Mistletoe Melody (Christmas Holiday Extravaganza) Read online

  “Yay!” Janie danced around the room in her shuffling gait.

  “Yay!” Little Ava copied Janie and spun in a circle.

  He smiled, and his gaze retraced its path to Melody. Was it his imagination, or had her joy dimmed when his daughter mentioned the sleigh ride? There was hesitancy in her expression that he couldn’t read.

  “I’ll bring lots of blankets,” he promised.

  She smiled weakly.

  “Pine Valley Tree Farm is the best place to cut down a Christmas tree,” Janie gushed. “They have hot chocolate with marshmallows, pictures with Santa, and a petting zoo with reindeer. This year, they added carollers dressed up in old-fashioned clothes. Every year they add something new.”

  Melody tugged at her earring and looked outside at the falling snow. “It’s perfect weather for tree cutting.” She said all the right words, but her tone lacked enthusiasm. “You all go ahead without me. I’ll stay back and get the hot chocolate ready.”

  Clive and Julie frowned, but they didn’t challenge her decision. Her dad stared at his feet, and her mom made that tsking sound.

  Quentin sat on the couch beside Melody. He lowered his voice so Janie couldn’t hear. “You have to come,” he said. “This is your family tradition. Janie and I can stay behind if we’re overstepping.”

  “It’s not that,” she said. “The cold and I don’t get along.” Melody shrugged apologetically.

  An unexplainable sadness settled over him. There was more to it than that. He was sure of it.

  “Dad can bring extra blankets, can’t you, Dad?” Janie wrung her hands. So much for her not hearing.

  Melody’s family all stared at her. It was like the entire room collectively held their breath waiting for her permission to exhale.

  She sighed and pushed herself off the couch. “I’ll get my coat.”

  In less than half an hour, Janie was in the front seat of the sleigh buried under a pile of heavy blankets and wedged happily between him and Melody. Quentin had even provided hand and foot warmers for them both. Ava and Clive reclined in the back where Ava kept a running commentary on everything she saw.

  The rest of the family had decided to walk along the path marked by pine trees symbols. They were meeting the sleigh at the edge of the tree trail to hike in farther and choose a tree.

  Quentin’s phone vibrated in his pocket. “Grab the reins, Janie.” He tossed them onto her lap and dug out his phone. Janie competently took the reins and nickered at the horses.

  He opened the incoming text message, fired off a quick reply, and then took back the reins. He looked at Clive. “I have to stop at my music store. I can drop you off at the front gate of Pine Tree Valley. You can find the Christmas Tree Trail from there. Janie will come with me, and we will catch up with you after.”

  Janie huffed.

  “You good with that, Mel?” Clive leaned forward and rested his hand on his sister’s shoulder.

  “If it’s no bother, I’ll keep Janie company in the sleigh.” She exchanged a meaningful look with her brother.

  Clive nodded.

  A few minutes later, Quentin guided the horses to Pine Tree Valley’s gates and pulled back on the reins. The horses stopped.

  Clive climbed out of the sleigh and then lifted Ava out. He gave Melody one last searching look.

  She nodded.

  Interesting. Quentin steered the sleigh toward his store pondering the subtext between the siblings.

  “Why do we have to go to the store?” Janie asked.

  “Jethro needs guitar strings. He broke one, and he has none left at the church.”

  The sleigh brushed against a tree branch, and a clump of fluffy snow fell from an evergreen branch and landed on Melody’s winter hat.

  She reached up to brush it off just as he reached behind Janie to do the same. Their eyes met over Janie’s head, and something foreign jolted his heart, something he’d never felt before, not even with Ashley.

  He snatched his hand back and steeled himself. It didn’t matter how much his heart jolted. Melody wasn’t moving to Mistletoe Meadows. She was only here for Christmas. There was no point in investing anything into a doomed friendship.

  “Who is Jethro?” Melody asked.

  “He’s organizing the music for our Christmas Eve service. He is a retired music pastor.”

  “Dad usually does it, but this year he’s talking,” Janie said.

