A Christmas Spark (Hudson House Holiday #2)

Chapter One

San Francisco, California

December 1, 1920

D orthea Elizabeth Stanford, known to all as Dori, raised her arms above her head, stretching the kinks from her neck, and almost toppled off the wobbly slipper chair where she’d perched an hour earlier. Despite her longing to continue to ignore what must be done, it was time to begin the monumental task of sorting through the life of her parents that had been reduced to a storage room in her aunt Eloise’s sprawling home on Nob Hill.

Miraculously, the house and its occupants had survived the 1906 earthquake and fire that had devastated the city. Uncle Dean had suggested moving, but Aunt Eloise refused, or so went the story frequently passed around their dinner table.

Dori thought about Dean and Eloise Mitchum. They weren’t related to her by blood, but she’d always referred to them as her uncle and aunt. In truth, they were the closest thing to relatives she had, since her mother had been an only child outcast by her family when she’d fallen in love with George Stanford, a traveling photographer, and married him.

Edith Belmont Stanford and Eloise Hudson Mitchum had been best friends since they’d been old enough to walk. When Dean had left New York with Eloise to start the Pacific Horizon Shipping Company with Eloise’s brother, Brant, Eloise had begged Edith to move there as well.

It had taken a bit of convincing for Edith to talk her husband into moving to California, but he’d finally agreed. In San Francisco, he’d found the weather mostly to his liking, and an endless array of people willing to pay top dollar for his photographs, thanks to introductions from Dean and Eloise.

Dori thought about her parents and the small yet tasteful house where she’d been raised just a mile from the exclusive neighborhood where the Mitchum family resided. The Stanford home had been a happy one filled with love, laughter, and friends. Dori had never gone hungry nor done without, but she sometimes wondered how much of that had been due to the kindness of her surrogate aunt and uncle.

Regardless, her father had been a talented and brilliant photographer. He’d felt called to France to document America’s part in the Great War, and Dori’s mother had insisted on going along as his assistant.

The ship they’d been on was struck by a German torpedo and sank before they ever made it across the Atlantic, leaving Dori heartbroken. At the time, she’d been in New York visiting her aging grandparents for the first time. Her parents had insisted she not stay alone in California while they were overseas, and her mother had been adamant Dori take the opportunity to meet Alastair and Katherine Belmont.

Years ago, her grandparents had lost their fortune, followed by their home, then any happiness they had in life when Edith left with George. Despite the years that had passed since they’d set eyes on their daughter, they still harbored anger toward her and George, although they’d welcomed Dori.

Two weeks later, Dori’s parents were gone. She’d remained in New York long enough for her grandparents to hold a memorial service. In spite of their insistence she remain in New York with them, she’d returned to San Francisco and the home she’d always known. Of course, without her father’s income, the house had to be sold along with most of the contents. Aunt Eloise had offered a storage room on the third floor of her opulent home for the belongings Dori wasn’t ready to part with, and offered Dori a place to stay for as long as she wanted or needed.

Thanks to her aunt and uncle providing the funds, she’d enrolled in college at Berkeley, and attended classes there with her best friend, Sarah Hudson, Eloise’s niece from Oregon.

The two girls spent their weekdays in a rooming house for girls attending the college, and their weekends at the Mitchum home. Dori thought Eloise and Dean missed having young people in the house since their son, Mayes, had moved out, wed, and started his own family half a dozen years ago. Their daughter, Clara, had also married and lived in Los Angeles with her husband and two little girls.

When Dori wasn’t with Sarah, the Mitchum family, or studying for classes, she took photographs. There were many students on campus interested in having their photos taken, whether to send to a sweetheart or their parents, and were willing to pay for quality photos. A few professors had also hired her to take photos of their departments. Dori had even sold a handful of images to one of the newspapers and been offered additional work.

The classes she took were to finish her education, or so Aunt Eloise said, but Dori’s true passion was photography.

From the time she was old enough to stand on a box and watch her father capture images and memories on film, it’s what she wanted to do with her life. She felt as though she’d already trained with the best, working as her father’s assistant when she wasn’t in school, and sometimes when she was supposed to be.

She had adored George Stanford, and he’d always made her feel seen and loved. Which was the reason why it was so incredibly hard for her to decide what to let go of and what to keep when it came to the things that had once filled the happy home of her childhood.

Yesterday Dori had finished her classes for the semester and returned to Nob Hill resolved to sort through the remainders of her life with her parents before she and Sarah left to spend their holiday in Silver Bluff with Sarah’s parents.

