Upon a Midnight Clear Read online

  It was said, too, that Elizabeth had never left the hills, that she waited still for Stephen's return. Several of Elizabeth's descendants had, at one time or another, claimed to have seen her, usually at a time of danger. Her daughter Selena was said to have seen her innumerable times, as had Quinn's mother and aunt, Catherine and her sister, Charlotte. In Quinn's generation, both Liza and CeCe had claimed to have seen her once when they were swimming and a mountain lion had stalked them on the way home. Susannah swore she had seen her once when a momma bear had decided that Susannah was picking huckleberries all too closely to the den wherein her cubs slept. Each time, it seemed, Elizabeth had appeared to lead her descendants to safety. Quinn alone of Catherine's girls had yet to see the old woman, who had always been described in the same manner: dark hair, gently streaked with gray, hanging over one shoulder in a fat braid that reached past her hips, a green woolen blanket wrapped around her against the chill of the mountain air.

  A random snowflake fell here and there as Quinn headed farther up the hill. Over the tops of the trees to her left, a trail of smoke twined toward the sky. She stopped momentarily, then recalled that the McKenzie cabin sat back in the woods a little off the road, back behind the pines. Val must already be there, she thought as she headed on her way.

  "I love this place," Quinn announced aloud to the silence inside her car. "I love the way the road winds around through the trees, and I love the way the trees look up here when they are covered with snow, like puffy, soft sculptures, white and quiet and still. And I love the way the air smells, sharp and intense and drenched with pine."

  She slowed, then stopped the car in front of the old one-room structure, the original section of the cabin that had been all to survive a fire twenty years earlier.

  "And most of all," she proclaimed as she hopped out, "I love this place."

  Despite the fact that she had spent some of the most painful moments of her life in this very spot—had spent several hours pacing the stone path leading to the door, waiting for a man who never came—Quinn's love for the cabin had never diminished.

  With the shovel she dug a narrow path through the snow to the thick wooden door marking the front of the old stone structure that had weathered more than a hundred winters. Through her heavy gloves her fingers sought the nail upon which she would hang the wreath. She returned to the car and slid the shovel in the backseat with one hand, and with the other, grabbed the wreath and the broom. Slinging her bag over her shoulder, she returned to the cabin and placed the circle of greens on the door. With fingers already cold through her gloves, she searched her bag for the key ring she had removed from the cupboard in the ranch house, and finding the key marked "E," she slid open the lock that hung from the old wooden door handle.

  As if a simple lock would keep anyone out who wanted in, she thought, as she pushed the thick door open into the small room, then closed it behind her. Dropping the bag to the floor, she leaned down to retrieve the candles and matches she had packed to lend a little extra light to that which the small windows afforded. One by one she lit the candles, placing them around the room to brighten and cheer the dark space.

  "Happy birthday, Grandmother."

  Rummaging in her bag again, she found the clippers she had packed, then pulled her hood up and went outside to clip a few sprigs of holly from the tall bush that sheltered one side of the cabin.

  Though the air was bitterly cold, Quinn welcomed its sharpness even as it stung her nose and throat just to breathe it in, reminding her of all those many winters Elizabeth had spent here alone. Quinn thought perhaps she understood why Elizabeth had brought her broken heart here, why she had stayed with nothing but the wind to keep her company. Had Quinn herself not sought the silence of the hills, and come to this place to nurse her own broken heart?

  Piling up the clipped branches, Quinn went back inside and dropped them onto the floor, then pulled a cloth from her bag and, singing Christmas carols, proceeded to dust the furniture and the window ledges. Starting as children, each of the Hollister girls had taken their turn at this small task, cleaning Elizabeth's cabin, several times each year. Although all grown women now, they still continued with the tradition. It didn't take long, there being little furniture left to dust. Quinn cleaned a few dead bees from the window ledges, then dusted a few spiders from the mantle before placing the holly branches there, wondering if perhaps Elizabeth might have, once upon a time, done the same thing. Sweeping cobwebs from the corners and dust from the floor and removing the dead leaves from the unused fireplace pretty much completed the job.

  "And now, we can visit," Quinn announced. Opening the thermos, she poured herself a cup of coffee. The cookies tempted her, but her hands were grimy from cleaning, so she decided to forego the snack until she arrived back at the ranch. "Are you here, Elizabeth?" she asked softly.

  The air inside the unheated cabin was cold enough that Quinn's breath puffed from her face in tiny white clouds. She sat on one of the backless benches near the front window and sipped at her coffee, feeling the past—familial as well as personal—nipping at her heels. It had been in that very doorway she had stood watching for Cale's beat-up old black pickup truck that day, this exact bench on which she had sat and sobbed, her heart breaking at the truth she had had to face. Not once since that day had she entered this room without imagining that she could sense the vestiges of her own heartache, as if the walls had absorbed her sorrow and held it tbere, along with Elizabeth's.

  "I suppose more than one of us has wept our share of tears here," she said aloud, as if to include the spirit of her grandmother in her reverie.

  She drained the last bit of cool liquid from the cup and returned it to the top of the thermos, where it served as a lid. Pulling her jacket around her against the chill that seemed to seep through the thick walls, she gathered her things and snuffed out the candles.

  "Good-bye, Grandmother, and merry Christmas to you. I’ll be back in the spring. I hope your birthday is a happy one, and that wherever you are, Grandfather Stephen is with you to share your anniversary."

  Quinn opened the door, and stepped into a swirl of white wind that all but lifted her from her feet. While she had cleaned Elizabeth's cabin, the storm had hit with a ferocity she had not seen in years. She put her head down against the driving wind, her feet seeking the path she had made, grateful that she had shoveled so narrow a trail, because only by following the path she had made was she able to find the car, so dense was the snowfall.

  How could I have been so oblivious, she chastised herself. How could I have been so foolish to allow myself to lose track of time like that?

  She climbed into the cab and huddled against the seat, trying to decide what to do. Perhaps if she waited a few minutes, the storm would subside as quickly as it had struck. For a long fifteen minutes, Quinn sat staring out through the windshield, but the storm only seemed to intensify. Some heat would be welcome right about now, she thought, as she turned the engine on and shivered heartily as the frigid air filled the cab. Knowing it would be some minutes before the vehicle wanned up, she decided to call home and let her family know where she was. Cold fingers punched the number on the cellular phone that she had dug out of her bag.

  "Trevor? Hi," she said, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

  "Quinn? Where are you? You sound so far away."

  "I'm sitting outside of Elizabeth's cabin. The storm came up so quickly. I never even heard the wind pick up."

  "Really? There's a storm up there? Hasn't hit the valley yet," he told her. "Are you all right?"

  "Right now, I am. I thought I'd give it a few minutes to see if things settled down before I headed for home. Is it snowing there at all?"

  "Not a flake. I guess it'll move down the mountain soon. Which means I should probably leave now if I'm going to make it to the airport to pick up Sunny and Lilly and whoever else is flying in today." He paused thoughtfully. "'You're sure you're okay, Quinn?"

  "Well"—she hesitated—"