Miracle Road: Eternity Springs Book 7 (37 page)

How in the world would she ever find the strength to walk away from this child? Maggie and Celeste had both said it:
You are always a mother. Always.

So, was Hope ready to accept that she could take the risk? Did hope spring eternal for Hope in Eternity Springs?

A knock at her back door distracted her from the troublesome thoughts. Her back door? Who would come to her back door on Christmas Eve?

But even as she asked the question, she knew the answer. Maybe he was here to talk. Maybe … just maybe … her heartbeat sped up. Her mouth went a little dry. On her way to answer the door, she passed in front of a mirror and smoothed her hair.

She opened the door to see Lucca standing bathed in moonlight. He looked solemn and serious. “Hello.”

“Come outside, would you? I have something I want you to see.”

She hesitated. “It’s late, Lucca.”

“Give me five minutes. Please?”

“Let me get my coat.” She retrieved her long wool coat from the front closet, then spied the gift beneath her tree. She picked it up and stuck it in her pocket, then returned to her back door.

Outside, she looked around but didn’t see him. “Lucca?”

“Back here,” he called from the deep shadows at the back of the house.

She knew then what his visit must be about. “You got a telescope for Christmas?”

“Not for Christmas,” he replied. “I ordered it after our trip to Texas. It’s pretty awesome.”

“It’s huge,” she said once her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she was able to pick out the shape.

She realized she had missed her friend. They hadn’t talked, laughed, or counted stars in what seemed like ages.

“I didn’t ask you out here to look at my telescope. I want you to see a star. Come here and look, Hope. I have it focused on the star I want you to see. Try not to move the scope when you look into the eyepiece.”

She wondered if he planned to tell her a Star of Bethlehem story. Looking into the powerful telescope, she spied a whole bunch of stars. “What am I supposed to see?”

“The binary star. See the pair?”

She had to concentrate. It had been awhile since she’d looked at the stars. Without him, searching the night sky had made her sad. “Okay. Yes, I see the pair.”

“Now, step away from the telescope. I want to show you how to find it. First, you look for Draco, which is a circumpolar constellation. That means it revolves around the North Pole and it can be seen year-round. You want to find the dragon’s head. See these four stars positioned in a trapezoid?”

As he’d done in the past when teaching her the stars, he stepped close enough so that she could smell his aftershave. The memory of lying on his chest assailed her, cutting into her chest like a knife. She mourned the loss of him, and here he was right next to her. “Hope?”

“I …” Inhaling deeply, she shook off the feeling and followed the path of his finger as he pointed out the four stars. “Okay. I’ve got it.”

“From the head, the tail slithers through the sky there to there to there,” he demonstrated, “ending between the Big and Little Dippers.”

She was distracted. She wanted to tell him that she was sorry she’d hurt him. Tell him she was sorry that she was such a mess. Sorry that she couldn’t seem to let go of part of her past. That she couldn’t see her way forward. “You’ve lost me.”

“Have I?” He studied her, searching her face, his expression troubled. “I can help you find it again.”

“Can you?”

“Of course.”

She looked back to the stars. “I don’t know, Lucca. It’s hard.”

“It can be. But all you really need to do is trust that once you find a place to start, you can find what you’re looking for.”

“Trust the trapezoid?”

“Always. It’s a center. You just need a center, Hope.”

“Okay.” With him leaning so close and his coat right there, she seized the opportunity to silently slip his gift from her pocket and into his.
Good. That worked out well. No more worrying about what to do with it. Out of sight, out of mind.

“From the top right star in the trapezoid, look right and up about forty-five degrees. See the bright star?”

“Yes.”

“That’s actually two stars, the binary star I showed you in the telescope.”

“Okay.” She didn’t have a clue what they were doing out in the cold looking at stars, but did she care? He was there. With his soft voice and gentle eyes.

“So, you think you could find it again?”

“I may need”—her voice cracked—“help.”

“I can help you.” He didn’t push harder. He didn’t touch her. He was there if she wanted him, but he wasn’t going to push. “But you can do it, Hope. I know you can.”

“The trapezoid is easy to pick out.”

