A Little Country Christmas - Carolyn Brown Page 0,147

took a moment for Brenda to process what had happened. This was not a snowy nightmare. A frigid wind swept through the room she’d occupied as a child. The snow landing on her cheeks as she looked up was cold and wet and real. She shivered.

And then, like an aftershock, the fear struck. A black, nameless panic welled out of her. “Momma!” she hollered at the top of her lungs.

Silence and the whine of the wind answered her.

“Momma!” she hollered again, this time like a frightened three-year-old, as a sob erupted from her chest. “Momma!”

She struggled against the quilt and sheets. The limbs had trapped her, so she had to bend herself like a pretzel to wriggle her way through the cold, wet branches. Piles of snow had cascaded into the room, and by the time she’d gotten away from the branch, her pajamas were soaked, and her feet were almost numb from walking through the icy piles on the floor.

“Momma!” she shouted again, pulling open the door just in time to see her mother, coming down the dark hall using her cell phone’s flashlight to negotiate the darkness. Brenda reached for the hall light switch but it didn’t work. Obviously they’d lost power.

“Momma?” She raced down the hall and hugged her mother like she didn’t ever want to let her go.

“Good lord, you’re soaked. What happened?”

“You didn’t hear?”

Momma cocked her head. No, of course she hadn’t heard. Momma was going deaf. And evidently only the shade tree in the front yard had fallen. Momma slept way in the back of the house.

“The tree fell,” Brenda said.

Momma took a couple of steps into Brenda’s old bedroom and let out an audible gasp. “Praise the Lord. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“No. Yes,” she answered the questions in reverse order as she started to shiver. Momma sprang into action then, proving that, despite the hearing loss, seventy was the new forty. Momma might have arthritis but she wasn’t feeble. Not by a long shot.

In short order the Magnolia Harbor Fire Department was summoned, dry pajamas were found, and half an hour later, Brenda sat wrapped up in two handmade quilts in front of a fire burning brightly in the living room fireplace at the Heavenly Rest rectory. She clutched a cup of hot Earl Grey tea in her hands and leaned back in the old couch while Ashley Scott got Momma settled down in Rev. St. Pierre’s guest bedroom.

Ashley would have put them up at Howland House if there had been even one room available. But there was no room at the inn because a number of year-round residents with homes along the coast had chosen to ride out the snowstorm in town.

Now if Brenda could only reach Jim, she might get some sleep. But the man had yet to respond to her text about the tree falling on Momma’s house. He had sent a text earlier in the day saying he’d made it over the bridge, but the roads were bad and it might take some time before he got back home again.

She hoped to heck that he’d booked himself into a hotel room or something and was just sound asleep. But she couldn’t help spinning one disaster after another in her mind. Visions of him being stuck all night by the side of the road, running out of gas, his cell phone battery dying, and his hands going numb because he’d lost his gloves. Or worse yet, being buried and then having some jackass plow into his car and…

“You’re going to be okay.”

She looked up as Rev. St. Pierre sat down on the ottoman in front of the couch. “You need another cup of tea?” he asked.

“No, thank you. I’m really sorry we’ve descending on you like this.”

He cocked his head. “I have an extra bedroom and a couch. There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

She shivered.

“Are you still cold?”

She could lie. But this was her minister. So she opted to tell the truth. “I don’t know. I can’t stop shaking.”

“I can imagine. You came very close to being seriously hurt.”

She pulled the edges of the quilt closer around her shoulders. “Can I tell you a secret?” she whispered.

“That’s why I’m here.”

“I wouldn’t have minded.”

He frowned and leaned forward. “What do mean?” His words had a dark urgency.

She waved his concern away. “I’m not suicidal. That’s not what I mean. What I mean is…” She stopped as an emotion swelled in her throat. It took a minute to swallow it