PROLOGUE
Christmas Eve, Then
Bunyan, North Carolina
Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
White Christmaswas playing on the TV, but this year the scenes of soldiers far from home made her throat ache. It felt weird to be watching the movie without Dad. Everything felt wrong this year.
Meg sighed. “It wouldn’t be so bad if we were home.”
Jo propped her chin on her hands to look around the old frame farmhouse—the wide-plank floors imbued with the smell of woodsmoke and tobacco, the faded hydrangea wallpaper their grandmother had hung before they were born. “We are home,” she said.
“You know what I mean,” her older sister said.
Jo did. It wasn’t fair to lose Dad and the house at the same time. Their father was in Iraq.“Called,”he’d said, to give up his congregation to serve as an army chaplain.
Jo understood that Daddy was doing good work, important work, serving their country far away. But that didn’t change the fact that the new minister andhisfamily were living in the girls’ house now, andMomma and Meg and the rest of them had been forced to move to the farm.
When the girls were all little, they’d loved to visit their grandparents’ farm. There were woods to roam, if you weren’t particular about ticks and poison ivy. A long slope down to the river, with a tire swing over the water and a splintery old dock where you could fish or swim or simply lie on your back and stare at the clouds.
But it was different actually living here. Like moving to another planet.
Jo ran cross-country, so she didn’t mind walking the extra mile to the bus stop. But Amy whined that she missed her friends, and Meg complained because their parents couldn’t afford to buy her a car like Sallie Gardiner’s parents had done.
Of course, just about any boy in high school would be happy to give Meg a ride anywhere she wanted to go. But Momma was strict about things like that.
“At least we don’t have to share a bedroom anymore,” Jo pointed out.
She had begged to be allowed to move into the converted space in the attic, to have what Virginia Woolf called “a room of one’s own” to write in. Their mother worried the attic would be too cold. But Daddy had intervened.“Let the girl have her privacy. It’s not like she’s entertaining boys up there,”he’d said. So eventually Momma relented and agreed.
The atticwascold. Especially in December. But Jo liked the funny peaked window with its view of fields and trees. She loved having her own space.
Ten-year-old Amy looked up from the coffee table, where she was making something out of the scraps she’d begged from Miss Hannah’s quilting bag. “We still have to share a bathroom. That’s worse. Your hair clogs the sink.”
Beth spoke up from her corner of the shabby couch. “Whatever happens, we have each other,” she said, quoting Momma. “At least we’re all together.”
“But we’re not,” Jo said. “Daddy’s not here.”
Silence fell over the living room, broken only by the muted dialogue from the television.
Crap. Jo bit her tongue. Keeping her mouth shut was not her specialty.
“But he will be,” Meg said with a glance at the younger girls. “Soon.”
His unit had been gone almost a year. Hemustbe coming home soon. They’d all agreed to put off opening their presents until his return.
A month ago, the decision hadn’t seemed so hard. But now...
Their gifts sat wrapped and waiting under the tree. Artificial, this year, to last until their father came home. Jo missed the sharp, resiny, real-tree smell of Christmases past.
She missed Dad.
“Anyway, Momma said we could each open one present tonight,” Meg said.
The back door opened, releasing a draft over the threshold. Momma appeared, wearing a faded work shirt over her jeans, bringing with her the scent of frost and the barn.
Warmth prickled Jo’s cheeks at the thought of their mother doing chores while they lolled inside, lazy and warm. Granny and Granddaddy had worked the farm together until a lifetime of sweat and cigarettes had carried them off. But except for Miss Hannah, who helped in the cheese room, Momma did everything herself.