“All right, then. That’s it. That’s all I wanted to show you. I picked it because it’s bright, it’s always in the sky, and it’s easy to locate. No matter where you are, the star is there for you to see. Stars never get lost.” He bent down and gave her a quick kiss. “Merry Christmas, Hope.”

Then, before she could make sense of what was happening, he disappeared into the deep, dark shadows that separated their houses. “Well,” she murmured. “That was different.”

She felt raw. He wanted to help. He wanted to make it work.
But dare I try?
“Maybe.”

When she turned toward her house to go inside, she didn’t feel nearly as lonely as she had before.

She didn’t notice the package until she stepped up onto her back porch. She picked it up and carried it inside. Wrapped in a Santa Claus print paper with green yarn for ribbon, the package tag read
TO HOPE. FROM LUCCA.

“I guess he was no more anxious to do a gift exchange in person than I was,” she said aloud. She set the package on her entry hall table as she hung her coat in the closet. Then she carried it over to the fire, which she stoked to life once again. She held the package for a moment, thinking about the last time a lover had given her a Christmas gift. Mark’s gift the Christmas before Holly was taken had been a lovely string of pearls. She still wore them on occasion. They reminded her of one of the most pleasurable holidays she’d ever had. Holly had still believed in Santa, and her joy and excitement when she discovered the Barbie Dreamhouse beneath the tree on Christmas morning had been unsurpassed.

“I wonder what’s beneath your tree this year, baby,” Hope murmured. She wouldn’t believe that her little girl didn’t have a Christmas tree. She had to believe that somewhere, a ten-year-old Holly took with her to bed tonight the same happy, excited spirit that the five-year-old had known on Christmas Eve.

Needing a distraction, Hope opened her gift. A Christmas card rested on top of white tissue paper. She opened it and read Lucca’s firm handwriting.

Up front, I need to tell you that the scientific community doesn’t recognize this gift, but they’re not the ones who matter. Merry Christmas, Hope.

All my love, Lucca.

Opening the tissue paper, she spied a framed certificate, the edges of which were trimmed in breathtaking watercolor and ink drawings of planets and stars, novas and—Hope smiled—whimsical angels. She recognized it as the work of Eternity Springs’ own famous artist, her friend Sage Anderson Rafferty.

The certificate’s words were done in lovely calligraphy and read:

From the night sky of the Northern Hemisphere,
a star shines down upon a mother and a daughter,
linking them through the geometry of love.

The star at latitude 43:04:33 North, longitude 77:39:53 West
is officially unofficially named
Holly’s Star.

Love beams up from the mother
and reflects down upon the daughter wherever she exists.

Love radiates up from the daughter
and shines down upon the mother, in daylight and in darkness.

Starshine,

Loveshine.

Hope and Holly.

Hope released a shaky breath. “Oh, Lucca.”

Cradling the frame against her chest, Hope rushed back outside. She ignored the winter’s chill and stared up at the sky, searching, until she found Holly’s Star.

“Oh, Lucca,” she repeated. He loved her. He wanted her. He wanted a family with her. He wasn’t just a second chance, a fix to a past she couldn’t change. He was the future she could embrace. How could she ever walk away from this man?

I can’t.

On December 29, after Lucca had spent almost six months in Eternity Springs, the boisterous noise of midtown Manhattan grated on his nerves like sandpaper as he walked toward the Seventh Avenue entrance to Madison Square Garden. Car horns screeched. A siren blared. Across the street, a jackhammer pounded. He found himself yearning for the peace and quiet of Eternity Springs. “Go figure,” he murmured as he walked into the arena.

His phone sounded—Gabi’s ringtone—and he reached into his suit coat pocket to answer it. He’d been waiting for this call. “Hey, Gabs. How did it go?”

“Good, I think. It was a bit hard to tell. She seemed pleased, but she cried.”

“Good cry or bad cry?”

“Good cry. I think.”

“Give me details.”

“Okay. Celeste called Hope and asked her to come over to Angel’s Rest at ten a.m. to discuss a fund-raising idea for the basketball team. She told the rest of us to be there by nine forty-five.”

“Who all came?” He wished he could have been there to see it, but after their last conversation on Christmas morning, he’d decided that the best strategy was to give her space.

