Read Online Leave a Candle Burning by Lori Wick - Free Book Online Page B

few hours up the tracks. He hadn’t been able to get the train at Worcester, and Ollie had been forced to take him on to Cherry Corners.
    He hadn’t let himself think while riding with Ollie, and that man had had enough to say to keep his mind occupied, but now he was alone with his thoughts. He knew he was tired enough to sleep, but fear that he would drop off hard and miss his stop kept his eyes open, no easy task since it was dark and the train moved slower than usual. He kept his head up, even when it bobbed with fatigue, and tried to pray.
    Thoughts of Grant MacKay filled him. Grant’s father had died when Grant was a young teen. He had lived with his mother but also spent untold hours with Dannan and his parents. And when Dannan’s parents had made the decision to move south, the two young men stayed in Willows Crossing, even finding a place of their own to live. It had been the right decision. The church family had kept a close watch on them, and they’d both done a lot of growing up in those years. And to top it off, Annie had come into Grant’s life.
    A rumble on the tracks momentarily diverted Dannan’s thoughts. He glanced around the dark, semifull train car. He could make out the shapes of the other passengers but not their faces. One minute he was looking around, and the next he was jolted awake as the train pulled into the station. Dannan’s heart thundered over the fact that he could have overslept his stop. It thundered again when he realized he was back in Willows Crossing.

     
    Tucker Mills
     
    “You’re up early,” Alison said to Douglas when she came downstairs Sunday morning and found him in the kitchen.
    “I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep.”
    Alison put coffee on before joining him at the table. “Are you thinking about Dannan?”
    “Almost constantly.”
    “Will you talk about it with the congregation?”
    “I think we’ll take some time for prayer, and if that goes long, I can adjust my sermon.” He paused before adding, “I can’t get that three-year-old off my mind.”
    Alison’s heart was just as heavy, and both sat wondering whether Dannan would do more than return to Tucker Mills, gather his belongings, and head back to Willows Crossing, where he might be needed more.

     
    Willows Crossing
     
    Dannan was in the kitchen, a mug of hot coffee in front of him, when his uncle found him. Doc MacKay poured his own coffee before taking the chair by the fireplace.
    “Did you sleep?” Doc asked.
    “A little, I think. You?”
    “Fairly well.”
    Both men were silent for a time. The funeral had been the day before. Dannan had arrived late to the house, after midnight, and Saturday had been full of the viewing, burial, and meal the women of the church family had prepared and served at the parsonage.
    Dannan still couldn’t believe he was in Grant and Annie’s house. Even with Corina sound asleep upstairs, their absence was conspicuous. Annie’s housekeeping had been excellent, but since they’d been so ill before they died, it looked as though nothing had been put to rights for weeks.
    “I thought I heard you,” Jathan MacKay, Dannan’s father, spoke as he entered the room. He passed by the coffee and sat opposite Dannan at the kitchen worktable.
    “I’ve been thinking since yesterday morning,” his father wasted no time in saying. “I can’t get over Corina’s reaction to you. I was all ready to take her, Dannan. She’s like a granddaughter to me, and I figured your mother and I could make it work.
    “I mean, I knew, Dannan,” Jathan rushed on, “I knew you were very close to Grant and Annie, but I didn’t know how close. Corina got out of bed yesterday morning, found you at this table, and clung to you. She clung to you for an hour. Her little world had been turned upside down, and you’d made it right again.”
    “Get to the point, Jathan,” Doc MacKay finally put in.
    “You’ve got to take her, Dannan,” his father said with tears in his eyes.