Chapter One

Of course the telephone would send out its shrill summons just as the timer for the oven went off. And of course Charlotte couldn’t find her red oven mitts.

Her gaze skittered over the counter, the table half-covered with cookbooks and papers, but she could see no worn, red oven mitts.

She yanked open the oven door in the faint hope this would slow down the baking process. Then, belying her sixty-some years, she jogged across the worn linoleum and snatched the phone off the cradle.

“Hello,” she said, breathless as she pushed a strand of graying hair back from her face, one eye on the cookies in the oven.

They looked done. She just hoped the caller wasn’t her dear friend Hannah, whose phone calls could last up to half an hour when she was feeling chatty.

“Hello?” she said again as she realized the person on the other end hadn’t replied to her greeting. “Hello?”

She shrugged and hung up the phone. Probably a telemarketer, she thought, wishing yet again that Bob would open his wallet just a little more to pay for the Caller ID feature on the telephone.

She wiped her hands on the bright yellow apron covering her worn shirt, glanced around the kitchen one more time, and then caught sight of her oven mitts tucked in behind a bag of flour on the wooden table.

She slipped them on her hands and then eased the perfectly browned cookies out of the oven and onto an overflowing counter.

To the casual onlooker, it might seem as if she were getting carried away with Christmas baking, but some of it was for the Bedford Gardens Convalescent Center. The residents there loved her baking as much as her own family did.

Christmas carols played from the stereo in the living room, creating the sense of anticipation and wonder that came with the season.

Christmas was coming.

Charlotte had put out a few of her decorations in a bid to add to the ambience underlined by the scent of spices and chocolate wafting from the kitchen.

Sunshine sparkling on the snow outside only added to the feeling.

Christmas was coming, and now that her grandchildren were more settled into living on the farm, she hoped this year the holiday season would be full, rich, and peaceful.

Most of all she hoped for peaceful.

Life with three grandchildren in the house and a son who was getting married had made her and Bob’s life busy and, at times, a bit frenetic.

But over the Christmas holidays the kids would be home from school and life would slow its pace, if only for a couple of weeks.

She put another pan of cookies in the oven, closed the door, and turned on the timer just as the telephone rang again. Once again she hurried to the phone, and once again there was only silence on the other end.

Prank call, she thought as she hung up, feeling slightly annoyed and a bit unsettled. Was it the same person who had previously called? And why the silence? If it was a wrong number, wouldn’t they say so?

She went back to the stereo in the living room off the kitchen and turned up the music to ease away the disquiet. Maybe it was a bit early to be listening to “The First Noel” and “Silent Night” in the first week of December, but she loved the atmosphere the songs created.

And once they went out and cut the Christmas tree this weekend, as Bob had promised they would, the piney scent would add another layer of Christmas to the house.

Her mind slipped back to last Christmas, their first with the children in the house. They had been understandably upset. After all, that was their first Christmas not only in a new place but also without their mother.

While struggling through their own loss, Charlotte and Bob had forced themselves to be strong for the kids.

At least they’d had the Christmas play. Though it had been a wonderful distraction, and though Charlotte had enjoyed seeing her grandchildren take part, she was thankful that this year they would all be willing spectators instead of participants.

She pulled the bag of flour off the kitchen table—and in the process knocked over an envelope that Sam had laid on the table the night before. A few papers slipped out, and as she caught sight of them she frowned.

Sam’s college application forms.

Sam’s blank college application forms.

She leafed through the papers, her heart growing heavier with each page she turned. Nothing had been filled in for any of the colleges he’d talked about applying to. In fact, one of the forms had a brown stain on the front. Spilled pop, most likely.

What was he thinking? Charlotte glanced over the papers once again and released an angry sigh. He had to have them filled in and sent by the end of the year to meet the deadline. He’d been dithering the past few months, and Charlotte had been struggling not to nag, but it looked as if she would have to give him yet another nudge.

She slid them into the envelope, her momentary feeling of well-being pushed aside. She hated nagging and for a moment was tempted to ask Bob to deal with it, but she knew how that scenario would play out.

Bob would ask Sam if he had filled out his forms. Sam would say no. Bob would say maybe he should. Sam would agree, and that would be the end of that scintillating discussion.