Determined to make progress, Dori opened another box and began to sift through the contents. It was packed with her mother’s things. Handkerchiefs. Lace collars. A few pieces of jewelry passed down for generations in a box filled with inexpensive trinkets. Dori set the jewelry box aside and lifted a sachet that smelled of lavender, sunshine, and happier days.

Eyes closed, she held it to her nose and sniffed, riding a wave of remembrance that carried her to a summer afternoon at the kitchen table, laughing with her mother, drinking lemonade, and making the sachets.

After one more sniff, Dori knew she wasn’t ready to part with anything in the box, so she closed the lid and took out a pen and paper, writing what was inside before moving on to the next box.

She lifted the lid and stared at the jumble of document folders filled to bursting with photographs. The first one she picked up was labeled Smith Family . Inside were dozens of prints of a family her father had photographed four or five years ago. Dori recalled them, because she’d gone with her father that day and thought the way he’d posed them, to maximize the effect of the light, was genius.

She studied the formal poses, but the photographs that drew her eye were the informal, natural images her father had managed to capture. The images of siblings laughing, parents smiling, and two little ones hugging the family dog were keepsakes. To her, they showed the family living, not just pausing for a moment in their life to stare at a stranger’s camera.

Dori wondered if the Smith family would like to have the other images and made a note to telephone Mrs. Smith later.

The more Dori looked through the box, the more awed she was by her father’s talent. He truly had been a master of his craft. It wasn’t any wonder she’d found it hard to remain in her photography class at college. She’d realized within a week of starting the class that she knew more than the instructor. At least she’d finished the course with top grades.

When Dori opened a file labeled Hudson , she stared at the faces of Sarah and her family. An image of Sarah’s parents exchanging a sweet kiss made her smile. She bet Brant and Holland had no idea her father had snuck in that photograph of them. There were many images of Sarah and her two brothers.

Dori sighed, knowing how dearly Sarah missed her oldest brother, Drake. He’d been killed during the war two years earlier, as had so many other good young men.

The family had rejoiced when Kase had returned from France with nothing more than a limp from a shrapnel wound to his thigh. It was the scars to his heart, though, that Sarah despaired may never heal.

For reasons no one understood, Kase blamed himself for Drake’s death. He’d withdrawn so far into himself, no one could seem to draw him out.

According to Sarah, Kase spent most of his time in a room in the stables he’d converted to a woodworking shop where he sat alone and carved wood. Occasionally, he helped his uncle, Holland’s brother, with projects since Denver was in charge of the Hudson Estate carpentry and building maintenance divisions.

Dori said a prayer for Kase and the Hudson family, as she went through the photographs. Her favorite was an image of Drake and Kase playfully hugging each other, arms around the other one’s shoulders, fishing poles in hand, while standing on the banks of the Columbia River. Hudson House, a massive home on a bluff above the river, had always seemed more like a fairy castle to Dori than a home.

The first time she’d visited Hudson House, her parents had been invited by Eloise to join them there for Christmas. Dori thought she’d been six at the time. Kase had been nine and had acted as though he was far too mature to pay her any mind. That was when she and Sarah had become close friends. Even after Dori returned to California, the girls often exchanged letters. Dori had looked forward to summer visits from the Hudson family when they came to San Francisco to stay with Eloise and Dean for a few weeks each July. The men talked business, the women shopped, and the children played with their cousins and friends.

Dori recalled going to Hudson House in May the year she turned ten. Nothing compared to the spectacular landscape of the estate when the wildflowers were blooming and the gardens were lush and green before the heat of summer beat down upon them. During that visit, Kase had gone with her to pick a bouquet of the yellow and purple wildflowers that grew in a sea of blooms among sagebrush and native grasses between the house and the river. He’d mostly ignored her, but had saved her from stepping on a rattlesnake.

Her last visit to Hudson House had been the Christmas when war had broken out in Europe. While the fighting had seemed a world away at the time, and therefore not of interest to her, the war had soon taken more from the Stanford and Hudson families than any of them had wanted to give.

A photo of Drake standing in a sailboat with Dean and Mayes jarred her memories of the day it was taken. She and Sarah had begged to go with them and were so excited when they were granted permission that they had been unable to sit still. Then they’d gotten seasick and cast up their accounts all over Kase. Perhaps by now he’d forgotten that unfortunate incident, since she and Sarah had only been eight.

The last time she’d seen Kase had been the summer she was sixteen. He and Drake had spent two months with Mayes, learning from him at his office and staying at his home. The few occasions she had interacted with the two brothers were etched in her mind. She’d thought Kase to be handsome, suave, and something of a mystery. Drake, who had looked so much like their father, was full of laughter and fun, and he’d gone out of his way to make Dori feel welcome. The two young men had looked nothing alike, except for their eyes, but they had clearly been fond of each other.

