A Family-Style Christmas and Yuletide Homecoming

by Carolyne Aarsen

  They ate their pie in silence and Sarah wondered what the conversation would have been about had she not been there. But the pie was delicious and the silence not uncomfortable.

  “Billy, why don’t you get the Bible?” Donna asked, after Sarah declined seconds. “We can have devotions and then Logan can get the horses ready.”

  Billy leaned his chair back, pulled open a drawer and handed the heavy book to Donna. Donna leafed through the Bible, the pages rustling in the quiet that descended. “I’m reading from Psalm one hundred three,” Donna said.

  As she read the words, Sarah reached back into the past. Every evening, without fail her father would pull out the Bible, as well. When Sarah left Riverbend she’d packed her Bible out of duty and custom. But she hardly read it.

  Now Donna’s quiet voice reading words so familiar to her drew out memories of those nights around the table.

  “‘...For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His love for those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who hear Him.’”

  As a father has compassion on his children... Sarah felt a touch of melancholy. Her father was not known for his compassion. She didn’t like to think that God was like Frank Westerveld.

  You’re starting with the wrong father.

  She hung on to those words.

  God. A father to the fatherless.

  God. The perfect father.

  Peace settled through her, soothing away the tension and frustration of the past few days, creating a calm that both puzzled and comforted her.

  “‘...but from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear Him, and his righteousness with their children’s children...’”

  God’s love. Everlasting.

  You’ve been trying to please the wrong father.

  Logan’s words seeped up from her subconscious.

  She tested those words, trying to fit them into her life. She didn’t need Frank Westerveld. She just needed God.

  “Logan, will you pray?” Donna’s voice broke into Sarah’s thoughts and with a start she looked up. Logan was watching her and as his eyes held hers his nod acknowledged his mother’s request.

  Logan bowed his head and began.

  And once again, Sarah’s preconceived notions floundered and dissipated. The Logan she had dated had struggled with the whole notion of faith and church. He had told Sarah, often and loudly, that he didn’t believe in a God that could have allowed his father to be so vilified, to be falsely accused and then to have to deal with the health problems he had. Indeed, Logan’s vocal anger with God had been one of the unspoken reasons she thought her father might be right when he told Sarah to break up with Logan.

  But now in Logan’s quiet voice Sarah sensed a conviction she had never heard as a young girl of eighteen. It shifted her perception of him.

  When Logan finished, he looked up at her and smiled, and for a moment they shared connection on another level.

  “You’d better head out right away, while the moon is still up,” Donna said.

  “I should help with the dishes,” Sarah protested.

  “It’s Billy’s turn.”

  “What? Since when?” Billy dropped his teetering chair with a thud. “Why can’t Logan help?”

  “Because I love him the best.”

  Sarah felt a jolt of surprise at Donna’s bold-faced comment. Her attention flew to Billy to see his reaction.

  “Well, as if we didn’t know that by now,” Billy grumbled.

  “Learn to live with it, little brother,” Logan said with a laugh. “Let’s go, Sarah. We can leave poor Cinder-fella to do all the cleaning and tidying.”

  Sarah threw a puzzled look over her shoulder.

  “Sarah?” Logan prompted.

  “Sorry. I’m coming.” She followed him to the porch, taking her coat from him, still perplexed by the exchange. “Your mom doesn’t really...”

  “Love me the best? Well, yeah. Billy knows and accepts this.” Logan’s smile softened when he looked at her. He must have seen the confusion on her face. “My mom was kidding.”

  “I see.”

  “She would never mean anything like that.”

  “Well, some parents would.” She spoke without thinking.

  “Parents like your dad?”

  She looked him and nodded. “Yeah. Parents like my dad.” It hurt to admit, but at the same time speaking the truth was a freeing moment.

  “I’m sorry,” Logan said. “I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

  “Its okay.” Sarah took a step away and slipped her boots on. “It’s the truth.”

  He followed her out the door and into the cold, the snow squeaking under their feet. She got her toque and mitts from the car then walked with him to the barn. The moon’s reflected light created a pale twilight, casting shadows ahead of them. The awkward moment in the porch lessened in the eerie beauty of the snow-covered fields lit by the reflected light of the moon.

  “You ever been on a sleigh before?” Logan asked.

  She shook her head, pulling her mittens on.

  “So you’ve never seen a horse get harnessed.”

  “Even if I had witnessed such an auspicious event, I doubt I would be much help.”

  “So it’s all up to me,” Logan said with an exaggerated sigh.

  “I’m sure you’ll do just fine,” Sarah said, thankful for the lightening of the atmosphere.

  They came to the barn and Logan slid the large door open and flicked a switch. Soft, incandescent light flooded the barn. From a stall at the back, Sarah heard a welcoming whinny.

  Logan filled a pail with oats and dumped them out into the feed bins at the head of the stalls, then led the same horses Sarah had seen before into two separate stalls and tied their halters to the wall. While the horses ate, he slipped a padded collar over the horse’s heads. Then he returned to the wall, holding the tack, and pulled down what looked like a tangled armful of straps and buckles and rings.

