A Stone Creek Christmas. Linda Miller Lael

to prepare the previous year’s Thanksgiving dinner, gathering recipes for weeks ahead of time, experimenting like a chemist in search of a cure, and looked forward to hosting a houseful of congenial relatives.

      “Do cows even have appendixes?” Ashley asked.

      Olivia laughed, drew back a chair at the table and sat down. “That cider smells fabulous,” she said, in order to change the subject. “And the cookies are works of art, almost too pretty to eat. Martha Stewart would be so proud.”

      Ashley joined her at the table, but she still looked troubled. “Why do you hate holidays, Olivia?” she persisted.

      “I don’t hate holidays,” Olivia said. “It’s just that all that sentimentality—”

      “You miss Big John and Mom,” Ashley broke in quietly. “Why don’t you just admit it?”

      “We all miss Big John,” Olivia admitted. “As for Mom—well, she’s been gone a long time, Ash. A really long time. It’s not a matter of missing her, exactly.”

      “Don’t you ever wonder where she went after she left Stone Creek, if she’s happy and healthy—if she remarried and had more children?”

      “I try not to,” Olivia said honestly.

      “You have abandonment issues,” Ashley accused.

      Olivia sighed and sipped from her cup of cider. The stuff was delicious, like everything her sister cooked up.

      Ashley’s Botticelli face brightened; she’d made another of her mercurial shifts from pensive to hopeful. “Suppose we found her?” she asked on a breath. “Mom, I mean—”

      “Found her?” Olivia echoed, oddly alarmed.

      “There are all these search engines online,” Ashley enthused. “I was over at the library yesterday afternoon, and I searched Google for Mom’s name.”

      Oh. My. God, Olivia thought, feeling the color drain out of her face.

      “You used a computer?”

      Ashley nodded. “I’m thinking of getting one. Setting up a Web site to bring in more business for the B and B.”

      Things were changing, Olivia realized. And she hated it when things changed. Why couldn’t people leave well enough alone?

      “There are more Delia O’Ballivans out there than you would ever guess,” Ashley rushed on. “One of them must be Mom.”

      “Ash, Mom could be dead by now. Or going by a different name…”

      Ashley looked offended. “You sound like Brad and Melissa. Brad just clams up whenever I ask him about Mom—he remembers her better, since he’s older. ‘Leave it alone’ is all he ever says. And Melissa thinks she’s probably a crack addict or a hooker or something.” She let out a long, shaky breath. “I thought you missed Mom as much as I do. I really did.”

      Although Brad had never admitted it, Olivia suspected he knew more about their mother than he was telling. If he wanted Ashley and the rest of them to let the proverbial sleeping dogs lie, he probably had a good reason. Not that the decision was only his to make.

      “I miss having a mother, Ash,” Olivia said gently. “That’s different from missing Mom specifically. She left us, remember?”

      Remember? How could Ashley remember? She’d been a toddler when their mother boarded an afternoon bus out of Stone Creek and vanished into a world of strangers. She was clinging to memories she’d merely imagined, most likely. To a fantasy mother, the woman who should have been, but probably never was.

      “Well, I want to know why,” Ashley insisted, her eyes full of pain. “Maybe she regretted it. Did you ever think of that? Maybe she misses us, and wants a second chance. Maybe she expects us to reject her, so she’s afraid to get in touch.”

      “Oh, Ash,” Olivia murmured, slouching against the back of her chair. “You haven’t actually made contact, have you?”

      “No,” Ashley said, tucking a wisp of blond hair behind her right ear when it escaped from her otherwise categorically perfect French braid, “but if I find her, I’m going to invite her to Stone Creek for Christmas. If you and Brad and Melissa want to keep your distance, that’s your business.”

      Olivia’s hand shook a little as she set her cup down, causing it to rattle in its delicate saucer. “Ashley, you have a right to see Mom if you want to,” she said carefully. “But Christmas—”

      “What do you care about Christmas?” Ashley asked abruptly. “You don’t even put up a tree most years.”

      “I care about you and Melissa and Brad. If you do manage to find Mom, great. But don’t you think bringing her here at Christmas, the most emotional day of the year, before anybody has a chance to get used to the idea, would be like planting a live hand grenade in the turkey?”

      Ashley didn’t reply, and after that the conversation was stilted, to say the least. They talked about what to contribute to the Thanksgiving shindig at Brad and Meg’s place, decided on freshly baked dinner rolls for Ashley and a selection of salads from the deli for Olivia, and then Olivia left to make rounds.

      Why was she so worried? she wondered, biting down hard on her lower lip as she fired up the Suburban and headed for the first farm on her list. If she was alive, Delia had done a good job of staying under the radar all these years. She’d never written, never called, never visited. Never sent a single birthday card. And if she was dead, they’d all have to drop everything and mourn, in their various ways.

      Olivia didn’t feel ready to take that on.

      Before, the thought of Delia usually filled her with grief and a plaintive, little-girl kind of longing. The very cadence of her heartbeat said, Come home. Come home.

      Now, today, it just made her very, very angry. How could a woman just leave four children and a husband behind and forget the way back?

      Olivia knotted one hand into a fist and bonked the side of the steering wheel once. Tears stung her eyes, and her throat felt as though someone had run a line of stitches around it with a sharp needle and then pulled them tight.

      Ashley was expecting some kind of fairy-tale reunion, an Oprah sort of deal, full of tearful confessions and apologies and cartoon birds trailing ribbons from their chirpy beaks.

      For Olivia’s money, it would be more like an apocalypse.

      Tanner heard the rig roll in around sunset. Smiling, he closed his newspaper, stood up from the kitchen table and wandered to the window. Watched as Olivia O’Ballivan climbed out of her Suburban, flung one defiant glance toward the house and started for the barn, the golden retriever trotting along behind her.

      She’d come, he knew, to have another confab with Butterpie. The idea at once amused him and jabbed through his conscience like a spike. Sophie was on the other side of the country, homesick as hell and probably sticking pins in a daddy doll. She missed the pony, and the pony missed her, and he was the hard-ass who was keeping them apart.

      Taking his coat and hat down from the peg next to the back door, he put them on and went outside. He was used to being alone, even liked it, but keeping company with Doc O’Ballivan, bristly though she sometimes was, would provide a welcome diversion.

      He gave her time to reach Butterpie’s stall, then walked into the barn.

      The golden came to greet him, all wagging tail and melting brown eyes, and he bent to stroke her soft, sturdy back. “Hey, there, dog,” he said.

      Sure enough, Olivia was in the stall, brushing Butterpie down and talking to her in a soft, soothing voice that touched something private inside Tanner and made him want to turn on one heel and beat it back to the house.

      He’d be damned if he’d do it, though.

      This was