Jessie knew she’d been leaving Eric, yet bizarrely, she couldn’t remember exactly why. Although she’d known for weeks that she wanted a divorce, to this day she still sensed—quite strongly—that something major had triggered her decision to end their marriage that particular evening instead of leaving on her planned business trip. And no amount of counseling or even hypnosis could make her remember what had happened between running into the bathroom when Eric had suddenly slapped her and waking up in the hospital three days later, when her distraught parents had tearfully explained that she was widowed, childless, and likely would never walk again.
She’d remained insensate for over a week, preferring the dark, emotionless cavity her attacker had carved out of her soul instead of facing reality, and refused her father and mother’s desperate petitions that she let them transfer her to a hospital in New York. She wasn’t being stubborn or heartless; Jessie simply hadn’t wanted anyone she loved—or who loved her—to witness her struggling to regain control of her life. But not two days after her parents’ teary good-byes, an angel had walked into her hospital room and introduced herself as Merissa. She’d then proceeded to drag Jessie kicking and screaming out of bed and into a wheelchair, and pushed her out into the sunshine.
Slowing down to turn onto Frog Point Road, Jessie smiled sadly at the memory of Mer wading through the snow to retrieve the yards of ribbon hanging off no less than six trees. The wind had been blowing, causing the ribbon to repeatedly flutter out of reach, and Merissa had expended more energy cursing Jessie than capturing it.
“Lord, Toby, I miss her already,” Jessie said, glancing in her rearview mirror to see Toby had sat up and was looking out the window. “But don’t worry, Mer said she’ll come visit us this summer. And who knows, maybe she’ll bring Andy.”
Jessie suddenly brought the car to a halt when she saw what looked like groomer tracks coming out of the woods in the spot where Roger had been set up four days ago. “Oh God, he’s back,” she said, seeing the tracks had turned down the snow-covered road toward her house. She craned her head to look out the rear window, trying to see Ian’s driveway. “Unless Ian came back from his hunting trip early because of the snowstorm and he’s using one of TarStone’s groomers to get around.”
Which wasn’t that odd a notion, actually, since she’d seen snowmobiles zipping through the streets of Greenville like cars.
Jessie shifted into reverse and backed up until she reached Ian’s driveway, and her heart sank when she saw it hadn’t been plowed and that there weren’t any tracks or even footprints. She put the car back in gear, but just sat staring out the windshield at the road ahead. “What if Roger’s sitting on my steps waiting for us?” she whispered, glancing at Toby in her rearview mirror. “I know he’s harmless, but I really don’t want to deal with the crazy man right now.”
When Toby merely yawned, Jessie took her foot off the brake and started toward home again, wracking her brain for a believable lie to get Roger to leave. But at the next curve in the road, she saw where the wide rubber tracks had climbed over the snowbank and back into the woods.
She blew out a relieved sigh. “He’s been here and gone already, so I guess I won’t be going to hell for lying to a lonely old man.” She laughed softly. “Well, at least not today.” When she pulled into the driveway, Jessie could see where the machine had been parked long enough for the snow to melt from the warmth of its engine.
Remembering the forecaster had said the sky would remain cloudless tonight, allowing the temperature to drop below freezing thanks to the new snowpack, Jessie didn’t bother getting out of the car to open the garage door. She shut off the engine, wondering for the tenth time why the Stones hadn’t installed an automatic garage door opener, but silently thanked them for the motion-activated floodlights that were now lighting up the entire front yard.
“Well, we almost made it home before dark,” she told Toby, getting out and opening his door. She looked around, her gaze stopping at the darkened windows of the house at the end of the peninsula, then moving on to the camp just beyond her garage with its windows boarded up. She looked to the right, barely able to make out another vacant camp through the trees. “Wow,” she said as Toby padded over to a snowbank and lifted his leg. “I guess Merissa was right and this place really is isolated. Our closest winter neighbor is halfway between here and Ian’s driveway.”
She’d met Ava and Richard Randall this morning when she and Merissa had walked along the camp road to see if she had any mail as well as retrieve the ribbon, and they’d come across the couple stringing Christmas lights on their garage. Ava had welcomed Jessie to the neighborhood, and said that if she needed anything to just give them a holler. Richard had asked Jessie if she intended to let Toby run loose, and warned her that once a dog got a taste for chasing deer, it was a hard habit to break.