  “Talking?” Melody perked up. “Like bringing the message?”

  Quentin shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. Janie’s the big deal.”

  Janie quieted.

  “Are you performing, Janie?” Melody asked.

  Janie shrugged.

  Quentin’s grip on the reins tightened as he guided the horses to the front of the store and tossed the reins around the hitching post. Jethro had said not to pressure her, so Quentin let it go. “Do you ladies want to wait out here or come inside?”

  “Can I come in? I love music stores.” Melody’s eyes lit up surprisingly for someone who hadn’t even hummed during the Christmas sing along the other night.

  He walked around to her side of the sleigh and held out his hand to steady her descent. She slipped her gloved fingers into his, and their eyes met. His breath caught in his throat until Janie squealed from behind her.

  “Me too!” She scrambled to hurry down, but Quentin slowed her and guided her feet.

  He lost sight of Melody as she poked around his store while he found the guitar strings for Jethro. The sounds of strumming drew him to the front window. Janie hummed as Melody coaxed a pleasing tune from the rectangular instrument he’d forgotten he had acquired at an estate sale.

  He leaned against the wall and watched. Janie’s face beamed. It was the happiest he’d seen her in a long while. Melody appeared not only comfortable holding the instrument but also entirely competent.

  Janie was the first to notice him. “What is this?” She pointed to it, and Melody stopped plucking the strings.

  “It’s an autoharp.” He moved in behind Melody and reached his arms around her. “You play it like this.” He gave it a simple strum.

  She tipped her head back to look up at him. Her lashes swept up, and she blinked. Their gazes locked, and his palms moistened.

  He lowered his voice. “You press these buttons for the cords,” he pointed at the white buttons on the right side marked with letters and numbers, “and strum. It’s pretty basic.” He lingered long enough to inhale Melody’s fresh vanilla scent.

  Her skin flushed.

  He stuffed his hands into his pockets and flicked his gaze to Janie.

  She rolled her eyes.

  “How much is it?” Melody asked.

  “You want to buy it?” He lifted his eyebrows. It wasn’t a common instrument.

  She flicked her gaze briefly at Janie and then back at him. “It’s for a friend.”

  He made the financial transaction and helped her and Janie back into the sleigh. As he guided the horses back to Pine Tree Valley Farms, he watched her from the corner of his eye. She pulled multiple layers of blankets around her and Janie, and they bent their heads together whispering fiercely. She held her harp like it was the most precious item in the world. Strange indeed.

  Soon enough, they found the rest of the family. Clive carried the axe on his shoulder. Wayne and Carol held hands. Janie scampered ahead with Ava to help her choose the perfect tree. Melody remained in the sleigh under the warm blankets, and Quentin stood beside the sleigh holding the horse’s reins.

  “Janie seems like a very capable girl.” She watched her family until distance obscured them.

  “She is, but she’s suffered a lot.” More than Melody would ever know.

  She swung her full attention back to him. “It must be hard to let her grow up.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. We battled hard to get here. The doctors never thought she would walk again, speak again, nothing. They offered no hope.”

  “I didn’t know it had been
so bleak.”

  “I’m not sure Janie even knows how bleak it was. She had to relearn everything after her stroke. How to walk, talk, hold a pencil. Until you go through something like that, until you walk alongside someone you love going through something like that, you don’t ever really understand.”

  A muscle twitched in her cheek. Her chin lowered and pulled back against her neck. “I know what it is like to have people underestimate me. I know what it’s like to have people act unsure around me because I’m not the same as I was before.”

  He strained to hear her soft words. He secured the horses and pulled himself up onto the bench seat beside her. “How do you know?”

  “People either act like everything is fine or they overcompensate. I know what it is like to start over. I do it nearly every single day.” She flattened her lips as if she suddenly realized how much she had shared.

  “That was avoidance, not an answer.”

  She held her tongue.

  He rolled his eyes upward. “When you have kids, you’ll get it.”

  She tugged at the blankets, hitching them up around her neck. Her fingers trembled where they clutched the fabric. “I’m not having kids.” A vein in her forehead pulsated near the rim of her knit hat.

