Love Inspired December 2014 - Box Set 1 of 2: A Rancher for Christmas\Her Montana Christmas\An Amish Christmas Journey\Yuletide Baby (10 page)

“What about the Shaws?” her father asked when at last she wound down.

“Oh, them,” she said in as offhand a manner as she could manage. “Their eldest daughter is getting married on Christmas night. They're all wrapped up in that. I don't imagine they have time for a distant cousin who won't be hanging around much longer anyway.”

“Well, I'm glad you got that out of your system,” he told her, not bothering to hide his relief. “Look, I know we're short on family,” he said, “but one day you'll meet a nice young man and start a family of your own. Then it won't matter. You'll see.”

Will I?
she wondered.
Or have I already met him and ruined it all with my lies?

They chatted a few minutes longer, then hung up. Robin felt both better and worse. She thought she could survive leaving town without the Shaws knowing who and what she was. She could get along with just the little bit of family she had; she'd done so to this point. Even the job that her parents were holding open for her didn't sound too bad. If it paid the bills and pleased her parents, she could always find ways to indulge her interest in history. She would miss her friends, but she'd lost friends before and survived. Perhaps if she left town, Rusty wouldn't tell what he knew, and the truth about the accident on the bridge would remain hidden. The bridge was being rebuilt after all, and what good would it do to reopen old wounds? If her great-grandmother could live with that lie, Robin supposed she could, too.

What cut her to the quick, what killed her, was the idea of never seeing Ethan again, of never knowing how he fared, what he needed, who helped him, if he made peace with his sister and got to see his niece and aunt again. To think that he had family from whom he was estranged pained Robin, not only because she identified with his need for family, but also because she knew it pained him so very deeply. If she could give him one thing before she left, it would be what she herself could not have: family.

And why not? she wondered. Maybe it was none of her business, but he could hardly hate her more than he was going to anyway. Why shouldn't she try to fix things between him and his sister? What her father had said about cross-referencing had gotten her to thinking about how she could find Ethan's family.

Recalling all that he'd told her, Robin pulled out a pad of paper and a pen and began making notes. His aunt's name was Molly Johnson. His sister's name was Colleen Connaught. They lived in the Los Angeles area of California. All she had to do was find a Molly Johnson and a Colleen Connaught with the same address in the environs of Los Angeles. Shouldn't be too difficult. Might take some time, though, and she didn't want to use the computers at the museum for the search, not that she had much time at work right now for anything but putting together exhibits.

She retrieved her tablet from her bag and logged onto the Wi-Fi provided by the inn. By the time she collapsed into bed two hours later, she'd succeeded only in eliminating all the Molly Johnsons in Los Angeles proper, by virtue of the fact that no Colleen Connaught cross-referenced with any of them, and making a list of the dozens of smaller towns that comprised the greater Los Angeles area, but she wasn't going to give up. She was going to find Ethan's sister and speak to her before she left this town, hopefully before Christmas.

Her alarm woke her at seven-thirty. She showered, then gulped down a cup of coffee and frozen pastries heated in the microwave before blowing dry her hair and outfitting herself for another cold day. Choosing warmth and comfort over style, she caught her hair in a ponytail low on the back of her head, slipped on a wide, thick, navy blue knit headband and stepped into her oldest jeans, which she paired with a snug brown rib-knit sweater. To this she added her hiking boots and down-filled coat. The sun shined bright out of a clear blue sky, so she donned a pair of sunglasses as she went out the door, the strap of her bag over her shoulder.

She arrived at the church a few minutes early, but she'd hardly put the transmission into Park before she spied Ethan via her side-view mirror, coming out the front door of the parsonage. Slinging on his coat, a piece of toast in his teeth, he ran across the street. She let herself out of the car in time to meet him as he arrived. He swallowed what he was chewing and tossed aside the remainder of his breakfast, dusting off his face and hands.

“Thank you for coming.”

“I told you I would.”

“I know. I didn't doubt it.” He huffed out a deep breath, fogging the air. “But I realize you'd rather not.”

She reached up to remove her sunglasses. “That isn't so.”

“Are you sure? I know you say you aren't put off by what I told you about my father, but some think the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. That's why you're the only one here I've told.”

