One Snowy Night Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  ONE SNOWY NIGHT

  “Heartfelt and homespun! Curl up under a quilt and escape into this hopeful read.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Lori Wilde

  “Stitched through with heart and hope, One Snowy Night is a story that will renew your faith in love, family, and the possibility of fresh starts. In short, this is the novel we all need right now.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Marie Bostwick

  “Pulls readers into an enchanted frozen land filled with people with warm hearts. So curl up with your favorite quilt and read Patience Griffin’s newest book.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Jodi Thomas

  PRAISE FOR THE OTHER NOVELS OF

  PATIENCE GRIFFIN

  “Griffin’s lyrical and moving debut marks her as a most talented newcomer to the romance genre.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Griffin gets loss, love, and laughter like no other writer of contemporary romance.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Grace Burrowes

  “A captivating story of four friends, two madcap romances, an idyllic Scottish town, and its endearingly stubborn but loyal inhabitants. . . . Witty, warmhearted, and totally charming!”

  —Shelley Noble, New York Times bestselling author of A Resolution at Midnight

  “Griffin has quilted together a wonderful, heartwarming story that will convince you of the power of love.”

  —Janet Chapman, New York Times bestselling author of Call It Magic

  “A life-affirming story of love, loss, and redemption. . . . Griffin seamlessly pieces compelling characters, a spectacular setting, and a poignant romance into a story as warm and beautiful as an heirloom quilt.”

  —Diane Kelly, author of the House-Flipper Mysteries

  “With the backdrop of a beautiful town in Scotland, Griffin’s story is charming and heartwarming. The characters are quirky and wonderful and easy to feel an instant attachment and affection for. Be forewarned: You’re likely to shed happy tears.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Definitely a ‘must read’ for any woman with romance in her heart.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “[I] laughed, cried, sighed, and thoroughly enjoyed every word of this emotional story set in a small coastal village in Scotland.”

  —The Romance Dish

  “A heartwarming romance series!”

  —Woman’s World

  “A fun hop to scenic Scotland for the price of a paperback.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Draws the reader into life in small-town Scotland. [Griffin’s] use of language and descriptive setting [made] me feel like I was part of the cast.”

  —Open Book Society

  ALSO BY PATIENCE GRIFFIN

  Kilts and Quilts Series

  To Scotland with Love

  Meet Me in Scotland

  Some Like It Scottish

  The Accidental Scot

  The Trouble with Scotland

  It Happened in Scotland

  The Laird and I (novella)

  Blame It on Scotland

  Kilt in Scotland

  A JOVE BOOK

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2021 by Patience Jackson

  Excerpt from Once Upon a Cabin by Patience Griffin copyright © 2021 by Patience Jackson

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  A JOVE BOOK, BERKLEY, and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Ebook ISBN: 9780593101483

  First Edition: February 2021

  Cover art © Anna Kmet

  Cover design by Judith Lagerman

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0

  For BrendaRae and Wanda

  Thank you, BrendaRae, for opening up your home and chauffeuring me all over Alaska. You’re not only a terrific tour guide but an amazing quilter!

  Wanda, thank you for answering the call of adventure again. We have had quite a few over the years, from Girl Scout campouts, to Maine, to Puerto Rico, to Scotland, and most recently to Alaska. You are my favorite travel buddy!

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise for Patience Griffin

  Also by Patience Griffin

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from Once Upon a Cabin

  About the Author

  Serenity Prayer

  God grant me the serenity

  to accept the things I cannot change;

  courage to change the things I can;

  and wisdom to know the difference.

  Chapter 1

  THIRTY-FOUR-YEAR-OLD HOPE McKNIGHT tried not to watch the clock, which hung on the dingy blue wall of her minuscule living room. But it was impossible to keep from glancing at it every other second. She turned and gazed out the frost-covered window into the pitch-black of night and shivered before peeking at the clock again.

  Ten thirty.

  Ella should’ve been home from the football game an hour ago. Calling and texting her daughter’s cell phone hadn’t eased Hope’s worry, as Ella hadn’t responded.

  Hope always agonized over Ella’s safety when it snowed, even when it was only a dusting. Sweet Home was remote, with winding roads leading in and out of the town, population 573—Alaska Native people, transplants, and multigenerational Alaskans like herself—and Hope knew better than anyone how treacherous the roads could be. Plus there was a deeper threat hanging over their little house. For the past two Friday nights, her sixteen-year-old daughter had staggered in the front door, clearly drunk. Hope felt defeated . . . and guilty. Lecturing Ella from birth about the pitfalls of alcohol—even being the head of the local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving—hadn’t prevented her daughter from getting caught up in Alaska’s number one pastime.

  Is Ella doomed to repeat my mistakes?

  Hope tried to shove the thought from her mind, but she couldn’t stop feeling—down to her bones—that Ella’s drinking was inherently her fault.

