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Winter Brides: A Year of Weddings Novella Collection

By Denise Hunter, Deborah Raney, Betsy St. Amant

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Chapter 1


Glancing at the chaos around her, Madeleine Houser set her coffee mug on the dining room table and shoved another packing carton out of her path. It didn’t budge. She bent over and attempted to read the smudged label. Kitchen—good china. Oh. Good thing she’d resisted the temptation to kick the box.
Maddie looked into the kitchen where cupboards gaped open, hinges naked. The cabinet doors were lined up against the wall in the empty breakfast nook. Even after four days, the smell of wet enamel stung her nostrils. The flooring couldn’t be laid until the electrician fixed the mess he’d made of the wiring. And she didn’t dare put her china in the cupboards until all that was finished.
What had her sister gotten her into? Kate’s husband had been transferred to Ohio, but with their mother in the nursing home here in Clayburn, Kate had begged her to leave her beloved New York loft and move into Kate and Jed’s house on Harper Street while it was being refurbished to sell. “You can write anywhere, Maddie,” Kate had pled in her best big-sister voice. “Besides, you can sublet the loft, and just think what you’ll save on the rent.”
So here she was in Clayburn, Kansas—the middle of nowhere—proving quite soundly that one could not write just anywhere.
Lugging the carton of china out of the way, she wove her way through the maze of boxes and poured another cup of coffee. She blew a long strand of dishwater-blond hair out of her eyes and slid into a dining room chair. In the midst of the piles of books and boxes and unsorted mail strewn across the table, her laptop computer glared accusingly at her.
Ignoring the disorder, she pulled the computer close, pushed her glasses up on her nose, and tried to remember where she’d left off. Ah, yes. The heartless landlord had just evicted the young widow. Oh, brother, Houser, how cliché can you get? Well, too bad. She didn’t have time to change the whole plot now. She’d managed to write almost two thousand words this morning, but given her track record lately, she’d be lucky if fifty of them were worth keeping.
What had she been thinking to let her editor to talk her into a January 1 deadline in the midst of this cross-country move? It was nearly October! “You can do it, Madeleine,” Janice had crooned in her conniving editor’s voice. “If we can get this book on the shelves before next Christmas, the first print run will sell out in a month. Come on. Say you’ll do it. Houser fans are clamoring for your next book.”
Over the six years Janice Hudson had been Maddie’s editor, they’d become dear friends. But right now Maddie wanted to strangle her.
She edited the sentence in front of the blinking cursor and forced herself to return to the nineteenth century and the plight of Anne Caraway, her suffering heroine. Poor Anne. She’d lost her beloved William, and been evicted from her home, alone with a small child to care for. Now, Maddie was about to throw Anne Caraway onto the mean streets of Chicago. It was the bane of an author’s existence—this need to make her beloved characters suffer. To put them in the furnace and turn up the fire. But without conflict, there was no story, and conflict often equaled sorrow. So, onto the streets Anne Caraway and little Charlie must go. She typed furiously.
The faint echo of dripping water pierced her concentration. She glanced up from her laptop and tilted her head, listening. Was it raining? Who could tell with the heavy drapes covering the room’s high windows? Those would have to go. But first she must finish this book. Brushing off the temptation to get up and check outside, she turned back to the keyboard. She typed twenty words before the drip, drip, drip became demanding.
She pushed her chair back and navigated the labyrinth of cardboard boxes. The sound seemed to be coming from the kitchen, but nothing was leaking there as far as she could tell. Dodging sawhorses the contractors had left, she crossed to the basement door. As a rule, basements gave her the creeps, but in this tornado alley on the Kansas prairie, it was a rare house that didn’t have one. She’d been relieved to find Kate and Jed’s charming Tudor had only a closet-sized cellar. Just enough space to provide refuge from a cyclone, but not enough to have dank corners where. . .well, where whatever it was she was afraid of could hide.
She opened the door––and gasped. The wooden treads at the bottom of the flight glistened with moisture, and from the far end of the cellar, she could hear the unmistakable sound of water trickling into more water. A naked lightbulb hung over the stairs. Rats! The string attached to the pull chain was caught on one of the splintered rafters overhead. Maddie straddled the steps, one foot on the top landing, the other on the thin ledge that ran the length of the stairwell. Grabbing the door handle for support, she scooted along the ledge, grasping blindly for the string.
