Read Online Christmas In Silver Bell Falls by Samantha Chase - Free Book Online Page B

to go shopping.”  Lowering her gaze from his, she stared into her wine glass.  “She left with the money and never came back.”
    Josiah was speechless.  He’d heard stories like this happening throughout his life, but never to someone he knew.  His heart broke for the little girl she had been, wondering where her mother had gone.  “Have you seen her since?”
    She shook her head again.  “Dad was a mess.  I don’t remember a lot of it, but I can remember him just sitting on the couch and crying.  He was devastated.  I was pretty self-sufficient for a five year old and I did my best to try and take care of him.  We didn’t celebrate Christmas that year.”
    He nodded with understanding.  “Was Carol still in your life at that point?”
    “Not much,” she admitted.  “You see, she wasn’t happy that my parents had gotten married.  She’d had big plans for my dad too and resented the fact he opted for a wife and child over college and a career.  So it was really just the two of us.”
    “What about your mom’s family?  Where were they?”
    “She was a late-in-life baby and her parents passed away when I was an infant.  She was an only child just like my dad.”  She took a sip of her wine.  “You know, as an adult I can see how they had everything against them—they were too young and didn’t have a supportive family around them.  But it doesn’t make it any less painful to know…”  Her voice began to tremble.  “To know I was a contributing factor and so many people were just able to ignore me or walk away.”
    “Oh, Mel,” he sighed and pulled her into his arms.  “You shouldn’t feel that way.”
    “How can I not?” she asked.  “My mom was able to just walk away from me.  I was her own child and it didn’t seem to matter.  And my grandmother never bothered to get to know me.  And…and now here I am in her house, a place she specifically left to me, and I don’t see it as a gift or a blessing.  It’s a reminder.  It’s nothing but a lousy reminder of her.  It’s like being stuck in a prison cell for three months.”
    Part of him wanted to take offense to her words, but he knew exactly what she meant.  This wasn’t about him and he couldn’t make it be that way.  She was carrying a lot of emotional baggage with her and maybe this was the first time she’d ever started to let it out.
    “Can I ask you something?” he asked softly, placing a kiss on the top of her head.  When she nodded, he pulled her a little more comfortably against him, tucking her against his side.  “Why did you take the house then?  If you felt this strongly about your feelings toward your grandmother and what this house represented, why come?”
    “My dad talked me into it.”
    He waited for her to continue.
    “He said it was a blessing in disguise.  I was struggling with this book I’m supposed to be writing and he thought a forced change of scenery would help.  The three months is about the time it usually takes for me to finish a book so the timeline would work.  And it was specifically stipulated in the will how I had to stay for three months.”
    “It seems like an odd request.”
    She nodded.  “I thought so too.  And I have no idea why she would have put it in there since I didn’t know her.  Who knows what was going on in her head?  She may have done it just to try to control me.”
    Josiah frowned.  “Why would you say that?”
    Pulling back a little, she looked up at him.  “Are you sure you want to talk about this?  I know you have good memories of her and I really don’t want to ruin that for you.  If she was nice to you, then those are the memories you deserve to keep, not the negative ones of my interactions with her.”
    He couldn’t help but smile at her thoughtfulness and pulled her back so her head was on his shoulder.  "I really want to know.”
    “About a month after my mom left, my grandmother showed up.  Dad was still kind of a mess,