  While Sarah watched, fascinated by the procedure, he draped the harness over the first horse’s back, pulling and shifting, buckling and attaching, then repeating the same steps with the second horse.

  “You might want to stand aside,” Logan warned as he gathered up the reins. He clucked to the horses and started backing up and, to Sarah’s surprise, the horses slowly backed out, as well.

  “Good trick,” she said, full of admiration for what he had just done.

  “Good training,” he said. The horses stopped, turned. “Now we need to get them to the sleigh. It’s just outside. Could you grab the blanket that’s lying on the shelf behind you?”

  Sarah did as she was told, then followed Logan out, watching as he hitched the horses to the sleigh.

  “Done here.” Logan wound the reins around a bar and turned to Sarah and helped her in. He climbed in behind her then took two blankets, wrapped one around each of their legs. “It’s kinda cold once we get going. No in-sleigh heater.”

  Sarah pulled her blanket a bit closer. Logan clucked to the horses and with a light jerk of the sleigh they were off.

  The moon had risen higher, throwing out a spectral light—enough to make out the shape of the driveway and the trees beyond it. The muffled thud of the horses’ hooves, the jingle of the bells on their traces and the hiss of the runners over the white snow created a gentle resonance to the pale shadows cast by the moon.

  “I feel like we’re the only people out here,” Sarah whispered, as if the very act of speaking would break the mood.

  “I love being out in the full moon. Just us and the coyotes.” Logan slanted her a smile, his teeth bright white against his face. />
  There it was again, the flash of awareness that sprang up so easily between them. Logan watched her, his smile fading, as if he sensed it, as well.

  “Thanks for taking me,” Sarah said primly, determined to enjoy the sleigh ride and equally determined not to let foolish emotions intrude on the moment. He was just an old friend taking her for a ride.

  “You are most welcome, madam.”

  Sarah pulled her blanket closer, leaning back against the padded seat, looking everywhere but at Logan.

  The trees, their branches laden with caps of snow, slipped silently past them as they turned onto the road. The horses’ heads bobbed as their snow-muffled hoofbeats pounded out a lulling rhythm, counterpointed to the jingling of the bells.

  “This is amazing,” she said quietly. “Do you do this often?”

  “Never as often as I’d like,” Logan admitted. “My work keeps me busier than I want to, but I try to find the time when I can. Working with the horses is relaxing and rewarding.”

  Logan steered the horses onto a trail and, as the horses plowed through the unbroken snow, Sarah was overcome by a sense of wonder. “We’re the first people on the trail this winter.”

  “It ends up at the back of our property, so it doesn’t really go anywhere people on snow machines would even want to venture. Most people around here know that.”

  “And maybe most people around here don’t want to face the wrath of Logan Carleton when they trespass.”

  “I can be pretty fierce,” he admitted.

  “I remember the time you caught those boys throwing eggs at your truck. I feared for their bones.”

  Logan’s sidelong glance held a suggestion of hurt. “I hope you have better memories than ones of me losing it.”

  Sarah smiled. “I have lots of good memories of you, Logan.”

  He jerked his gaze away, his jaw suddenly set. “Name me one.”

  Sarah heard the faint challenge in his voice, underlaid with a hint of anger that often simmered just below the surface with Logan.

  “I remember going for a walk. Your truck had broken down.”

  “That’s not a best moment.”

  “There’s more.” She ignored his anger, recognizing where it had come from. “It was October and the sun was setting. The northern lights came out that night, brighter and more colorful than anything I’d ever seen before. They were dancing and shimmering, a curtain of blue and green and pink.”

  “You got a sore neck, watching them,” Logan said.

  “You remember, too?”

  Logan kept his eyes on his horses, but she sensed his attention. “I kissed you for the first time that night.”

  A tremor of remembered connection crept through Sarah. She swallowed as the memory grew, filling up the space between them. She forced a laugh, trying to lighten the mood. “Do real men remember first kisses?”

  This time he looked at her. “I do.”

  Sarah’s interest tipped slowly toward a headier, deeper emotion. She looked away, pulling the blanket closer as she watched the trees slip silently past the sleigh. Her mind skated back through time, resurrecting memories she thought she’d abandoned long ago.

  She’d been so filled with love and all its attendant emotions. Logan was a young girl’s ideal first love. Taciturn, aloof, dark and mysterious. Toss in the whole puzzling but complex Westerveld/Carleton feud, and it suddenly became very Montague and Capulet. An irresistible combination for any young girl on the cusp of womanhood.

  When Logan had noticed her, started talking to her, she had felt as if she trembled on the verge of something else. Something exciting and serious. He was her first, serious love. They’d dated, kissed, made naïve, whispered plans for their future. They were in love and the rest of the world hadn’t mattered. Until it intruded on them.

  Sarah huddled deeper in the blanket. Since she had come back to Riverbend she had other information to work with, other experiences. She still wasn’t sure what to do with this all, how to fit it into her life.

