Miracle Creek Christmas

by Krista Jensen

  © 2020 Krista Jensen

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, ­Shadow ­Mountain®, at ­permissions@shadowmountain.com. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of ­Shadow ­Mountain.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters and events in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are represented fictitiously.

  Visit us at shadowmountain.com

  Proper Romance is a registered trademark.

  Library of Congress ­Cataloging-­in-­Publication ­Data

  (CIP data on file)

  ISBN 978-1-62972-787-5

  eISBN 978-1-62973-951-9 (eBook)

  Printed in the United States of ­America

  Publishers Printing

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Book design: © Shadow Mountain

  Art direction: Richard Erickson

  Design: Sheryl Dickert Smith

  Cover photos: AntartStock, alekso94, rvika, Hamperium Photography, sergiophoto/Shutterstock.com

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  Lies, Love, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Julie Wright

  For my dear friend Carmen and our hours in the dialysis center. You joked that one day I could use the experience in a story and we laughed. Who knew? You are a light.

  And for the firefighters of the Pacific Northwest, who work so hard to preserve this beautiful chunk of Earth.

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  In another life, Mark Rivers would’ve focused on the woman who’d just entered the bakery and nodded in her direction with a smile of appreciation. The new art teacher had turned more than a few heads in town. But this wasn’t that life, so he took the bag of apple fritters Lette Mae handed him, pulled his hood farther over his head, and ducked past the new customer and out into the chill of November third.

  He brushed off the lingering feeling that she’d looked his way. Everyone looked. It had taken months for the locals of Miracle Creek to stop staring at him like he wasn’t who he’d always been. Like he hadn’t gone to their schools and played in their conference championships and been to their weddings and funerals and anything in between. Eighteen months had passed since the summer fires had devoured a large portion of his family’s orchards—and a portion of Mark, too.

  Rivers Orchards hadn’t been the only property devastated by the fires. A lot of families were hit with loss. But while orchards were replanted, homes were rebuilt, and new growth covered charred ground—even in the skeletal remains of the Cascade Forest—Mark was still scarred, and, in some ways, still burning.

  He passed James Dean, Lette Mae’s basset hound sprawled on an old quilt in the winter sun, and climbed into his truck, still careful of the healed burns on his body.

  Town wasn’t much. Main Street made a sort of “J”—the bakery, the auto shop, and gas station on the corner, the IGA and Ace Hardware across the street, the Grill-n-Go drive-thru next door. The street meandered past the K-12 school and a park, a few blocks of homes, some “town” orchards, and then out of town.

  Pick a valley. Pick a hillside. Almost any road led to orchards. Acres of apple, peach, pear, apricot, and cherry trees along with the occasional vineyard had been tucked into the curves of this foothill region just east of the Cascade Mountains. The coastal weather from the west kept things mild, and the mountains siphoned off just enough rain to keep things irrigated. Usually.

  Two summers ago, a rare drought had settled in, and without the rain, everything had crackled on the ground. Midsummer greens had turned yellow and brown. A spark—campfire, cigarette, broken glass in the sun—nobody knew for sure how the blazes started, but once they began, high gusty winds out of nowhere had pushed and pulled until—

  Mark shuddered and clenched his right hand. That kind of thinking used to end with him in a sweat, screaming, his body feeling phantom flames. Even now, sometimes, the heat burned in his dreams. Not as much as it used to.

  He took a deep breath and let the truck follow its own way out to the old homestead.

  Several minutes later, Mark realized he was sitting in front of the house, his truck idling in park. That happened more often than he liked. He cut the engine and took in the stark reality of the fire’s hunger. The property north and west of the house remained charred except for what had greened up this past spring and summer. It had looked hopeful for a couple of months. Now with winter set in, it only looked bleak. The hillside was still pocked with mounds of blackened apple tree limbs—skeletons—and was traced with rows where irrigation pipes, twisted from the heat, had been dug up and hauled away. The acreage sat like a primitive battlefield in the morning mist.

  Only forty yards from the house, a large outbuilding had stood for decades. Now, nothing but foundation remained. His dad had started building a new orchard shop, office, and storage building all-in-one where equipment repairs could be made and the workers could eat lunch. They’d selected a plot down the east side near the irrigation pumps. Just in case. His dad hadn’t said as much, but Mark knew. The fire department’s response couldn’t be relied on. Not when half the force were volunteers—good volunteers, sure—because the full-time firefighters were out miles away in all directions, fighting other fires. Moving the outbuilding made sense when their only water came from irrigation pumped from the river or the house well.

  The house sat untouched, thankfully. The wind had turned the flames back on themselves, and with no more fuel, the fire had burned out. But only after destroying thousands of acres and a dozen homes in the county alone.

  Mark reached for the bag of apple fritters and made his way to the front porch.

  “You make those fritters from scratch?”

