One Snowy Night (Sweet Home, Alaska #1) - Patience Griffin Page 0,5

her sister. Maybe the truth would scare Ella straight.

But Ella had fallen asleep.

Hope brushed her daughter’s dark blond hair from her face. The same color hair as Ella’s father, a father she’d never known. Hope had been sure she’d never have to tell Ella about Donovan. There was no reason to. But apparently, Donovan was returning home.

Hope turned off the light and left Ella’s room, feeling drained. She’d spent the last seventeen years feeling tired. Exhausted to the bone.

She didn’t have the energy to finish packing for their camping trip tonight or to worry about Donovan coming to town. She shuffled to her ten-by-ten-foot bedroom. She didn’t turn on the lights but slipped off her slippers and jeans before climbing into bed, leaving on her turtleneck and kuspuk, a kind of loose Alaska Native hoodie. She threw her coat over the bed, too. Anything to keep warm tonight.

Before she fell asleep, Hope knew her eleven-year-old sister—dead eleven-year-old sister—would come to her in her dreams. Izzie had visited her on and off for the last seventeen years. But since Hope’s daughter had started drinking, Izzie had visited nearly every night. Her sister was always sparkling, almost glowing. Hope didn’t shy away from her sister’s pop-ins, as they comforted her in ways the town’s platitudes never had. Her sister would be wearing the same red moose flannel pajamas she’d worn on the night Hope had picked her up from the sleepover. But instead of covered in blood, the pajamas would be clean and new. Hope never told anyone about the dreams, which seemed so real.

For dreams they must be.

The first time Izzie had visited Hope was two days after she’d died. Her sister hadn’t been chatty then but sat cross-legged on the floor beside Hope’s bed, something she’d done a million times in real life. But this time, she stared off into the distance, looking lost. When Hope called out to her, Izzie had shaken her head, as if she didn’t want to talk. But these days, Hope couldn’t get her to shut up. Eleven-year-old Izzie, still in her little-girl body and her moose pajamas, spoke as a woman who’d lived a lifetime and had plenty of advice to give. Hope welcomed seeing her sister. It was hard to imagine that Izzie would’ve been twenty-eight a few months ago. If only Hope hadn’t killed her.

Hope closed her eyes, and before she’d really drifted off to sleep, Izzie appeared, sitting at the foot of Hope’s bed.

“Piney certainly threw you for a loop.” Izzie had a twinkle in her eye, as if she were having fun, stirring up trouble. “Didn’t you ever suspect Donovan might come back after his grandfather died?”

“I suppose.” Since Charles Stone had moved away seventeen years ago, the news of his death took nearly a month to reach Sweet Home.

Izzie reached out as if to pat the quilt covering Hope’s legs but withdrew her hand before touching it. “Do you think he’s coming back to reopen the hardware store and lodge?”

A Stone’s Throw Hardware & Haberdashery had been everything to this town when Hope was growing up. Her dad had worked there on weekends sometimes. And the lodge, well, Hope loved going to Home Sweet Home Lodge with her mom and Izzie, when the Sisterhood of the Quilt gathered for their monthly get-togethers. But that had been then.

Hope shook her head. “No. He wouldn’t reopen his grandparents’ businesses. He’s probably just coming to Sweet Home to sign papers at the bank, probably get a real estate agent, too . . . if I had to guess.”

Izzie slipped off the bed and put her hands on her hips. “Are you finally going to fess up to my namesake—my niece—and tell that child that Donovan is her father?”

Hope shivered. She couldn’t imagine telling anyone the truth. Though all of Sweet Home must have a clue.

“No. I’m not going to tell Ella about Donovan. I told you before. Ella thinks her father was an oil worker who lived in the Yukon, that he died in a work-related accident before she was born.”

“Are you at least going to tell Donovan that my niece belongs to him?”

“No!” Hope couldn’t. Donovan had been crystal clear at his grandmother’s funeral. I never want to see you again. There had been such vehemence in his voice.

Her last act of love was to respect his wishes. Besides, she didn’t want him to hate her more than he already did.

“Donovan might be coming to Sweet Home, but the fact is,