Jessie had assured him Toby was a service dog, and that he stuck pretty close to her side. The man had instantly warmed up, and suggested she keep an eye on the road just before dawn and right after dusk if she wanted to see the only other winter Frog Point residents, which consisted of two mama deer each with twin fawns and a couple of last year’s offspring. He’d also told her to watch the lake once it froze—which should happen tonight, he’d said, since calm winds and single-digit temperatures were predicted—as the deer would be using the lake to get around once it had a good snowpack.
Jessie had asked if she could buy feed to put out for the deer, and with eyes twinkling and tongue in cheek, Richard had told her it was illegal—although he did recall seeing bags at the feed store with pictures of deer and turkeys and other wildlife on them. Sort of like that one, he’d said, pointing just inside his open garage door at the large bag of wild game feed standing in the corner.
Watching her breath puffing into the crisp night air, Jessie walked around her car to get her purse and walking stick out of the front passenger seat. She then headed up her neatly shoveled walkway, wondering if there were any young local boys she could pay to shovel her out this winter. She should also ask in town if she could hire someone to plow, not wanting to presume Ian would come running every time it snowed. She snorted softly, figuring that offering to pay him would probably go over about as well as it had with Jack Stone, as she remembered the man had still been chuckling and shaking his head as he’d driven away.
Jessie suddenly stopped at the foot of the stairs when she spotted the huge wooden wagon parked on the porch in front of her door. Her shoulders slumping in defeat, she continued up the steps just as Toby bounded past her.
“What do you suppose this is going to cost me?” she muttered, standing over the wagon as Toby sniffed the large cast-iron pot sitting inside it on a bed of fir boughs. She stepped around the wagon as she fished her keys out of her purse and unlocked the door. “If that old goat thinks he’s found a new chump to pawn off his junk on, he’s in for a surprise.” She smiled as she stepped inside, leaned her cane against the counter, set down her purse, then hung her coat on one of the pegs. “Maybe ‘what I be needing’ are his boots and fur hat. What do you think; should I insist on bartering the clothes off
his
back? Toby?” she called, opening the door when she realized he hadn’t followed her inside. “Get in here.”
Instead of obeying, Toby sat down next to the wagon and gave a soft woof.
“No. Bringing that pot in the house will only encourage Roger to drop more stuff off on my porch, and the next thing you know he’ll want to trade my car for that beat-up old trail groomer. Now get in here, you big lug.”
Toby stood up and nosed the pot until its lid fell off, exposing an envelope inside. Jessie stepped onto the porch and snatched it out of the pot, then followed Toby into the house. He trotted over to his bed and plopped down, and Jessie went to her chair and tossed the envelope on the side table. “I’ll read it after I build the fire back up,” she said when Toby lifted his head, his gaze going to the envelope. “What is it with you, anyway?” she asked, grabbing the poker and kneeling down to open the front doors of the woodstove. “Do you think Roger’s going to pay you a commission?” She poked at the ashes, looking for embers that might still be glowing. “Or are you taking his side because you think you’ve found another new male buddy?”
Toby rested his snout on the hearth and silently watched.
Jessie continued their one-sided conversation, mostly to ward off the absolute silence of the house. “Do you suppose Roger bartered one of the MacKeages for that old groomer, Tobes? Or maybe they put it for sale by the side of the road like all the snowmobiles and ATVs we saw on the drive back, and he bought it.” She placed several pieces of the kindling on the exposed embers, then sat back on her heels to see if they were going to catch fire. “No, Roger said he had no use for money, so he must have traded—oh, damn!”
Jessie lunged forward to shove open the large lever when smoke started billowing out the stove doors, then pulled the small lever on the right side toward her. “I forgot to open the dampers,” she explained when Toby lifted his head and sneezed.
Seeing the kindling burst into flames, Jessie immediately closed the doors, stood up, and grabbed a split log from the washtub Merissa had lugged in from the garage and then filled with wood. She opened the top lid and set the log into the flames, then added two more pieces before closing the lid and brushing her hands on her pants.
