Now, though, the memories were as vivid as if she’d never left. Even from her stalled car way out here on a lonely Texas highway she imagined she could see the lights twinkling on the ceiling-scraping Christmas tree, smell the aroma of Consuela’s fresh-baked sugar cookies and bread mingling with the scent of fresh-cut pine. She could almost hear the sound of carols being played at full volume, while her dad chided her mom that she was going to deafen all of them.

She sighed as she remembered the angel of shimmering gold that was ceremoniously placed on top of the tree each and every year and the pride she’d felt when that duty had been given to her. At five she’d been too small to reach the top, so her father had hoisted her up on his broad shoulders so she could settle that frothy angel onto the tree’s highest branch. Then and only then, in a room that had been darkened for the ceremony, did they switch on the lights, always too many of them, always so magical that she and her mom had gasped with delight, while her dad had grinned tolerantly. The same ceremony had been repeated at White Pines, where as the oldest grandchild she’d always been the one who’d put the angel on her grandfather’s tree.

So many wonderful traditions, she thought now. How could she have run away from all the warmth and love in that house? she wondered in retrospect.

Rebellion, pure and simple. She had chafed at all the bright expectations and what she now suspected had been imagined pressures. Like all families, hers had only wanted what was best for her.

It was just that the Adams men, particularly Luke and her grandfather, had a tendency to think they were the only ones who knew what was best. No two men on earth could be more mule-headed once they’d charted a course of action, for themselves or someone they loved.

Ironically, they had rarely agreed on what that course should be. One plan would have been hard enough to fight, but two were impossible. Angela had wanted to decide her future for herself, and leaving—choosing a college far from Texas where the Adams influence didn’t reach—had been the only way she’d seen to do it. She’d limited contact to occasional calls, an infrequent e-mail to her computer-literate father.

Now, with snow falling in fat, wet clumps and the roads turning into hazardous sheets of ice, she sat in her idled clunker of a car less than a mile from home and wondered if anything else could possibly go wrong. Even as the thought crossed her mind, she glanced quickly heavenward.

“Not that I’m tempting fate, You understand,” she said wearily. “But even You have to admit my life basically sucks these days.”