The Christmas Ranch

“Aunt Hope! What are you doing here? I didn’t even know you were coming!”

“I’m sure it will be a big surprise to everybody,” she answered, a little grimly.

“The best, best, best kind,” her sweetly loyal nephew claimed as he wrapped his arms around her waist. She hugged him, feeling better already—even as she thought of the last little boy she had encountered, who hadn’t been nearly so enthusiastic about her presence.

“Oh, I missed you,” he exclaimed.

“I missed you, too, potato bug.”

Barrett was seven and most of their relationship had developed via email and the occasional video chat when the vast time zone conflicts could be worked out.

She hadn’t received nearly enough of these hugs in her lifetime, she suddenly decided, with an almost painful aching for family and home.

“Who’s at the door, Barrett?” she heard her sister call from the kitchen.

“Don’t tell her,” Hope said, managing a grin even though some part of her was still annoyed with her sister.

“Um, nobody,” he answered back, obviously not good at coming up with fibs on the fly.

“How can it be nobody?” her older sister said, and Hope could almost hear the frown in her voice.

Holding a finger to her mouth for Barrett, she headed down the hall toward the kitchen where her sister’s voice originated.

In the doorway, she caught a glimpse of Faith at the work island in the center of what was really command central of the house. Her sister’s dark hair was held back in a messy ponytail and she looked tired, with deep circles under her eyes and lines of strain bracketing her mouth.

More of Hope’s half-formed displeasure at her sister slipped away. Her sister had lost so much—everything!—and Hope hadn’t been here for her.

“Seriously, Barrett. Who was at the door? Was it UPS again, delivering something for Auntie Mary?”

The boy giggled, a sweet, pure sound that drew Faith’s attention from the vegetables she was cutting at the island. She looked up and her jaw sagged.

“Hope! What in the world?”

Hope mustered a smile. “Surprise.”

Her sister wiped her hands on a dish towel and came toward her. Faith had lost weight. Hope was struck again by how fragile and slight she seemed, as if a sharp gust of wind from a December storm would blow her clear out to the barn.

Those lines around her mouth had been etched by pain, she suddenly realized. Her sister had lost the love her life, her childhood sweetheart, a mere four months earlier in a tragic accident and had barely had time to grieve. She would be reeling from the loss of her husband for a long time.

Travis Dustin had been killed after he had rolled an all-terrain vehicle while rounding up cattle in the mountains. He hadn’t been wearing a helmet and had been killed instantly, leaving behind Faith and their two children.

Hope still couldn’t believe he was gone. If she closed her eyes, she could almost picture him the last time she saw him alive, nearly two years earlier when she had been able to come home briefly between assignments in time for New Year’s Eve. He had been a dear friend as well as a beloved brother-in-law and his loss had hit her hard.

She had been here four months earlier for his funeral but had only been able to stay a few days. It hadn’t been long enough.

Hope crossed to her sister and hugged her hard, wishing she could absorb some of her pain.

They were extremely close to each other and to Celeste, their sibling relationship forged through their unorthodox upbringing and the tragedy that had changed all of them so long ago.

Faith rested her cheek against Hope’s. “Oh, what a wonderful surprise. I thought you were going on to Nepal after you finished your teaching stint in Morocco.”

“That was the plan, but I decided to take a break for a few months to figure things out. I thought maybe, I don’t know, I could take a rest from traveling. Maybe stay and help you out around here for a while.”

“Oh. It will be so wonderful to have you here longer than a few days!”

“I thought I could stay through the holidays, if you’ll have me.”

While Faith smiled at her with apparent delight, Hope didn’t miss the sudden wariness in her gaze. “This is your home, too. You’re always welcome here, you know that.”

She paused and gave Hope a searching look. “I guess you must have seen the sign at the Ranch on the way in.”

Hope tried to summon a little of the anger that had accompanied her on the short drive to the ranchhouse but it was impossible to dredge up more than a little kernel at this sister she had always loved and admired for her courage, her sweetness, her practicality—all the things Hope didn’t have.

Her sister had suffered great pain and somehow continued to trudge on, though Hope had no idea how she was managing it.

“I saw the sign. I don’t understand what it means.”

“It means we’re not opening The Christmas Ranch this year,” Barrett announced, sounding just as disgruntled as Hope had been when she first spotted the empty parking lot.

She placed a hand on his shoulder. “That’s what I suspected when I saw the sign. I still can’t quite believe it. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Faith’s mouth compressed into a tight line. “I would have told you eventually, if you had asked how things were going with The Christmas Ranch, but I didn’t see any point in stirring the pot when you weren’t here anyway.”

She couldn’t blame her sister for that, she supposed. Her family had no reason to believe this year would be any different from the last handful, when she hadn’t been able to manage coming home for longer than a day or two for a quick visit, if that.

“What gives, though? Why are we Closed Indefinitely?”

Her sister pounded a little harder on the dough she was working on the table. “Auntie Mary and I decided to take a break this year while we figure things out.”

She gave a meaningful look to her son. “And speaking of Mary—Barrett, go find her. I think she went into her room earlier to do some knitting.”

“You mean to take a nap,” he said with a grin as he headed out of the room.

“A nap?” she asked as soon as her nephew was out of earshot. The idea of her vibrant aunt taking a nap was as foreign to her as she imagined Couscous Friday—a Moroccan cultural tradition—would be to her family.

“She takes a nap just about every afternoon. She starts in with watching a television show and usually dozes off in the middle of it for a few minutes. Don’t forget, she’s in her seventies and not as energetic as she used to be, especially since Uncle Claude died.”

Hope hated thinking of her aunt slowing down. Mary was her aunt by marriage, wed to the girls’ father’s oldest brother. She and her husband had become the only thing they had to parents after their parents’ tragic deaths only a few months apart.

“You’re telling me she wants to close the ranch, too?”

“Celeste voted, too. It was a mutual decision. We didn’t have much of a choice.”

“But people around here love it. It’s as much a tradition as the giant Christmas tree in the town square and the ice rink on the tennis courts behind city hall.”

“You think I don’t know how much people love the place? I completely get it. This is my home, remember? You haven’t been around since you graduated from high school and left for your study abroad in Europe.”

Though she didn’t think her sister meant the words as a barb, they stuck sharply anyway.