The Christmas Wedding Quilt: Let It Snow / You Better Watch Out / Nine Ladies Dancing. Sarah Mayberry

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      “YOU’RE NOT FROM here, are you?” The teenager manning the cash register at the gas station twenty-five miles from Kanowa Lake looked up, and his cheeks flushed. “I just mean, you know, I haven’t seen you around.”

      Jo glanced at her watch. Could it really be getting dark? It was only three-thirty, yet a curtain was drawing closed over what had passed for sunshine just half an hour earlier.

      When the boy cleared his throat she looked up again. “My family owns a summer house over on Kanowa Lake, but I haven’t been back in years.”

      “Bad night to visit. You ought to stay here.”

      She cocked her head in question.

      “The weather, I mean.” He cleared his throat again. “Bad storm coming.”

      For the past twenty miles the skies had been spitting snow, but Jo wasn’t worried. She had paid the extra bucks for a rental car with four-wheel drive, and now she had topped off the gas tank. She was prepared.

      “Doesn’t look that bad,” she said.

      “It’ll be a dumper. You better get where you’re going fast and settle in.”

      When she smiled he flushed again. Jo had that effect on men, although she never played it up. Right now she was wearing jeans and fringed suede boots—the closest thing to winter boots she owned. Under her suede jacket a rust-colored cashmere sweater flattered her chestnut hair and amber eyes, but the only makeup she wore was a little lip gloss.

      “I’ll be fine.”

      He didn’t look convinced. He was maybe sixteen, broad-shouldered and skinny. He probably couldn’t eat fast enough to keep up with his latest growth spurt.

      “You might want to stock up on a few groceries, just in case,” he said. “Snow hits, you won’t be going anywhere for a while.”

      Five minutes later she left with a small bag of everything edible that the station’s sparsely populated shelves had offered. A box of cereal, the last quart of milk in the cooler, two cans of corned beef hash and three chocolate bars. The chocolate bars were three for two dollars, and her teenage admirer had suggested she take advantage of the sale.

      The snow was falling harder now, and she grabbed a few guilty moments in the parking lot, arms flung out like a little girl’s to embrace it. Since moving to California at thirteen, she’d only seen snow at ski resorts, where it always seemed professionally staged. This was the snow she remembered from her childhood in the small Pennsylvania town where her physician father had run an emergency clinic until his own emergency, a brain aneurism, had ended his life.

      By the time she pulled onto the road the snow was a thin sheen, but the asphalt was still clearly visible. Four-wheel drive or not, she took her time, not sure if ice had formed under the snow. Three miles down the road she realized that the road and the shoulder now seemed to be one. She could barely discern where her wheels should go, and unfortunately no one had yet come this way to mark the path with tracks.

      She slowed even more and set her wipers up a notch, because the snow was falling faster. Fortunately her tires weren’t losing their grip, and signs helped her gauge where she ought to be. According to the rental car’s GPS she had twenty-two miles to go, and once she got to Hollymeade, all she had to do was find the key under a vase beside the door and settle in. She guessed there would be a few staples left from the last Miller to use the house. The great-uncle who had told her where to find the key had also assured her the power and water were never turned off, and the house and grounds were checked periodically. The house would be livable, and she would be welcome but alone. Nobody else was scheduled to visit until late January.

      Now, as she gripped the steering wheel and gingerly guided the car through deepening snow, she tried to imagine that kind of freedom, that silence. Nobody but Rachel, Ella and her great-uncle, Albert, knew she was here.

      Well, that wasn’t quite true. Eric Grant’s parents, who spent winters in Florida, knew. Eric’s mother, Lydia, had given her permission to rifle through the Grant’s lake house attic in search of Eric’s old baby quilts. In a flash of sentiment Jo had decided that incorporating Eric’s childhood into the quilt, along with Olivia’s, would make it even more meaningful. His mother had promised that anything Jo found that was too far gone to save for a grandbaby was fair game for the bridal quilt, and Lydia had promised not to breathe a word of the plan to her son or her daughter-in-law to be.

      So Eric’s mom knew, but not her own. Jo had stretched the truth a bit and told Sophie she was on a spiritual retreat and not allowed to reveal the location. That was close enough to the truth that she didn’t feel she’d actually lied.

      As for her boss? The only thing Frank Conner knew was that over the Christmas holidays Jo was taking some of the many vacation days the company owed her and would be available by email, but only for emergencies.

      The last part was a gamble, but Jo had finally faced the fact that her skills and talents were largely unappreciated by her boss. And wasn’t some of that her own fault? For too many years she had taken Frank’s abuse without comment. It was time he realized how hard it would be to run his consulting firm without her. Even during the holidays, when work tapered off.

      She came to a crossroads and slid to a stop, her heart thumping wildly until the wheels stopped spinning. She took a deep breath and carefully made the required left turn, fishtailing just a little, but straightening as she picked up speed.

      Twenty minutes later the GPS promised she only had sixteen miles to go. At home sixteen miles meant something less than sixteen minutes, but here she was barely crawling. The same clouds shoveling snow over the landscape had now completely blocked the sun. She saw occasional lights from houses or businesses along the road, but no sign of driveways to reach them.

      She wasn’t scared. Not exactly. The road wasn’t a major byway, but eventually there would be traffic. If the worst happened she could pull over—if she hadn’t already run off the road—and wait for a plow or state police car.

      An hour later, after skidding three times and one time spinning wildly, she arrived at the turnoff to Hollymeade. At least that was what the friendly GPS was telling her. The only signs of a road were the ridges beside a slightly lower area that might well be the long winding driveway. She wasn’t sure she would recognize the turnoff in bright summer, but she had seen a sign to Kanowa Lake a mile back.

      What choice did she have? There was a shape lurking far in the distance, like a monster waiting to pounce.

      “Welcome to Hollymeade,” she whispered, as she turned into what she hoped was the driveway.

      She was parked in front of the house before she took another deep breath. She couldn’t believe she had made it through the drifts of snow piling higher and higher. But here she was, the familiar old house just waiting for her. She had fought the elements and won. Memories of her childhood summers were in reach. She couldn’t wait to go inside.

      Of course part of the reason she couldn’t wait was that cold was already seeping СКАЧАТЬ