A Down-Home Country Christmas (9 page)

Chapter 12

“
Dashing through the snow
…” Holly forced herself to sing along with Brianna and Kayleigh as they drove up the gravel road to Grady’s farm. Not that she felt festive at the moment. She kept seeing Robbie’s broad back disappearing through her kitchen door over and over again.

Kayleigh stopped singing. “Mama, look how pretty the nativity scene is with the snow on top of it!”

There’d been a snowstorm during the night, as Robbie had predicted, and she’d been worried her mini-van wouldn’t make it up the drive. But Grady had plowed it down to just an inch of powder. Holly cast a quick sideways glance at the decorations. Most of the figures were buried knee deep in the white stuff, although it looked like a couple had been dug out. Maybe she would come down to finish the job it appeared Grady had started. Some hard physical labor might distract her from the tears that kept threatening to spill over.

“
Oh-oh! Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way
.” She joined the girls for the chorus, finishing just as they pulled up beside Grady’s door. “Brianna, will you grab the pie carrier? Kayleigh, you can bring the cookie tin.”

Claire had brought the girls home at lunchtime and sensed something was wrong with Holly, whispering, “Tell me when you’re ready to talk about it,” before she announced she was staying to help bake Christmas cookies. Holly wasn’t ready yet, but she gave her sister a grateful hug and a watery smile.

Claire’s supportive presence and her daughters’ excitement about the upcoming holiday lifted Holly’s mood. As the delicious holiday aroma of hot sugar and butter swirled through the kitchen, Holly told her sister and her children about her first experience in the sky. When she saw the respect and wonder shining in her daughters’ eyes as she told them she’d been in control of the plane for part of the flight, she felt a rush of pride that put a temporary bandage over the pain of losing Robbie.

Now they had come back to earth to deliver fresh cookies and the promised mince pie to the elderly farmer. Holly hoped to make it a quick trip so she could go home and take a nap and probably cry some more in the privacy of her bedroom. She and Robbie hadn’t slept much the night before. She hoped fatigue didn’t sabotage his ability to fly Santa’s helicopter.

They knocked on the door and waited, but there was no answer and no sound or movement came from within the house.

“Let’s try the barn,” Holly said.

“I hope Noël’s inside so we can visit her.” Brianna gave a little skip.

Holly was worried Noël might hurt one of them after the incident where the donkey had knocked her into Robbie. Not that she minded the contact with him, but Noël seemed so capricious. She was worried about Brianna or Kayleigh getting stepped on or bowled over. And she couldn’t forget those big square teeth. “We’ll just pat her from outside the stall though.”

Brianna looked disappointed.

“Grady?” Holly called as they opened the barn door and slipped inside.

“Mr. Boone?” Kayleigh’s high little voice echoed in the rafters.

An ear-splitting hee-haw shattered the stillness of the barn. Holly jumped and grabbed Brianna’s shoulder as her heart did a flip in her chest.

“That’s just Noël saying hello, Mama.”

“I know. She has a loud voice though.” Holly took the pie and cookies from the girls and set them on a hay bale before they walked down to the donkey’s stall. Noël’s head was already over the half-door, her ears pointed toward them. She lifted her head and let out another thunderous bray. Holly was braced for it this time, but the sound still made her wince as it walloped into her eardrums.

Brianna and Kayleigh, on the other hand, broke into a run to reach the donkey faster. As Holly caught up with them, they were already cooing over Noël, stroking her nose and neck and scratching behind her long, graceful ears. Holly had to admit the donkey was a pretty little thing, but she sure had an ugly voice.

“Look, Mama, she’s wearing a jacket.” Kayleigh pointed to the red and green horse blanket buckled around Noël’s neck and belly.

Holly took a quick glance. “She looks very stylish. You two stay right here. I’m going to look for Mr. Boone.” She gave them a listen-to-your-mother look. “No going in the stall.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the girls agreed obediently, but without enthusiasm.