  He looked up and found his dad holding open the front door.

  “No,” Mark answered.

  “Took you long enough. I wondered if Lette Mae put you to work in the kitchen.” Cal Rivers smiled, deep grooves along the sides of his mouth proving he did it a lot. Irritatingly.

  Mark pushed the bag at his dad, who took it in the chest, still grinning. “I got ’em and came right back.”

  He entered the house, and his dad shut the door behind him. The smell of his childhood home filled him like it always did, reminding him of the contentment of a nine-year-old boy running outside to play in the dirt after eating a stack of syrup-drenched pancakes and gulping down a cold glass of milk he’d squeezed from Ol’ Maize all by himself.

  Dad pulled a fritter from the greasy white bag. “See anybody you know?” He took a large bite on his way to the kitchen table, where two glasses of milk waited next to two plates. Maize had long passe
d, and so had Mark’s milking days.

  “It’s a small town, Dad. Everybody knows everybody.”

  His dad waited patiently, brow lifted.

  “I saw Lette Mae,” Mark answered. “And James Dean.”

  Dad gave him a look and plunked down onto a chair. “Anyone else?” He pulled out the chair next to his and motioned for Mark to sit.

  Every Friday morning, Mark was sent to the bakery for apple fritters and anything else his dad might request. An attempt to get him out of the house, Mark knew, and maybe see a few people. “Nope.”

  His dad gave him a long look, then nudged the other chair with his foot.

  Mark sighed and sat at the table, pulling out a fritter and shoving a third of it in his mouth. “There.” He chewed the word. “Happy?”

  Dad nodded, still watching him. “You got something there, on your shoulder.”

  Mark glanced at his shirt. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Hard to miss. Mighty big chip. Right there.”

  Mark frowned, but his dad leaned back with a look that challenged Mark to respond. Mark just bit into his fritter.

  “We’re putting up framework today. Ivy’s school play is at six.”

  Mark swallowed his last bite and took a long drink of milk. It had taken a lot of practice to master the task without dribbling down his front. He wiped his mouth with a napkin.

  “You’re going with me,” Dad said.

  Mark fought the urge to tell his dad to stop ordering him around. But he knew his dad was the reason he’d come so far in his rehabilitation. If his dad didn’t prod him into stuff he was expected to do, Mark wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t have done anything. Besides, Ivy had begged him to come, and he couldn’t let his niece down.

  He nodded and pushed his chair away from the table. “I’ll meet you down at the site.”

  “Thanks for the fritter,” Dad said. “Delivery makes ’em taste better.”

  Mark grunted in reply.

  Riley Madigan looked over the backdrops and the painted props she and a handful of students from art club had worked on for weeks after school. She reviewed the spreadsheet on her clipboard, mentally checking off the order the props would be used in each scene and when each backdrop would be lifted to reveal the next, hoping the mechanics would all work smoothly. Rehearsals had been hit-and-miss.

  She found Yvette Newsome, head of the drama department and director of Peter Pan, helping the four mains check their flight gear—basic theater harnesses for “flying”—as the set of the nursery window was pulled away and the background filled with stars before the curtain dropped. Fairly effective and low-risk as long as everything coordinated properly. At least stunt rehearsals had gone well. Dropping backgrounds was one thing. Dropping kids? Never good.

  Yvette spied Riley and dismissed the students. “Hey, just the person I need to talk to.”

  “Why do I get nervous when you say that?”

  Yvette laughed. They’d been working together on the play practically since the day Riley had moved into the tiny orchard community of Miracle Creek. As soon as Riley had been hired as the new art teacher and word got out she was revitalizing the defunct art club, Yvette had spread out her far-reaching wing and pulled her into the frantic carnival ride that was a high school play.

  Yvette dragged a foam-and-fiberglass prop toward center stage. She shaded her eyes against the glare of the stage lights and called out, “Can I get the lighting for the Lost Boys scene?” She waved to Riley. “Follow me.”

  Riley followed her into the auditorium ­seating.

  “Now, what do you see?”

  Riley narrowed her gaze. “What is it supposed to be?”

  “It’s supposed to be a rock,” Yvette said.

  “Well, with this lighting, it looks like a pig.”

  “Like the rear end of a pig.”

  “I can’t un-see it,” Riley said. The shadows the students had painted had to have been unintentional, but still. “Is that a tail?”

  “I can’t have a pig’s rear end on my stage, Riley. Wendy sits on this rock.”

  “What if you turn it around?”

  Yvette yelled to one of the kids on stage to turn the prop around.

  After a moment, Yvette broke the silence. “Now it looks like a roast turkey.” She threw out her arm. “It’s too distracting.”

  “I’ll fix it,” Riley said. “If I do it now the paint will be dry in time.”

  “Thanks,” Yvette said. “You are the Smee to my Hook. Don’t take that the wrong way.”