Although she had no idea he’d done it, her father had taken photographs of Drake and Kase in their uniforms. When had he seen them? It had to have been during their training at Camp Lewis. She continued digging in the box and found images taken at the camp of soldiers training, in the mess hall, and in their bunks. The images felt raw and real and charged with emotion.

She’d been unaware her father had visited Camp Lewis, but he’d often gone on short trips when he was hired to take photographs out of town. Had visiting the camp been the reason her father had felt such a driving need to go to France and capture images of the war?

Dori studied the photographs she held for a long time. Finally, she sighed and returned them to a box. The Hudson family would cherish every photo. She would be sure to take them with her to Hudson House when she and Sarah went for the holiday.

The next four boxes she opened were also filled with photos. She knew all of the photos needed to be organized and began sorting the faces of people she recognized into one pile, those she’d never before seen into another, and any related to the Hudson and Mitchum clan into a third.

Strangely, she’d not yet happened across any photos of her parents, nor herself, but knew there had to be boxes filled with those images somewhere in the stacks of boxes.

“Aunt Eloise said you’ve been up here for ages,” Sarah said as she breezed into the room carrying a tea tray. Sarah, like Drake, resembled her father with her black hair and lively blue eyes. Hudson eyes, Aunt Eloise called them, although neither of her children had inherited them.

Sarah looked around for somewhere to set the tray, and Dori rose, hopped around piles of boxes, and unearthed a small side table.

“Thank you,” Sarah said, setting the tray on the table, then looking around the disorder of the room. “Are you making headway, or just a mess?”

Dori scowled at her, then motioned for Sarah to have a seat in the wobbly chair while she rolled over an oak desk chair with a squeaky wheel.

Sarah gave Dori an amused glance, and soon both of them were giggling as they sipped cups of rich black tea sweetened with sugar and a dash of cinnamon and nibbled on slices of date nut bread topped with cream cheese.

While they ate, Dori questioned Sarah about her day and the exams in her last two classes. They talked about the classes they planned to take in the winter semester and which professors they thought were better than others. Sarah was studying language arts and intended to become a teacher. Her parents encouraged her plans, and Dori thought it admirable Sarah wanted to teach when she could have just as easily done nothing useful with her life.

None of the children in the Hudson family had been raised that way, though. All of them had been taught it was important for them to pursue worthwhile endeavors, preferably those that might make a difference to others.

Dori’s thoughts drifted back to Kase. Before the war, he and Drake had been training to one day take over their father’s many and varied enterprises housed under the Hudson Estate Corporation. However, after losing Drake and returning home, Kase refused to discuss the business and spent his days working with wood, hiding out alone in his workroom.

Last year, Kase had spent months hand carving the most remarkable figurines, focusing primarily on versions of Santa Claus. Some he painted; others he left the wood bare. But the faces on each one Dori had seen had been amazing.

Kase had made a large carving for Eloise and Dean, as well as carvings for Mayes and Clara for Christmas last year. Back in September, he’d sent two crates of Santas to Sarah and she’d sold them to three elite boutiques where only the cream of society shopped.

Even if Kase never stepped into a management position with his family’s corporation, he’d be able to make a living off his wood carvings. At least as long as Sarah didn’t mind being the contact person for the shops where they were sold.

“What are we doing with the photographs?” Sarah asked after finishing her tea and wiping her fingers on a napkin.

“Sorting,” Dori said, wiping her hands until there wasn’t a spot of anything left behind before she picked up a stack of unidentified photographs. “Apparently, Papa had boxes and boxes of photos he’d taken from family portrait sessions and other engagements. I’d like to give the photographs to the families, but I don’t recognize half of them.”

Sarah held out a hand, but Dori shook her head.

“Later we’ll look through them. First, I want you to see these.” Dori set a box of photographs of Sarah’s family on her friend’s lap, then sank onto the floor beside her.

They were still looking through the photos, one by one, tears on their cheeks caused by the smiling face of Drake, when Dean arrived to let them know dinner was ready.

“What have you girls found?” he asked, walking over and tilting his head to see the photographs. After he picked up an image of himself with Mayes, Drake, Kase, and Brant, he set it back in the box, then looked at Dori. “Your father had a talent beyond description, Dori. I see so much of him in your work. Your photographs are a beautiful way to carry the very best of today into tomorrow. Never stop taking them.”

“I appreciate your kind words, Uncle Dean. Thank you. I can’t imagine never taking another photograph. That would be like holding my breath until I ran out of air.”

