Season of Miracles

by Emilie Richards

  Copyright 2014

  ©Emilie Richards

  Cover by Tina McGee

  Cover photo by © Igor Stevanovic | Dreamstime.com

  Ebook Creation by Jessica Lewis

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the permission in writing from the author.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Originally published by Silhouette Books in 1986

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  Dear Reader,

  I’m having so much fun sharing my classic romances with you. In March I followed the calendar to give you my Mardi Gras novel, The Unmasking about a lovely mask maker in the New Orleans French Quarter and the man she never expected to see again.

  Now I’m delighted to share Season of Miracles, which has not one but two Christmas celebrations on its pages, as well as a special holiday unique to the small Florida town of Miracle Springs where the story takes place. I had forgotten how much I loved writing this book and exploring the lives of these characters. I’m a sucker for “lover’s reunited” stories, and Sloane and Elise are exactly that, determined not to fall back in love after seventeen years and powerless to stop themselves.

  I will warn you, though, that as much as I loved Sloane and Elise, Clay, Sloane’s son, almost steals the novel. His romance—his first—with Amy was a joy to create. When the book was originally published in 1986 I was asked repeatedly to write a sequel, and reading and editing it this time around, I understood why. You’ll wonder what happens to these characters, too.

  Just a word or two—or hey, several dozen—about 1986. Some stories can be easily updated. This one could not. Had I added twenty-first century “innovations” like texting, Facebook, cell phones, the fluid, easy pace of life in Miracle Springs—almost a character in this story—would have disappeared. And there’s a bit of real history that’s important to the story, too. That, too, was too important to alter.

  So settle in for life in the 1980s, when some things were much simpler, some more difficult, and all worth reading about.

  Two years ago I moved back to Florida, the state where I was raised. The setting for this novel comes from real summers as a teenager in the central part of the state near Ocala where the fictitious Miracle Springs would be a dot on the map. Sometimes I still dream of icy, crystal clear springs, with moss-draped live oaks on the banks and full Florida moons turning the landscape to molten silver. I hope I’ve captured a little of that for you.

  I’m delighted to make this new edition of Season of Miracles available, and I hope that Miracle Springs will work a little magic in your life, too.

  Happy Reading,

  Emilie

  For my children:

  Shane, Jessie, Galen, Brendan,

  who sometimes have to point the way.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The first thing she noticed was the silence, hovering in the morning air like a patient vulture waiting for his prey to cease its struggles. Elise had never realized that silence, something she had experienced little of in her thirty-five years, could be so foreboding.

  Forcing herself awake she sat up in bed, pushing long strands of black hair away from her face with the palms of her hands. She listened carefully, but the silence remained unbroken. Through sleep-swollen eyes she gauged the time. There was no clock in her bedroom. Sleeping late had been one of the problems Elise had never had to worry about.

  The August sunlight beating relentlessly through her window told her that the morning was at least half gone. Why? Is Mama sleeping late too?

  The question triggered its own answer as she became more fully awake. Mama. No, Mama would sleep forever. Elise waited for the familiar sadness, but this morning she could detect no signs of it. Her mother was gone; Jeanette Ramsey’s death was unalterable. Elise Ramsey was alive, possibly for the first time in seventeen years.

  And the house was silent.

  Swinging her legs over the side of the bed she stood, her long cotton gown falling in snowy swirls around her bare feet. Parting the curtains she peered out the window at the sun-dappled avenue. The town of Miracle Springs was awake, going about its business with slow-moving enthusiasm. She stood there for long minutes counting cars. One…two… Satisfied that by sleeping late she had missed absolutely nothing, she turned and began to search her closet for the coolest dress she owned. The day was going to be a scorcher..

  The dress she chose was one her mother had never liked—not that it had been easy to please Jeanette Ramsey, anyway. But this particular dress had elicited comments about gypsies and dressing to suit one’s age and position in the community. It was white with a full embroidered skirt in a style that was never quite in or out of fashion, and Elise felt young again when she wore it. She realized that in her mother’s eyes, that had been the whole problem.

  Elise fastened the dress and pulled a brush through her long hair, twisting it into a cool knot on top of her head, and wondered fleetingly how much longer she’d be able to get away with the severe hairstyle that did nothing to soften the inevitable signs of approaching middle age. She wasn’t much of a judge, never having wasted time examining her appearance for innovative ways of dealing with flaws. Elise had worn her hair long since she was a child. She loved it. Glossy, still black and utterly unstylish, it was part of her image of herself. If it emphasized features that were less than perfect, it also emphasized the high cheekbones and smooth olive skin that she liked to think were her best assets.

  As she wandered the room her movements disturbed the intimidating silence and shaped it to suit her. Now that she was wide awake Elise wondered why something she had longed for all her life—freedom, a chance to think her own thoughts—had seemed so threatening this morning. Undoubtedly, living alone was going to take some getting used to.

