Holiday Homecoming by Jillian Hart

there at the window, like you are now…”
    Don’t go there, Mom. The thought blared in his mind, but he didn’t dare open his mouth to speak. He couldn’t take any more memories.
    â€œâ€¦with shoulders so broad and strong, I felt as if he could handle anything. That nothing would ever hurt me as long as he was there.” Mom’s words resounded with true love, like a candlelight hymn, but they bore wounds in his heart as surely as if they’d been bullets blasting into his flesh.
    He turned away, thinking of last night’s blizzard and how it had shrouded him from the rest of the world. He made himself like that, steeling the walls of his heart.
    Mom kept talking, but he wouldn’t listen. He just couldn’t let her in. He was like a drowning man going down for the last time. Feeling the icy waters welling up from within, he prayed for relief.
    As if the angels heard and took pity on him, his cell chirped. His E.R. doc buddy Tim’s number flashed on the phone’s small screen. You’d better have good news, man, Ryan thought. Because right now he couldn’t take any more bad news.

Chapter Six
    K ristin entered the post-Thanksgiving dinner calm of the unoccupied dining room, slid the Monopoly box onto the table and sank into a cushioned chair. Yawning from too much turkey, she could put her feet up and sneak in a nap—yeah, as if her sisters were going to let her get away with that.
    She could hear their voices throughout the house. Karen and Kirby in the kitchen talking about the family’s beloved pony, Honeybear, which they’d all learned to ride on and now was teaching a second generation of McKaslin girls. Their laughter rose higher and fell below the hum of the dishwasher and the clink of pots as they put the last of the hand-washed dishes away.
    Kendra, who kept the pony at her riding stable, chimed in with a comment Kristin couldn’t quite make out as the roar of the football game in the living room rose into a frenzied crescendo. It wouldn’t feel like a holiday without Dad glued to the big-screen TV he’d splurged on and his muttering commentary on the referee’s call was a sound she’d heard every game day since she was little.
    It was good to know some things would never change. That’s what got her through the sadness of sitting at this table where Gramma occupied Allison’s chair, which had remained empty for years. With the leaves in the center, the table stretched to nearly fill the entire room. There were so many of them with the additions to their family—her sisters’ husbands and kids. It was a good thing she’d decided not to ever get married. Because there would be no room for another man at the table!
    Oh, it’s good to be home. Kristin breathed deep, and the warm scents of this day soothed her. The spicy goodness of Gramma’s pumpkin pie warming in the oven. The vanilla candles she’d gotten Mom last Christmas burning with a cheery brightness in the corner by the window. The steady comfort of brewing coffee seasoning the air.
    She rubbed at the tension in the back of her neck. Wow, her muscles were knotted up good. It was always this way. Allison’s loss was like a layer of ice over a cold pond of grief. No matter how many layers of snow covered it, no matter how hard her family tried to reach for that contented wholeness that used to exist, the ice was there. The loss. There was no solid place to stand on.
    Youngest sister, Michelle, glowing in the second trimester of pregnancy, padded out from the kitchen with a bowl of rippled potato chips and stacked coveredbowls of different flavors of homemade dip. She unloaded them on the table. “There’s no place like home, is there?”
    â€œNope. It’s good to be back.”
    â€œThis house used to be so lonely. You know…after Allison.” Michelle peeled back the plastic wrap from the first bowl of dip. “But