Midnight Miracle

Gary Parker

Description

Jenna Newsome is praying for a miracle. When Mickey, a boy from her day care, is diagnosed with cancer, Jenna is determined to raise money for his costly treatments. But with Christmas around the corner, Mickey's time is running out and the fund is far short.When Rem Lincoln, a former classmate of Jenna's, returns to town to visit his father, they both unexpectedly find their lives intertwined in ways they couldn't imagine. Having been hurt by love before and preoccupied with helping Mickey, Jenna becomes hesitant of her relationship with Rem. So as Christmas Eve draws near, she is surprised to discover that she's now praying for two miracles . . . one for Mickey and another for love.This magical tale set in the hills of North Carolina will captivate fiction enthusiasts everywhere as they, too, discover that miracles sometimes come in unexpected packages.

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2005
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441239228
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

© 2005 by Gary E. Parker
Published by Revell a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.revellbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2011
Ebook corrections 12.29.2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owners. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-3922-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920.
Contents
Cover
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
About the Author
Cover Flaps
Back Cover
1
B ing Crosby crooned, “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas,” through the grocery-store sound system. The smell of fruitcake and fresh pine filled the air. People pushed shopping carts full of hams, turkeys, and fixings for cranberry salad and green bean casserole and all kinds of other holiday dishes up and down the store aisles. Scores of voices chattered, threatening to drown out Crosby’s music. A Christmas tree decked with red bulbs, white lights, and gold beads almost reached the ceiling near the front of the store. Electronic doors opened and closed every few seconds, and a blast of cold air jumped into the grocery each time.
Sitting at a card table about ten feet from the doors, Jenna Newsome pushed back her sandy blond hair and smiled at the old man standing on the other side of the table. She’d known Handy Jones, a mechanic who lived about three miles out of Hilltop, North Carolina, for most of her thirty years. At least twenty cakes and ten pies sat on the table between them. A stand-up poster with an eight-by-eleven-inch picture of a baby boy stood behind the pies and cakes. The words “Support Mickey’s Miracle” were written in bold letters above the picture.
“You want two cakes, is that right?” she asked.
Handy, dressed in worn overalls and a red baseball cap with “Chew” written on it, handed her fifty dollars. “Two ought to do real good,” he said, his voice heavy with mountain twang.
“They’re only fifteen apiece,” Jenna said. “You spend fifty dollars on two cakes, and Martha will skin you when you get home.”
Handy refused the twenty she tried to hand back. “It all goes to help Mickey, don’t it?”
Jenna nodded. “Yeah. Ladies from Hilltop Community Church made and donated the cakes and pies. Every dollar we make goes to pay for Mickey’s medical costs.”
“Keep the change then,” Handy said. “Martha won’t mind. Heck, she probably made a couple of cakes herself.”
“You’re mighty nice,” Jenna said. “Every dollar makes a difference.” She pulled a brown bag from the floor, opened it, and sat the two cakes inside. A man, this one a lot younger, stepped up behind Handy.
“How much you got so far?” Handy asked.
“Not nearly enough,” Jenna said. “About forty thousand dollars, and we’ve been at it close to two months.” She glanced at the man behind Handy, and her eyes widened as she recognized Rem Lincoln. What in the world was he doing back in Hilltop?
“That’s a heap of cakes to sell,” Handy said.
Jenna smiled at Handy again but didn’t really feel very happy. “Most of the money came from donations,” she said. “People didn’t even get a cake.”
“Folks around here got good hearts.”
She handed Handy the bag and tried to stay positive but found it tough. As the chair of a group raising money for a bone marrow transplant for a baby boy with no health insurance, she knew better than anybody that things didn’t look good.
“How much you got to raise?” Handy asked.
Rem shifted, and Jenna thought he was going to leave without speaking. Maybe he didn’t recognize her.
“Close to two hundred fifty thousand,” she said, her eyes still on Rem. “Within the next couple of weeks too. If we don’t get it by then, it might be too late.”
“You needin’ a miracle, I reckon.”
“You can say that again. Say hello to Martha for me.”
Handy tipped his hat and stepped away. Rem moved to the table, and Jenna sat up straighter without quite knowing why. Rem wore khaki pants, a chocolate-brown V-neck sweater, a navy waist-length jacket, and an expensive-looking watch. He had dark hair, cropped closely but not severely. Although no taller or heavier than average, he carried himself just like she remembered—with a coiled energy that seemed about to burst from the hiking boots on his feet. Rem’s eyes locked on hers, and she stared into them against her better judgment. They looked like black bullets, only alive.