Sam’s Uncle Pete might be one to light a fire under her grandson, but Charlotte didn’t think it fair to put that kind of strain on her son. He was already stressed enough trying to figure out how the farm would pay for the house he needed to build for his future wife and Sam’s college at the same time.

So it was up to her again.

“Something smells mighty good in here,” Bob called out as he entered the porch. A blast of cool air accompanied his announcement, and Charlotte shivered.

“Do you want a cup of coffee?” she asked as she went to the cupboard for a mug. The question was simply rhetorical. Bob always had a cup of coffee when he came into the house after doing his afternoon chores.

Didn’t matter that in the winter the chores only consisted of walking through the cows, making sure their feed troughs were full, and checking on the horses. But chores were chores, and Bob tried to maintain the routine he had kept ever since he took over the farm from his father.

“Pretty nice out there today,” he announced as he stepped into the kitchen, the light overhead glinting off his glasses and highlighting the gray strands in his thinning hair. “I think we’re going to have a wonderful Christmas.” He pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. His cheeks and the end of his nose were red in spite of the wonderful weather he was celebrating.

“That’s three weeks away,” Charlotte said, putting some cookies on a plate for him.

“I know, but according to our records, every time we’ve had nice weather the first week of December, it’s been beautiful at Christmastime.” Bob settled into his chair as Charlotte poured his coffee. The scent of hay and cold emanated from his clothes. “You’re not having any?” he asked, glancing across the table to where she usually sat.

“I’m a little busy.” Charlotte shot another glance at the clock.

“Surely you can spare a few minutes alone with your husband on a Friday afternoon before the kids come barging in. Lately it seems we haven’t had much time to sit and chat.”

The faint hurt in his voice hit her right in the guilt zone. Yes, she’d been busy lately, but that was the nature of family. Having Pete stay in the spare room since the tractor- shed fire damaged his apartment had added more work to her schedule as well. It seemed that busy was her default mode lately.

“I suppose I could.” Charlotte didn’t mean for the begrudging tone to enter her voice, but she could tell from the frown Bob shot her way that he had heard it.

“Of course, if you’re too busy …”

“No. I’m not.” She gave him a smile, pulled a mug out of the cupboard, and poured another cup of steaming coffee. Bob was right. The past few weeks had been busy, and with Christmas coming, more busy times lay ahead. They had to take their moments when they could.

As she settled in her usual chair, she gave him a quick smile and curled her hands around the warm mug. “How are the cows looking?”

“Good. Real good. Pete’s been doing a great job with them. I think we’re going to have a crackerjack batch of calves in the spring.”

Charlotte smiled at Bob’s unexpected compliment of their son. Though Pete was doing most of the physical labor on the farm, Bob still made the decisions and, unfortunately, the criticisms. It was nice to hear that he appreciated Pete’s work.

Bob dunked a cookie in his coffee and as he took a bite, his elbow nudged the envelope Charlotte had set on the table, and it fell to the floor.

“What’s this?” he asked, picking it up.

“Sam’s college application forms.”

“Are they ready to mail? Doesn’t he need to send them out soon?”

“They need to be out by the end of the month, and no, they’re not ready to mail. He hasn’t filled anything in yet.”

“What’s the holdup?”

Charlotte shrugged. “I wish I knew. I’ve been after him to get them done for a while now.”

Bob dropped the envelope on the crowded table. “He better get a move on.” But that’s all he said, and Charlotte knew it would be up to her.

“And I need to talk to Emily,” Bob continued. “She was supposed to clean out the horse barn last week, but it’s still looking pretty messy.”

“I thought she said she did.” Charlotte frowned, remembering Emily’s vociferous complaints about the smell and the copious amount of manure she’d had to shovel out.

“Maybe she did, but she was supposed to keep an eye on it, and it’s piling up again. Shouldn’t let it go so far.”

“I guess the kids still need reminders,” Charlotte noted.

Bob shifted in his chair, frowned, pulled a sweater from the back of it, and tossed it aside. “Whose is this, and what’s it doing here?”

“It’s Christopher’s. I told him to put it away last night. He must have forgotten.”

“That boy’s been getting more and more forgetful these days. He told me he’d checked the waterer for the horses, but when I checked it was frozen—and he didn’t tell me.”