  Right. She wasn’t getting married.

  “I can’t imagine not having Janie.” Despite his rough and fierce introduction to fatherhood, he considered Janie God’s greatest blessing to him.

  Her booted foot tapped relentlessly against the floorboards of the sleigh. “Not every person is cut out to be a mother.” She tried to hide it, but the pain of her words was etched on her face.

  Did she think she was an unfit mother?

  “Melody! Quentin!” Her parents hurried toward them. “We can’t find Janie.”

  6

  Melody bolted upright, and the blankets around her tumbled to the floor.

  Quentin leaped off the sleigh. “What do you mean you can’t find her?” His jaw moved back and forth, and a muscle twitched in his check. A sign Melody recognized as controlled fear.

  Her father offered his hand to help Melody climb down. As soon as her feet hit the snow-packed earth, she rested a gloved hand on Quentin’s arm. His muscles tightened under his lightweight winter jacket.

  “I’m sure she’ll be OK,” she said. “Janie’s eleven years old. Something probably caught her attention, and she didn’t think about it.”

  Quentin wrenched his hawkish gaze from the crowds milling about and slammed it onto hers. “She’s not like other kids her age. She gets disorientated. She falls. She could be hurt.” He started down the trail in the direction Janie went earlier. Melody’s mother followed him, nattering all the way, “She was there one minute and then gone the next. We were all together…”

  Melody started to follow, but her dad stretched out his hand to stop her. “I think you should stay here in case she comes back. We don’t know how far we’ll be walking, and that’ll get hard for you. Keep your phone on, and man the home base.”

  Dad waited until she nodded in agreement and took out her phone. Then, he jogged down the trail after Quentin.

  Melody resisted the urge to stomp her feet in a tantrum, loathing her physical limitations. Logic dictated that Dad was right. She wouldn’t last long in this cold on foot, and if her body shut down, it would detract from their search for Janie. Logic dictated that she should stay behind, but she wanted to help. She needed to be useful. She needed Quentin to know she wanted to help.

  Why?

  Don’t go there. She shook her head to clear her muddled emotions. She didn’t have time to consider what motivated her desires. Janie needed her.

  Quiet descended as news of Janie’s disappearance circulated the farm. The people previously milling about all rushed into the wooded areas to help search. Everyone but Melody.

  In sudden absence of noise, lilting notes of a-cappella carollers drifted her way. Melody cocked an ear. Hadn’t Janie said something about carolers? Hadn’t her eyes lit up at the idea of seeing this new addition to Pine Tree Valley Farms?

  Melody’s fingers curled around her phone. She should text Quentin and share her hunch, but what if she was wrong? What if he wasted valuable minutes retracing his steps back here, and it was nothing? She jammed her phone into her pocket. She’d text Quentin if she found something and not before. She wrapped additional blankets around her shoulders, stuffed new hand and foot warmers into her boots and mittens, and followed the music.

  She wandered through the trails. The occasional calling of Janie’s name broke the harmonies. A cold seeped deep into her bones that she couldn’t shake. Her teeth chattered. She clenched her jaw. There would be time later to deal with that. Janie needed her.

  A break in the trees provided a clear line of sight to the profile of a slender, female frame leaning against a tree with her attention transfixed on a trio of singers on the other side of a frozen stream. Melody approached from behind, her footsteps crunching in the snow. “Janie?”

  Janie turned. She had fallen. Her pants were soaked through, but joy flowed from her eyes. “Aren’t they beautiful? It’s perfect, just perfect.” Janie’s lips trembled, and her eyes glittered, but Melody couldn’t tell if it from the cold or emotion.

  Melody stepped beside her. They stood shoulder to shoulder. Somehow, she instinctively knew this was not the time to correct the girl for slipping away. Something bigger was happening. Something inside Janie was coming back to life. A faint sensation of warmth flickered inside Melody’s chest too, so fragile she feared if she moved she’d extinguish the flame.

