Coming Home For Christmas

“That’s why we didn’t see anyone,” Elizabeth exclaimed, her stomach muscles clenching.

“We’ll be fine. I’m in a big truck with four-wheel drive.”

“It’s always the guys with four-wheel drive who think they can get through anything and end up off the road,” the cashier said. “That won’t do you diddly if it’s icy. Four-wheel-drive vehicles slide off just as easy as front-wheel.”

“Thanks for the reminder,” Luke said. “But we’ve got to keep going. Family emergency.”

“Well, good luck to you, then,” she said, shaking her head in a pitying sort of way.

Luke paid for their supplies and the gas, and they walked back outside. Just in the short time they’d been inside, the wind had picked up. Now those snowflakes felt like tiny ice-cold missiles, and visibility had dropped to only a few hundred feet.

Elizabeth tried to fight down her panic, remembering another night, another storm.

She did not want to be out in this. She wanted to be safe at home next to her fireplace at Brambleberry House with a mug of hot cocoa and a mystery novel.

Luke was a good driver, she reminded herself as he helped her inside the truck again and she fastened her seat belt. He always had been.

He would keep her safe.

She repeated that mantra for the next half hour, with Luke driving no more than twenty miles per hour. Neither of them said anything, focused only on the increasing fury of the storm.

After what seemed a lifetime, he released a frustrated sigh.

“We’re not going to make it any farther tonight. Might as well catch a few hours of sleep while the storm blows over and then take off again in the morning when the roads are clear. Look online and see if you can find us a couple of rooms in the next town.”

This sparsely populated and remote part of Oregon wasn’t exactly overflowing with towns that boasted four-star hotels. Add in the storm that was basically crippling transportation and she wasn’t optimistic about their chances. Still, she was grateful she still had cell service and something to do to take her mind off the weather conditions and the fear that hovered just on the edge of her mind.

Sure enough, she searched on her phone for hotels in the next town and found only two. When she called, neither had vacancies. Not so much as a broom closet.

She had more luck with the town after that, about ten more miles along the interstate.

“Looks like there’s one room with two beds in a motel in the next town,” she said, looking at the hotel app she used to book her trips to Haven Point.

“Call them and book it. I’m afraid it might take us a half an hour or more to get there and I would hate for it to be sold out when we show up. You can take a credit card out of my wallet.”

He lifted a hip to pull it out, then handed it over, still warm from being in his pocket.

She took it quickly so he could return both hands to the wheel. Using the light from her phone, she opened it and started to search for a credit card. Before she could find one, she stopped on a snapshot inside the wallet, in a little pocket with a clear cover.

Their children.

Cassie and Bridger were hugging each other, faces turned to the camera with matching smiles.

Next to them was another picture. Older. This one was of a much younger Luke with his arm around a woman with blond hair and blue eyes. They looked at each other with a love that was as plain as if hearts and flowers suddenly floated off the image.

She felt as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the vehicle, as if her lungs couldn’t expand enough to take in the necessary air.

She missed them, this couple who had been so in love. She missed the evenings they would spend snuggled together, sharing secrets and dreams; she missed the pure contentment she felt in his arms; she missed the serenity of knowing someone loved her completely.

She missed that woman, too.

It had been seven years since she’d seen a picture of herself the way she used to be.

She had forgotten. The angle of her nose and the little bump where she had broken it in second grade trying to ice-skate down the slide at the playground. The mouth that looked like the mother she had never forgotten, even during the time she considered the blank years.

Luke looked so young. Not at all like the hard, forbidding man who sat beside her. He had been closed off when they married, his spirit bruised by a cruel, abusive father, yet there had been a softness to him then. A sweetness. She had always attributed that to Megan’s mother, Sharon, his stepmother from the age of about six, who had loved and nurtured the lost little boy he had been.

She fought the urge now to rub her finger on that familiar, beloved face, as if she could absorb him through her skin and somehow resurrect some of that sweetness and joy.

“Well? Did you find a credit card?”

She jerked her gaze from the picture to the man beside her. “Sorry. Just a minute.” She dug out a card and flashed it to him. “Will this work?”

“That’s fine.”

With great reluctance, she closed the wallet on that picture and dialed the number to the hotel, then pushed the required sequence of numbers to connect with an operator.

The line rang at least ten times before a woman answered, sounding flustered.

“Riverside Inn.”

“Hi. I was...wondering about booking a room tonight. We are...traveling and stranded by the storm.”

She hated her hesitant, faltering voice and hated most of all that Luke heard it. So far she had been able to conceal the way her mind tangled sometimes over the right words. At other times, the right ones slipped away completely.

“You and everyone else, honey.”

“Your...your website said you had availability.”

“I’ve got one room left. How long will it take you to make it here?”

“I...don’t know. But I was...hoping I could reserve it with a credit card.”

“That works. Good thing you called. That’s probably the last available room in a hundred miles. Let me open up a reservation.”

After they went through the particulars of booking the room on Luke’s card, Elizabeth thanked the woman.

“I hear it’s ugly out there. Be safe, Mrs. Hamilton.”

No one had called her that in so many years. “I... Thank you.”

She disconnected the call and carefully slid Luke’s credit card back into the pocket of his wallet, fighting the urge to flip through the pictures again and stare at all of them. He probably had more of the children, maybe when they were younger.

“All set?”

She nodded and carefully closed the wallet again. “It was the last room. You were right about booking it over the phone. Here’s your wallet.”

“I can’t put it back in my pocket while I’m driving. Just set it on the console,” he said before turning his attention back to the road and the snow blowing across.