a motel? It’s not as if I’m asking for a five-star hotel, you know.”
Cassie answered him. “We go where we are needed, we stay where we are welcome, and we do what we must. When you follow the Way, you must follow the path that it dictates.”
“Thank you, Ms. Buddhist,” he quipped. “You just love to go all Zen on me, don’t you?”
The blonde in the backseat merely smiled and flipped her crocheting over, starting on the next row. The three rode in silence for a little while more. Around them, the landscape was lit with an eerie orange-gray glow. It was faint, but the refracted light from that town in the distance was mingling oddly with what little sunlight made it through the thick cloud cover.
Small flakes had already been swirling down out of the sky like granules of sugar on steroids. They now grew to the size of bleached cornflakes, obscuring the vision of the three travelers with disturbing quickness, until it was hard to see more than a hundred feet ahead. The tires slipped on the powder that was accumulating on the packed snow, sending the car skidding sideways.
Mike yelped and clutched at the handle fastened over the upper edge of his door. “Prophet, save us! Can’t you drive any more carefully than that?”
“Oh, you fuss over nothing,” Cassie soothed him as Bella corrected the vehicle’s skid, her attention firmly on her driving. “She has it well in hand!”
Mike shook his head, still clutching the panic-grip over the door with one dark-skinned hand. “To quote Ebenezer Scrooge: ‘I am mortal, and liable to fall!’”
“Hah hah, very funny. We’re not exactly on a mountainside, Michael, nor staring out a Victorian window,” Bella reminded him, her mouth twisted wryly. Since they were out of danger, she was free to speak again. “We’re in the middle of Iowa. Flat Iowa, no less.”
“Nowhere, Iowa,” he muttered. “And those ditches are six feet deep, if you haven’t noticed.”
“If we were nowhere, then we wouldn’t be here, because there wouldn’t be a here to be,” Bella stated.
In the backseat, Cassie pouted and muttered, “Rats. You beat me to it.”
“And yes, I noticed the depth of the ditches.” Downshifting, Bella carefully turned into a driveway marked by a snow-powdered, ornately carved sign reading “Bethel’s Inn—Welcome!” She smiled as she guided the car up the drive. The snow wasn’t packed down on the driveway as it had been on the road; the bumper of the rounded car pushed it up in chunks, broke it to either side, and plowed them a path up to the gingerbread-trimmed farmhouse. “Well. Here we are. Time to get going.”
“More than get going,” Cassie said, freeing a hand from her project to point past Mike’s shoulder. “Look.”
Two pickup trucks sat at what looked like hastily parked angles mere feet from the covered front porch. Others had arrived ahead of them. From the way the truck lights were still shining on the front windows of the house, it didn’t look like their owners were the polite type. Indeed, despite the swirling snowstorm hissing its flakes around them, they could hear shouting from somewhere within the farmhouse.
One
“NO. NO, NO, NO…NOT THIS!” RACHEL STARED IN DISMAY at the small television set perched under the cupboard containing her willowware plates. “Not this, on top of everything else…”
The weather report shifted from the weekend to the ten-day forecast, ignoring her pleas. They had eight guests planned to arrive for the Christmas holidays, but with the sudden shift in the jet stream overnight, a huge blizzard was now headed directly their way, rather than bathing the states to the north. Without those eight guests, she and her fiancé wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage at the end of the month, and the country inn that had been in Steven’s family for four generations would fail. She stared at the longer forecast, noting with dismay that snow was predicted all the way up through Christmas Night.
The weatherman was cheerfully relating to his viewers that they were definitely going to have a “white Christmas.” Rachel didn’t find his prognostication the least bit cheering. She flinched when the phone rang, and shifted to pick up the receiver. Sure enough, it was Mrs. Terwilliger, calling to cancel her and her husband’s arrival. Opening the day planner, Rachel scratched out the couple’s names, feeling depression closing in around her.
Within five minutes, the phone rang again. Billy Platz was calling to let her know that he and his two brothers weren’t going to make it; they were stuck at an airport farther north, snowed in and unlikely to go anywhere for a long while. Her hands shook a little as she marked out those names. Three names were left. Mary, Joseph, and Maggie Stoutson; Mary was old Bill Pargeter’s granddaughter. Rachel didn’t think Joseph would want to travel quite this far in the coming weather with a three-year-old. She flinched when the phone rang again, but it wasn’t the Stoutsons, thankfully. Just her future mother-and father-in-law, calling to wish her and their son a quick Merry Christmas before boarding their ship for a holiday cruise in the Caribbean.
Rachel managed to get through the phone call without betraying her inner fears. As soon as she gave an upbeat farewell and hung up the phone, however, she shuddered with the weight of responsibility. It wasn’t her fault that the old farmhouse had been partially damaged by a passing tornado. Nor that the insurance company had tried to declare bankruptcy, leaving not only the Bethel Inn but many other homes and businesses in the lurch in the legal tangle that had caused. Nor was it their fault that the estimated costs had grown when the contractors discovered dry rot in some of the main support beams last autumn, requiring extensive repairs.
It was her and Steve’s fault for deciding to take out a mortgage on the house, in order to finance those repairs, yes…but it wasn’t her fault that Mr. Thomas Harrod was such a tight-fisted Scrooge when it came to making payments on time, to the last penny. The Inn was profitable; the old house had just run into a bad patch of luck. That was all. It was also more than enough to put the two of them teetering on the brink of ruin. Stress and worry had become a daily part of their lives, and Rachel just wished it would all go away.
The door to the mudroom opened. Her fiancé stepped inside, balancing two pails of milk in his hands. Snow still dusted his light brown hair, though he had removed his boots and overcoat in the mudroom. Setting the covered pails on the counter, he started to grin at her. His smile faltered, seeing her expression. “What’s wrong?”