“Dinner is ready.” Del squeezed her shoulder. “Shall we go ahead?”
Lark looked out the window once more. She could barely see the barn through the snow. “I think so.”
Around the table they gathered, dressed in their best, the table set with the nicest dishes they had managed to bring on the journey. Lilac had gathered winterberry and sumac branches and entwined them between Ma’s pewter candlesticks as a centerpiece, and the candlelight glowed on the crimson berries.
At the head of the table, Lark reached for Del’s and Robbie’s hands on either side to say the blessing. At the other end, she saw Forsythia clasp hands with her doctor, and the hands continued to join around the table until they formed an unbroken circle.
Lark closed her eyes. “Father, we thank thee.” A sudden lump filled her throat. So much to be thankful for . . . so very, very much. Yet suddenly, awareness of those missing from this table pressed on her heart, those they wouldn’t feast with again until heaven. Ma and Pa. Dr. Adam’s Elizabeth, and Jesse’s parents. Thomas and Alice Durham, and Sofie and Mikael’s mother and father. So many broken pieces, and yet the Lord had woven them all together into a family, as only He could do.
“We thank thee,” she began again. “For bringing us all to this place to gather around this table. For the food thou hast provided for us, and for the love of family and friends. And most of all, for the gift of thy Son, whose coming as Immanuel we celebrate this day. Bless this food and our fellowship around it.”
The “amen” echoed heartily around the table.
They dug in, laughter and chatter rising with the fragrance of roast goose and apple pie. After dinner and the washing up, they gathered back around the table. Forsythia brought over her guitar and tuned the instrument. Lilac fetched the fiddle and passed the mouth organ to Lark.
“What shall we start with?” Forsythia’s fingers picked over the strings.
“‘Joy to the World’?” suggested the doctor.
She smiled and swung into those joyous chords, Lilac and Lark adding fiddle and harmonica to the singing. Sofie and Robbie clapped along, and then Robbie requested “Jingle Bells.”
“Maybe something quieter now?” Del cuddled a sleepy Mikael, who lay against her, chewing on the leather teething ring he had found in his stocking. They expected a tooth to poke through any day now.
“How about that new one we learned last Christmas, ‘Silent Night’?” Lilac played the intro on the fiddle.
“Good idea.” Forsythia finger-picked the guitar and softly began to sing. “‘Silent night, holy night . . .’”
Was that a knock at the door? Lark cocked her head, halting her own singing for a moment. Perhaps it was only the wind—no, there it came again. She pushed to her feet and hurried to the door.
Isaac McTavish stood outside the soddy, his shoulders and boots crusted with snow. He removed his hat, sending a shower of white to the ground. “Did I miss dinner?”
“We’ve plenty left.” Lark held the door wide, feeling her smile stretch her cheeks. “Come in. You must be half-frozen.”
“Not once I heard that music.” Isaac stepped inside, nodding to everyone. “Near to lost my way in the storm at one point, and then I heard this glorious sound. I said to myself, either I’m freezing to death and that’s a heavenly choir, or I’ve near made it to the Nielsens’.” He smiled, lighting those gray eyes of his. “As much as I look forward to glory one day, I must say, I’m glad it was the latter.”
They set a chair for Isaac by the stove and provided him with a cup of coffee and as much food as a plate could hold, then settled back into their places once more.
“Do you have a favorite Christmas carol, Mr. McTavish?” Lark asked.
“Always been partial to ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful.’ And please, it’s time you call me Isaac. You folks are the closest I have around here to a real home.”
With a strum and a nod, Forsythia led off.
“O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant!
O come ye, o come ye to Bethlehem;
Come and behold Him
Born the King of angels;
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him . . .”
Home, Lark thought, her heart echoing Isaac’s words as she sang. The Nielsen sisters had come home at last.
Epilogue
SALTON, NEBRASKA
JUNE 1866
Lilac popped her head through the church doorway. “Sythia? They’re ready for you.”
Standing on the steps outside, Forsythia drew a quick breath as Del put the final touch on the sprigs of Queen Anne’s lace tucked in her hair. This was really happening.
Lark handed her the nosegay of Ma’s roses, brought from Ohio and now blooming again. “You look beautiful.”
“Thank you.” Forsythia gazed at her sisters for a moment, imprinting their smiling faces on this day deep in her heart. They all wore new springtime dresses, their hair wreathed with flowers from their garden—Ma’s garden.
Mr. Caldwell stepped near and held out his arm with a fatherly quirk of his brow.
Forsythia tucked her hand through the crook of his arm. “I’m ready.”
Her sisters slipped through the door ahead of her. In a moment, soft chords sounded from the piano—not from her fingers today. It turned out Mrs. Caldwell had a fair musical background as well.
Grateful for the attorney’s steady arm, Forsythia stepped inside the church, her knees unexpectedly wobbly. Lord, I know this is what you have for me. But it will be such a change for all of us. Be thou with us in this new season.
Then she looked up and saw Adam standing in his dark coattails near the simple wooden altar.
And she forgot everything else.
A few moments later, she stood before a beaming Rev. Pritchard, her hands clasped in her doctor’s, his grip so loving and sure that all the
