A Stone Creek Christmas

Brad reached her, hooked an arm around her neck and gave her a big-brother half hug. “She’s referring to the paper one,” he told her in an exaggerated whisper.

Olivia contrived to look surprised. “Oh!” she said.

Brad laughed and released her from the choke hold. “So what brings you to Stone Creek Ranch, Doc?”

Olivia glanced around, taking in the familiar surroundings. Missing her grandfather, Big John, the way she always did when she set foot on home ground. The place had changed a lot since Brad had semiretired from his career in country music—he’d refurbished the barn, replaced the worn-out fences and built a state-of-the-art recording studio out back. At least he’d given up the concert tours, but even with Meg and fourteen-year-old Carly and the baby in the picture, Olivia still wasn’t entirely convinced that he’d come home to stay.

He’d skipped out before, after all, just like their mother.

“I have a problem,” she said in belated answer to his question.

Meg had gone back inside, but she and Brad remained in the yard.

“What sort of problem?” he asked, his eyes serious.

“A reindeer problem,” Olivia explained. Oh, and I got off to a fine start with your friend the contractor, too.

Brad’s brow furrowed. “A what?”

“I need to get out of this truck,” Ginger transmitted from the passenger seat. “Now.”

With a slight sigh Olivia opened Ginger’s door so she could hop out, sniff the snow and leave a yellow splotch. That done, she trotted off toward the barn, probably looking for Brad’s dog, Willie.

“I found this reindeer,” Olivia said, heading for the back of the Suburban and unveiling Rodney. “I was hoping he could stay here until we find his owner.”

“What if he doesn’t have an owner?” Brad asked reasonably, running a hand through his shaggy blond hair before reaching out to stroke the deer.

“He’s tame,” Olivia pointed out.

“Tame, but not housebroken,” Brad said.

Sure enough, Rodney had dropped a few pellets on his blanket.

“I don’t expect you to keep him in the house,” Olivia said.

Brad laughed. Reached right in and hoisted Rodney down out of the Suburban. The deer stumbled a little, wobbly legged from riding, and looked worriedly up at Olivia.

“You’ll be safe here,” she told the animal. She turned back to Brad. “He can stay in the barn, can’t he? I know you have some empty stalls.”

“Sure,” Brad said after a hesitation that would have been comical if Olivia hadn’t been so concerned about Rodney. “Sure,” he repeated.

Knowing he was about to ruffle her hair, the way he’d done when she was a little kid, Olivia took a step back.

“I want something in return, though,” Brad continued.

“What?” Olivia asked suspiciously.

“You, at our table, on Thanksgiving,” he answered. “No excuses about filling in at the clinic. Ashley and Melissa are both coming, and Meg’s mother, too, along with her sister, Sierra.”

The invitation didn’t come as any surprise to Olivia—Meg had mentioned holding a big Thanksgiving blowout weeks ago—but the truth was, Olivia preferred to work on holidays. That way, she didn’t miss Big John so much, or wonder if their long-lost mother might come waltzing through the door, wanting to get to know the grown children she’d abandoned so many years before.

“Livie?” Brad prompted.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll be here. But I’m on call over Thanksgiving, and all the other vets have families, so if there’s an emergency—”

“Liv,” Brad broke in, “you have a family, too.”

“I meant wives, husbands, children,” Olivia said, embarrassed.

“Two o’clock, you don’t need to bring anything, and wear something you haven’t delivered calves in.”

She glared up at him. “Can I see my nephew now,” she asked, “or is there a dress code for that, too?”

Brad laughed. “I’ll get Rudolph settled in a nice, cozy stall while you go inside. Check the attitude at the door—Meg wasn’t kidding when she said she was in the holiday spirit. Of course, she’s working extra hard at it this year, with Carly away.”

Willie and Ginger came from behind the barn, Willie rushing to greet Olivia.

“His name is Rodney,” Olivia said. “Not Rudolph.”

Brad gave her a look and started for the barn, and Rodney followed uncertainly, casting nary a backward glance at Olivia.

Willie, probably clued in by Ginger, was careful to give Rodney a lot of dog-free space. Olivia bent to scratch his ears.

