LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter One

      Snow tumbled from an unforgiving sky, icy against her cheek as Chelsea McKaslin knelt in the small town’s cemetery. The marker was simple, the white marble hard to read in the falling twilight and the accumulating snow. She swept away the fluffy inches of flakes from the gravestone with her fingertips, her hand-knit crimson mittens a vivid splash of color in a white, gray and dark evening. Ever since her mother had passed on, the world hadn’t seemed as kind or as colorful.

      “Hi, Mom.” She laid pink carnations on the headstone, where the name Jessica Elizabeth McKaslin was etched, beloved wife and mother. “It’s me, Chelsea. I’ve missed coming to see you, but I did what you asked. I finished my residency. I stuck it out. It was tough, the last thing I wanted to do after you were gone, but I did it.”

      More than anything she wished—she prayed—that her mother could hear her. That her words could lift through the airy snowfall and rise up to heaven as if on angels’ wings. Her faith had been tested over the two years of Mom’s sickness and death, but it remained strong. She still believed. Somewhere her mother was looking down at her and smiling. Her love lived on. Maybe it was in the soft brush of snowflakes against Chelsea’s cheek or the whisper behind the wind, so light it was barely audible. She liked to think so.

      “Christmas is not the same without you.” She could hope it would be better than last year with the gaping, painful hole in their lives and in their family. No one and nothing could ever fill the void. “Sara Beth and Meg plan to fix our traditional dinner this year. Johanna has her heart set on a tree. We’re all pooling our gift money to start a scholarship in your name.”

      The electronic jingle of her cell penetrated her wool coat’s outer pocket. She fumbled for it, the mitten’s thickness and the numbing cold making her fingers clumsy. The number on the luminous display came as no surprise.

      “I’m almost home,” she said, squinting as the snowfall thickened, beating against her face.

      “I was worried.” Her youngest sister’s voice sounded crackly. Reception was terrible because of the storm. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the clock and the weather report. Half the county roads are closed, and you should have been here twenty minutes ago. Where are you?”

      “Safe. I had to stop by and visit Mom.”

      Johanna’s silence said it all. Understanding zoomed across the line, the static unable to diminish the strong bond between them. Chelsea didn’t

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