“No, I think Mom would want us to remember the good times, and maybe if Amy decides to bring Timothy home, we can make an ornament with him.”
“That will take a miracle. Keep praying.” Bella pulled the dry, cracked rubber band from around another stack of Christmas cards. “I can’t think of the last time I mailed out Christmas cards.”
“You never have.”
Bella laughed. “You’re right. I found your birthday card on my desk before I left Chicago. I should have brought it.”
“From which year?”
“Uh, I don’t really remember.”
Smiling sheepishly, Bella pulled out a simple paperback book, no thicker than a quarter of an inch, and covered with photos of cookies.
“Mom’s Christmas cookie cookbook.” Her throat caught.
“I thought it was lost.” Jo-Jo stared at the stained book.
Bella’s hand trembled a little as she opened it. Mom had a way of making Christmas special for all of them, and the tradition of cookie making was one of Bella’s favorites. That is, back when she still loved the trappings of a traditional Christmas.
She held up the small book and smiled. “I can remember Mom trying to get this to lay flat on the counter when it was new. I would be the one to hold the book open while she read the recipes and sent Sophie and Amy to the pantry for the ingredients.”
“At some point all I remember is her using recipe cards. I wonder why?” Jo-Jo said, quirking one eyebrow.
“I think somebody gave her a wood recipe box for Christmas one year, and she copied out her favorite cookie instructions on note cards. This cookbook is falling apart.” A couple of pages slipped out on the coffee table. Bella tucked the brittle sheets back in.”
“We should make some Christmas cookies while you’re here, Bell.” Jo-Jo sounded excited. “We can go shopping and pick up everything. The cookie cutters should still be in a drawer somewhere.”
Bella couldn’t remember the last time she’d baked anything, not even refrigerated cookie dough. “I’d love that. I don’t really cook anymore, but doing this together would make the best Christmas . . .”
A tear escaped from her right eye, and she wiped it away.
“Don’t cry, Bella.” Jo-Jo leaned over and hugged her. “This is a time to be happy. Mom would want us to be happy.”
“I know.” She smiled through unshed tears, then looked down into the box again at a small bundle of envelopes tied up with string. She pulled the stack from the box and scanned the top envelope.
“Jo-Jo, look.” Handwritten letters from her father to her mother while he served overseas.
The postmarks were faded—the handwriting as well. “These are postmarked twenty years ago. I would have been eight.” Bella handed the stack to Jo-Jo.
“Mom kept these? Why?” Jo-Jo shook her head. “Things were horrible between them when we were little.”
“Mom always said Dad was a better writer than a talker. I used to like his letters.” Until they stopped.
“Should we read them? I feel like we’d be snooping.”
Bella took the letters back and studied the first envelope. “This one was never opened.”
Jo-Jo tapped the stack of envelopes in Bella’s hand. “None of them were.”
“I don’t know about you, but I need to think about this for a while. I don’t know if either of us should read these. What will it change? They’re both gone. All has been said and done.” Bella put the letters back inside the Christmas box.
When a knock sounded at the front door, Bella sprang to her feet. “I bet that’s David!”
Sure enough, when she opened the door, there he stood, wearing the grin that caught her attention the moment they first met.
“Hi.” He winked at her, causing her heart to hop a little.
She put her arms around his neck and hugged him. “I missed you.”
“It’s nice to be missed.”
She stepped back to let him enter the great room. “Jo-Jo and I have been skipping down memory lane all morning. If you play your cards right, you just might get the chance to sample some of the Tucker girls’ Christmas cookies today.”
David glanced from Bella to Jo-Jo, then back again. “Baking? You? Your lavish spending keeps the Italian bakery on the corner in business.” He cocked his head at her and grinned. “Are you the real Isabella Tucker or a clone?”
“Hey, we were pretty good back then, weren’t we, Jo-Jo? But she’s the real baker in the family.” Bella shrugged and smirked. “I was pretty good at holding open the cookbook, and I paid attention to whatever Mom did. Anyway, baking is really just chemistry and careful measuring.”
“So if your efforts are a success, dare I assume once we get back to Chicago you’ll keep it up?”
“I can make no promise of that.” She grinned as she picked up the brittle cookbook while Jo-Jo gathered up a few childhood ornaments so they could hang them on the tree.
Jo-Jo placed the lid back on the Christmas box. “I need to take care of a few things around here today. I promised Jed I’d help him with chores before he heads to his other job. Gil is out picking up supplies, and the other two hands are working on a fence. We can make cookies after that.”
“We can help, too,” Bella said.
Both David and Jo-Jo looked skeptical.
“What? I can shovel.” Bella used to dread mucking out the stalls and the smell of manure, although she did like the idea of helping the horses find good homes. Truthfully, she’d realized she missed Jo-Jo more than she could say and wanted to spend as much time as she could with her sister. Not only that, she wanted to find out more about the Jed who’d captured her baby sister’s heart. They’d known him when they were kids. But what about Jed, the adult?
Yes, Isabella Tucker could bake if she wanted to, along with clean out horse stalls. Not that she wanted either to be part of her regular routine.