He’d healed up nicely since being attacked by a wolf or coyote pack on the mountain rising above Stone Creek Ranch. With help from Brad and Meg, Olivia had brought him back to town for surgery and follow-up care. He’d bonded with Brad, though, and been his dog ever since.

With Ginger and Willie following, Olivia went into the house.

Mac’s playpen stood empty in the living room.

Olivia stepped into the nearest bathroom to wash her hands, and when she came out, Meg was standing in the hallway, holding six-month-old Mac. He stretched his arms out to Olivia and strained toward her, and her heart melted.

She took the baby eagerly and nuzzled his neck to make him laugh. His blondish hair stood up all over his head, and his dark blue eyes were round with mischievous excitement. Giggling, he tried to bite Olivia’s nose.

“He’s grown!” Olivia told Meg.

“It’s only been a week since you saw him last,” Meg chided, but she beamed with pride.

Olivia felt a pang, looking at her. Wondered what it would be like to be that happy.

Meg, blond like her husband and son, tilted her head to one side and gave Olivia a humorously pensive once-over. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” Olivia said, too quickly. Mac was gravitating toward his playpen, where he had a pile of toys, and Meg took him and gently set him inside it. She turned back to Olivia.

Just then Brad blew in on a chilly November wind. Bent to pat Ginger and Willie.

“Rudolph is snug in his stall,” Brad said. “Having some oats.”

“Rudolph?” Meg asked, momentarily distracted.

Olivia was relieved. She and Meg were very good friends, as well as family, but Meg was half again too perceptive. She’d figured out that something was bothering Olivia, and in another moment she’d have insisted on finding out what was up. Considering that Olivia didn’t know that herself, the conversation would have been pointless.

“Liv will be here for Thanksgiving,” Brad told Meg, pulling his wife against his side and planting a kiss on the top of her head.

“Of course she will,” Meg said, surprised that there’d ever been any question. Her gaze lingered on Olivia, and there was concern in it.

Suddenly Olivia was anxious to go.

“I have two million things to do,” she said, bending over the playpen to tickle Mac, who was kicking both feet and waving his arms, before heading to the front door and beckoning for Ginger.

“We’ll see you tomorrow at the ground-breaking ceremony,” Meg said, smiling and giving Brad an affectionate jab with one elbow. “We’re expecting a big crowd, thanks to Mr. Country Music here.”

Olivia laughed at the face Brad made, but then she recalled that Tanner Quinn would be there, too, and that unsettled feeling was back again. “The ground’s pretty hard, thanks to the weather,” she said, to cover the momentary lapse. “Let’s hope Mr. Country Music still has the muscle to drive a shovel through six inches of snow and a layer of ice.”

Brad showed off a respectable biceps, Popeye-style, and everybody laughed again.

“I’ll walk you to the truck,” he said, when Olivia would have ducked out without further ado.

He opened the driver’s door of the Suburban, and Ginger made the leap, scrabbling across to the passenger seat. Olivia looked at her in surprise, since she usually wasn’t that agile, but Brad reclaimed her attention soon enough.

“Is everything okay with you, Livie?” he asked. He and the twins were the only people in the world, now that Big John was gone, who called her Livie. It seemed right, coming from her big brother or her sisters, but it also made her ache for her grandfather. He’d loved Thanksgiving even better than Christmas, saying he figured the O’Ballivans had a great deal to be grateful for.

“Everything’s fine,” Olivia said. “Why does everybody keep asking me if I’m okay? Meg did—now you.”

“You just seem—I don’t know—kind of sad.”

Olivia didn’t trust herself to speak, and suddenly her eyes burned with moisture.

Brad took her gently by the shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. “I miss Big John, too,” he said. Then he waited while she climbed onto the running board and then the driver’s seat. He shut the door and waved when she went to turn around, and when she glanced into the rearview mirror, he was still standing there with Willie, both of them staring after her.

Chapter Three

Although Brad liked to downplay his success, especially now that he didn’t go out on tour anymore, he was clearly still a very big deal. When Olivia arrived at the building site on the outskirts of Stone Creek at nine forty-five the next morning, the windswept clearing was jammed with TV news trucks and stringers from various tabloids. Of course the townspeople had turned out, too, happy that work was about to begin on the new animal shelter—and proud of their hometown boy.

