by K. J. Emrick
Izzy wasn’t the only one she needed to make it up to, either.
She took the phone and braced herself for whatever Mark was going to say to her. She pushed her hair back behind her ear, and said, “Hi.”
“Hey, Darcy. Merry Christmas.”
Well, that was a nice start, anyway. “Merry Christmas to you, too. My invitation to come over for dinner still holds, you know.”
“I know,” he said, in a very neutral tone, “and I appreciate it. I’ve got a deadline to meet for my publisher, though. Real writing, I promise.”
He laughed, and Darcy laughed with him. Izzy eyed her suspiciously.
“Um,” Darcy said. “I’m going to give you back to Izzy now, okay? I have a feeling it was her you called to talk to anyway.”
“Well,” he said, and suddenly he was speaking in a perfect French accent. “She iz zee one who likez me bezt, no?”
Darcy laughed again at his amazing talent for voices. He really was a funny man. “Hey, Mark? I really am sorry.”
“No worries, Darcy. We all make mistakes.” Then he was imitating Jack Nicholson. “Nobody’s perfect, wouldn’t you agree, little lady?”
“You’re really good at that,” she said, and meant it. “Here’s Izzy again.”
When she took the phone back, Izzy gave Darcy a smile, apparently pleased with the things Darcy had said. She cupped the phone to her shoulder before saying. “I’m going over to Mark’s for dinner today. I’ll use my skis. Don’t wait up for me.”
“Izzy, you don’t have to…”
“Darcy, I want to.” She shrugged. “I just don’t think I’m over what you did yet. I’m going to spend some time with Mark and then I’ll be back. Probably tomorrow. Okay?”
“Well, sure, I guess.” Darcy wasn’t happy about it, actually, but she wasn’t going to say anything for fear of upsetting Izzy again. This was Christmas, and she had wanted to spend it together, but like she’d said… she had to let her friend have her own life.
Izzy put the phone back to her ear as she left the room again. She went upstairs, and a moment later Darcy heard the door to the spare bedroom closing. The rest of the call was private, apparently.
There really wasn’t much more that she and Jon could do to prepare for dinner until it got closer to the actual time to eat. She was just closing the oven door again, to give the turkey another ten minutes, when she heard the strangest sound outside. A rumbling, followed by a scraping, but with an engine sound mixed in.
She looked over at Jon. “What is that noise?”
He was looking out the window, at the bright sunlight shining off the nearly even layers of snow. “It sounds kind of familiar…”
Then it hit Darcy. For Pete’s sake, she thought to herself.
Jon snapped his fingers at the same time. “That’s a snowplow!”
They were both rushing to get their boots on when Colby and Zane burst in from outside, cheering and jumping up and down. They had both of their parents by the hand and were pulling them outside before Darcy could even make a grab for her coat. “Hey, slow down, slow down!”
“No, Mom,” Colby told her. “You have to come outside. You have to see this! Come on!”
The wind bit at Darcy’s cheeks and stung her eyes. The snow all around was melting, dripping from the trees in the yard and sliding off the roof in splotches that smacked wetly into the drifts below. She could see the top of her car again, and somehow that seemed like a small victory in itself. Like everything would be all right after all.
Down the street, rumbling its way along, a big yellow snowplow threw up a tidal wave of snow. It was clearing away all that snow, carving out a tunnel on that side of the road in one forceful, slow-moving sweep.
“Look, Mommy,” Zane said. He was down in the yard, just his chest and head above the snow. “Look, look, look!”
She couldn’t understand what they were so excited about at first. Yes, it was awesome to see the hulking snowplow coming down their street to give them their freedom back, but that didn’t require dragging their parents outside without their jackets. Then, as the plow got closer, she could see there were people riding on the outside of the plow’s cab. The people were bundled up with scarves and heavy coats and one of them was wearing a thick purple hat that nearly covered gray hair that curled up at the sides, pinned into a tail at the back…
Darcy gasped. Could it be?
The woman in her hat waved at her, and then she was sure. It was her mother.
Next to her was a man in a long woolen coat and heavy leather gloves. Darcy hadn’t seen James in a while, but there was no mistaking that long face and that smile. She had always suspected that smile was what had attracted Eileen to him in the first place. Then again, considering the kind of man Darcy’s actual father had been… anything was an improvement. James was all of that, and more, from what Darcy had seen.
“I can’t believe this,” she said to Jon. “They’re here. My mom’s here. It’s like some sort of…”
“Christmas miracle?” Jon finished for her. “Yeah, it kind of is. But your mom sure picked a weird kind of sleigh to ride in on.”
“Well, I doubt it’s Santa driving that thing.”
She could barely believe it. After all this time worrying and waiting for some word that her mother was all right, here she was, right on time for Christmas dinner. The unexpected lump in her throat brought tears to her eyes. She was just so happy. It was a wonderful feeling, to know that she and her mother had come to a point in their lives where they meant this much to each other.
With a shudder of shrieking brakes, the plow came to a stop right in front of their house. The driver, a burly man in a baseball cap, nodded to them and said something to Darcy’s mother that she couldn’t hear over the rumbling of the engine. Then Eileen climbed down the handholds on the side, along with James, and jumped into the hip deep snow. The plow driver carefully handed down two suitcases and her mother’s purse. Wow. Her mother was travelling light for a change.
“Mom!” Darcy called joyfully. “Mom, why didn’t you call, I was worried sick!”
