It was her cider that had first made him realize he was in love with her. They had met in college in business class. He had offered to buy her a cup of coffee and chat in his dorm room, and she had countered with an offer of home-brewed cider in her apartment. An offer that he had ended up accepting several times. The spices she used reminded him of her eyes, cinnamon-warm and nutmeg-bright. Their courtship had progressed slowly, since she had accepted an internship for two years at a hotel down in California after getting her MBA, with a minor in the hospitality industry. But Steve had been willing to be patient.
Stress over their finances had dampened some of their prewedding enthusiasm, and certainly curbed their original, pre-tornado plans for a better wedding. Inching his way across a snow-obscured road, Steve just wanted to get back to her. But there were two young fools somewhere out here. He couldn’t leave them to freeze to death.
His feet found the edge of the ditch, blanketed into a mere dimple by the drifting snow. The moment he felt the curve, he shifted to the left, crowbar in one hand, the other tugging Joey behind him. It didn’t take more than another two minutes to find the truck, though at first he couldn’t make out what he was seeing; tilted firmly on its side, Dave’s black pickup sat under an obscuring blanket of white at least three inches deep. Part of it was due to the way the wind swirled snow up off the road, driving it until it hit the vehicle and formed the start of a snowdrift, but part of it was just the heavy, icy downpour of flakes all around.
“Here it is!” Steve told the others, restraining the impulse to hurry to the front of the truck. With the road slick from compressed snow underneath the freshly deposited stuff, he didn’t want to risk stepping wrong and twisting an ankle, or worse. As soon as he was even with the back of the pickup bed, he whacked the truck with the crowbar, clanging metal against metal. “Hopefully, that’ll wake ’em up!”
“I’ll stay at the bumper with the rope,” Bella told him, releasing Joey’s hand. “Don’t go further away than you can touch this thing, or you’ll be lost!”
Nodding, the two men moved up along the length of the truck. They reached the door, designated by a peak in the blanketing white that was the side mirror, and heard a thumping and yelling noise from within. Scraping the snow from the window, Steve saw Dave and Pete inside. With Joey’s help, he cleared off the rest of the snow, finding the door handle. It seemed to be stuck. Joey took the crowbar from him and, with Steve gripping the latch to release its lever, helped to pry the thing open. Dave helped by shoving from the inside.
Holding the door open against the wind, Steve watched as Joey assisted his two friends in scrambling out. It was awkward, since the moment Dave released his seat belt, he slid right into Pete, who yelped at being squished. But the boys sorted themselves out. Gesturing at the back of the truck, Steve shouted over the wind.
“Bella’s at the back of the truck. She’s got a rope that’ll lead us right back to the Inn. Everybody, grab hands and work your way back there together. Don’t let go!”
Joey took point, pulling Pete along behind him. Dave hesitated a moment, then gripped Steve’s hand. “Thanks.”
Steve almost didn’t hear the words, but knew it must have cost the younger man a bit to say them. He held his tongue, saving his breath and his energy for the trek back to the Inn. He let Bella take the lead, reeling in the rope as she walked steadily through the thickly falling flakes, retracing their path through the snow. Joey had one hand tucked into the belt wrapped around the waist of her overcoat, the other forming the rest of the chain of men. All Steve had to do was follow in the wake of the others, holding Dave’s gloved hand as he trudged through the gap in the drifts that had been churned and trampled into their path home.
INSIDE THE FRONT ROOM, CASSIE PEERED THROUGH THE glazed front of the woodstove. The flames were burning merrily enough, but eventually the fire would die down. Peering at the logs stacked in the nearby basket, she smiled and selected a rounded one, then used a nearby pot holder to open the metal door.
Long ago, the people of the Scandinavian lands had ceremonially lit a log like this one—only much, much bigger, the entire trunk of a tree—to celebrate Thor, god of lightning, at this time of the year. The object was to burn a single tree for the entire length of the old celebrations. The Celts had also lit a log much like this one as well, to entice the sun to grow strong once again, shedding more and more light. But the tradition involving flames she thought most fondly of, as she tenderly placed the rounded bit of trunk into the heart of the fire, was the one Bella would think of, too: that of the miracle of the temple lamps, in the ancient land of the Hebrews. At the darkest time of the year, it was important to remember that light would come back into their lives, no matter how gloomy things might seem.
“Shalom,” she breathed into the metal box, before closing the door. Inside the stove, the log slowly caught fire, burning with a steady golden light. The Franklin stove was as far as one could get from a menorah, but in a storm like this, it was just as important to warm the body as to warm the spirit.
This had to be the snowstorm to end all snowstorms; by the time they reached the front porch of the converted farmhouse, it was nearly three steps shorter than it should have been, and all of them were chilled to the bone, shivering inside their clothes. A pink-clad figure met them on the porch, dusting each of them off in a fluttering bustle of pink-gloved hands before allowing them into the house, so that the caked snow on their clothes wouldn’t melt and soak them into a worse chill, or so Cassie chattered. The boys accepted her fussing with wide eyes, and Steve with an impatient sigh, wanting only to rejoin his fiancée. Bella accepted it with a roll of her eyes as she finished coiling the last bit of rope.
As soon as they were inside, Rachel met them with a tray loaded with steaming mugs. The spicy scent warmed Steve’s heart just as much as his lungs. As soon as he had shed his outer coat and his gloves, he wrapped his hands around the almost-toohot mug, letting the heat sink into his chilled fingers. For a moment, he wanted to tell her how much he loved her. It felt too awkward, though. Professing his love in front of strangers was bad enough, but in front of three unwelcome guests, boys who would snicker and make fun of his feelings…he couldn’t do it.
Mike came down the stairs, dressed in a deep brown sweater-vest, tan shirt, and chocolate trousers. “I’m glad to see all of you made it back safely. Allah’s blessings upon you, and those of the Prophet Emmanuel.”
Pete blinked and frowned at him. “You ain’t a Christian?”
Bella smacked him on the back of the head with her muff. “No, he isn’t! And neither am I, though I’m willing to admit your Christ was probably a True Prophet of God, if not the Messiah.”
“God is God,” Cassie interjected smoothly, favoring Pete with a smile. “Whether you dress Him up in an aba, a sari, or a three-piece suit, God is God.”
“And this time of the year has been set aside for the celebration of kindness, tolerance, unity, and brotherhood,” Mike agreed as he finished descending the last few steps. Reaching for one of the mugs, he lifted it from the tray in Rachel’s hands. “A toast: to the enlightenment that comes from opening our minds to knowledge. May we all know the Creator a little better, through getting to know each other.”