Touched, she smiled at him. “You don't have to worry that I'll tell anyone else.”

“I don't,” he said, “and not because you're good at keeping secrets. I intend to reveal all of mine, just gradually.”

Frowning, she leaned back against the car door and looked down at her toes. “Sometimes there seems no point in revealing secrets.”

“Why? Become some might disapprove? I can't imagine your parents, for instance, would approve of someone who has close family serving time in prison.”

“They don't approve of
me
,” she reminded him. That might change, though, if she returned home, took the job.
When,
she reminded herself.
When
she returned home and took the job at the foundation.

She realized suddenly that the job her father had pitched last night was not the same job her mother had pressed her on before. One had been funded through Templeton at the university; her dad had essentially offered her a spot at the foundation itself. This went beyond a simple “mischaracterization.” This was her big “in,” a tailor-made position to fold her into the bosom of her family, the only family she truly had. Perhaps she should be thrilled about that, instead of desperate to avoid thinking about it.

She glanced pointedly at her watch, saying, “We ought to get busy.”

Ethan raised his hand, and she preceded him up onto the boardwalk. As they drew near the front door of the church, he slid around her, pulling his keys from his coat pocket. He unlocked the door and let her inside, reaching around her to flip on lights. Stepping in behind her, he closed and locked the door. The stone antechamber felt chilly despite the low hum of the central-air unit, but they quickly went to work removing the shelves and getting out the ropes, which they stretched across the vestibule. He held up a long, blunt wooden dowel with a metal ring screwed into one end.

“This,” he said, “is apparently a thread needle. We attach the clip on one end of the rope to the ring, push the needle through the eye in the wall in the closet there and pull the rope through up top. Then I detach the clip from the needle and attach it to the arm of one of the bells.”

“And we repeat the process with the other rope.”

“Exactly.”

He opened the trapdoor, pulled down the ladder and, after donning a cap and gloves, climbed up into the belfry. When he gave the order, Robin lifted the ladder and closed the trap, then hurried into the closet to push the rope through the eye as he pulled. While she waited for him to send the thread needle back down, her cell phone rang. She tugged off her gloves and answered the call.

It was Olivia, wondering if Robin could meet her at the museum to work for a while. With only ten days left before the opening and Christmas smack in the middle, time was short.

“Uh, sure,” Robin told her, “but I have to be at the church by four for dress rehearsal, and it might take me some time to get over to the museum.”

“It's okay,” Olivia assured her. “I'm not ready to head into town yet myself, and I'll take whatever help you can give me. I'll text when I get to the museum, and you can come over then.”

“Deal.”

Just as she rang off, Ethan called through the closed trapdoor. “One down and one to go. Open the trap.”

She did so, and he dropped the wooden dowel, watching as she hurried over to pick it up and clip on the rope. She closed the trapdoor again then moved back into the closet. Pushing the thread needle through the eye proved more difficult the second time, partly because one side of the channel in the center of the eye was already filled with rope and partly because the second channel was on top of the eye. She had to stack up some hymnals on which to stand in order to force the long wooden needle through the space. Finally, she heard Ethan shout that he had it.

She returned the hymnals, put the box in which the ropes had been shipped back into the closet and waited for Ethan to tell her to open the trap so he could come down. It was almost nine before he stepped off the ladder onto the floor of the vestibule again.

“Quick,” he told her, hurrying for the closet as the carillon began to play.

She used the pole to push up the ladder and close the trapdoor. Suddenly, the whole room seemed to vibrate with the deep resonance of the bells overhead. Running to the closet, she found Ethan with one leg braced against the wall as he pulled first one rope and then the other, his face alight with joy.

“This is definitely a two-person job!” he shouted, obviously laboring.

She laughed. “So I see!”

To stop the bells from ringing, he wound the ropes securely around the anchors bolted into the rock wall and stepped out of the closet, throwing his arms wide. “We did it, Robin. We roped the bells. And we're going to ring them for Christmas,” he vowed, grinning broadly.

“Everyone's going to be so surprised,” she enthused, clapping her hands.

“And pleased, I hope.”

“I'm sure of it.”

Reaching out, he looped his gloved hands around her neck and pulled her to him, dropping his forehead to hers. “Thank you. Again. For everything.”