Sarah set the box aside and stood, pulling Dori up with her. “Uncle Dean, do you think it might be possible for us to take the boxes of photographs with us? We can spread them out on the dining room table at home and sort through them there.”

Dean nodded and held an arm out to each girl. “Certainly. You mark which boxes you want to take, and I’ll make sure they are loaded on the train.”

“Are we still set to leave tomorrow afternoon?” Sarah asked as they made their way down the wide mahogany staircase to the dining room where Eloise and dinner awaited them.

“Yes. The private car will be ready to leave on the afternoon train.” Dean grinned at them. “As much as your mother misses you, Sarah, I’d wager she’ll be standing on the platform ready to thoroughly embarrass you with her affectionate greetings when you arrive.”

Sarah laughed. “Mama does tend to get a little carried away when one of her little chicks comes home to the roost. Last time I arrived home, she practically squeezed me to death before Dad insisted she give me a chance to breathe.”

Sarah tossed Dori a guilty look. Often when her friend talked about her parents, she would remember Dori no longer had any and then feel terrible she’d mentioned them.

Nothing could change the fact that Dori’s parents were gone, but she didn’t want anyone to feel hesitant to speak of theirs around her. She gave Sarah’s hand an encouraging squeeze, then took a seat across the table from her. The four of them enjoyed a pleasant conversation throughout the meal.

After they ate, Dori returned to the storage room, lifting the lids on every box to make sure none with photos were left behind. After setting the boxes near the door, she searched until she found an old leather trunk, lifted the lid, and breathed in the scents of bayberry and childhood anticipation. Although Hudson House had an abundance of decorations and cheer, Dori felt a need to have the Christmas decorations with her that had once been part of holiday celebrations in her childhood home.

The following afternoon, she and Sarah stood on the train platform, Eloise between them, while Dean made sure everything was loaded into their private train car.

“Are you sure you won’t join us this year, Aunt Eloise?” Sarah asked. “It won’t be the same if you’re not at Hudson House for Christmas.”

Eloise kissed Sarah’s cheek. “I shall miss being there, darling girl, but Clara has invited us all to her home, so we’re going. It will be nice to spend time with her family.”

“It will be,” Dori said, giving a warm hug to the woman who had always treated her with such care and affection. “I hope you will have a lovely holiday, Aunt Eloise.”

“We will. You two will have a wonderful adventure in Silver Bluff.” Eloise took their hands and squeezed them with hers. “Be safe in your travels.”

“We will, Aunt Eloise.” Sarah smiled, then stepped back so they could board the Hudson private car. “Don’t forget to take the gifts we left for Clara and Mayes and their families.”

“I won’t. Love you both!” Eloise blew them kisses.

Dori laughed and blew one back in return. “Love you, Aunt Eloise!” She turned and hugged Dean, then kissed his cheek. “Have a wonderful Christmas, Uncle Dean.”

“I will, Dori dear. I hope you girls enjoy your time in Silver Bluff. We’ll be ready to hear the stories of your holiday antics when you return.” He turned and kissed Sarah’s cheek, giving her a hug before he offered his hand and helped them up the steps onto the train car. They both stood on the small balcony and waved a moment before hurrying inside.

Stacked in one corner of the sitting area were the boxes of photographs and Dori’s trunk of holiday decorations. She hadn’t wanted to take a chance of them getting lost in the train’s baggage car, so Dean had ordered them loaded on the private car along with their personal suitcases.

As she and Sarah removed their coats and hats and settled into the overstuffed, velvet-upholstered seats, Dori felt a renewed sense of gratitude that her mother had become best friends with Eloise, and that Eloise had been so generous and kind all these many years.

“Has your mother or father mentioned Kase in their recent letters?” Dori asked as the train chugged out of the station.

Sarah turned from gazing out the window to give Dori a look full of sadness. “Only to say he seems to withdraw more by the day. He rarely comes into the house anymore, choosing to sleep in the staff quarters above the stable. I think the only thing that coaxes him to the house is Aunt Dulcie’s cooking.”

Dori thought of the tempting, wonderful meals the woman who had married Sarah’s uncle had prepared on Dori’s past visits to Hudson House. Dulcie’s biscuits were something of a legend in the Silver Bluff community, and no one turned down an invitation for a meal. Even if it were something as simple as stew, it would be delicious.

“At least something lures him out of his workshop,” Dori said, wishing she could do something to help. “Perhaps he’ll catch a bit of the Christmas spirit and join in the festivities.”

“While you’re making wishes, you might as well ask Santa Claus to send us two handsome fellas to keep us entertained while we travel home.”

Dori grinned. “If we venture to the dining car, maybe they’ll be waiting for us. It’s almost Christmas. Anything is possible.”