  Hope glanced at the car keys hanging on the hook by t
he front door. At least there was that: Ella wouldn’t be driving. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t getting a ride home with another inebriated teen.

  To stop fretting, Hope pushed herself off the couch to rearrange the furniture in her living room, anything to occupy her mind. At one time she’d thought about getting a degree in interior design, but that was before. And because her living room was tiny, the rearranging took no time at all. She needed something else to keep from going crazy with worry. She strode to the closet and pulled out a rucksack. “I’ll start packing without her,” she said to the empty house. Every year they took several snow camping trips in the thick forests surrounding Sweet Home, where Hope could test Ella’s survival skills.

  Hope’s gaze traveled to the clock once again. Yes, according to the experts, only five percent of what people worried about actually happened. But Hope knew that danger lurked around every corner, ready to ruin lives. She was living proof of how a good life could turn awful in an instant. And how, once things went bad, there was no way to turn back time and recapture the joy she once had. When her parents named her Hope, they’d made a grievous error . . . because she had none. She hadn’t been prepared for what life had thrown at her. Her job one now? To prepare Ella for what lay ahead, good or bad.

  She went to Ella’s room and unearthed her daughter’s backpack from beneath a pile of clothes. As an exhausted and overworked single parent, she’d thrown in the towel about Ella keeping her room picked up. In the vast scheme of things, an untidy room wasn’t important. Having the skills to make it alone was. Knowing how to survive in the wild was key, too. Their camping trip would only be two days—Saturday and Sunday—the first days Hope had had off since September.

  She dug past the second layer of clothes on the floor but couldn’t find Ella’s wool socks. Just as she was going to look in her daughter’s closet, Hope’s phone rang. She raced for the other room and caught it on the tail end of the second ring, knowing it had to be Ella.

  “Where are you?”

  But Hope was wrong. It was Piney Douglas, the closest thing she had to a mother now. Not that she didn’t love Piney, but Hope’s heart sank. Where are you, Ella?

  “Where am I?” Piney chuckled. “I’m in my drafty apartment above the Hungry Bear”—the grocery store–diner where Hope worked. “Where else would I be?”

  “I thought you were Ella.” Hope could’ve added that Piney might’ve been anywhere, even the cabin next door to Hope, where Piney’s boyfriend, Bill Morningstar, lived. Bill was known throughout Sweet Home for making Alaskan quilts.

  Piney clucked. “Ella’s fine. I’d know if something was wrong.”

  Hope sighed, thinking of Piney’s crystals, tarot cards, tea-leaf readings, and other psychic stuff. Bill thought Piney’s belief in the spirit world was complete rubbish and didn’t seem to think twice about voicing his opinion. But Hope had to admit that at times Piney had an uncanny ability to know what was up with Ella, and thus decided that Piney was an intuitive. Piney maintained that she was more in touch with the universe than regular folks because she was born on the summer solstice. She certainly looked like Mother Earth—her gray hair curled at her shoulders, her Bohemian skirts flowing about her, and her wise smiling face, as if she were privy to the world’s inner secrets. A self-proclaimed hippie, Piney had arrived in Alaska in the seventies, searching for the truth, traveling and sleeping in her converted blue school bus, way ahead of the current tiny home movement. Piney and her thirty-four-year-old daughter, Sparkle, had lived in that blue bus until just a few weeks ago, when two suits from Juneau had arrived, asking to purchase the bus for the state capitol as part of a pioneer sculpture. Piney took the money, telling everyone she’d outgrown the bus. But Hope knew money was tight since Sparkle’s emergency appendectomy. It was perfect timing, too, as the apartment above the Hungry Bear had been vacated the week before.

  “Keep your chin up, buttercup,” Piney said. “Don’t let your negative thinking carry you away. Besides, I’m calling to see if you know whether the rumor is true.”

  Once again, Hope glanced at the clock. Ten forty. Maybe she should call the Alaska State Troopers to find Ella. “What rumor?”

  “Mr. Brewster heard at the bank that Donovan Stone is coming home.”

  It felt like a lightning strike. Hope couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think either. “Donovan? Here?” What am I going to do? She hadn’t seen him in seventeen years, not since his grandmother’s funeral . . . where he’d told Hope he never wanted to see her again. And he hadn’t.

  The front door creaked. For a second, Piney’s call kept Hope from being able to move. But as Ella tripped on the threshold, Hope yelled into her phone, “Gotta go.” She lunged for her daughter, breaking her fall and keeping Ella’s head from hitting the corner of the side table.

  Ella’s response was to laugh as she went down. “You should see your face!”

  Hope didn’t think it was funny. “Where have you been?” She kicked the door shut with her foot. Winter was just getting started, and the baseboard heaters were expensive to run.

  Ella stopped laughing. “Chill, Mom. I was just out with friends.” Her words were slurred, and her breath smelled of cheap wine.

  A smell that brought back awful memories.

  “Who drove you home tonight?” Hope hadn’t heard a vehicle. “Were they drinking, too?”