“Your mother,” James said in his deep, friendly voice, “dropped her phone in the sink of a hotel on our way here. We haven’t had time to get a new one.”
Darcy shook her head. That sounded so much like her mother. Of course, she wouldn’t have thought of calling from an old-fashioned landline. No, not her mother. Probably, she didn’t even remember the number anymore without her phone’s contact list. She would have just shrugged and said ‘oh well’ and kept coming, never once thinking that Darcy would be sitting at home worrying the whole time. Grace too, for that matter. It just wasn’t in her mother’s nature to think about things like that.
Once upon a time, it wouldn’t have been in her nature to come visiting for Christmas, either. Small steps, Darcy told herself. Be grateful for the small steps.
“Mom, come inside where it’s warm. It’s freezing out here!”
She was going to stand right here on the porch and wait for her mom to come to her. The top step might be cleared of snow but everywhere around her was piles of the stuff. Boots and jeans and her favorite cable-knit sweater would not be enough to keep her from getting hypothermia.
“Wait a minute,” her mom called back. “Just wait there, we’ve got someone else with us.”
“What’s she talking about?” Jon asked. “Were you expecting someone else?”
Darcy shook her head. “No, I can’t imagine who she means.”
With another wave, and a long blast from his horn, the snowplow driver started up again, shoving snow out of his way, off the street and over to the side. Darcy had to believe it was going to take several passes through the town to get it all shoved away. And even then, when all the roads were cleared, people were still going to have to dig out from their homes and their businesses. Yes, it was going to take a long time get Misty Hollow back to normal, but on this Christmas day, Darcy was too grateful for what she had to spend time wo
rrying about what troubles tomorrow might bring them…
As the snowplow drove away, Darcy’s mother waved her arm up with a flourish. As the flurry of drifting, bowing snow cleared, there was indeed another someone standing there. A tall young woman huddled into her coat, holding a single duffle bag as her only luggage, and smiling from ear to ear. Peeking out from under her white cable-knit beanie, her brown hair was streaked with lines of pink. Darcy would recognize that pretty face anywhere.
Lilly McIntosh.
“Look who we found at the airport,” Eileen said proudly, raising her voice to be heard over the fading noise of the plow. “She needed a ride, and we had already talked that nice snowplow driver into getting us here. We figured what was one more, right?”
“Lilly!” Colby squealed. She hadn’t seen her friend in a long, long time and the excitement at her being here, on Christmas, was making Darcy’s daughter burst at the seams. “Lilly, Lilly, Lilly!”
Darcy’s hand came up to cover her mouth she was so overwhelmed. Happy tears threatened to freeze at the corners of her eyes. Jon cradled his arm around her shoulders and kissed her cheek. “Merry Christmas, Darcy Sweet.”
She smiled up at him, unable to speak for the knot of emotion in her throat. They hadn’t exchanged their presents yet. That was for later in the day, in private, but… Jon didn’t know that she had accidentally seen the e-mail confirmation of the gift he bought her. He’d ordered her a bracelet designed in the exact shape of four words he found in a letter from her Great Aunt Millie. The words were, “I love you, Darcy,” and now they were spelled out in rose gold forever. It would be like wearing the love her aunt had shown her while she was alive.
She hadn’t even seen it yet, and she already loved it.
It had taken everything in her not to let the cat out of the bag to get her hands on it early. But this… her mother being here in time for Christmas? This was a gift of a different kind. The gift of family and friends and the warmth of love in her life. The fact that Lilly was here just made it that much more special.
Especially considering the way Lilly was carrying herself. The way she walked. The way she held a hand to her tummy. How she smiled in that way that women only did for one particular life event.
Lilly McIntosh was pregnant.
Darcy knew it for sure, in the way she knew things like this without anyone having to tell her. Looked like Lilly was bringing a surprise of a totally different kind. This was just… wow!
She turned and pushed the door open enough to call inside. “Izzy! Come see who the Christmas spirit dragged in. And I think she’s got something to tell you…”
For a moment, sitting over at the kitchen table, Darcy saw the ghost of her Great Aunt Millie. She smiled and tipped her floppy black hat in approval.
Then she faded away.
Darcy knew she was still around. This was Christmas, after all, and it just wouldn’t be the same without all of her family being here.
“Merry Christmas,“ Darcy whispered. “See you soon.”
* * *
Continue reading?
Book 28
Acknowledgments
Edited by Adam C-S
Edited and Formatted by L.E. Crase
Edited by Shawn Wells
Cover Art - Joanna Walker at
http://bookcovermasterclass.com
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About the Author
K.J. Emrick
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Kathrine Emrick writing as K.J. Emrick is the author of the popular Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery series and the Pine Lake Inn Cozy Mystery series.
Strongly influenced by authors like James Patterson, Dick Francis, and Nora Roberts, Kathrine Emrick dreamed of being an author for the majority of her life.
She never quite gave up on the idea of being a published author and at the age of 51, thanks to the self-publishing explosion, she finally realized her dream. Her maturity allows her to bring a variety of experiences and observations to her writing.
She lives in beautiful South Australia with her family, including several animals. Kathrine can always be found jotting down daily notes in a journal and like many authors, she loves to be surrounded by books and is a voracious reader. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her family and volunteering at the local library.
Her goal is to regularly produce entertaining and noteworthy content and engaging in a community of readers and writers.
To find out more please visit the Kathrine's website at kathrineemrick.com
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