“Everyone who has earned one of the medals—except for you—and me and Mom. So, it was Zach and Savannah, Nic and Gabe, Mac and Ali, Sage and Colt, Cam and Sarah, Jack and Cat, and me and Mom. I have to tell you, it’s depressing to be paired up as a couple with your mother—especially when she is dating and I’m not.”

“What did Celeste say?”

“She stood on the staircase and said she had an announcement to make. She told Hope that after finding out the story behind the Angel necklace, you suggested Hope qualified and that she agreed. She referred to the Wizard of Oz argument you made, and she added that she believed Glenda the Good Witch was actually an angel.”

Lucca laughed. That didn’t surprise him one bit.

“Then Celeste got serious and told Hope that she’s acted courageously and that by wearing her Angel’s Rest medal, she will acknowledge her courage and honor her strength. She put the necklace around Hope’s neck and told her to let the medal be the talisman that reminds her to live boldly. She said if Hope listened to her heart and intuition as she traveled her life’s path, she would recognize the miracles that happen along the road every day. That’s when Hope started to cry.”

“Did she cry and run off or cry and hug people?”

“Actually, she did a little of both. She did the hugging, but then said she couldn’t stay any longer because she had somewhere she needed to be, and she left.”

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t say.”

“Huh.” Lucca thought it through and decided to think positively about her reaction. He shouldn’t expect to win the race in a hundred-yard dash. This was a marathon. He’d need stamina and patience to win, and win he would. He’d settle for nothing less than victory.

Gabi interrupted his musing. “Now, how about you, Lucca? How are you managing the return to college hoops?”

“It’s fine. Really good, in fact. Tony has a good group of talented kids.”

“And a talented substitute coach. Mom says when y’all made the semifinals, Tony grumbled that you were bound to take credit for his hard work.”

Lucca grinned. “Of course I will. So, Mom told me the surgery went well?”

“Yes. She said she’s going to have a hard time keeping him off it for another few days, but then, she’s in her glory playing nursemaid.”

“True.”

“Good luck in the game this afternoon, Lucca.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m really proud of you. You’ve given me hope that someday, I’ll find my way, too.”

“You will, Gabs. I have faith in that.”

“I love you, brother.”

“Love you, too, Gabriella.”

Lucca smiled as he made his way to the locker room where his team awaited. Tomorrow was New Year’s Eve and, while he couldn’t quite believe it himself, he felt down right positive about the coming year.

Upon entering the locker room, he turned his attention to the matter at hand. “Gather round, gentlemen. We are going to talk for few minutes about the way of the hardwood warrior.”

The first half of the semifinal game proved to be a barn burner with their opponents taking a two-point lead into the locker room. Lucca consulted with Tony’s assistant coaches and made some adjustments to the game plan, then took them out onto the court for warm-ups early.

He stood at courtside, his arms folded, watching his twin brother’s players practice layups and jump shots and enjoying the moment. This was Madison Square Garden, after all, a mecca of the sporting world and the scene of one of his best games as a pro player. He loved the atmosphere, the energy. The sights and the smells. He loved the competition. He loved the game itself.

But he didn’t necessarily love it anymore in the Garden than he did in the Eternity Springs gymnasium. Nor did he yearn for the hustle and bustle of big-city living over the slow, laid-back pace of small-town life.

He yearned for Hope and a home with their child and a job helping high school students grow and learn the important life lessons that competing on the hardwood has to teach.

He yearned for Eternity Springs.

“All right, men,” he murmured. “Let’s win this thing so I can go home where I belong.”

Life lessons and basketball.
A man is never too old to learn.

He watched Tony’s star power forward sink a shot from midcourt as a stir in the crowd gradually caught his notice. Then he heard the point guard say, “There’s another one. She’s older than the usual coeds, though. Hot, too. You might want to consider this one, Coach.”

“Excuse me?”

The player pointed up toward the huge scoreboard suspended from the ceiling above midcourt. First, Lucca read the ribbon graphic across the bottom that announced
FAN CAM
. Then he noticed that the camera had focused a close-up on a sign that read
COACH ROMANO, WILL YOU MARRY ME
?