When Snow Falls

Sitting in the passenger seat of her friend’s Prius, Cheyenne pulled her gaze away from Joe DeMarco. Together with his father, he owned the only service station in town. He was facing away from them, standing in one of the auto repair bays, while her best friend, Eve Harmon, got back behind the wheel. They hadn’t really needed gas, but they left the Gold Nugget B and B in the hands of Cheyenne’s kitchen helper to come here as often as possible, hoping to bump into him.

“Of course you should.” Cheyenne forced a smile. It wasn’t easy to encourage Eve to ask Joe out. Joe might be a relatively recent infatuation for Eve, but Chey had had a crush on him since forever. Not that she’d ever told anyone. She was fairly certain it was the best-kept secret in town.

Fingering the thick, knitted scarf tied around her neck, Eve worried her lip. “I don’t know....”

“What do you have to lose?” Chey asked.

“Face, I guess. I want him to ask me.”

“I once heard Gail say he wasn’t interested in a stepparent situation for his girls.”

“He only has them every other weekend. And I’d be a great stepmom!”

“That’s true, but he’s always seen us as his little sister’s friends. Maybe he feels he’s too old for us. For you,” she quickly amended.

Fortunately, Eve didn’t seem to catch the slip. “He’s nice, but…sort of preoccupied when I’m around. I can’t really get his attention.”

As Chey watched, Joe turned, saw her sitting in the car and waved. Instantly, her cheeks flushed hot. That was all it took—a wave. He’d had that effect on her ever since Anita had first carted them into town in her old Skylark. She’d never forget how hungry she and Presley had been that day. While her mother counted out the change they’d scrounged up to buy gas, she’d left Presley, who wanted to stay in the car, and went to the minimart. They didn’t have the money for food. She’d just wanted to look, to imagine what it would be like if she could indulge in one of the many treats displayed on those shelves.

When it was time to leave, Anita had called her twice. Chey remembered because her mother had then shouted for her to “get her ass moving” and thumped her on the head.

Stomach growling, Cheyenne had dragged herself from the Hostess aisle to the door, where Joe had caught up with her long enough to hand her two packages of the Twinkies she’d been eyeing. Embarrassed because she knew they looked as poor as they were, she’d tried to give them back, but he’d insisted the snacks were past their sale date and he was about to toss them.

It wasn’t until she was back inside the car, groaning in pleasure and devouring those Twinkies with Presley, that she’d taken a closer look at the wrappers. The expiration dates hadn’t passed. Neither one was even close.

Cheyenne was pretty sure she’d been in love with Joe ever since that day. Or maybe it was a couple of weeks later, when she first saw him at school. He was a handsome, popular senior, she a lowly freshman, when he’d noticed some kid making fun of her ill-fitting dress. He’d immediately walked over and sent that boy running. Then he’d grinned at her as if he somehow saw the sensitive girl, who’d already been through far too much, beneath the ratty hair and secondhand clothes.

“How’d he treat you at the Chamber of Commerce mixer last night?” she asked, picking at her nails so she wouldn’t be tempted to look at him again. It had broken her heart when he’d married right out of high school. But then he’d divorced and returned to Whiskey Creek and, at twenty-six, she’d been granted a second chance—not that anything had happened in the five years since.

Eve slid the receipt for the gas purchase into her purse. “He said hello. That was about it.”

Cheyenne hated that she was secretly pleased by this report. She wanted Eve to be happy more than anyone else in the world, even if it meant she couldn’t have Joe. Eve was like a sister to her, one she could both love and admire. Eve’s family, the Harmons, had taken Cheyenne in at various points during the past seventeen years. They’d given her a job in the kitchen of the family inn, trained her to cook and let her take over when their other cook moved away. She owed them so much.

Suppressing a twinge of conscience, she attempted to make a joke about the situation. “He should be grateful for your patronage. You come here more than anyone else. He probably wonders what you do with all those bags of chips you buy. He’d be able to tell if you were eating them.”

Eve laughed but sobered immediately. “Do you think I’m being too obvious?”

That was hard to tell. Joe was always friendly. He just never called or did anything else to show special interest—in either one of them.

Cheyenne drew a bolstering breath. “Why don’t you see if Gail will give him a nudge?”

His sister was part of their clique, a clique that had been friends since grade school—except for her, of course. She was fourteen when they moved to town. Presley had been sixteen.

“Gail would love to see Joe marry again,” she added. “Especially someone who’ll treat him better than his ex.” Gail had no doubt been too caught up in her own life to notice that Eve suddenly had a thing for her big brother. A year ago, she’d married a famous movie star who’d been a PR client and had her hands full coping with all the changes that required.

