CHAPTER 1
We’ve done the usual cooking and decorating but it doesn’t feel like Christmas. My older sister Tricia and I try to take more of the load, but with three extra children and the babe almost here, everyone is really tense and Mom cries a lot when Dad isn’t in the house to hear.
I love my mom. She’s so wise, even though she hasn’t been farther away than Pittsburgh in all her life. People come from all over the hills to get help and healing.
Sara Cameron is here now with her great-nephew Tony. She and Mom are doing a last minute project while Tricia and I help the little ones learn to make bread. The kitchen is a mess, there’s flour all over everything, including us. It’s a good thing we put the cookies into their boxes.
A bit before noon, Mrs. Cameron took off for the ridge with Violet, her German shepherd. I was a little worried, because yesterday we saw someone up there and I wondered if it was safe for her to go.
Then I remembered what Ben told me, that Violet is specially trained to guard Sara and no one can get near her without permission. I guess Violet is also trained to attack on command. I wish Mrs. Cameron didn’t need to be protected. Whatever she did for a living before she came to Campbell’s Point, it must have been very dangerous and very scary.
A lot of changes happened at our place when Mrs. Cameron came last spring looking for a place to live. One of the nicest things was her friend, Ben Johnson, bringing his dogs from Idaho and coming to work with Dad. They set up the pens down below the house this fall and a litter of pups is due soon.
I was thinking about all this while we finished the bread and put it on the back shelf above the stove. The little girls helped me clean up the morning’s mess. As I glanced out the kitchen window, a white, fifth wheel rig with a horse trailer came driving up the lane. The driver pulled it out of the way next to the barn. A man climbed out one side and Tony Cameron hopped down from the other.
I’ll treasure what happened next in my heart forever. The man knelt down and stretched out his arms to Tony. Their embrace was so loving, protective and private that I felt like we shouldn’t be watching.
I turned and whispered to Mom, “I didn’t know Tony had any kin like that. Who is he?”
Sis settled the matter. “Let’s go find out.”
Mom threw a shawl around her shoulders and picked up baby Pam. I glanced down at Susan as she wriggled with excitement and curiosity. My dad raises hogs and we have a cow, but the young ones have never been so close to an animal as big and beautiful as the one we could see peering out from the side of the trailer.
Tony and his friend were standing hand in hand as we came down the drive. The man was tall and thin. Really, he looked like he’d been short of rations a long time and his clothes hung on him with a lot of extra room. He moved like his body didn’t belong to him right now, as though he hurt a lot.
When he turned to greet us, I couldn’t help my cry of alarm. An angry, red streak of a poorly healed wound began at the top of his face and spilled down in a jagged line that burrowed under his collar. God knows how much more there might be. Tears welled up as I turned away.
He spoke to me in a gentle, patient voice. “Please forgive me, Mistress Forester. Sometimes I forget that I look a little like Frankenstein’s brother. Tony, would you be kind enough to introduce me to your new friends?”
Tony did well for a ten-year-old boy who’d met us only a few days before. First, he introduced the man himself.
“This is my best friend in the whole world, Brian Tracker. He’s a lawyer, and this is his horse, Roger,” He grinned as he looked up at Mr. Tracker, “and they both like kids.”
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