Next thing she knew, she was teetering on the ledge. She reached for something to steady herself. Unfortunately, what she found was the door, which slammed shut behind her.
The stairwell went dark. Miraculously she found the string with the next random swing of her arm. Not so miraculously when she pulled on the chain, the light flickered, then sparked. She heard the ominous sound of every electric device in the house powering down.
Had she remembered to save her manuscript? The old laptop barely held a charge any more; it would be dead before the auto-save kicked in. She felt herself slipping and gasped when she hit the stairs. Hard. A sharp pain sliced through her left ankle, and she bumped down half the flight of stairs.
When the stairwell quit spinning she crawled back up to the kitchen and pulled herself to her feet, testing. Ouch! Her ankle had already swollen to the size of a small grapefruit. Damp and aching, she hobbled to the cordless phone on the kitchen wall. Dead. And her cell phone was upstairs in the guest room charging. Thankfully the landline in the dining room had a dial tone. She rummaged through the desk drawer until she found the thin phone book and flipped to the number of her neighbor, Ginny Ross. Ginny answered on the second ring.
“Ginny? Hi, it’s Madeleine Houser next door. Is your electricity out?”
“No. Well, at least I don’t believe so. Just a minute. . .”
Maddie heard an oven door creak open and then what sounded like the ding of a microwave. “No. Everything’s still on over here.”
“Rats! I think I’ve blown another fuse. And there’s water in the—ouch!”
“Madeleine? What’s happened? Are you all right?”
Maddie cringed as she eased into the desk chair. “I’m fine. I fell down the stairs and sprained my ankle.”
“You scared me. I thought you’d electrocuted yourself.”
Maddie gave a humorless laugh. “Nothing so dramatic, I’m afraid. Sorry to bother you. I just didn’t want to call the electrician again if it was only—”
“I’ll be right over.”
The phone went dead, and Maddie sat staring at the receiver for a few seconds, until she realized Ginny meant her words literally. Maddie had met her neighbor only two weeks ago, but already she’d grown to love the woman. At eighty-four and widowed for a quarter of a century, Ginny epitomized the word spry. She was as independent as any of Maddie’s thirty-something New York friends. With her own mother’s mind ravaged by Alzheimer’s disease, it was good to have a wise older woman to talk to.
“Yoo-hoo!” Ginny’s cheery voice floated in from the mudroom.
“Come on in, Ginny. But watch your step.”
Ginny bustled into the kitchen, weaving her way through sawhorses and stepladders. “Now what did you do to yourself?” She bent to inspect Maddie’s swollen ankle. “Oh, my! Are you sure it’s not broken?”
“I don’t think so.” She rubbed the tender area around the swelling.
Ginny scooted another chair close and helped Maddie elevate her foot. Then she went to the freezer and rummaged inside until she unearthed a package of frozen peas. “Here we go.” She wrapped the icy bag in a dishcloth and draped it over Maddie’s ankle. She glanced around the kitchen, taking in the renovation chaos. “How are you ever going to finish that book in this mess?”
Maddie couldn’t help it. Tears that had been pent up for weeks overflowed. “Oh, Ginny, I’m already so far behind I can’t imagine how I’ll make my deadline. And without electricity, I’m sunk.”
“Well, of course you are.” Ginny made sympathetic clucking noises with her tongue and surveyed the kitchen again. “This will never do. I’d offer to let you write at my house, but I’m afraid my beginning piano students would make this wreck seem like a haven of peace.”
Maddie swiped at a tear and forced a smile. “I appreciate that, Ginny. But it’s not your problem. I’ll figure something out. Maybe I can just go to the library. . . .”
“Are you kidding? You’d have a constant stream of onlookers gawking and pestering you with questions.” Ginny snapped her fingers and turned to Maddie with a triumphant gleam in her eyes. “I know just the place. My friend Arthur Tyler has that monstrous house sitting empty ever since his Annabeth died. They had a booming bed-and-breakfast until Annabeth got so bad. Arthur rarely has guests at the inn now, so I know he wouldn’t mind if you went there to write. You probably wouldn’t want to stay overnight, but you could use one of the rooms for an office. Arthur is a professor at the university. Keeps saying he’s going to retire, but he never does.”
Maddie hesitated. “Where is this place, Ginny?” She felt awkward about the whole idea, but she had to do something. She sure wasn’t going to get her book finished here.
“It’s just a couple miles east of town. Out on Hampton Road. Pretty little place. Peaceful. Annabeth’s parents ran the inn for years. Named it after her, of course. Grover and I stayed there for our fortieth anniversary. Seemed kind of silly to stay overnight two miles from home, but it was nice. Kind of romantic. . .” A faraway look came to Ginny’s eyes, and an ever-so-faint blush touched her powdered cheeks. “Let me give Arthur a call. You just get the plumber and electrician here. I’ll take care of everything else.”

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