  “But you will get used to it,” she said out loud, “because you’re probably going to spend the rest of your life alone.” It wasn’t a new thought or a particularly sad one. It was something she was just beginning to come to terms with, and like a child reciting a Bible verse, she spoke the thought as often as possible to commit it to memory.

  Downstairs, she stopped to throw open the heavy draperies in the living room before moving on to the kitchen to fix her breakfast. The old frame house was already beginning to soak up the day’s sunshine. August in central Florida was as predictable as anything in life. The weather was invariably hot and humid, guaranteed to slow the average person’s pace by fifty percent. Most of the inhabitants of Miracle Springs cut their losses by air-conditioning their houses and places of employment.

  Elise’s house had one small air conditioner in the room that had belonged to her mother. The rest of the house had been left to the ravages of the Florida summer. Now Elise turned on a circular fan that was sitting on top of the kitchen counter and began to slice a grapefruit. She hummed as she worked, keeping the silence at arm’s length with her own music.

  This day would pass, and with it,
the other sultry days of August. September would come, and with its arrival her life would once again be filled with the noise and confusion of teaching tenth grade English at Miracle Springs High. Elise, who had spent most of her life wishing for silence, put down her grapefruit knife and picked up a pen. As she slashed an X through the date on the calendar above the counter, she wondered why that simple act gave her so much satisfaction.

  “So after all those years of faking illness, Mrs. Ramsey just up and died last month. Just like that. Nobody even knew she was really sick. She complained so much all the time Dr. Mooney didn’t do more than give her a quick check. Next thing anybody knew, she keeled over in his parking lot. Gone in a minute.”

  Sloane Tyson sat in his aunt’s living room and twisted the brim of his panama hat. The malleable straw crackled and popped as he ruined the shape forever. “So what happened to Elise after her mother died?” he asked, his voice a shade more enthusiastic than mere politeness dictated.

  “Oh, she’s still here. She’ll be teaching again this year, I suspect. Best teacher at Miracle Springs High. Prettiest, too.” Lillian Tyson looked at her nephew with interest. “Weren’t you sweet on her years ago?”

  Sloane had forgotten how every detail of life in a small town was collected and stored in the minds of its inhabitants. The system was more efficient than a computer bank and only slightly more personal. Today he had sat quietly and listened to his aunt’s recital of the intimate details of the lives of Miracle Springs citizens, not expecting himself to be drawn into the conversation. He should have known better. He should have realized that Elise Ramsey would be on Lillian Tyson’s list.

  “You remember farther back than I do,” he said nonchalantly. But of course, that wasn’t true.

  He’d forgotten a lot about Miracle Springs, put it out of his mind as if he’d never lived there, but he’d never forgotten Elise. No, he’d never forgotten Elise.

  Lillian would not be daunted. “Well, it seems to me that you went steady with her your senior year.”

  “That was seventeen years ago.”

  “Around here, nothing much happens in seventeen years.”

  Sloane smiled wryly. His aunt was right, and it was precisely the reason he had left the small town of three thousand where he’d been born. He’d left at the first opportunity and never come back—except once, for his mother’s funeral.

  Lillian Tyson seemed to read his mind. “Are you going to make it, Sloane? Can you stand living here a year?”

  “My choices are limited.” Sloane stood and began to pace the small living room that was crowded with old furniture and assorted knickknacks. He was a large man, and he dwarfed his surroundings as well as the old woman who fondly watched his pacing.

  “You’re like a tiger in a cage,” she pronounced, proud of her analogy. “Always have been. Miracle Springs hems you in.”

  And it was precisely that “hemming in” that had brought him back. For the first time he was in need of the sheltering influences of the little town, its slow, easy pace, its acceptance of its own. The last thought made him pause. “Do you think they’re going to accept Clay?” he asked.

  As Lillian watched her nephew her unfailingly cheerful expression didn’t change. She didn’t have to ask who “they” were. She knew Sloane referred to the citizens of Miracle Springs. “He’s your son, isn’t he? He’s a Tyson. He may have some trouble, but he’ll make it here.”

  “He wouldn’t have made it in Cambridge,” Sloane said to himself as much as to his aunt. “The kids there would have eaten him alive.”

  “They may try that here, but he’ll be protected.”

  “I guess that’s a start.”

  The living-room door swung open and a slender young man entered the room, his hands jammed in the pockets of stiff new blue jeans. “I fed your cats, Lillian,” he said.

  “Aunt Lillian,” his father corrected him sharply.

  “It’s all right,” Lillian said, waving aside Sloane’s protest. “Clay doesn’t know me from Adam. I don’t seem like an aunt to him yet.”