She shook her head, rubbing her forehead against his, her heart full to the point of bursting. “It's been my pleasure, all of it.”

Her phone beeped, letting her know that she'd received a text. Taking full advantage of the interruption, she jerked away, whipping the little technological wonder from her pocket.

“I have to go. Olivia needs me.”

Sighing, Ethan waved a hand. “Go. Go. But I'll see you at four. Right?”

“At four,” she promised, beating a hasty retreat.

Saved by the beep.

After the bells.

She couldn't even get her metaphors right, she thought grimly, but at least she hadn't made a fool of herself, though with Ethan that was increasingly a near thing.

Chapter Ten

“W
hose idea was this log cabin?” Livvie grumbled as she shoved at the stump beside the back wall of the small structure that took pride of place in the center of the museum gallery. The preserved stump had been placed picturesquely, the blade of an ax affixed into a precisely carved cut in its top.

“You know it was Mayor Shaw's,” Robin muttered, applying an aging compound to the hewn ends of the small logs. A construction crew had erected the structure to Olivia's specifications. Now she and Olivia were dressing it for display. “That's why the plaque says that he and his wife endowed the exhibit.”

“It does make an interesting focal point,” Olivia conceded, sprinkling dirt over the tracks she'd made.

A pot of faux beans hung over the faux blaze in the rock fireplace inside, visible through the open door, while a seasonally appropriate pair of hares waited on the porch for skinning and cleaning. In spring they would trade the hare for fish and add onions and field greens. Summer would see berries, potatoes and larger game rotated into the display. Autumn would provide the greatest bounty. They'd set up smoking racks in the “yard” to show how meat had been processed for storage. Except Robin wouldn't be here to assist Olivia with any of those displays.

She wouldn't know what Christmas was like in Jasper Gulch next year either, or the Fourth of July, for that matter. She would never see this valley at normal, after the six-month-long centennial celebration had concluded, the bridge was reopened and life had gotten back to its everyday cadence. She would only ever have these months and this time of the centennial.

Robin stopped what she was doing and looked around her at the displays in their glass cases. Here unfolded the history of Jasper Gulch, Montana, from its earliest settlement to its founding through the following century to today. Just over nine hundred souls called this little stopover home, yet it bore a proud and noble heritage, sheltered by the surrounding mountains, its roots sinking deep into the valley floor. She was shocked to realize that the city of Albuquerque alone contained a population of well over half a million people, while the whole state of Montana, the fourth-largest in the United States by area, boasted barely more than a million, and every one of them hardy, determined, independent and, at the same time, neighborly in every sense of the word. She'd come to Montana to find family, but Montana
was
family, one big, far-flung, let-me-give-you-a-hand family. And she was leaving it all behind her.

It had taken a concerted effort to mess up things this badly, but she'd managed it.

Not a single person in this town deserved the dishonesty she had dished out since her arrival, nor the cowardly retreat she planned. Olivia, who had befriended and hired her, didn't deserve it. Rusty, who had kept her secret and tried to help her, didn't deserve it. The parents and children and performers in the pageant didn't deserve it. The ladies on the decorating and costume committees didn't deserve it. The women in the a cappella quartet didn't deserve it. Mamie Fidler, who had been almost a second mother to her, certainly did not deserve such treatment from Robin. Even the Shaws, who had shown her nothing but respect and kindness, did not deserve to be lied to, tricked and ultimately dismissed for her pride's sake.

Most of all, Ethan did not deserve to be treated the way she was treating him. He deserved every consideration, all honesty, every bit of support she could give him and all the happiness this world could provide. To think that he'd worried she would look down on him because of something his father had done made her feel small and unworthy. He deserved the truth from her, and she deserved whatever came after that. Her pride had no say in the matter anymore.

Robin finished up what she was doing, then put away her tools before checking the time. Almost fifty minutes before she had to return to the church.

“Liv, do you mind if I call it a day? I have something to do before dress rehearsal.”

Dusting off her hands, Olivia smiled. “Oh, sure, hon. I've kept you long enough.”

“Thanks.”

Robin hurried into her outer layer of cold-weather gear, but as soon as she got into the car, she tugged off her gloves and put in a call on her cell phone. As usual, she got her father's voice mail, so she left a message.