“He’s been busy,” Charlotte said, though she knew her excuse was lame. Charlotte wanted to ask Bob why he had suddenly become so grumpy but decided to let it be. Sometimes the more she tried to dig into his moods the more he retreated.

Bob scratched his forehead with his thick, work-worn fingers and crossed his arms. As he leaned back, the old, wooden chair creaked with his weight. “Sometimes I feel like I’m a bit old for this.”

Charlotte felt a tiny niggling of foreboding.

When they first took the children in, it had taken Bob a few months to adjust, but she knew he enjoyed having them around. Just the other day he had told Sam how much he appreciated his help. He and Christopher were talking about getting a 4-H animal for Christopher to enter in the fair. And though he liked to tease Emily about her clothing choices, Bob certainly had a soft spot for his granddaughter.

Then she had an idea that might explain his current funk.

“Is your blood sugar a bit high?” He often got a bit surly when that happened.

“Nope. Just been thinking.” He sighed again, rocking a bit in his chair, making it creak with each movement. “I suppose I had pictured these years differently. I had seen us sitting back and enjoying the fruits of our labor. Relaxing, maybe doing a bit of traveling. You do realize that by the time Christopher is ready to graduate, we’ll move right from here to the old folks’ home.”

Bob got up and took another couple of cookies from the pile cooling on the counter, and Charlotte decided to hold her tongue.

“Well, what’s so wrong with that?” Charlotte asked.

On his way back to the table, Bob paused at the window and looked out over the yard. “I always thought that as Pete took on more of the farmwork, we’d have more time. The two of us.”

“We have all day together,” Charlotte reminded him, choosing to forget that only a few moments ago he’d had to ask her to join him in a cup of coffee. “And you’re often visiting with your friends in town or hanging around the tractor supply anyway.” And she didn’t want to remind him that he had resisted Pete’s slow takeover of the physical responsibilities of the farm, which gave him the free time.

Bob returned to the table and dropped into his chair again.

“I think we should take a trip someday. Just the two of us. Get away from here for a while. We never go anywhere.”

“We went to San Diego to visit Denise, Kevin, and the children when they lived there.”

“That wasn’t traveling. That was visiting. And if you call sitting in that tiny apartment listening to Kevin go on and on about all the things he was going to do …” Bob snorted his anger. “Can’t see what Denise saw in that blowhard. Couldn’t stick around long enough to raise his own kids. Couldn’t even show up for Denise’s funeral.” Another snort clearly stated his opinion on that as well.

Though Charlotte shared his anger with their absent son-in-law, she knew she couldn’t express it aloud to Bob. Doing so would only pull both of them down into an ever-deeper spiral of frustration and bitterness.

Yes, Kevin had been a neglectful husband and father. Yes, he hadn’t contacted the children since he left his family when Christopher was a baby, but she knew she had to keep her emotions about his actions buried. Kevin was still the children’s biological father. As much as his actions, or rather inaction, bothered her, neither she nor Bob could let Sam, Emily, and Christopher see how they truly felt about him.

“If we were to take a trip, where would you want to go?” she said, latching onto his previous comment as a way of avoiding talking about Kevin.

Bob shrugged as he popped another cookie into his mouth. “Hawaii. Someplace warm.”

Charlotte had to force herself to keep her mouth closed. She had a fairly vivid imagination, but it didn’t extend far enough to imagine Bob lounging on a beach in Hawaii. A beach he would have to take an airplane to get to.

“I think that could be … fun,” she said, opting to play along. “Although we’d have to make arrangements for the kids.”

Bob rocked a bit more. “Yeah. The kids again. I suppose it was a silly idea.”

“Not silly, exactly. It’s just we need to do some advance planning and budgeting. We’ve got Pete and Dana’s wedding coming up, and they have to find a place to live. And Sam’s college education …” She let her voice trail off. She didn’t want to think about how they would pay for all of that. The farm was holding steady, but extra money wasn’t sitting around.

“It seems like there’s always something with the kids.”

“We had that with our own children as well,” Charlotte gently reminded him.

“That’s what I mean. We went through all that with Bill, Denise, and Pete. Now we’re doing it again.”

She didn’t want to say anything to that. Didn’t want to venture down the path he was headed toward. Instead she avoided the topic and took a sip of her coffee. Bob was just being Bob. Just voicing his complaints out loud, she reminded herself. She had to make sure not to make more of it than he did.