“Okay, now I’ll read Roger’s letter,” she said over the snaps and crackles coming from the burning kindling. She settled into the perfectly sized recliner she’d moved from the condo her parents had rented and furnished for her in Atlanta before her release from the rehab facility, lifting up the footrest. Jessie then slid her finger under the flap of the envelope with a sigh, both wondering and dreading what cryptic warning Roger had for her this time.
She gasped in surprise when she pulled out a Christmas card of a beautiful angel floating in a small clearing in the woods, surrounded by fir trees dusted with snow. Jessie studied it for several seconds, noticing the crow sitting on a branch overlooking the clearing, as well as what looked like . . . She squinted at the card. Were those groomer tracks disappearing into the woods behind the angel?
She opened the card with a frown and, ignoring the folded piece of paper that fell into her lap, read the handwritten inscription out loud.
Yuletide greetings to you, Jess, along with my wish that all your dreams come true in this enchanted place throughout this magical season. Welcome home, lass.
Roger AuClair de Keage
PS: Don’t worry, Tobias; there’ll be something under the tree for you.
Jessie held the card for Toby to see. “Look, Roger sent it to both of us. And apparently he wants you to believe he’s Santa Claus.”
But then she looked at it again and frowned. De Keage. Was Roger related to the MacKeages? Maybe that was how he’d gotten hold of one of their groomers.
She frowned again when she realized he’d called Toby
Tobias
. But how could he know that she often called the big lug Tobias? She snorted, standing the card on the table beside her and picking up the folded piece of paper, only to discover there were two pages. “Everyone knows Toby is short for Tobias, and Roger was obviously trying to sound formal.”
But then why had he called her
Jess
instead of Jessie or even Jessica?
She scanned the top paper and snorted again, waving it at Toby before sliding it behind the second page. “The old goat included detailed instructions on how to cook a venison roast. Ohmigod, listen to this:
It’s a sin against humanity for a woman not to teach her daughter to cook,
” Jessie read aloud. “
And don’t think I won’t be telling your mama exactly that when she comes for Christmas. Doesn’t she know the way to a man’s heart is directly through his belly? At least you inherited your papa’s acumen for business, Jess, and he’ll be right proud of you for purchasing such a fine home.
”
Feeling the fine hairs on her neck stir, Jessie stopped reading. “Toby,” she whispered. “How would Roger know I even have a mama and papa, much less that they’re planning to come spend Christmas with us?”
When Toby merely blinked at her, Jessie took a steadying breath and started reading aloud again. “
The house will serve you well, lass, until you start filling it up with bairns the way Megan did. But don’t you worry; you’ll have another fine home by the time your third child is conceived—that is, assuming you’re not only careful whose hand you grasp, but that you also have the courage to accept all that comes with the man extending it.
”
Jessie let the pages flutter to the floor, glancing toward the window at the blackness outside before staring wide-eyed at Toby. “Is Roger crazy, or am I? How can he possibly know all this . . . this stuff? Everything he’s said, from calling me a
gràineag
to my trying to remember what happened that night to even knowing I don’t cook—they can’t
all
be coincidences. And . . . and what did he mean, when I conceive my third child?” she whispered, placing a hand on her belly.
Toby got up from his bed and picked up one of the fallen papers in his mouth. He dropped it on her lap, then gave a soft whine and nosed her arm. But when Jessie only stared at him, her heart threatening to pound out of her chest, Toby licked her hand and gave a soft woof.
She slowly picked up the paper and started softly reading aloud again. “
Forgive me for scaring you, lass, but I’m afraid I don’t have the luxury of time to gently ease you into the magic, seeing how you took so long to get here because you kept throwing away that brochure I sent you.
”
Jessie lowered the letter when her trembling made it impossible to read any more. “Roger sent me that brochure?” she asked, her mind’s eye seeing it on her desk and in her briefcase and on her nightstand. She looked down at Toby resting his head on her reclined leg. “But I e-mailed TarStone Mountain Ski Resort and asked them to send me their brochure, although . . . although that still doesn’t explain why it kept reappearing after I kept throwing it away.”