Upon a Midnight Clear Read online

  Quinn laughed and kissed her mother's cheek. "You worry too much, Mom. We're just all taking our time to find the right person, that's all. Now, how long will those cookies take?" She peered at the recipe book. 'Twelve minutes. Just enough time to go up to the attic and bring down a few boxes of Christmas decorations."

  "Well, it might be a good idea to do that now. Your dad is afraid that the storm they've been predicting for tomorrow might hit early, so he wanted to go out after lunch to cut down the tree."

  "CeCe will be disappointed if we go without her."

  "She'll be more disappointed if we end up with no tree at all because we waited too long to go."

  "True." Quinn turned on the light to the attic and opened the door, setting loose a cold whoosh of frigid, musty air. She climbed the steps and set about the task of selecting the boxes that would be stacked and carried to the first floor to trim the family tree. One of the advantages of being the first one home, she mused, is that you got to choose what decorations would go on the tree. She peeked through this box and that, piling up the ones that held her personal favorites. After several trips up and down the steps, she had several piles of boxes assembled in the great room. She began to lift lids, and to reminisce.

  The timer from the kitchen signaled that this present batch of Christmas cookies had finished baking. She heard the oven door open, then close, smelled the pure vanilla aroma. Her mother would finish up the batches of sugar cookies, then start on the oatmeal raisin cookies, the orange drops, the shortbread. Everyone's favorites would be made, from her father's chocolate chip to those of Lilly, the youngest member of the family, who had a preference for the butterscotch brownies she had sampled the last time she had visited. Sky would want gingersnaps, Liza would want lemon squares, Susannah chocolate thumbprints, and Trevor and CeCe, the twins and oldest of the Hollister brood, would be scouring the cookie tins until they found the big, soft molasses cookies they both loved. Her mother would continue baking for days, and from now until Christmas, the old ranch house would smell like a fine bakeshop.

  "Hey, Sis," Schuyler called from the doorway, "if you're planning on going with us to find the tree, you'd better start to get ready now."

  "Can't you wait another hour or so, Sky? Mom and I were going to make the dough for the gingerbread houses next."

  "Dad and I are thinking we should go before lunch." Schuyler pointed out the window and frowned. "It's getting white back toward the mountains. Dad thinks the storm might come early, and he'd just as soon take care of the tree now."

  "I think I'll pass, then. Mom wanted to have a little village of gingerbread houses all baked so that when Sunny gets home, Lilly can have fun decorating them." Quinn lifted the lid off a box. "Look here, Sky. All the old colored-glass Christmas balls."

  "You mean all the ones that didn't get broken the year the cat jumped onto the Christmas tree," her brother called from the kitchen, where he would be snitching a few golden sugar cookies off the cooling racks. "Good idea Liza had, to tie a ribbon around the cat's neck and take her for a walk."

  The young orange tabby had taken off across the room, jumped onto the back of the sofa, from which it had been a mere hop onto the back of the Christmas tree, which had smashed forward onto the hardwood floor with all the might of a falling timber. Liza had been six or seven at the time, and had never lived it down. Knowing how upset Catherine had been to have lost so many of her mother's fragile glass balls, the children had spent the next several days making things to hang on the tree to take the place of those that had shattered. Paper chains and popcorn balls, diamond shapes made of aluminum foil and toothpicks, clothespin dolls and stars made of drinking straws, all had been hung on the tree to surprise their mother. Quinn would never forget the look on her mother's face when they led her into the great room and turned the lights on the tree. Liza had been vindicated, and the integrity of the family tree as a sort of family journal had remained intact.

  From the pink tissue lining of the box that lay open on her lap, Quinn uncovered a stack of white paper hearts. She lifted it and let the paper chain unfold, remembering the year she had been ten and a bad case of chicken pox had kept her confined to her bed. Catherine had done double duty that year, supervising the tree decorating downstairs and trying to keep Quinn entertained in her sickroom at the same time. To make Quinn feel a part of the family effort, Catherine had brought her stacks of paper and a pair of scissors. With careful folding and a few quick snips, Catherine had shown her how to transform the paper into a chain of hearts. Quinn had spent all of Christmas Eve making chain after chain, and Catherine had patiently taped them together into one long chain before hanging them on the tree. Over the years this one or that section of Quinn's heart-chain had been ripped or torn or mistakenly tossed out, but here, in the corner of the box, cushioned by pink tissue, the last of the paper chain rested.

  I could probably still do this in my sleep, Quinn thought, as she folded the chain back into itself again, I made so many of them that night. Holding the hearts in her hand brought that night back to her so vividly, and for the briefest second, Quinn felt that if she closed her eyes, she could still hear her mother's gentle voice, feel the cooling touch of those soothing fingers, taste the cold tartness of the orange juice Catherine had brought her.

  The timer buzzed rudely from the kitchen and Catherine turned it off. It was time to start another batch of cookies if they were to be done by the end of the week. Quinn loved having this little bit of the morning to spend alone with her mother, just as she loved sorting through the old boxes that contained the fragments of Christmases past, as she loved the little pieces of herself and her family that she found within them.

  Wasn't that what coming home for Christmas was all about, the memories, the love?

  "Quinn." Sky tapped her on the shoulder.

  "What?" She looked up at him.

  "I said, Mom's calling you.v

  "Oh, I guess she's ready to make the gingerbread."

  "You're sure you don't want to join us, Quinn?" Her father asked.

  "I'm sure, Dad." She smiled back at the big man who filled the doorway. He was still tall and broad-shouldered, though not quite so tall as Sky, nor as muscular as Trevor, both of whom had played high school football before going on to play at the University of Montana at Missoula. Though well into his sixties, their father still had all of his hair, much of which was still chestnut brown, like that of both his sons. His eyes still twinkled and his laughter still filled this house and his face still softened when he looked at his beloved Catherine.

  It had only been recently that Hap had started taking the first steps toward retiring, talking about turning the ranch over to his sons, to give him more time to spend with his wife. They spoke of taking a cruise come February, maybe even fly to Florida, then book a ship to the islands over there on the opposite side of the country. Their children not only encouraged them but had, as a Christmas surprise, chipped in for that very trip for their parents. Trevor had driven into town just that morning to see if the tickets had been delivered to the post office box.

  Quinn had set the box of ornaments on the floor and stood up, preparing to drop the chain of hearts into a basket on the table next to her, when she realized the basket was filled with Christmas cards.

  "I can never get over how many people find the time to mail Christmas cards each year," she said to her father.

  "It's not something you find time to do," her mother corrected her from the nearby kitchen, "it's something you make time to do. And we received some lovely cards this year."

  Quinn lifted the stack of cards and sorted through them, reading the names of the senders. Mostly relatives and old friends of the family, she noted.

  "Who is 'Valerie ?" she asked, holding up the environmentally correct card depicting the endangered timber wolf on the front.

  "Valerie McKenzie." Hap grinned. "She was here over Thanksgiving. Spent most of the fall up at old Jed's cabin, cleaning it up. Had a bunch of w