Sleigh Bell Dreams (Mistletoe Meadows Sweet Christmas #1)

Chapter 2

Terry couldn’t stop the swelling of her heart as she saw the familiar buildings of her hometown. Driving down Main Street was like driving down memory lane. And she smiled as she saw the coffee shop and the courthouse and the road where she would turn to go to her clinic.

But there were no for rent signs anywhere. She’d taken a couple of side streets and looked at different apartment buildings, willing to live anywhere.

She had five siblings, and while one brother had moved back in with her parents, it was possible that one of them might put her up or at least let her stay on the couch.

She hadn’t realized that housing was so tight.

The first place she was going to go was her sister Amy’s. She had a pet sanctuary outside of town, and while she probably didn’t have any room in her one-bedroom bungalow, Amy was often in touch with people, just because of folks stepping out to adopt a pet or drop one off or donate supplies. People sometimes had to give their pets up when they moved, and Amy might know of any places that were available.

She was the only person Terry could think of, but maybe she was panicking just a little. She hadn’t realized it was going to be this hard.

Still, it felt good to be back in town, and she smiled as she drove through and out the other side. Farmlands almost immediately opened up on either side of the road, with the mountains rising all around them. Mistletoe Meadows was almost on top of Mistletoe Mountain. And perfectly situated for its name, since they got snow when the lower lying areas didn’t.

Still, the views were gorgeous, and she took a moment to admire them. She didn’t see views like this in Richmond. Ever.

Her sister didn’t live far out of town, and she soon saw the mailbox in the shape of a dog and grinned. It was looking a little ragged, a little older, a little faded, but still beloved and familiar.

Putting her turn signal on, even though there weren’t any cars on the road, she pulled down the lane and drove the short distance to Amy’s spread.

The familiar bark of dogs greeted her, some of them quite insistent and loud. It sounded like she had a couple of hounds, and there were two large draft horses in the small pasture area.

She didn’t often have big animals in her sanctuary, but every once in a while, she got some in.

Those looked well taken care of, and if Terry remembered correctly, they were Percherons.

Amy, carrying a bucket in each hand, walked from the small supply shed to the larger kennel area and looked up. Her eyes narrowed for a moment before her face broke into a big grin. She set the buckets down and came over to Terry’s car as she parked it.

“I knew you were coming in today, but I wasn’t sure I was going to get to see you!” Amy said as Terry got out and they embraced.

“I can’t begin to tell you how good it feels to be home and know that I’m going to get to stay.”

“I know you’d always talked about that. It’s kind of like your dreams are coming true.” Amy lifted her shoulder. “Like getting your doctoral degree wasn’t a dream come true.”

“Honestly, it’s nothing compared to what I feel today. I mean, that was kind of a means to the end, but my goal had always been to come back to my hometown and set up a practice. I can hardly practice without the degree, but this is the completion. The full circle.”

“Monday will be the day,” Amy said with a knowing smile.

“Exactly,” Terry replied, loving that Amy knew exactly how she felt. Monday was the day she would open her clinic, and that would be the day her actual dreams came true.

She looked around, the sky big and open, mountains visible in the distance, and the air feeling fresh and clean. There was just something about mountain air that felt different than air in the low country. Scientifically, she could recite the composition of the air and explain what made it different, but she knew it wasn’t just the composition. It was the state of mind that being in the mountains gave her.

“So, are you moving in with Mom like you planned?”

“I don’t think so. I might not have a choice. But with Gilbert and everything...” Her voice trailed off, and Amy’s expression dropped.

“That’s terrible. So sad to think that something like that is happening to such a wonderful person, first of all, and also to such a wonderful family. Honestly, I’ve struggled sometimes with why God allows that.”

“Me too. I’m not going to lie. I’ve seen a lot of things that just don’t seem fair or right, but it’s not my responsibility to decide what’s fair and right. I’m not God, and I’m not going to pretend to be.”

“Well, at least you’ve retained a little bit of your humility despite your years in med school,” Amy teased.

“I think I’m a lot more humble than that,” Terry said, laughing. “Although, maybe the fact that I think I am actually shows I’m not.”

They laughed together.

“So what are you going to do?” Amy finally said, turning and starting to walk toward where she set the buckets. Terry fell into step with her. She’d helped Amy so often over the last few years, and before that, growing up, they’d always been close. Amy was like her best friend, and now, she was actually going to get to live in the same town.

“I was hoping that you might know someplace that’s open. I’ve searched the ads and looked everywhere, and I just can’t find anything.”

She had been through a lot in med school and residency. Faced emergencies, seen people die, watched families grieve. She knew, on a scale of importance, whether or not she could find a house was very, very low. At least for her. The pain and suffering that she’d had no idea of before she left for med school had shocked her and had changed her in a lot of different ways. She was a lot more aware of the fact that people were more important than things. That life was transient, not that she hadn’t known it before, but it had been brought home to her on multiple levels.

It had made her a better person, she thought. A better Christian too. Everything that she’d been brought up to believe had been borne out in her studies, even though most of the people around her, sometimes it felt like all, were not Christian. They did not believe and would walk away from her because of her beliefs if they knew.

Maybe that’s why more people didn’t speak out, which was sad. That being an adult, getting a doctorate degree, made her feel like she was back in preschool, where children didn’t know any better than to make fun of people they didn’t agree with or who were different. But in today’s society, it felt like Christians were fair game for otherwise totally sane adults to revert to their childhood and be unkind.

Her sister had picked up her buckets, and she had gone ahead, opening the door where she knew she would be going to put dog food into the feeders.

“Well, I honestly can’t think of a single thing. Nothing like what you’d want.”

“What was that supposed to mean?”

“You’re a doctor now. You probably want something really nice or at least in the nice section of town.”

