Silent Night in Dry Creek. Janet Tronstad

some vestige of it had clung to his soul anyway.

      He pulled the car to a halt in front of the Walls’ house. The windows were decorated with Christmas lights and tall wooden candy canes lined the path up to the front door. Light and laughter spilled out the windows.

      Even when he’d been in the pageant, he’d dreaded Christmas. Wade wondered if he was ever going to be on the right side of the holiday. He glanced over at Jasmine. He wondered if she knew she had a frown on her face as she marched up the sidewalk to the house. Then he realized he had one, too.

      At times like this he wished he had someone to arrest.

      Chapter Four

      Jasmine had lost what little Christmas cheer she had. She was sitting on the sofa in the Walls’ living room with a glass of cold spiced cider in one hand and a piece of stuffed celery in the other. Carols were playing on the stereo system and she’d just let her misery overflow to Edith, the only other person in the room. The older woman was sitting next to her on a straight-backed oak chair.

      “Oh, dear, no, we’d never pay someone to take you out,” Edith protested.

      “Not take me out,” Jasmine corrected in the whisper she’d been using to tell the story. “Follow me around.”

      “Oh, Wade wouldn’t do that. Goodness, no. You must have heard him wrong.” Edith’s short gray hair was tightly permed and her waves shook along with her head. She had a worried look on her kindly face and her white magnetic necklace hung above a red checked housedress in an attempt at seasonal fashion. “Besides, Wade isn’t the man we have in mind for you anyway.”

      “You have someone in mind for me?” Jasmine looked around to be sure no one else had walked back into the living room. It sounded like they were all still in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on that coconut cake.

      “Well, just Conrad. You know he’s a sweet man. A little shy maybe, but…Of course, it’s just a suggestion. For when you’re ready to date.”

      “I don’t need to date anyone,” Jasmine said firmly. She supposed a husband like Conrad made sense given the fact that she wanted a regular life. But somehow the prospect seemed a little suffocating right now. Of course, he was a good mechanic. She liked that, but—“No one needs to worry about me. Maybe Wade can do whatever he’s supposed to do with someone else.”

      “Yes, well, maybe. I thought he was going to help the sheriff, though,” Edith conceded as she rubbed her hand around her wrist. “Maybe he could be a security guard at the barn now that we’re setting up the stage. With the pageant being this Monday—”

      “Do you want an aspirin?” Jasmine asked. Everyone knew the older woman suffered from arthritis on cold evenings. Her wrist must be hurting.

      Edith shook her head. “I’ll be fine. And don’t worry about Wade. I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.”

      “He said he’d rather dig ditches than have anything to do with me.” Jasmine didn’t realize how peevish she sounded until she saw a spark of interest light up her friend’s eyes.

      “Not that I want him to,” Jasmine added firmly. “He’s just a test from God anyway.”

      Edith looked a little startled. “In what way?”

      Jasmine wished she’d left that last part out. “Oh, you know, old feelings.”

      She’d already decided that, when she’d almost kissed him in her father’s kitchen, it had just been because of the rush of adrenaline that had raced through her after the gunshots. It was a natural response. Guns always made her nervous these days. It had nothing to do with the way Wade’s eyes made her feel. Or the way the line of his chin looked so strong. Or—

      “I don’t know that God sends us people as tests,” Edith said gently, interrupting her thoughts.

      They were silent for a moment, Jasmine taking a sip of her cider and Edith taking a drink from the glass of water by her side.

      “I must admit Wade’s a handsome man,” Edith finally said. “I can see why you’d be interested.”

      “I’m not—”

      Edith just kept going. “The problem is that he has it in his head he can’t really trust anyone. He refuses to even have a partner on the job. Until he does, I can’t see him being married. Not happily. And he doesn’t have much use for God, either. I blame myself for that.”

      “You?” Jasmine set her glass of cider down. “How can it possibly be your fault?”

      “I should have taken him to live with me and my husband. It wasn’t good for him to rattle around in that house with his grandfather. The man wasn’t even sober most of the time. He would have given the boy up for a case of cheap wine. I thought a couple of times of making him an offer, but I kept hoping things would get better. How could a boy, living with someone like that, trust anyone?”

      “He looks like he turned out fine.” Jasmine offered what comfort she could.

      “Yes, in some ways,” Edith said slowly. “Carl says he’s got a spotless reputation. Determined and smart. He never bends the rules. Always by the book. Other lawmen look up to him.”

      Jasmine swallowed. She wondered why a man like that had been tempted to kiss her.

      “He’s a good boy,” Edith finished. “Even if he hasn’t answered the letter I wrote him about his grandfather.”

      “It sounds like Mr. Sutton cooked some grand meals in his time.” Jasmine grabbed at a new topic like a lifeline. She’d been in the kitchen earlier when Barbara had been asking Wade about the cake his grandfather used to bake. The raspberry filling apparently had orange flavoring in it, too.

      “That cake is the very reason I should have taken Wade in. I knew back then it was too good to be true.”

      Just then a burst of laughter came from the kitchen.

      “Sounds like they’re having fun,” Jasmine said.

      Edith nodded and started to stand up. “No point in us sitting out here when the excitement’s in there.”

      

      Wade was holding the frosting spoon in his hand, feeling like a fraud. Carl’s two kids had taken Charley outside to see their kittens and he and Carl were standing at the center counter in the kitchen. Two round circles of white cake sat on wire racks. A bowl of raspberries sat beside them.

      Carl’s petite, dark-haired wife, Barbara, said she’d followed Carl’s crumpled up old recipe as best she could but that she had waited for Wade to get there to assemble the Christmas Fantasy Cake. He’d been dumbstruck that she’d baked it.

      “You say your grandfather found the cake in a magazine?” Barbara was asking as she turned the bowl of icing slightly. She was standing at the side counter so she’d have room to move around the cake. “I hope that you don’t mind that I named it. Did your grandfather call it anything special?”

      “All I know is there was a picture of it in Good Housekeeping.” Wade remembered his mother’s magazine like he’d been holding it yesterday. It was the one thing in the whole story that was true. He wondered how he was going to carefully unravel his lies without destroying Barbara’s enthusiasm. “My grandfather really wasn’t much of a cook.”

      “Well, maybe not every day, but on Christmas. Uhmmm,” Carl said with a smile as he looked down at his Barbara with love in his eyes. “I used to spend half of Christmas thinking about Wade over there eating that cake. I wished my mother’s fruitcake was half as good. And then I found you and you made the cake for us.”

      Carl gave his wife a quick kiss. “You’re a great cook.”

      Wade felt hollow. “I may have exaggerated the cake back then.”

      “I wondered how you got