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Chapter One

Out of difficulties grow miracles.

—Jean de La Bruyère

What were they going to do now? Patience Mather wondered. Hard Luck, Nevada, was dying, even after all the effort that’d been made to revitalize. With a downtown area built on high-desert ground and laid out in a grid—as much as the nearby mountain would allow—and a single-story casino as its largest building, it certainly wasn’t anything to boast about. But the shops and restaurants that’d gone in over the last few years had promise, too much promise to let them waste away like the businesses that’d been there before. And updating the look of the town, moving in a more modern direction, had been her idea; she’d sold the hope of what it could do to all her friends and neighbors and the parishioners in her father’s church. She couldn’t stand by and watch them lose everything.

“I don’t know how long the people in this town can hold on,” she lamented to her father, Reverend Carl Lee, who was sitting at his desk directly across from hers, studying for the sermon he’d deliver tomorrow morning.

“God will provide,” he mumbled, his nose still in his Bible.

God hadn’t been overly generous so far. Hundreds of Hard Luckers had gone to a lot of work and expense, and it all seemed to be for nothing. Patience had been absolutely convinced that with the right vibe they could draw enough traffic from the interstate only twenty miles away to save them all. But the steady stream of motorists traveling across Nevada didn’t seem eager to exit even after all the social media effort.

People liked other old mining towns, some that were even ghost towns. Why not Hard Luck? How could they attract the tourist dollars they needed?

“We’re not getting the donations we used to either,” she said, frowning at her computer screen. She’d been updating their financial statements so they could, hopefully, get a loan to be able to put a new roof on the church. They had buckets set out to catch the water where it’d been leaking.

Carl glared at her over the rim of his glasses. “I don’t do what I do for money. I never have.”

She knew that. He called money “filthy lucre,” quoting Titus 1:7, and used any excess he had to help those who were less fortunate. He approached life from a spiritual perspective, which was admirable. But that left her to deal with the more practical side of getting by. Their bills had to get paid somehow. “I was merely trying to say that what we’ve done with downtown isn’t working. The decrease in our donations proves that folks are struggling as much or more than ever.”

“The situation can still turn around,” he said. “Isn’t that why you planned the Christmas festival?”

“It is, but…”

“What?” he prompted.

She was terrified that she’d led the people of Hard Luck into wasting even more time, money and effort. “What if the festival turns out to be a flop? I don’t think many of the businesses in town can survive another year.”

“Have a little faith,” he chided.

He’d always had more than she did. To his bitter disappointment, she wasn’t inclined to be quite so deeply religious. He had to keep hammering his beliefs into her. But she knew better than to challenge him. She’d only be subjected to an hour-long lecture. And she didn’t have time for that. She had to pick up Ari, her fourteen-year-old daughter, from her ex-husband’s house so they could attend church together. Ari’s spiritual education was important to Carl, and it wasn’t something she was going to get at Jack’s, since he didn’t attend.

Out of respect for Carl’s wishes, Patience had negotiated to make it happen. In the beginning, getting Ari on Sunday meant giving him two school days. But they had shared custody and weren’t so strict about their “days” anymore. Their daughter basically came and went between their two houses whenever it made sense.

Fortunately, Glenda, whom Jack married after they divorced, had turned out to be a decent stepmother. She got Ari to school when she needed to and helped with homework and school projects. So at the moment, everyone seemed satisfied—or as satisfied as they could expect to be, considering their history.

There were still times when Patience wondered how her ex-best friend managed to get along with Jack. Being married to him had been such an emotional roller coaster—difficult enough that she didn’t think she’d ever marry again.

Still, she would’ve hung in there until Ari turned eighteen—maybe even longer. The last thing she’d ever wanted was to drag her child through a divorce. It was Jack who’d finally insisted they split up. And when that happened, the most practical and economical solution for finding a place to live was to move back in with her father.

Carl owned one of the grandest houses in the area—or, rather, the church did. The owner of the mine that’d employed so many people back in the day had donated it for the pastor’s use when the mine closed—a tax write-off that saved him from having to sell it for much less than it was worth when he moved to greener pastures. Since Carl had four empty bedrooms and lived only three blocks from the church, where Patience also worked, it didn’t make sense to pay for two households just so they could live separately. Her father had raised her after her mother died—she’d been young enough that she couldn’t even remember her mother’s face, had only pictures to go by—so she’d felt she should probably move in and help take care of the place, which was getting old and needed a lot of upkeep. Returning home meant she could help take care of her father, too. He wasn’t yet “old,” only fifty-six, but he was so swept up in his work he’d skip meals, hardly eat, if she wasn’t around to cook for him. If they lived together, she could save some money, and he could devote even more time to serving God and helping others.

When she didn’t respond to his “faith” comment—she knew that was quicksand—he went back to working on his sermon. But it wasn’t fifteen minutes later that he pushed away from his desk and got up.

“Are you done? Already?” she asked. He generally worked much later. “Should I grab Ari and go get dinner on?”

He reached for his heavy coat. Hard Luck, though hot and dry in the summer, was cold and snowy in the winter with year-round temperatures ranging from about 17 to 98 degrees Fahrenheit. “No, but if you could put together a basket for Kelsey Norman, I’d appreciate it.”

Suzanne, Kelsey’s mother, had passed away during the summer. She’d been out riding when her horse encountered a rattlesnake and threw her into a ravine. But that’d been five months ago; Patience had organized the food for the funeral, so she had a clear recollection of the timing. Why would her father want another basket? “Has something happened I don’t know about?”

“I’d just like to offer Kelsey a little support. Grief often gets worse in the months following the funeral, when everyone has drifted away and it’s time to get back to regular life.”

Patience stood. “Okay. What do you want me to put in it?”

“Just the kinds of things you normally do. Cheeses, jelly, salami, crackers.” He waved a hand. “Whatever you think would be good.”

Patience bought a lot of what she used for her baskets from Salt & Pepper, one of the cuter stores that’d opened downtown over the past few years. She did it to support the local community. “A small one?”