  The voices of the singers harmonized as the best Melody had ever heard. A growing crowd of Christmas tree customers gathered. Melody shrugged the blankets off her shoulders and tucked them around Janie. She wrapped an arm around the girl’s slight frame. “Your dad is looking for you.”

  “It’s so beautiful,” Janie said as if she didn’t hear Melody’s words. Then, she started to sing.

  Janie’s voice held Melody hostage. It was not the voice of an eleven-year-old. It was the voice of a trained singer. No wonder her dad had grieved Janie’s resistance to perform again. She had an incredible gift.

  Melody’s heart hammered, and a familiar desire rose in her chest. She waited for the usual lump to form in her throat, for rising panic, and for reality to knock her down, but it never came. She started to hum the harmony. When anxiety failed to steal her voice, she transitioned from humming to singing the words of the familiar carol.

  Their voices blended, two broken women singing tentative praises to the God who gives and takes away. It was a sacrifice of praise. A tear slipped down her cheek.

  Melody wrestled with a desire to let this moment stretch indefinitely, but she couldn’t do that to Quentin. Every minute they spent here singing was another minute Quentin feared the worst.

  She placed her hands gently on Janie’s shoulders and turned Janie’s body away from the singers to face her. She bent down so she stood eye level with the girl. “It’s time to go back.”

  Janie nodded. Her wet eyes confirmed the moment had been special for her as well.

  Melody sent a quick text to Quentin, and then for many minutes, she and Janie walked in companionable silence both lost in their thoughts. Melody broke the quiet. “You’ve had voice lessons.”

  A flush crept across Janie’s face. She tipped up her chin. “You too.”

  Melody’s face, neck, and ears felt impossibly hot at the girl’s redirect. “Were your lessons from your dad?”

  Janie nodded. “Dad gives lots of kids lessons in his store.”

  “Did he give you piano lessons, too?”

  “Yeah.” Darkness clouded Janie’s eyes. “But since the stroke, I can’t stretch my fingers that way anymore, and I don’t like how sad Dad looks when I try.”

  “So you stopped trying.” It made sense. “Have you asked to play a different instrument, or to focus on voice?”

  Janie shrugged. She pulled the blanke
t tighter around her body as if she just realized how cold she was. “Dad gets nervous about me trying new things.” She tipped her head back to look fully at Melody. “You sing. Why didn’t you sing the carols with your family?”

  The familiar boulder swelled in her throat. It wasn’t that she couldn’t sing physically, but ever since her diagnosis, she’d felt too sad inside. Too broken. It didn’t seem to matter how much she loved to lead people to worship the Lord or how much she wanted to sing out her trust in the Lord. She couldn’t do it without breaking.

  Until today.

  “Everybody can sing.”

  Janie laughed, “but not everybody sings well.”

  Melody tightened her arm around Janie’s shoulders. “Ain’t that the truth!”

  They could see Quentin pacing as they approached the sleigh. He scooped Janie up, beaming at Melody for a half-second before settling his gaze on his daughter. “You’re shivering,” he scolded her, but his eyes, wide and glowing, were not angry.

  “I’m OK. Melody gave me her blanket.”

  Quentin wrenched his gaze from Janie and dragged it up and down Melody. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, and stepped back to avoid his eyes. He was uncomfortably perceptive. She fiddled with her scarf. “It’s no big deal.”

  “Thank you.” He said it like he understood how big of a deal it was, but he couldn’t. Not unless someone told him about her illness.

  “How did you know where to look?” Quentin tucked Janie’s head under his chin and held Melody’s gaze over the top of Janie’s head.

  Her father pulled another blanket from the back of the sleigh, unfolded it, and placed it around her shoulders. Melody tugged it tightly, using the distraction to form her answer.

  A slow smiled stretched her face. “I followed the music.”

  He furrowed his brows for a second and then released them. He blinked and nodded slowly. “Let me get you two home.”

  “I’ll come with you.” Carol climbed into the sleigh before Melody could protest.

  Melody looked at her dad for help.

  He shrugged.

  She mentally prepared herself for the lecture that was sure to come.