Holly searched the barn, checking the workshop, the loft, and the feed room, but Grady was nowhere to be found. She and the girls went outside to walk around the house and barn, calling his name. His truck was parked in the garage and the tractor was in the barn, so he had to be somewhere within walking distance.

Holly stood in the middle of the road, her hands on her hips, as she debated where to look. She hated to invade the privacy of his house but a niggle of worry snagged in her throat. He was an elderly man and he’d shoveled a lot of snow that morning. “Let’s see if the side door’s unlocked,” she said, making her decision.

The knob turned in her hand. Easing it open, she stuck her head inside and called Grady’s name into the empty mudroom. Her voice was swallowed by the silence of an empty house.

“I don’t think he’s home, Mama,” Kayleigh said.

“Probably not, but I want to make sure.” Holly pushed the door wide and herded the girls inside. “Wipe your boots really well.”

Peering into the kitchen, she heaved a sigh of relief when she didn’t find Grady’s body crumpled on the floor. “You two have a seat at the table while I see if Grady’s upstairs and can’t hear us.” If the farmer had collapsed, she didn’t want the girls to discover him.

The girls seemed to sense her concern because they sat at the Formica-topped metal table without argument.

Holly walked swiftly through the old farmhouse, finding the square rooms a mish-mash of several decades of decorating trends. Yet the hand-quilted throw pillows somehow perfectly accented the blunt-edged sofa upholstered in a 60s-vintage stripe. Bess had had an artistic eye.

Finding no sign of Grady downstairs, she put her foot on the bottom step of the staircase and took a deep breath before she called upward. “Grady? Are you here?”

When there was no answer, she jogged up the stairs and made a swift tour of the second floor. No sign of Grady.

“Where could he be?” Brianna asked when Holly returned to the kitchen. Her voice held some of the worry Holly felt.

The only place she could think of was the nativity scene. She remembered noticing he hadn’t finished clearing the figures.
What if he hadn’t been able to?

“Let’s get in the van,” she said, the urgency in her voice sending her daughters scrambling off their chairs and out the door.

They got buckled into their seats in record time and she pointed the mini-van back down the road. “If you see any footprints leading off the road, you shout out.” She was scanning back and forth along the sides of the drive herself. The fresh snow would show those clearly, and her girls had eagle eyes.

As they came alongside the gate leading to the field where the nativity scene stood, Brianna said, “I see footprints leading into the field.”

Holly had spotted them too. She slammed the van into park and turned off the engine. “You two stay here and keep warm.”

“But—” Kayleigh started to protest, but Brianna shushed her.

“Mama needs to go fast, and we can’t keep up in the snow.”

Holly jumped out of the van and ran to the gate. Unlatching it, she pushed it open along the track Grady must have made, a short arc of scraped snow ending in a pile he’d used the gate to sweep aside. She left it unlatched and followed Grady’s trail, stretching out her stride to set her boots into the fresh footprints. That way she could move through the deep snow more swiftly. Every now and then she lifted her gaze to scan ahead of her, hoping to see the farmer. She thought she remembered that the figures farther away from the gate were the ones he’d already shoveled out.

The trek across the snowy field seemed so much longer without Robbie striding along beside her. Her chest heaved as the frigid air set her lungs burning. She reached the first of the three wise men. “Grady? Are you here?” she called, stopping to look around more thoroughly.

“Holly! Here!” The farmer’s hoarse cry came from near the grouping of shepherds at the far side of the nativity stable.

Holly forgot about the cold and her burning lungs as she high-stepped through the snow drifts. She passed the camels, the holy family, and the first sheep when she spotted Grady, propped up against a shepherd, his legs stretched out in front of him. “What happened? Where are you hurt?”

The old farmer untucked his gloved hands from under his armpits and gestured toward his left leg. She noticed his cheeks were so pale they were nearly white. “Wash…was…shoveling snow away from thish…this…shepherd when I b-blacked out or s-something. Ankle shtuck…stuck…under the shovel when I f-fell. W-won’t hold me.” A series of shivers racked his body and she could hear his teeth clatter together.