Her face warming, Jenna wondered again if Rem remembered her; they’d graduated high school together twelve years ago.
“Long time no see,” he said.
She glanced down. “I’m surprised you remember me.”
“How could I forget?” he said. “Yeah, you’ve changed a little, but I’d recognize those eyes anywhere. Bluest things since God made the sky. You’re Jenna Newsome, former editor of the Hilltop High Herald . Best student in every English class ever taught at Hilltop, head of the Code of Conduct Council, and secretary of the Bible Club. A most serious young woman, if I recall correctly.”
“You recall more than I’d like,” she said, trying to ignore the flirty comment about her eyes.
“I saw you a few years ago at my mom’s funeral,” he said. “I asked my dad about you; he said you’d moved up to Winston-Salem for a while but then came home. What brought you back?”
“It’s not worth telling,” she said, firmly shaking her head. “It grieved me when your mama passed.”
“It surprised me you attended her funeral,” he said.
“She went to my church. I wanted to pay my respects.”
“That’s right.” He laughed. “Everybody goes to everybody’s funeral up here on the mountain.”
“And they bring a casserole to the house beforehand.”
A cell phone rang, and Rem held up a hand to put Jenna on hold, pulled a sleek little gadget from his pocket, and stepped back a few steps to take the call. Something in the gesture bothered Jenna, and she suddenly recalled that Rem had always annoyed her, that he seemed to treat people like they worked for him. Although no one else ever appeared to notice this, Jenna had long ago reached the conclusion that Rem Lincoln was a snob.
Part of her wanted to forgive him for the trait. After all, he’d moved to Hilltop at a hard time—the summer before his junior year, when his dad became the chief of the four-man police department. Another part, however, felt no pity whatsoever, because Rem had quickly taken the little town by storm. A star athlete, he’d played quarterback on the football team, point guard in basketball, and pitcher during baseball season. In addition to his abilities in anything competitive, he’d also whipped through his studies, particularly excelling in math. Cutting a wide swath in the eight-hundred-student school, he’d picked up friends as easily as a black skirt picks up lint and by his senior year had become class president and earned the “Most Likely to Succeed” superlative. Every girl in the school had fallen in love with him, Jenna included, and it seemed he’d eventually gotten around to dating all of them but her.
Rem closed his cell phone and moved back to her. “Sorry,” he said. “A pressing situation.”
“You were always busy,” she said stiffly.
He pocketed the phone. “I’ve got to make a business decision,” he explained. “Almost the end of the year; taxes and all.”
“What are you doing home?” she asked, a slight edge rising unbidden in her voice. “Couldn’t you do your business better in . . . well . . . where do you live now?”
“Atlanta. Yeah, guess you’re right. But my dad, his heart isn’t so good, and it’s been a while since I saw him. Figured I’d come for Christmas this year, flew in a couple of hours ago.”
He pulled a prescription slip from his jacket and held it up. “He sent me to pick up his medication.”
“What’s wrong with his heart?”
“The usual. High cholesterol, some clogging in the arteries—too much bacon and eggs, that kind of thing. He never exercises now that he’s retired. Not that he did much before.”
“He getting a bypass?”
“Not sure. Since Mama died, he doesn’t seem interested in much of anything, his health included. I come through every now and again to check on him, usually for a day or so. He doesn’t seem to care if I’m here or not.”
Jenna thought of her parents. Although both were alive, they’d been divorced for about seven years and seemed to find most of their pleasure by making each other miserable. She usually got caught in the middle.
“I hope your dad gets better,” she said.
Rem shrugged. “He’s sixty-six. Getting older isn’t for sissies.”
Jenna smiled but only briefly.
“Age isn’t bothering you,” Rem said. “Unless it’s for the better.”
Jenna waved off his flippant charm, but her heart jumped a little just the same, and she remembered the first time she’d ever talked to Rem, the interview she’d done for the school paper. Serious about her writing, she’d wanted to give the students of her isolated hamlet a sense of what it felt like to transfer to a new place. Pen and pad in hand, she’d approached him after basketball practice near the middle of the season. For some odd reason, he’d seemed familiar as they sat down on the bleachers a few feet from the court. Although she knew it was crazy, she’d felt like she’d met him somewhere. She’d started to say something about the weird sensation, but her courage had failed as she opened her mouth, and she’d moved straight to the interview.
Surprisingly, Rem had revealed little about his background, only that his dad—a policeman in Knoxville—had gotten shot in a drug bust and