Olivia’s feelings about Brad’s fame were mixed—he’d been away playing star when Big John needed him most, and she wasn’t over that—but seeing him up there on the hastily assembled plank stage gave her a jolt of joy. She worked her way through the crowd to stand next to Meg, Ashley and Melissa, who were grouped in a little cluster up front, fussing over Mac. The baby’s blue snowsuit was so bulky that he resembled the Michelin man.

Ashley turned to smile at Olivia, taking in her trim, tailored black pantsuit—a holdover from her job interview at the veterinary clinic right after she’d finished graduate school. She’d ferreted through boxes until she’d found it, gone over the outfit with a lint roller to get rid of the ubiquitous pet hair, and hoped for the best.

“I guess you couldn’t quite manage a dress,” Ashley said without sarcasm. She was tall and blond, clad in a long skirt, elegant boots and a colorful patchwork jacket she’d probably whipped up on her sewing machine. She was also stubbornly old-fashioned—no cell phone, no Internet connection, no MP3 player—and Olivia had often thought, secretly of course, that her younger sister should have been born in the Victorian era, rather than modern times. She would have fit right into the 1890s, been completely comfortable cooking on a woodburning stove, reading by gaslight and directing a contingent of maids in ruffly aprons and scalloped white caps.

“Best I could do on short notice,” Olivia chimed in, exchanging a hello grin with Meg and giving Mac’s mittened hand a little squeeze. His plump little cheek felt smooth and cold as she kissed him.

“Since when is a year ‘short notice’?” Melissa put in, grinning. She and Ashley were fraternal twins, but except for their deep blue eyes, they bore no noticeable resemblance to each other. Melissa was small, an inch shorter than Olivia, and wore her fine chestnut-colored hair in a bob. Having left the law office where she worked to attend the ceremony, she was clad in her usual getup of high heels, pencil-straight skirt, fitted blazer and prim white blouse.

Up on stage, Brad tapped lightly on the microphone.

Everybody fell silent, as though the whole gathering had taken a single, indrawn breath all at the same time. The air was charged with excitement and civic pride and the welcome prospect of construction jobs to tide over the laid-off workers from the sawmill.

Meg’s eyes shone as she gazed up at her husband. “Isn’t he something?” she marveled, giving Olivia a little poke with one elbow as she shifted Mac to her other hip.

Olivia smiled but didn’t reply.

“Sing!” someone shouted, somewhere in the surging throng. Any moment now, Olivia thought, they’d all be holding up disposable lights in a flickering-flame salute.

Brad shook his head. “Not today,” he said.

A collective groan rose from the crowd.

Brad put up both hands to silence them.

“He’ll sing,” Melissa said in a loud and certain whisper. She and Ashley, being the youngest, barely knew Brad. He’d been trying to remedy that ever since he’d moved back from Nashville, but it was slow going. They admired him, they were grateful to him, but it seemed to Olivia that her sisters were still in awe of their big brother, too, and therefore a strange shyness possessed them whenever he was around.

Brad asked Olivia and Tanner to join him on stage.

Even though Olivia had expected that, she wished she didn’t have to go up there. She was a behind-the-scenes kind of person, uncomfortable at the center of attention. When Tanner appeared from behind her, took her arm and hustled her toward the wooden steps, she caught her breath. Stone Creekers raised an uproarious cheer, and Olivia flushed with embarrassment, but Tanner seemed untroubled.

He wore too-new, too-expensive boots, probably custommade, to match his too-new hat, along with jeans, a black silk shirt and a denim jacket. He seemed as at home getting up in front of all those people as Brad did—his grin dazzled, and his eyes were bright with enjoyment.

Drugstore cowboy, Olivia thought, but she couldn’t work up any rancor. Tanner Quinn might be laying on the Western bit a little thick, but he did look good. Way, way too good for Olivia’s comfort.

Brad introduced them both: Tanner as the builder, and Olivia—“You all know my kid sister, the horse doctor”—as the driving force behind the project. Without her, he said, none of this would be happening.

Never having thought of herself as a driving force behind anything in particular, Olivia grew even more flustered as Brad went on about how she’d be heading up the shelter when it opened around that time next year.

More applause followed, the good-natured, hometown kind, indulgent and laced with chuckles.

Let this be over, Olivia thought.

“Sing!” someone yelled. The whole audience soon took up the chant.

