My heart swelled, too big for my chest. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want you to worry.”

“Good job, Trey.” Jo threw her arms around Beth. “Oh, I’m so glad to see you!”

Good job, John. Somehow he’d known what I wanted, when I couldn’t even admit it to myself. He’d given me my sisters. I blinked back happy tears, feeling as if the sun had come out. Whatever happens, we have each other.

“March family?” the nurse liaison called. “The surgeon will see you now.”

An icicle trickled down my spine. John took my hand as we all turned, our father’s face set like stone.

“All of you?” the nurse asked.

Trey put his arm around Beth. “We can wait here.”

“No,” Amy protested.

“Yes,” Jo said at the same time.

The nurse looked at our silent father. Shrugged. “All right. This way.”

We barely fit into the family consultation room. My father and I sat in two of the three chairs, leaving one empty for the surgeon.

“Dr. Chatworth will be right with you.”

The next ten minutes dragged by, almost as long as the five hours that had gone before. Amy’s face was white. Beth picked at her fingernails. The neurosurgeon came in, still wearing scrubs, and shook hands with our father. I tried to focus, but he spoke so rapidly, his words dissolving into meaningless clips and medical phrases. “Decompression of spinal canal . . . neural function . . . stable bony fusion . . .”

I fixed my gaze painfully on his face, as if his expression, his tone of voice, could give me a clue to my mother’s condition.

“. . . be significant postoperative discomfort,” he said. “But your mother should wake up feeling much better.” He paused. “Merry Christmas.”

Like a present.

Jo was grinning, Beth pink with happiness. “Thank God,” our father said.

Shaken with relief, I turned my head into John’s shoulder.

An hour later, we all crowded into her hospital room as my mother was admitted upstairs. Amy tripped in her eagerness to get to Mom’s side and was caught by a handsome orderly. “Careful,” he said.

But I barely heard. I didn’t care. I saw our mother’s face as her bed was wheeled in from the hall, as her gaze traveled around the room, recognizing each face, and finally lit on the white roses in my hand. I saw her smile.

Merry Christmas.

CHAPTER 21

Jo

We couldn’t all spend the night at the hospital. “One overnight visitor per patient,” the nurse explained with a touch of regret. Even at Christmas. So, for the second night in a row, Beth slept in the recliner in our mother’s room.

“It’s Christmas Eve. You’re not coming home at all?” I blurted, and then bit my tongue when Beth looked stricken. “Of course not,” I answered my own question. “You’re flying back to Branson tomorrow. You should spend as much time with Mom as you can.”

So, while Meg went home to John and the twins, I went back to the farmhouse with Dad and Amy. Somebody had to feed the goats.