“Dad, I need a favor, and I need it ASAP. That state-of-the-art software you've had installed, will it cross-reference addresses? If so, I need to find two women who live at the same address in the Los Angeles, California, area. Their names are Molly Johnson and Colleen Connaught. You'll have to try every spelling of the second name. And please, get back to me as quickly as you can, but not on this phone. Call the inn. Thanks. I owe you.” She couldn't take a chance that he'd call while she was with Ethan and ruin the surprise she was planning. Besides, if this didn't work, she didn't want to get Ethan's hopes up for nothing.

Back at the inn, she set about garbing herself for the dress rehearsal. The long dress with its high neckline, gathered skirt and long sleeves was not actually wool so wouldn't scratch, but she wore a black leotard under it anyway. The bodysuit gave her added warmth and doubled for stockings. Over the dress went the knee-length white smock with its gigantic floppy red bow. She twisted her hair into an adequate knot, being sure to cover her ears, and wore her plainest pumps. She'd hoped to borrow a pair of historically accurate shoes from the museum, but women of that era had proved to have ridiculously tiny feet, at least those whose shoes they had acquired anyway.

She was in the process of fixing holly in her hair when the phone in her room rang. Dropping everything into the sink, she ran to answer. It was not her father but a Templeton foundation research fellow named Abel Goodenour.

Abel spoke with a slight German accent when he said, “Greetings, Ms. Frazier. Your father has instructed me to call you with the following findings.”

He went on to tell her that a Molly Johnson and a Colleen Connaught lived at a certain address in Valinda, California. He gave her the address and three phone numbers, all of which she wrote down.

“Thank you, Mr. Goodenour.”

“
Dr.
Goodenour,” he corrected her.

“Thank you, Dr. Goodenour,” she corrected, determinedly
not
rolling her eyes. “I appreciate the information very much.”

He rang off with a terse “Goodbye.”

Robin could hardly contain her excitement. Perhaps soon she could speak to Ethan's sister. She wouldn't expect too much. It would be enough if Colleen would just call Ethan to wish him a merry Christmas. That and the truth were all Robin had to give him.

* * *

Everyone looked great. Ethan couldn't have been more pleased with the costumes. Unfortunately, the rehearsal could only be described as disastrous. The donkey stepped on an angel's foot, which, thankfully, did not appear to be broken despite copious tears. A sheep ran amok, much to the screaming delight of the children. The chicken tried to roost in the Christmas tree in the vestibule, which toppled and had to be put back into place. The shepherd with the rope decided to practice lassoing everyone and everything as soon as his mom was called away by the babysitter to pick up his sister, who was suspected of having a stomach virus.

“That's all we need,” Chauncey Hardman exclaimed, sure that the stomach virus would run rampant through the cast and church by Christmas.

Feeling defeated, Ethan pinched the bridge of his nose, gathered everyone for prayer, then sent them all home. They knew what to do and when to do it. More practice was not going to change anything for the better; it was just going to frustrate those who took this seriously, himself included, and give more opportunity to those tending toward mischief.

The Shaws helped move the altar and pulpit to places down in front of the stage set for the next day's service. Ethan hoped that seeing the set on Sunday morning would encourage everyone to return for the Christmas Eve program, but he felt discouraged about the whole venture, or perhaps he just felt discouraged in general.

The euphoria over roping the bells that morning had vanished with Robin's eagerness to get away from him. She had as much as admitted that his concerns about her family approving of him were merited. Worse, she'd intimated that her secrets were more dire than he had anticipated. How they could be worse than his own, however, he could not imagine.

Nevertheless, her fear of the truth made him fear it, not that he would shrink from it—or so he told himself until he realized that, for once, Robin did not have to be coaxed to stay behind when the others left. He just looked around as he was turning off lights and there she sat, a lone figure in a black leotard, a great green cardigan that swallowed her from neck to knees and an incongruous pair of brown pumps, her costume in a plastic bag that draped, clothes hanger down, over the back of the pew beside her.

Something in the way she sat there watching him put his senses on alert and turned his stomach into a jumble. They'd hardly had a chance to speak at all that evening, but now that he thought about it, he realized that she'd been unusually quiet and thoughtful, even for her.