“Here’s where we make a run for it,” Tanner whispered to Olivia, and the two of them left the stage. Tanner vanished, and Olivia went back to stand with her sisters and Meg.

Brad grinned, shaking his head a little as one of his buddies handed up a guitar. “One,” he said firmly. After strumming a few riffs and turning the tuning keys this way and that, he eased into “Meg’s Song,” a ballad he’d written for his wife.

Holding Mac and looking up at Brad with an expression of rapt delight, Meg seemed to glow from the inside. A sweet, strange alchemy made it seem as though only Brad, Meg and Mac were really there during those magical minutes, on that blustery day, with the snow crusting hard around everybody’s feet. The rest of them might have been hovering in an adjacent dimension, like actors waiting to go on.

When the song ended, the audience clamored for more, but Brad didn’t give in. Photographers and reporters shoved in close as he handed off the guitar again, descended from the stage and picked up a brand-new shovel with a blue ribbon on the handle. The ribbon, Olivia knew, was Ashley’s handiwork; she was an expert with bows, where Olivia always got them tangled up, fiddling with them until they were grubby.

“Are you making a comeback?” one reporter demanded.

“When will you make another movie?” someone else wanted to know.

Still another person shoved a microphone into Brad’s face; he pushed it away with a practiced motion of one arm. “We’re here to break ground for an animal shelter,” he said, and only the set of his jaw gave away the annoyance he felt. He beckoned to Olivia, then to Tanner, after glancing around to locate him.

Then, with consummate showmanship, Brad drove the shovel hard into the partially frozen ground. Tossed the dirt dangerously close to one reporter’s shoes.

Olivia thought of the finished structure, and what it would mean to so many stray and unwanted dogs, cats and other critters, and her heart soared. That was the moment the project truly became real to her.

It was really going to happen.

There were more pictures taken after that, and Brad gave several very brief interviews, carefully steering each one away from himself and stressing the plight of animals. When one reporter asked if it wouldn’t be better to build shelters for homeless people, rather than dogs and cats, Brad responded that compassion ought to begin at the simplest level, with the helpless, voiceless ones, and grow from there.

Olivia would have hugged her big brother in that moment if she’d been able to get close enough.

“Hot cider and cookies at my place,” Ashley told her and Melissa. She was already heading for her funny-looking hybrid car, gleaming bright yellow in the wintry sunshine. “We need to plan what we’re taking to Brad and Meg’s for Thanksgiving dinner.”

“I have to get back to work,” Melissa said crisply. “Cook something and I’ll pay you back.” With that, she made for her spiffy red sports car without so much as a backward glance.

Olivia had rounds to make herself, though none of them were emergencies, and she had some appointments at the clinic scheduled for that afternoon, but when she saw the expression of disappointment on Ashley’s face, she stayed behind. “I’ll change clothes at your house,” she said, and got into the Suburban to follow her sister back through town. Ginger had elected to stay home that day, claiming her arthritis was bothering her, and it felt odd to be alone in the rig.

Ashley’s home was a large white Victorian house on the opposite side of Stone Creek, near the little stream with the same name. There was a white picket fence and plenty of gingerbread woodwork on the façade, and an ornate but tasteful sign stood in the snowy yard, bearing the words “Mountain View Bed-and-Breakfast” in elegant golden script. “Ashley O’Ballivan, Proprietor.”

In summer, the yard burgeoned with colorful flowers.

But winter had officially come to the high country, and the blooming lilacs, peonies and English roses were just a memory. The day after Thanksgiving, the Christmas lights would go up outside, as though by the waving of an unseen wand, and a huge wreath would grace the leaded-glass door, making the house look like a giant greeting card.

Olivia felt a little sad, looking at that grand house. It was the off-season, and guests would be few and far between. Ashley would rattle around in there alone like a bean in the bottom of a bucket.

She needed a husband and children.

Or at least a cat.

“Brad was spectacular, wasn’t he?” Ashley asked, bustling around her big, fragrant kitchen to heat up the spiced cider and set out a plate of exquisitely decorated cookies.

Olivia, just coming out of the powder room, where she’d changed into her regulation jeans, flannel shirt and boots, helped herself to a paper bag from the decoupaged wooden paper-bag dispenser beside the back door and stuffed the pantsuit into it. “Brad was—Brad,” she said. “He loves being in the limelight.”