David tromped with the others out to the stable, a foreign place to him. He’d always lived in town, away from the horse culture that ran deep in Kentucky’s roots.
“We have several horses stabled here right now,” Jed explained to them as he led the way to the barn. “If we divide up the stalls, it won’t take long. Grab a pitchfork, pick up any manure or soiled straw you see, and throw it in your wheelbarrow.”
Good thing he’d worn his hiking boots. The horses had already been turned out to pasture that morning, but they’d left evidence of their presence behind.
“You can take Lucinda’s stall.” Jed handed David a pitchfork. “She’s got arthritic knees, but she’s a great therapy horse.”
After twenty minutes of combing through the straw for manure or wet bedding, David felt certain he’d cleaned Lucinda’s stall thoroughly. Jed told them not to worry about tossing in fresh straw. He’d do that.
David leaned on his pitchfork and looked over at Isabella in the stall next to him. “This must have been a great place to grow up.”
Bella tossed one more pitchfork full of soiled straw into her wheelbarrow and wrinkled her nose. “Except for this chore, it was a great place to grow up. Mom made every season and holiday special for us. Me? I always wanted to feel the rhythm of the city, so I left when it was time to go away to school.”
He nodded. “I can understand that. Still, sometimes I miss living here. My parents are getting older and my little brother is almost through with college. Then it’s off to a military commission for him and who knows where he’ll end up. My oldest brother is an hour away; I’m pretty sure he and his wife and kids will be coming in on Christmas Eve.”
David glanced to the other stalls where Jed and Jo-Jo worked, chatting away and sharing the laughter of a couple in love. He had moments like that with Bella, but sometimes she seemed to drift away from him and he didn’t know where she’d gone. He used to chalk it up to her being preoccupied with work, or maybe jet lag after a long trip, but lately he suspected something else weighed on her mind.
Bella sneezed. “Can’t
say I missed this part at all.” Her dark eyes sparkled at him. Her hair hung in pigtails that skimmed her shoulders, and wisps of hair escaped the bandana tied around her forehead.
“Jed was right,” he said. “With four of us pitching in, we’re almost done.”
“Good.” She sneezed again. “I want to show you the rest of the horse farm to see what you think.”
“Think?”
She lowered her voice. “Jo-Jo and I have talked about what the four of us should do with the property. You know . . . fixing it up to put on the market.”
David left his stall and stopped in the doorway where Bella worked. “What does she think?”
Bella leaned on her pitchfork and wiped the back of her hand on the damp bandana. “She wants to make plans but wait for the others before making a final decision. Stay or go, this place needs a lot of help. We need to work on promoting it, either way.”
“It’s a good piece of real estate. While part of me thinks selling the family farm would be a shame, considering how long it’s been in your family, the business side of me thinks the four of you could make out well financially—with the right buyer. But first, I can tell you from just what I’ve seen so far, it’ll need some fixing up.”
“I thought that’s what you’d say, and we already know the place needs work. We want whatever suggestions you can think of. I’m prepared to put up some of the funds for whatever work needs to be done. I know Jo-Jo and Amy won’t be able to afford it, but that doesn’t matter to me. A good sale would help all of us.”
“If—and I know it’s an if right now—the four of you do decide to go forward with a sale, I hope you’ll let me broker it for you. I’ll waive my commission, of course.” David already knew some of what needed to be done to get the property ready to sell. It would take tens of thousands of dollars. For starters, the house needed a new roof.
Bella frowned. “I didn’t think you were licensed to broker real estate in Kentucky.”
“Not until a month or so ago. I . . . I’ve been thinking of branching out and opening an office in the Louisville or Lexington area.”
“Louisville or Lexington? But what about Chicago?”
“I would still keep that office open and put George in charge. I’d have to go back and forth between here and there for a while.”
“But eventually, you’d make a permanent move to Kentucky, wouldn’t you?” It was more of a statement than a question.
“That’s the general idea.” David groaned inwardly. He’d never planned to discuss this with her in a stable, and it definitely wasn’t the way he wanted to break the news to her.
“But . . .”
“But?”
“But what about us?”
David stepped into Bella’s stall and took the pitchfork she clutched, leaning it against the wall. “We could still be us.” He cupped her chin with his hand.
Bella frowned. “A long-distance relationship is hard to work out. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”
“We pretty much have a long-distance relationship now, don’t we?” He studied her face. “You’re gone for weeks and weeks every year. But at least we can Skype and talk almost every day while you’re away. What would be different if I were living in Kentucky and you in Chicago?”
She frowned at him. “A lot would be different. Your family is here, probably some of your old friends. I’m not a Kentucky girl, David. Not anymore. This horse farm is part of my old life. I’m not a horse person or a homebody. If you move here to Kentucky, I’d feel as if I’d have to move, too. And I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
Chapter Four
Suddenly, Bella needed air. She tried to scurry from the stall, but David put his hands on her shoulders to stop her. Looking back, she should have known something was up when he insisted on coming home to Kentucky for Christmas, talking about how he looked forward to her meeting his family.