  The horses sped up, just a bit, then turned onto another trail. The trees hung low, shedding showers of snow as they passed.

  “Where are we going?” Sarah finally asked, breaking the silence.

  “You’ll see.”

  No sooner had he spoken than the trees suddenly gave way to an open field. Logan turned the horses toward the edge of the field and when they stopped, Sarah felt perched on the edge of an unknown and dangerous world.

  They stood on the edge of a sheer cliff dropping over a hundred feet then sloping away to the deep, wide valley. The river that had cut the valley spooled out below them, a wide band of white broken by a few tree-dotted islands.

  Sarah had grown up with the river just a short drive away, had crossed over the bridge spanning it a thousand times, had walked along its edge as a young girl, throwing sticks into it to watch them being carried away downstream. But she had never experienced the immense depth and width of the valley the river had carved over the centuries.

  “This is amazing,” she whispered, hardly daring to speak, hardly daring to break the peace that had descended as soon as the horses stopped.

  Logan wound the reins around a post and sat back, his dark eyes sweeping over the valley, lit by the ghostly light of the moon. “I come here whenever I need to think,” he said, his voice growing quiet, almost reverent. “I’ve spent a lot of time sitting here. Dreaming.”

  “What dreams did you have, Logan?”

  “You’ve heard them all.”

  “Things have changed in our lives. Surely your dreams have, as well.”

  “Yeah. A lot of my dreams are for my brother now, I guess.” Logan lifted his foot, resting it on the front of the sleigh. “Who knows what he’ll do with them.”

  “He may have his own plans, but at the same time he should be thankful that you have wishes

  for him. I think that kind of involvement in your brother’s life speaks well of you.”

  “Yeah, well, he doesn’t seem to want the same things I do,” he said, sighing lightly. “I’m working myself to nothing trying to make sure this kid gets all the breaks I didn’t get, and he doesn’t even want to take advantage of them and the natural talent he has that could get him out of here.”

  Sarah knew he was speaking from his own youth. “Was it hard for you? Growing up a Carleton?”

  “Only when I was around your father. Or when I would hear stories from my father about your father.” Logan leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his clasped hands hanging between them. “Sorry, Kitten, but our family has a complicated history.”

  He gave her a rueful glance. “And I don’t want to talk about that now. I don’t want your father to interfere again. With us.”

  Us. The single word created a storm of feelings in Sarah. “I didn’t know there was an us.”

  “At one time there was.”

  Sarah wasn’t sure she wanted to follow Logan’s lead—to head in the direction his conversation was going. Instead she sat back, letting the silence surround them like a gentle blanket of forgiving. When no words were spoken, no mistakes could be made.

  The horses shifted and blew as the moment drew out. One glanced back as if to ask Logan what was happening. But Logan didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

  Normally Sarah felt uncomfortable in silence, experiencing a need to fill it with words, to create a connection with communication.

  Though she was fully aware of Logan sitting beside her, a gentle peace surrounded them. As she settled in the sleigh, the blanket around her shoulder slipped off. She reached to straighten it at the same time Logan caught it.

  She glanced sidelong at him and caught him watching her.

  And the wide-open spaces suddenly narrowed down to his hand on her shoulder, their gazes melding, their frozen
breath combining in an ethereal mist.

  “Sarah...” Logan whispered.

  She was going to be smart. She wasn’t going to give in to the feelings of uncertainty that tantalized her. That hovered on the edge of emotions that threatened to pull her in.

  But she couldn’t look away and didn’t want to. For the first time since she had returned to Riverbend, they were in a place of solitude, with no fear of people nearby watching, judging. Sarah had no other eyes through which she could see her and Logan.

  Just hers.

  And then his hand slipped behind her head as if to anchor it, and his face drew near, his breath warm on her lips. He waited, giving her an opportunity to pull back or to stop him.

  An onslaught of inevitability rushed over her. A feeling that everything she had done, every decision she had made had brought her to this place with Logan. If she bridged the gap, completed the circle, everything would change. She could stop this now.

  But even as those thoughts spun and wove their faint warning, Sarah felt something inside of her shift, and she knew this was right.

  She moved those last few inches and, as their lips met, cool at first, then warming, Sarah felt she hovered on the threshold of a new and yet familiar happiness.

  Chapter Twelve

  Logan drew back and rested his forehead against hers, his eyes a dark blur against his face.

  “It’s been a long time, Sarah,” he whispered.

  Sarah pulled her mittens off and cradled his face with her hands. In spite of the chill of the air his cheeks felt warm to the touch. She traced the shape of his mouth, as if learning him by Braille.

  “Lots has happened since we were together.” She let her fingers drift down to his chin, then touched the new lines at the corner of his mouth.

  “Did you miss me?” he asked.

  Her harsh laugh was the barest glimpse into the six lonely years she had spent away from him. “I thought of you every day.”

  Logan leaned back against the seat, taking her with him, tucking her head under his chin, holding her close. “You never phoned. Wrote.”