Read Love Finds You in Frost Minnesota for Free Online Page B

pulled at her heartstrings.
    When she pulled into her driveway at one o’clock, she noticed Hildy Olson next door struggling to put up a Christmas wreath on her front door. Hildy was a tall woman with short, iron-gray hair and a determined expression. She’d been a few pounds overweight when Merry first met her, but those pounds had fallen off over the past few months, and now her jacket fell loose around her.
    Hildy never asked for help. Ever. With steely resolve she tackled every project herself. Sighing, Merry walked across the yard to where Hildy was struggling with the wreath.
    “Don’t say a word,” Merry warned her cheerfully. “Let me put that thing up.”
    “I don’t need help,” Hildy muttered. “If I could just get the thingamabob in the gizmo . . .”
    Merry took it out of Hildy’s hands, and with experience born of much practice, she hung and fastened the wreath, fluffed out the bow, and turned on the battery-operated twinkle lights woven into the greens. “There.”
    “I could have gotten it . . . eventually,” Hildy admitted ruefully.
    “But you did the right thing letting me, a self-proclaimed Christmas decorating expert, do it in a couple minutes.” Merry put her hand on Hildy’s arm. “Now you can come to my house and have a cup of tea instead of wasting your time out here. One day I’ll come over and help you string the lights on your porch.”
    “I’m not doing it this year. This wreath is it. Now I’m done with Christmas.”
    Shades of Jack Frost!
    “Not you too!”
    Hildy looked at her. “What?”
    “Oh, never mind. Just come over.” Merry tugged encouragingly on the older woman’s sleeve. “I want to hear what turned you into Ebenezer Scrooge.”
    Hildy snorted. “That’s a long story I won’t get into, but I will have some of your peppermint tea.”
    “Good. Come with me.” This, at least, was a start.
    Merry put on the teakettle and dished out a plate of her buttery spritz cookies while the water was heating. Then she sat down across from her neighbor at the kitchen table. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
    “Nothing I want to get into, Merry,” the older woman said gently. “It brings up sad memories. I just don’t feel like Christmas this year.”
    “It’s the birth of Christ.”
    “Well, there is that. I’ll go to church, of course, but none of this whiz-bang fancy stuff. Christ is all I need for Christmas.”
    “He’s all any of us need,” Merry agreed, “but I like to think of this as His birthday party. I serve birthday cake every day in December, and when people ask me why, I can tell them about Him. It’s a gentle way to remind people what the season is really about.”
    “Good for you. Just count me out this year.”
    There was nothing more to get out of Hildy, Merry knew. She was a woman who kept her own counsel and would only tell Merry what was troubling her when she was good and ready. Merry had no doubt, however, that it would come out eventually.
    * * * * *
    The windows rattled and the house shook when Jack plowed through the front door and slammed it behind him. Bells on a string jingled and the Clap On, Clap Off light went dark. Several shoppers who were sniffing candles in order to decide which fragrance to buy looked up, startled.
    Merry put her finger to her lips to indicate that he should be more circumspect, but she was met with a black glare that could have sliced metal.
    “Come into the kitchen,” she said. “You look like an angry old bear. I’ve got beef stew cooking. Maybe a full stomach will help.”
    Jack looked chagrined and followed her.
    With swift hands, she dished up a bowl of stew from the Crock-Pot, thrust a spoon in the bowl, and broke off a hunk of French bread. “Eat. I’ll go ring up these last sales and be back. Don’t break anything while I’m gone.”
    When she returned a few minutes later, Jack was serving himself a second bowl of stew and had taken the butter out of the refrigerator for his bread. He’d