“There aren’t very many not-good sections of Mistletoe Meadows. It’s not like it’s a big town.”

“Well, you know what I mean.”

She kind of did, although she wouldn’t have said there was a bad section anywhere in Mistletoe Meadows. There were just some smaller houses, apartments, and she’d already looked in all of those.

Amy set the buckets down, and though the roar of barking was almost deafening, she stopped at the first pen and petted the muzzle of the dog who stood there.

All of the dogs had outside runs, and Amy cleaned them all every day.

“How’s funding?” Terry asked suddenly, knowing that it had always been a struggle for Amy to make enough money to survive and also to feed the animals. Then, she’d gotten a sponsor from a place down the mountain, and she hadn’t had to worry about it for several years.

“Funny you should ask,” Amy said while measuring out dog food and pouring it into the feeder. “We lost it.”

“You lost it?”

“Yeah. Not because of anything we did, but I was training someone to open up another pet sanctuary down closer to the garage that had sponsored us. They shifted their sponsorship from me to them.”

“You’re kidding!” Terry said, trying not to be outraged. “You mean you actually trained the person who took your funding?”

“I knew when I was doing it that was probably what was going to happen, and in fact I spoke with the Richmond Rebels garage, and they asked me specifically if that was okay. Of course it was okay. I mean, it meant more pets will be able to be saved. I wasn’t going to say no.”

“What about your funding?”

“I’ll just do what I did before. I’ll have to have more fundraisers, more eyes in town, make more people aware that they need to donate. I was able to make it before.”

“But you expanded on the basis of the funding that you received. You have a lot bigger budget now than you used to.”

“Something will happen,” Amy said with a smile as she patted the next dog on the head and then poured his food into the bowl. “Maybe I’ll have a sister, who happens to be a doctor, because doctors make a lot of money, and maybe she’ll open an office in town, and who knows, maybe she’ll feel inspired to donate to the cause.”

“You know I don’t have anything. I’ve spent everything that I’ve made since I started working on trying to pay my debts back. You can’t imagine what having that kind of debt hanging over the top of your head does to your psyche. I can’t stand the stress.” She shivered. It was true. She had used a lot of positive thinking techniques, and redirection, to try to keep herself from dwelling on it, but she couldn’t stop paying it back with everything she had. She even thought about getting a second job, just so she could pay it back faster. Had anyone ever heard of a doctor with two jobs?

But she admired Amy’s faith. She shared it, but it was a faith that said she had to put her boots on and work for it too. She couldn’t just pray and assume that God was going to drop it in her lap. That was seldom the way it happened.

It reminded her of her other problem. She was going to need to do something to solve her housing crisis. God wasn’t going to just drop a house or apartment in her lap. But He could open something up for her.

“You know, depending on how much you want to fix things up, that old house at the edge of town is for sale.”

“The one that they used to give haunted house tours at Halloween?”

She had never gone. She wasn’t the slightest bit interested in seeing any kind of haunted house or dealing with the spirit world. God clearly said necromancers were an abomination, and there was no way she was doing anything like that.

Not to mention, she was a scaredy-cat, and it gave her the heebie-jeebies.

“Yeah. That one. It’s not very expensive.”

“I don’t have any money for a down payment. Seriously. Just what is in my bank account from the last two paychecks. Since I write a check out at the beginning of every month toward my student loans.” That was after she paid her rent and utilities. She didn’t even have a car payment, since she drove around in the one that her dad had helped her buy when she was still in high school.

Thoughts of her dad made her smile, although it made the familiar sad feeling clench around her heart. She missed him.

“Good to know.” Amy had moved on to the next dog, petted its head, and fed it. She straightened, putting her hands on her hips and looking up at the ceiling.

“This will be a long shot, but I know that Judd Landis is living in a duplex in town. He’s only living on one side from what I can see. And the only reason I know this is because I was out catching a stray cat on that street. Anyway, it looks like the other side is open, although I can’t say for sure.”

Amy shrugged her shoulders and lifted her hands up. “Maybe someone’s living there and they were gone for the day. But I was there for several hours, and I didn’t see anyone. The windows look dark too, if you know what I mean. It was early evening by the time I left, and everyone was inside.”

It cooled down quickly in the mountains once the sun went down, especially this time of year. They were always ten or more degrees cooler than folks in the valley.

“I see. So he doesn’t have an ad up or anything?” Judd Landis was a name she recognized. She thought she went to school with him, but the name didn’t really bring a picture to her mind, other than dark hair. And dark eyes.

It wasn’t someone she talked to a lot in school. Still, he would be a local boy and would probably know her. Considering that she was one of the most celebrated academic students in the school at the time.

“No. Not that I know of. But I’m not scouring the ads, and I assume you didn’t find one.”

“No. I didn’t,” she said, feeling a little foolish as she carried the bucket down to the next pen and used the hose to fill up the water. In the pen was a sweet little terrier mix, very happy and also adorably cute.

“This one’s a little darling,” she said, bending down and putting her hands in for him to sniff before she started to scratch his head.

“He’s sweet, and he breaks my heart a little, because his owner adored him. But her children moved her to a nursing home, and none of her kids wanted her dog. So he came here. He’s been here about six months or so.”

“That’s sad.” She scratched his head a little more.

“You can adopt him. You know, I’ll even waive the fee for you.”

“Wow. Family discount,” she said, knowing that her sister worked on donations exclusively and didn’t charge anyone anything.

She had a little bit of an in, because her best friend was a veterinarian, and he donated all the spay and neuter operations, as well as the shots to get the animals up to date. It was his contribution to the sanctuary. He also came out and helped. He must have already been at his practice today, since there weren’t too many times that she saw Amy without Jones, unless Jones was working.