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her.”
    Okay, she was spilling way too much here. She caught herself
and wanted to change the subject, but on the other hand, these were her dearest
friends. She would rather be open with them from the outset about Jack and Sage,
rather than have them all shake their heads and worry about her behind her back.
Hadn’t she endured enough of that since Layla’s death?
    “How did they find each other?” Alex asked.
    “As you all must know, Jack is an architect. Apparently Sage
attended a lecture he gave a few days ago on campus. She knew he was from Hope’s
Crossing and they struck up a conversation. In the course of the conversation,
they both connected the dots. And here we are.”
    Silence descended on the group as everyone mulled the
information. Claire was the first to break it. “How are you doing with all
this?”
    “Peachy. Why wouldn’t I be? It’s all very civil.” Except for
that moment when she had wanted to smack him and tell him how he had shattered
her heart. “It will be interesting to see what happens. My hope is that Jack and
Sage can develop a friendship. They have a shared interest in architecture,
after all. Perhaps Jack can, I don’t know, mentor her. Help her with her
studies, maybe.”
    “That would be great,” Angie said. “Does that mean you think
he’s sticking around Hope’s Crossing?”
    Oh, she hoped not. The very idea made her stomach cramp. “I
doubt it. Jack isn’t a big fan of our little neck of the woods. Not to mention
that he also hates his father.”
    “Not a big shocker there,” Mary Ella muttered. She had a
long-standing feud with Harry Lange, the wealthiest man in town, who seemed to
think he owned everyone and everything in town—not just the ski resort he had
developed, but everybody in Hope’s Crossing who owed a living to the tourists he
had brought in to enjoy it.
    “Is there anything you need from us?” Claire asked.
    A little spiked cider would be a good start. “I’d like to get
back to the party. You have all found time in your holiday-crazed lives for
this, and I don’t want to ruin everything with more drama. Can we just forget
about Jackson Lange for now?”
    Everybody seemed to agree, to her great relief. Katherine
Thorne asked Janie a question about one of her children who had broken an arm
sledding off the hill at Miner’s Park, and the conversation turned.
    She loved these women. Sometimes their idiosyncrasies and their
smothering concern drove her crazy, but she didn’t know how she would have
survived these past months without them. She had a feeling she would be leaning
on them more than ever with this new twist on her life’s journey.
    * * *
    H ER HOUSE WAS QUIET when she returned after the
party finally wrapped up. She’d become used to it over the past few months since
Sage had returned to Boulder and school. After she opened the door and found
only the whoosh of the furnace, she finally admitted to herself that some part
of her had been looking forward to Sage’s return to fill the empty space with
sound—her endless chatter about grades and her classes and current events, the
television set she always had on, usually to HGTV, her local friends who went to
other schools or had stuck around town to work and who always seemed to find
excuses to drop in when Sage was in town.
    She was destined for another quiet night, she realized.
    “Sage? Honey?” she called, but received no answer. Maura knew
she was home. Her purse was hanging on the hook by the door, and her cell phone
was on the console table. She walked through the house to Sage’s bedroom. The
door was ajar and she rapped on it a few times softly, then pushed it open.
    Sage was curled up in her bed with only her face sticking out
of the cocoon of blankets. The lights of one of the little individual Christmas
trees Maura had always set up in her girls’ bedrooms twinkled and glowed,
sending brightly colored reflections over Sage’s face.
    She rubbed a hand over her chest at