Christmas music flowed from the speakers, and the warmth of the corn-burner stove permeated the house along with the aroma of Christmas baking. But now the faintest sniggle of unease had entered the atmosphere.

“When is Anna supposed to have her baby?” Bob asked.

“Not for a couple more weeks. I hope after Bill gets back from Chicago. I know he hates to be away so close to her due date, but the meeting could mean a lot of grant money for River Bend.”

The flash of sun reflecting off a window made her crane her neck to see a large, yellow school bus pull up out on the road, lights flashing as it came to a stop. Toby, their dog, let out a happy yelp as she streaked down the driveway toward the bus.

“The kids are home,” Charlotte said, pushing her chair back as she stood.

Sam’s car was broken down. Again. So he was on the bus today along with Emily and Christopher.

The bus doors swung open, and three bodies piled out. Sam, the eldest, was the first, and he immediately bent over, scooped up some snow, and packed it into a ball. Just behind him came his little brother, Christopher, his coat wide open, laces of his boots dragging, and his head bare.

He flung one hand over his head as Sam lobbed the snowball his way.

Emily was right behind Christopher, her arms full of books, her long blonde hair falling over her face as she ducked her head as well.

The snow hit her black, woolen coat, making a white blob that stuck.

Even through the windows, Charlotte could hear her granddaughter yelling at her brother. “Sam Slater, you are in such trouble!”

Toby danced around them all, a bundle of brown-and-black fur, her plume-like tail waving a welcome.

The doors hissed shut, and as the bus pulled away, Christopher threw his backpack on the snow and hunched over, scooping up snow and compacting it with his bare hands.

This was only going to escalate, Charlotte thought, watching them through the frosted window.

Christopher lobbed a snowball toward Sam who easily ducked it, his long dark hair swinging over his forehead.

Emily tossed one end of her red-and-white-checked scarf over her shoulder, pulled her books closer, and ran to the house. The soles of her brown leather boots were slippery, and she had a hard time finding purchase on the snow. From seemingly nowhere, another snowball sailed through the air but fell beside her on the ground.

Still clutching her books, she spun around to see where it had come from.

“No, fair, Uncle Pete,” she yelled. “I don’t have my mittens on.”

Just beyond Emily, Charlotte could see her own son standing by the garage, his blue coveralls and yellow gloves streaked with grease.

He was laughing—and then a snowball caught him right on the chest.

The door of the porch swung open and Emily charged in, slamming it shut behind her.

“Those boys,” she grumbled, but Charlotte could hear the edge of humor in her voice.

Charlotte walked to the porch to greet her granddaughter.

Emily was stamping the snow off her boots and brushing it off her coat. She glanced up and grinned at Charlotte. “If I’d had my mittens on, I’d have been able to fight back.”

“And you’d probably be full of snow now,” Charlotte said with a smile.

Emily slipped her coat off and gave it an extra shake as she shivered. “Those boys will be soaking wet when they come in.” She gathered up her books and sniffed. “Boy, it smells good in here.”

“I got an urge to do some Christmas baking. Want a cookie?”

“Sounds great.”

“You better hurry before the boys come.”

But no sooner had Charlotte spoken the words than the door slammed open again and Christopher, Sam, and Pete all came into the porch, laughing and pushing each other, snow falling off of them in clumps.

“You make sure you get rid of all that snow before you come into the house,” Charlotte warned. “I just mopped the floor this morning.”

Pete snapped off a salute, and Sam and Christopher laughed.

The phone rang again, and Charlotte felt another twinge of foreboding. Was it her prank caller?

For a moment she was tempted to let it ring, but then she pushed the thought aside and walked to the telephone.

“Charlotte? It’s Anna.” The breathless voice on the other end of the line sent Charlotte’s heart pounding.

Her daughter-in-law had been on bed rest for several weeks to allay the complications of her pregnancy. Had something happened?

“Anna, are you okay?”

“This wasn’t supposed to happen yet. Bill is still gone. I can’t get hold of my mother. I don’t have my suitcase packed. The girls are a mess—” Anna’s voice was cut off by another gasp.

“Anna, what’s wrong?”

“I think I’m in labor.”