  “He’s still got to learn the proper forms of address,” Sloane said, his hat brim crackling anew in his hands.

  “Aunt Lillian,” Clay said pleasantly, stressing the first word. “All this relative stuff seems strange.”

  “I suspect everything seems strange,” Lillian said, a smile directed at her great-nephew. “But you don’t seem strange to us. You’re the spitting image of your daddy there. Right down to the way your hair swirls off your forehead.”

  Clay nodded, glancing at his father to see what impact his aunt’s comment had made on Sloane. With an insight far beyond his years, Clay probably suspected that their resemblance was not a source of pleasure to his father.

  “Resembles you right down to the ponytail,” Lillian said, this time to Sloane.

  “Sloane had a ponytail?” Clay asked.

  “Nothing like yours,” Lillian said, reaching out to tug the brown hair that fell in restrained waves to the middle of Clay’s back. “When your dad was growing up around here, nobody’d even seen long hair on a man. Your dad’s was short, barely long enough to put in a rubber band, but I’ll tell you, it caused a stir in this town you wouldn’t believe.”

  “What happened, Sloane?” Clay turned to his father and monitored his expression again.

  “My uncle hauled me off to the barber shop. He was bigger than I was.” The ghost of a grin lit Sloane’s face.

  Clay seemed encouraged. “Are you planning to repeat history?”

  “I’m not going to force you to do anything, Clay. It’s your hair. I have no opinions about it one way or the other.”

  “Well I do,” Lillian said firmly. “You want to fit in at Miracle Springs High, you get that hair cut before you go the first day. Kids’ll like you better if you look like them.”

  Clay looked as if he was considering her words. “Why would they want me to look like them?” he asked finally. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Lillian’s jaw dropped a little, and Sloane shook his head. “You’ve got a lot to learn about teenagers, Clay,” he said.

  Clay shrugged. “I haven’t even seen any teenagers here.”

  “Hasn’t he been to the springs?” Lillian asked Sloane.

  “I’ve been too busy settling in to take him.”

  “He can go by himself. He’s fifteen. This isn’t Boston. Fifteen’s old enough to go anywhere around here. Do you have a swimsuit?” she asked Clay. At his nod she added, “Do you want to go?”

  Clay nodded again.

  “Then go home and put it on. You can swim while your dad takes care of business this afternoon. I’ll walk you down to show you the way.”

  Sloane waited until Clay was gone. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “He’s got to start somewhere.” Lillian’s frown matched Sloane’s. “It’s not like Clay’s got something seriously wrong with him. He’s going to be fine.”

  “He’s got such a long way to go before he understands what this crazy world is all about. I feel like I’m throwing him to the lions.”

  “All parents feel that way,” Lillian said.

  “But not all parents are suddenly raising a son they didn’t even know existed,” Sloane said bitterly. “Not all parents have a son who didn’t even know he had a last name until a month ago.”

  “And not all parents in that situation would care,” Lillian reminded him.

  “I never wanted to be a father.”

  “Give yourself time. Give Clay time. Give Miracle Springs time.”

  “Miracle Springs will have to bring me a miracle. I’m afraid that’s what it’s going to take.”

  “It’s happened before.” Lillian stood too and set her frail hand on her nephew’s shoulder. “The first miracle was finding Clay; the second one will be really finding him.”

  Sloane relaxed a little under her touch. “I appreciate your optimism.”

  “I appreciate your coming back he
re. I may be a selfish old lady, but I’m glad you’re home. Even if it’s just for a year. You were always more like a son than a nephew.”

  “By the time we leave, you may be glad to see us go.”

  “Not likely.”

  Sloane put his arms around his aunt and hugged her much as he had as a young boy. There were some things that time and distance and endless mistakes never changed. Sloane knew that his aunt’s love was one of them.

  Lillian’s eyes were filled with tears when the embrace ended. “Don’t go getting all soft on me, boy.” She stepped back to search Sloane’s face. “You know, as much as you dislike this town, you might find some things here for yourself this year.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as a mother for Clay.”

  Elise’s name lay unspoken between them.

  Sloane shook his head, his features fixed in decisive lines. “Clay will have to do with one parent. But then, that’s more than he’s ever had before.”

  “Just give this year a chance,” Lillian said softly. “Let time take care of the rest.”

  But Sloane, who had never believed that time took care of anything, was lost in his own thoughts.

  As Elise strolled under the succession of canvas and fiberglass awnings that were strung over Hope Avenue’s sidewalks she wondered if she would live long enough to see any changes in Miracle Springs. The only real miracle the town had to offer was the way it had avoided entry into this century. Even if changes occurred, they were so subtle they were invisible to the human eye.

  The monotony was like an opiate to creativity and growth. Predictability was a potent drug that lulled Miracle Springs residents into accepting the inevitability of their lives.