Sweet Laurel Falls. RaeAnne Thayne

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      He glimpsed movement by the side of the house and spied a couple of cold and hungry mule deer trying to browse off the shrubs, which looked as if they had been wrapped to avoid just such an eventuality. The deer looked up when Jack’s headlights pulled into the driveway, then it turned and bounded away, jumping over a low cedar fence to her neighbor’s property. Its mate followed suit and disappeared in a flash of white hindquarters.

      Now, there was an encounter that brought back memories. When he was a kid and lived up Silver Strike Canyon, he and his mother would often take walks to look for deer. She would even sometimes wake him up if a big buck would wander through their yard.

      “Thanks for the ride. I guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

      “I can walk you in. Help you with your bag and your laundry.”

      “You don’t have to do that.”

      He hadn’t been given the chance to do anything to help his daughter in nearly twenty years. Carrying in her bags was a small gesture, but at least it was something. He didn’t bother arguing with her; he only climbed out of the SUV and reached into the backseat for the wicker laundry basket she’d loaded up at her apartment in Boulder, hefted it under one arm and picked her suitcase up with the other.

      Sage made a sound of frustration, but followed him up the four steps to the porch and unlocked the house with a set of keys she pulled from her backpack. Warmth washed over them as Sage pushed open the door to let him inside, and the house smelled of cinnamon and clove and evergreen branches from the garlands draped around.

      Jack found himself more interested than he probably should have been in Maura’s house. He took in the built-in bookshelves, the exposed rafters, the extensive woodwork, all softened by colorful textiles and art-glass light fixtures.

      “Looks like Mom went all out with the Christmas decorations. A tree and everything.”

      He glanced at his daughter. His daughter. Would he ever get used to that particular phrase? “You sound surprised.”

      “I thought this year she wouldn’t really be in the mood for Christmas. Usually it’s her favorite time of year but, you know. Everything is different now.”

      He didn’t want to feel this sympathy. For the past three days, he had simmered in his anger that she had kept this cataclysmic thing from him all these years. Being here in Hope’s Crossing, being confronted with the reality of her life and her pain and the difficult choices she must have faced as a seventeen-year-old girl, everything seemed different.

      He felt deflated somehow and didn’t quite know what to do with his anger.

      Sage fingered an ornament on the tree that looked as if it was glued-together Popsicle sticks. The tree was covered in similar handmade ornaments, and he wondered which Sage had made and which had been crafted by her younger sister.

      “I hope Grandma and the aunts helped her and she didn’t have to do it by herself,” Sage fretted. “That would have been so hard for her, taking out all these old ornaments and everything on her own.”

      Sage’s compassion for her mother, despite everything, touched a chord deep inside him. There was a tight bond between the two of them. Had it always been there, or had their shared loss this year only heightened it?

      He spied a cluster of photographs on the wall, dominated by one of Sage and Maura on a mountain trail somewhere, lit by perfect evening light amid the ghostly trunks of an aspen grove. They had their arms around each other, as well as a younger girl with purple highlights in her hair and a triple row of earrings.

      “This must be Layla.”

      Sage moved beside him and reached a hand out to touch the picture. “Yep. She was so pretty, wasn’t she?”

      “Beautiful,” he murmured. All three females were lovely. They looked like a tight unit, and it was obvious even at a quick glance that they had all adored each other.

      Maura had been divorced for a decade and had raised both girls on her own. How had she managed it? he wondered, then reminded himself it was none of his business. He was here only to establish a relationship with his newly discovered daughter, not to walk down memory lane with Maura McKnight, the girl who had once meant everything to him.

      “Oh, look. Presents.” Sage’s eyes were as wide as a little kid’s as she looked at the prettily dressed packages under the tree. What had she been like as a big-eyed preschooler waiting for Santa to arrive? He would never know that. He’d missed all those Christmas Eves of putting out plates of cookies and tucking his little girl into bed.

      “I guess I’d better head out to find a hotel. Are you sure you’re okay now?” He couldn’t see any evidence of the tears from earlier, but a guy never could tell.

      “Yeah. I’m fine. I’m just going to throw in a load of laundry and check my Facebook, then go to bed.”

      “Okay, then. I guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

      “Okay. Good night.”

      He turned to head toward the door and had almost reached it when her voice stopped him.

      “Wait!”

      He paused, then was completely disconcerted when she reached up and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m really glad we found each other, Jack.”

      On the way here, they had already had the awkward conversation about what she should call him. She didn’t feel right calling him Dad at this point in their relationship, so he had suggested Jack.

      “I am too,” he said gruffly.

      He meant the words, he thought, as he walked out into the snowy evening lit by stars and the Christmas lights of Maura’s neighbors. Despite everything, the realization that Sage was his daughter astonished and humbled him. And yes, delighted him—even though it meant returning to Hope’s Crossing after all these years and facing the past he thought he had left far behind.

       CHAPTER THREE

      FOR A LONG TIME AFTER SAGE walked out with Jack, Maura sat in her chair with her hands folded together on her desk, staring into space.

      Jackson Lange was here in Hope’s Crossing.

      She’d never thought she would have occasion to use those particular words together in the same sentence. Stupid and shortsighted of her, she supposed. This was his hometown, and despite his avowed hatred of the place, she should have expected that someday he would eventually be drawn back.

      One would assume some latent affection for the town where he had lived his first eighteen years must have seeped into his bones. It was only natural. Salmon spent their last breaths returning to their birthplace. Why should she simply have assumed Jackson wouldn’t want to come back at least once in twenty years?

      In her own defense, she had always assumed his hatred for his father would also serve to keep him away.

      In the early years after Sage was born, she used to come up with all these crazy, complicated scenarios in her head for what might happen if he did return. She had worked it all out—what СКАЧАТЬ