He'd gotten all the lights in the sanctuary except one. That left just the light in the vestibule and a light behind the set, which he'd intended to switch off after checking the side doors. Despite the golden glow of the windows from the light poles on either side of the building, large rectangular shadows reached across the pews, meeting in the center aisle and banding the great hall in thick stripes of black.

She sat calmly in a wash of muddy gold light, waiting for him to come to her. He'd left his own smock and bow on a hanger draped over his reading stool but wore his tweed pants, white shirt and suspenders with an old pair of black lace-up dress shoes. He'd parted his hair in the middle like the parson in the old photo and slicked it down with water, but it wouldn't stay in place.

“I have some styling gel you can use,” she told him as he nervously attempted to right the mess his hair had no doubt become, sliding his hands through it.

“Rusty told me to oil it.”

“Rusty would probably know,” she said with a nod. “He knows a lot. For instance, he knows all my secrets.”

Ethan felt as if he'd been felled with an ax. He practically toppled into the pew beside her. “What does Rusty know?”

“First, you need to understand that I didn't tell him,” she said urgently. “He guessed, and, well, he's part of it, in a way.”

Confused, Ethan glanced around the shadowed space, taking in the jumbled set, the altar and the pulpit. “I don't know why I'm so surprised. It's just... We came here about the same time, you and I, and you're keeping secrets with one of the town's most respected citizens, while I feel I've barely made a start.”

“But it's a good start.”

“Is it?” he asked. “The truth is, I'm not much of a minister. I have my own secrets that you know nothing about. Why, my own sister won't speak to me.”

“She'll come around.”

“I can't see my own niece.”

“You will.”

“My father is in prison.”

“Not because of anything you've done, and you were able to reach him, turn him to God.”

“I can't take credit for that. Prison is a mighty influence on a man.”

“But you didn't give up on him,” she argued.

“How could I?” he asked. “God didn't give up on me. I just don't know if I'm living up to His expectations, His purpose for me.”

She clasped both of his hands in hers, saying urgently, “Now, you listen to me. You're making a difference here in this valley, Ethan Johnson.”

He wanted to believe that, and he blessed her for saying so, but he had to wonder.

“Am I? Am I really? Then why don't you trust me enough to tell me your secrets?”

“I do.” She bit her lip. “I just don't want you to think less of me.”

Letting go of her hands, he smoothed the hair around her face, saying, “I think the world and all of you, Robin Frazier, more than I want to, to tell you the bald truth. But I can't help you if you won't tell me what's bothering you.”

Sighing, she slumped against the pew and closed her eyes. Ethan let his hands fall away, but then she straightened and swiveled to face him, her knees bumping his.

“You can't help me,” she said, “but I'll tell you. It all started when my great-grandmother was dying. Everyone expected it. She was one hundred and three years old, but we were very close, she and I. She wasn't gone yet, and I was already missing her, so she told me what no one had ever suspected, that her name wasn't really Lillian. It was Lucy. Lucy Shaw.”

Ethan blinked at that, sure he'd misheard. “I thought you said Lucy Shaw. But that wouldn't be possible. Lucy Shaw...”

The implications slowly dawned on him.

“She didn't die when Ezra's Model T went off the bridge,” Robin confirmed.

“That is wild!”

“She faked her death. So she could marry my great-grandpa Cyrus.”

Ethan had a difficult time getting his teeth to meet. “Faked her death.”

“Ezra wanted her to marry someone else. Rusty thinks it was to save the bank after Silas Massey left town.”

“Rusty thinks?”

“He was there that night when they faked the accident, and he's kept her secret all these years.”

Astonished, Ethan leaned forward, braced his elbows on his knees and rubbed his hands over his face, trying to wrap his mind around this information. “Lucy didn't die, and Rusty has known it all along. She was your great-grandmother and told you all this on her deathbed, so...” He sat up straight. “You're kin to the Shaws.”

Robin grimaced. “That's why I'm here. Great-Grandma wanted me to connect with my Montana family, but my parents thought it was all a hallucination on her part, and by the time I could prove she'd been telling the truth, I'd been here long enough to realize that the Shaws wouldn't take kindly to this information or my delay in bringing it to light. I mean, they are sort of the first family around Jasper Gulch. To them, I would be just a hanger-on trying to worm my way into the family for some nefarious reason.”