Ashley went still and frowned, oddly defensive. “His heart’s in the right place,” she replied.

Olivia went to Ashley and touched her arm. She’d removed the patchwork jacket, hanging it neatly on a gleaming brass peg by the front door as they came in, and her loose-fitting beige cashmere turtleneck made Olivia feel like a thrift-store refugee by comparison.

“I wasn’t criticizing Brad, Ash,” she said quietly. “It’s beyond generous of him to build the shelter. We need one, and we’re lucky he’s willing to help out.”

Ashley relaxed a little and offered a tentative smile. Looked around at her kitchen, which would have made a great set for some show on the Food Channel. “He bought this house for me, you know,” she said as the cider began to simmer in its shiny pot on the stove.

Olivia nodded. “And it looks fabulous,” she replied. “Like always.”

“You are planning to show up for Thanksgiving dinner out at the ranch, aren’t you?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Olivia asked, even as her stomach knotted. Who had invented holidays, anyway? Everything came to a screeching stop whenever there was a red-letter day on the calendar—everything except the need and sorrow that seemed to fill the world.

“I know you don’t like family holidays,” Ashley said, pouring steaming cider into a copper serving pot and then into translucent china teacups waiting in the center of the round antique table. Olivia would have dumped it straight from the kettle, and probably spilled it all over the table and floor in the process.

She just wasn’t domestic. All those genes had gone to Ashley.

Her sister’s eyes went big and round and serious. “Last year you made some excuse about a cow needing an appendectomy and ducked out before I could serve the pumpkin pie.”

Olivia sighed. Ashley had worked hard to prepare the previous year’s Thanksgiving dinner, gathering recipes for weeks ahead of time, experimenting like a chemist in search of a cure, and looked forward to hosting a houseful of congenial relatives.

“Do cows even have appendixes?” Ashley asked.

Olivia laughed, drew back a chair at the table and sat down. “That cider smells fabulous,” she said, in order to change the subject. “And the cookies are works of art, almost too pretty to eat. Martha Stewart would be so proud.”

Ashley joined her at the table, but she still looked troubled. “Why do you hate holidays, Olivia?” she persisted.

“I don’t hate holidays,” Olivia said. “It’s just that all that sentimentality—”

“You miss Big John and Mom,” Ashley broke in quietly. “Why don’t you just admit it?”

“We all miss Big John,” Olivia admitted. “As for Mom—well, she’s been gone a long time, Ash. A really long time. It’s not a matter of missing her, exactly.”

“Don’t you ever wonder where she went after she left Stone Creek, if she’s happy and healthy—if she remarried and had more children?”

“I try not to,” Olivia said honestly.

“You have abandonment issues,” Ashley accused.

Olivia sighed and sipped from her cup of cider. The stuff was delicious, like everything her sister cooked up.

Ashley’s Botticelli face brightened; she’d made another of her mercurial shifts from pensive to hopeful. “Suppose we found her?” she asked on a breath. “Mom, I mean—”

“Found her?” Olivia echoed, oddly alarmed.

“There are all these search engines online,” Ashley enthused. “I was over at the library yesterday afternoon, and I searched Google for Mom’s name.”

Oh. My. God, Olivia thought, feeling the color drain out of her face.

“You used a computer?”

Ashley nodded. “I’m thinking of getting one. Setting up a Web site to bring in more business for the B and B.”

Things were changing, Olivia realized. And she hated it when things changed. Why couldn’t people leave well enough alone?

“There are more Delia O’Ballivans out there than you would ever guess,” Ashley rushed on. “One of them must be Mom.”

“Ash, Mom could be dead by now. Or going by a different name…”

Ashley looked offended. “You sound like Brad and Melissa. Brad just clams up whenever I ask him about Mom—he remembers her better, since he’s older. ‘Leave it alone’ is all he ever says. And Melissa thinks she’s probably a crack addict or a hooker or something.” She let out a long, shaky breath. “I thought you missed Mom as much as I do. I really did.”

Although Brad had never admitted it, Olivia suspected he knew more about their mother than he was telling. If he wanted Ashley and the rest of them to let the proverbial sleeping dogs lie, he probably had a good reason. Not that the decision was only his to make.