  “I walked home from Lacy’s.”

  “The trail through the forest?” Hope glanced out the window to the black sky beyond. “Did you have your flashlight with you?”

  “I was fine,” Ella said. “I didn’t need my flashlight. I know my way.”

  But Alaska was dangerous!

  Sweet Home wasn’t Anchorage, but someone could’ve kidnapped Ella and Hope would’ve never seen her again. Or Ella could’ve fallen into the river. Or she could’ve encountered a late-to-hibernate bear!

  Hope got to her feet and helped Ella to her feet, too. “We’re going to talk about this tomorrow. I know you’re sad about Grandpa’s passing—”

  Ella swayed from side to side. “Don’t bring Grandpa into this. He has nothing to do with anything.” She wobbled into her room.

  Hope followed and caught the door before Ella slammed it shut. Hope’s heart was heavy, so very heavy, as she watched her teenage daughter stagger across her room and fall into bed. Hope plodded over to Ella and pulled off her boots. “I think your drinking has everything to do with Grandpa’s death.”

  Death was such a harsh word, but it had been harsh for Hope to see her dad lying in that casket, felled by a heart attack. There hadn’t been time for her to fall apart, though. Hope had to keep it together for Ella. Remain strong. Even when she felt her life coming apart at the seams. Sometimes it was best to focus on the small things.

  Hope laid a hand on her daughter’s arm. “I couldn’t find your warm socks.” She congratulated herself for coming up with something so benign.

  Ella rolled her eyes. “Please don’t start lecturing. They’re at the bottom of my closet. I’ll pack in the morning, all right? And yes, you’ve told me a hundred times to take care of my feet, especially during winter.” She rolled away, burying her face in her pillow, which muffled her voice so she sounded a bit like Charlie Brown’s teacher. “It can mean the difference between having a good time and losing toes.”

  Hope wasn’t deterred, only determined. Determined not to waste these two days off from her job at the Hungry Bear. Determined to teach Ella how to start a fire with wet wood and no matches. Mostly, she was determined to get Ella out of the funk she’d slipped into. They both were still reeling from the loss. She’d love to coddle her daughter, but that would be a disservice. “Listen, the world is harsh. It’s my job to teach you survival skills.” Things Hope had been forced to learn on her own, when she had to grow up all at once.

  Ella sighed heavily, as if having a mother were the most annoying t
hing. “You’ve told me a million times: ‘We’re all alone in this world. I better be prepared to fend for myself.’”

  “It’s nice to know you’ve been listening. I’ll see you in the morning.” Hope started to leave, but Ella grabbed her hand.

  “Stay. Tell me a story.” Ella had switched gears again, from cranky teenager to affable angel. She’d always loved stories.

  “Which one do you want to hear? The one where I stared down a bear?”

  “No. I want to hear about Aunt Izzie.”

  Have people been talking? Has someone said something to Ella about Donovan returning to town? “You haven’t asked about Izzie in a long time.”

  “I know. I want to hear about her now.” Ella reached over the side of the bed and pulled a ribbon from between the mattress and box spring. “I found this ribbon to tie on the Memory Tree.”

  Hope reached out and ran her fingers over the ribbon. “We can do that on our camping trip, okay?”

  “Sure,” Ella said.

  Hope had started the Memory Tree after Izzie died. It was the same mountain hemlock where Donovan, on Izzie’s eleventh birthday, had carved her name—Isabella!—declaring that the tree was now hers. She’d been thrilled. After Izzie’s death, Hope had started visiting the tree, bringing trinkets, things Izzie might’ve liked, to decorate it. Over the years, the two of them had continued the tradition, as Ella had enjoyed finding new treasures for Aunt Izzie.

  “Go ahead.” Ella closed her eyes, as if ready for a bedtime story.

  Hope understood. Only the two of them were left. When Ella was little, Hope had started telling her stories about Izzie. It was one of the ways Hope kept her sister alive, and a way for Ella to know her namesake. Hope’s mother had hated that she’d named her child Isabella after her dead sister, telling her it was cruel, making Mom despise Hope more.

  Izzie was always a clear image in Hope’s mind and she never tired of talking about her. “Izzie was just a little thing with a big personality. Even though she was six years younger than me, she tried to act like we were the same age and wanted to do everything I did. Because your grandmother worked nights in the ER, I babysat her a lot. It was fun. I taught her so much, from how to say her ABCs to how to tie her shoes. When we’d go with Mom to the Sisterhood of the Quilt stitch-ins, Izzie and I would set our sewing machines side by side and make all sorts of things from the fabric the Sisterhood would give us. Like matching pillowcases for the bedroom we shared, and blankets for Izzie’s stuffed animals. We used to play Barbies together, bake cookies, and I really didn’t mind if she tagged along with me and my friends.” Most of the time, anyway. Donovan and his brother, Beau, were great about letting Izzie hang out with them, too.