“She and Simon are in L.A. He’s working on a movie.”

“That doesn’t mean she never talks to Joe.”

With a frown, Eve started the car. “No, but…I’m not ready to go that far yet.”

Now that Eve had aborted her mission to invite Joe to dinner, Cheyenne could relax for the moment. “So you’re not going to ask him out?”

“Not right now. Maybe I’ll work up the courage later.”

Cheyenne nodded. She needed to forget about Joe, finally get it through her head—and her heart—that there was no chance he’d ever return her interest. As long as Eve wanted him, it didn’t matter even if he did.

* * *

“What are you doing here? It’s too cold to be sitting outside.”

Cheyenne turned to see Eve, who’d been as busy as she had since their trip to the gas station, weaving carefully through the headstones of the old cemetery next to the inn. “Just thinking.”

It was the slowest part of the day, between the morning rush when they prepared a fancy breakfast for the inn’s guests and cleaned the rooms, and three o’clock, the time new patrons began to trickle in. She would’ve run home to check on her mother. She normally did. But this afternoon she couldn’t bring herself to make the effort. Presley was there; she’d call if Anita’s situation worsened.

Eve’s footsteps crunched in the patchy snow. Since her boots were more for looks than bad weather, she watched where she was going until she got close enough to avoid ruining the pretty black suede. Then her eyes cut to the words carved in the closest headstone—also the oldest and largest—as if they made her uncomfortable.

They probably did. They made everyone uncomfortable.

Here lies our little angel, brutally murdered at six years. May God strike down the killer who took her from us, and send him into the fiery pits of hell. Mary Margaret Hatfield, daughter of Harriett and John Hatfield, 1865–1871

“Are you feeling bad that we’re planning to capitalize on the mystery of her murder?” Adjusting the scarf around her neck, Eve perched on the garden bench next to Chey.

Eve didn’t have to say who she was. “Maybe a little.” Not only had Mary been born in the home that was now Eve’s parents’ B and B, she’d died there. Her murder had taken place well over a century ago, but just about everyone in town knew the terrible details. She’d been found in the basement, strangled. There’d been no indication as to who’d killed her.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do it.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Cheyenne responded. “You and your parents will lose the inn if we don’t do something.” If that happened, Chey would be without a job, too, but she could probably get on somewhere else. It was Eve’s situation that concerned her. The Gold Nugget meant so much to the Harmon family. Over the years, especially during the past twelve months, they’d dumped everything they had into the business.

Eve hugged herself for added warmth. “I know. I keep telling myself that publicizing a haunting isn’t a big deal. It’s such an old crime. It just adds atmosphere, right? But…we’re talking about a girl who died a violent death. Her ghost really could be lingering here.”

Cheyenne straightened in surprise. “I thought you didn’t believe in things like that. I thought you said every rattle and creak could be explained as the settling of an old house.”

“Since I’m so often at the inn alone, it’s easier to believe that. There’s no point in scaring myself to death. But—” Eve met her eyes “—a lot of people do believe in the paranormal.”

Chey frowned at the sea of headstones surrounding her. For the most part they were organized in neat rows, but crookedness in certain spots suggested a random beginning. “Do you remember, shortly after we moved here, when my mother got mad because I stayed with you part of the time and with Gail part of the time and I didn’t come home for a couple of days? She tied me to that tree.” Cheyenne pointed to the big oak in the corner, which was located close to another bench.

Eve grimaced. “How could I forget? You spent the entire night out here. When my father found you the next morning, he was furious that she could do such a thing to her own child. But…your mother pretty much wrote the book on how to be a terrible parent.”

After that incident, Cheyenne had gone to live with the Harmons for three months—until her mother’s cancer took a turn for the worse. Because she hated feeling like a burden on people who shouldn’t have to take care of her, and because Presley wanted her to come home, she’d eventually gone back. “At first I was terrified to be trapped in the dark, so close to Mary’s grave.”

The memories of that warm, summer night often lingered on the fringes of her mind. They were partly what drew her out here.

“But after a couple of hours,” she went on, “I felt this strange sort of peace, as if she was with me and didn’t want me to be frightened. I even started talking to her.” Uncomfortable admitting this, since she’d never told Eve before, she laughed to make herself sound a little less crazy. “I know it was all my imagination, but I’ve never been frightened of her since.”

“You don’t feel like you’re betraying a friend by using her death or her ghost or whatever in our marketing ideas?”

Cheyenne shook her head. “We could never squelch the rumors, anyway. A good ghost story gets handed down generation after generation.”