  She laughed. “Smee is charming in his own way. I’ll take it.”

  “Hey, who brought the turkey?” a student called from a row of seats. Giggles followed, and the lights on the prop went out.

  Riley hurried to the stage. She’d need to move the prop to the art room; no easy task given its awkward shape and size. After enlisting a couple of students to help her, she led the way off stage and down the hall, exchanging the bright hum of the auditorium for the quiet art room.

  They set the prop down on a covered table used for painting. “Thanks, guys,” she said. “Back to work.” They grinned and left.

  Riley tilted her head at the rock. “Start at the start.” She selected her acrylics and brushes, filled a water jug, and went to work. This rock would look like a rock, no matter the lighting.

  Mark hung back as the crowds surged forward to congratulate the actors on a successful opening night. He found a dark corner to the right of the stage stairs to wait. From there, he could see his family—his dad, his older sister, Steph, and her husband, Brian, their baby—Mark’s namesake—and his seven-year-old niece, Ivy.

  He could also see backstage, behind the closed curtains, to the backdrop hanging from the last scene. The play had been entertaining, even with the occasional mistake, but the painted scenery had caught his attention. He wondered if the school had bought the backdrops premade, or if they’d hired someone to do them. He knew of a muralist who did work over in Leavenworth, but the style wasn’t his. He wondered if the new art teacher had done them, and if he had the nerve to ask her about them.

  “Uncle Mark!”

  Only Ivy could make him forget it was difficult to smile. She ran to him, lunging at his waist and squeezing him.

  She looked up. “What did you think?”

  He pulled out a rose wrapped in cellophane from behind his back. “I think you were the best Tootles ever.”

  She beamed and took the flower. “Thanks.” Her smile faded, and she crinkled her nose. “I forgot a line when Wendy was telling us a story.”

  “I didn’t even notice.”

  Her smile returned.

  “Are you ready to do it again tomorrow?” he asked.

  Her eyes grew round. “Oh yeah! We do it again!” She ­nodded. “Maybe I’ll remember my line tomorrow.”

  “I bet you will,” he said.

  She leaned against his side, smelling her flower.

  The rest of the family approached, and his dark corner grew suffocating. He moved along the wall toward the auditorium to create more space.

  “Thanks for coming, Mark. You know how much it means to Ivy.” His sister, Steph, pulled the little girl into an embrace.

  Mark nodded, keeping one eye on the crowd of people drawing nearer. “Wouldn’t miss it.” He pulled at the hood on his jacket.

  Brian ruffled Ivy’s hair. “That’s a pretty rose.”

  “Uncle Mark gave it to me.” Ivy turned. “He’s coming tomorrow to watch me remember my line.”

  Steph looked at him, surprised. “You’re coming tomorrow, too?”

  “Uh . . . I didn’t—” Mark hadn’t planned on coming again. It’d been hard enough to face the crowds tonight. He caught Ivy’s hopeful expression and released a breath. “Yeah, I’m coming.” He poked Ivy in the shoul
der. “You better get that line, or else.”

  “Or else what?” Her eyes danced.

  “Or else . . .” His voice became menacing. “Or else Captain Hook will be the least of your worries.” He made a pretend grab for her.

  She squealed and shrank back into her mom, smiling at him. He caught his sister’s eye.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” She smiled. “It’s good to see you.”

  Mark sobered.

  He glanced at his dad, who shrugged. “I see you all the time.”

  Mark rolled his eyes.

  A group of people began making their way between Mark and his family, heading toward the exit. He pressed back against the wall, dropping his head, watching his feet, only nodding when people addressed him.

  “Hey, Mark.”

  “Hi, Mark.”

  “Nice to see you out, Rivers.”

  They shuffled past.

  “Good to see you, Mark.”

  His head came up faster than he wanted. He quickly adjusted the angle of his face so the right half was shadowed by his hood. Caylin Clark blinked at him uncertainly. Some guy stood next to her, his arm around her waist.

  “H-Hey,” Mark said, hating how his voice halted.

  “I saw you from across the auditorium and thought I’d say hi.” Caylin turned to his suddenly reserved family. “Hello.”

  They muttered hellos back.

  She turned to Mark, and when he didn’t say anything, she shook her head. “I’m sorry, this is Nick. His cousin was Peter Pan.”

  Nick nodded. “Good to meet you. Caylin told me what you did, saving those kids. That’s really cool, man.”

  Mark never knew how to respond to stuff like that. That day in the fires hadn’t been cool. It had been a nightmare.

  Nick glanced between him and Caylin. “Well, take it easy.” He whispered something in Caylin’s ear and left.

  Caylin turned back to Mark. “So, what’s it been—a year?”

  A year and four months, Mark thought. She’d stuck around a whole two months after he’d landed in the hospital.