“Daddy…”
The word was hardly louder than the crackle of the dying fire.
Yet Jack Callahan heard it like a gunshot.
His eyes opened.
For several seconds, he did not know where he was.
The room floated in amber darkness. Snow whispered against the windows of the old Wyoming ranch house. A single candle burned low on the mantel. Beneath the Christmas tree, shadows trembled over three clumsily wrapped presents.
Then Jack felt the small weight against his chest.
Three-year-old Gracie Collins lay curled in his arms.
One tiny hand had twisted itself into the fabric of his shirt. Her cheek rested beneath his chin, warm and soft, and strands of golden hair brushed his jaw whenever she breathed.
Jack looked down.
Gracie’s eyelids fluttered.
For one impossible second, her blue eyes opened.
And the dead came back.
Not as ghosts.
Not as voices.
But as memory.
A little girl racing barefoot through summer grass.
A blue ribbon flying from her hair.
A child laughing from the saddle of a wooden rocking horse.
“Again, Daddy! Push me again!”
Jack stopped breathing.
Those eyes were Lucy’s eyes.
The same clear, heartbreaking blue.
The same eyes Jack had watched close forever six winters earlier.
From the hallway came a sharp intake of breath.
Sarah Collins stood frozen in the doorway.
Her dark hair fell loose around her shoulders, and she held one hand over her mouth.
“Oh,” she whispered.
Jack could not look away from the sleeping child.
Sarah took one cautious step forward.
“I’m sorry. She sometimes dreams about her father.”
Jack said nothing.
“She was barely a year old when he died,” Sarah continued. “Sometimes she calls for him without knowing she’s doing it.”
Another step.
“I’ll take her.”
Sarah reached toward her daughter.
Jack’s arm tightened.
Not deliberately.
Not possessively.
It simply did.
Sarah stopped.
Jack looked down at Gracie.
Then toward the little pine tree standing in the corner of a room that had not held Christmas for six years.
Something inside him—a thing frozen so long he had mistaken it for dead—gave one painful, impossible beat.
Then another.
He lifted his eyes to Sarah.
“Sarah…”
His voice broke.
“What if you and Gracie—”
Sarah’s face changed.
Not with joy.
With fear.
Jack saw it clearly.
Her hand fell to her side.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
Jack frowned.
Sarah stared at him as though the words he had been about to speak were more frightening than the snowstorm raging beyond the windows.
“Please,” she said. “Before you ask me anything… there’s something you need to know.”
And in that moment, Jack Callahan understood something he had failed to understand from the instant Sarah Collins appeared at his door.
She had never come to Callahan Ranch merely to cook Christmas dinner.
Six years earlier, Christmas had died in that house.
Jack remembered the exact moment.
December twenty-third.
The doctor had stood beside the bed upstairs with his sleeves rolled to his elbows and exhaustion carved into his face.
Influenza had swept through the county like an invisible fire.
First Mary became ill.
Then Lucy.
Jack had carried water, changed blankets, prayed, cursed, begged.
Nothing mattered.
Mary died shortly before dawn.
Eight-year-old Lucy died that afternoon.
Jack buried them beneath the cottonwood trees on the hill overlooking the ranch.
Side by side.
Afterward, people tried to help.
Mrs. Parker brought casseroles.
Reverend Wilkins came twice.
Neighbors offered to feed Jack’s cattle.