David hadn’t said anything since her insistence he’d want her to move to Kentucky. Her shoulders drooped. She didn’t deserve someone like him and had been right about her gut feeling to end their relationship no matter how much it pained her. She almost wanted to redeem her frequent-flyer miles and jet away to somewhere warm that didn’t remind her of Christmas and the past.
“Why are you running away from me, Bella?” His warm and gentle hands slid down to her elbows. “Where do you want to run?”
“I don’t know,” was all she could answer.
“That’s fair enough.” David stepped back and rubbed his forehead. “Look, I’m sorry. This isn’t how I wanted to tell you about the Kentucky office. I wanted to do it the right way, at the right time.”
“Don’t worry about it. I appreciate you being honest about your plans.” She tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle the sigh that followed her statement. “In my job, I know exactly what will happen, how, and when. If there’s any issue that pops up, I deal with it. If it seems impossible to resolve, I do whatever I need to in order to turn it into a possibility. Then I got the news about Tuck, and now I’m here. Everything reminds me of the family I don’t have anymore—”
She raised her hands and let them drop to her sides. She had no idea what to say next.
“You still have your sisters,” he said.
“It’s not how I wanted things to turn out.”
“Bella, we have no guarantees other than what God promises. I would love to have the traditional Christmas like my family has always had, but that could change in an instant. Life can change in an instant. You know that all too well.”
She sighed again and nodded. “You’re right. This time of year, I really miss Mom though, and now Tuck—my dad—is gone. I miss what could have been.”
“I’m sorry.” He pulled Bella into his arms, and she laid her head against his chest.
She sniffed back tears, refusing to let them fall. “It’s not your fault. I just think about how it was when we were kids and now that’s all gone.”
“I know your mom did the best she could, raising the four of you while your dad traveled the world on deployments.”
Bella nodded. “Tuck loved us. I know he did. He just wasn’t very good at showing it . . . or saying it. Until the end. Long ago, I realized the problems between my parents weren’t my fault and weren’t about me. Their lives were going in different directions. Mom didn’t want to spend her life moving every two or three years. Tuck had this never-ending wanderlust and need for excitement that the Marines supplied. I don’t want something like that to happen to us. I don’t . . . I don’t know if I could be happy in Kentucky.”
“You know happiness is fleeting. Christ calls us to follow him, and sometimes that road is hard. Not that the road would be too hard—with me.” He quirked a smile at her.
“No. I don’t think it would. I know happiness is fleeting, but is it wrong to want to be happy?” She glanced up at him, his hazel eyes filled with concern and his expression tender.
“No, of course not,” he said. “But my heart tells me this is where I belong. I’ve prayed about this for months. Things in Chicago are good—with work, with you.”
Had she even sought God’s will about whether he wanted her to break off her relationship with David? Nothing within her wanted to move back to Kentucky, but she had vacillated between her love for him and her career.
“You never told me you were thinking about leaving Chicago,” she murmured against his shirt. “Getting your real-estate license in Kentucky. That’s way beyond just thinking about making a big change.” She stepped back and looked up at him again.
“Like I said, Bella, I’m sorry. I should have prepared you for this. This is a big decision.”
“I’ll say. Too big to think about right now.” A gust of wind swept through the open stable doors. Bella rubbed her arms. Time to buck up and not let this newest development with David sideline her. “On another note, what do you propose we should do about the farm to get it ready to sell?”
She couldn’t read
David’s expression. Did he look resigned or hopeful?
“I need to look up the comps to give you and your sisters an idea of what the current market looks like for properties similar to yours. Then you can make a decision on how much you should spend to whip this place into shape. You don’t want to overinvest in improvements.”
She nodded. That made perfect sense to her. “In the state it is now, we won’t get top dollar. Not that Jed and the hands haven’t done a good job taking care of the place.”
“I’m glad you understand that in a buyers’ market, they have a lot of properties to choose from, and many of them are likely more updated than what you have here.”
Bella whirled around when she heard Jo-Jo’s voice. “Did you talk to David about our plans to sell?”
“David thinks we should get some comps to see what other properties like ours are selling for.”
Jo-Jo frowned. “I do want to start working on the place. There’s a lot to do, even if we decide not to sell it. At the least, we need to make some updates and much-needed repairs.”
Bella nodded and put her hands on her hips. “We agree on that much. Anyway, with Christmas coming, it’s not a good time to start any major renovations, but after New Year’s we should make repairs a priority.”
After New Year’s she’d be gone. She did thank God that Tuck had the foresight to hold onto the property that had been in his family for several generations. The sale would provide a financial legacy for all of them. There was her young nephew, Timothy, to think of, along with any future nieces and nephews that came along in the years ahead. Or her own children? She dashed that idea aside for the moment, her heart still a bit sore from the conversation she’d had with David. If they sold the horse farm, whatever they sold it for would go a long way to investing in the future generation.
When the four of them left the stable, an expensive black SUV—a Cadillac Escalade—was pulling up in the driveway. It stopped behind David’s sedan.
An equally good-looking man, wearing a sport coat over a sky-blue Polo shirt and khakis, emerged from the vehicle. He wore costly shades and appeared to appraise the main house.
Her Old Kentucky Home Page 3