She was afraid the slurring she heard in his voice was from whatever had caused him to lose consciousness.

“How long have you been here?” Holly asked, shrugging her quilted coat off and draping it over Grady’s chest and shoulders like a blanket. She unwound her scarf and wrapped it around his neck and chin. She knew he was truly cold when he didn’t object.

“N-not sure.” He shivered again. “Sh-should’ve brought my shell…cell…ph-phone. G-got out of the h-habit after B-Besh…Bess p-passed.”

She needed to get him out of the snow and cold immediately. Holly surveyed Grady’s height and breadth and realized she wouldn’t be able to get him to the mini-van by herself. Nor would the van make it across the field in the snow. She thought of Grady’s tractor, but even if she could figure out how to drive it, she couldn’t lift him up onto it. The tractor reminded her of the barn and its most familiar inhabitant.

“Could Noël walk through this snow?” she asked the farmer.

Grady looked confused. “Y-you mean, the d-donkey? I g-guess sho…so. W-why?”

“Because you need a ride. I’ll be back.”

She reached into her jeans pocket for her cell phone and remembered she’d left it in the mini-van. Cursing under her breath, she started back toward the van, practically leapfrogging from one footprint to the next. Despite her exertions, the cold air was penetrating her thin sweater, turning the sweat she’d worked up into icy fingers on her skin. And she couldn’t get enough of the thin air into her lungs. She remembered Grady’s face and forced her burning thighs to lift higher and faster.

As she approached the gate, she saw the door of the mini-van slide open, and Brianna hopped out. “Mama, did you find him?”

“Yes,” Holly managed to call out. “Get…blanket.” Brianna disappeared back into the van.

Holly shoved the gate open, and Brianna emerged with the stadium blanket they kept stowed in back for football games and picnics. “Honey,” Holly paused to suck in a breath of frigid air, “I’m going to ask you to do a grown-up job. Follow my footsteps over to the nativity scene and find Mr. Boone. He’s sitting behind the shepherd with the green and yellow robe. Wrap the blanket around him and snuggle up under it, right up against him, to help keep him warm.” Holly gulped in another breath.

“Yes, ma’am.” Brianna nodded as she clutched the folded blanket to her chest.

“I’m going to get Noël so Mr. Boone can ride her out of the field.” Holly pulled Brianna in for a quick hug and then turned her toward the gate. “I’ll be right back.”

As Brianna set out across the field, Holly leapt into the minivan, slamming the door and yanking her cell phone out of its dashboard clip. As she dialed 9-1-1, Kayleigh’s small, tentative voice came from behind her. “Is everything okay, Mama?”

Holly twisted around in the seat to give her daughter’s knee a quick squeeze. “It will be, sweetie.” The dispatcher answered her call and she shifted forward again. “Hello, it’s Holly Snedegar. I’m at Grady Boone’s farm on Route 60. He’s fallen in the snow by the nativity scene and hurt his ankle so he can’t walk out. He lost consciousness before but he’s awake now and slurring his words. Send an ambulance.”

“You got it, Mrs. Snedegar,” the dispatcher said. “Stay on the line in case I need to ask you any more questions.”

Holly slotted the phone into the clip and turned on the ignition, blasting the heat onto her chilled skin.

She debated driving down to the bottom of the farm road to turn around but decided it would be quicker to just back all the way to the barn.

“What’s wrong with Mr. Boone?” Kayleigh asked in a quavering voice.

“He hurt his ankle, sweetie.” Holly swiveled to guide the car carefully along the road. The last thing she wanted to do was end up stuck in a snowdrift. “He’ll be okay, but we need to get him out of the field.”

She concentrated on navigating a curve in the road before she said, “I’m getting Noël. I need you to go in Mr. Boone’s house and stay there. You can watch the TV in his living room, if you want to. Can you do that for me?”

Kayleigh’s eyes were wide and slightly teary, but she nodded.

“You’re a good, brave girl. I’m proud of you.”

Kayleigh nodded again. “I want Mr. Boone to be all right.”