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Leslie nodded and stumbled awkwardly out of the room. She didn’t stop for anything or anyone. She didn’t take the bus home that day. She ran past the school’s track-and-field hut, through the open meadows that were just starting to pop with spring wildflowers, down the back alleys of Broken Yoke where trash cans overflowed. She followed Lightning River all the way to the turnoff for the interstate, and only stopped running when the stitch in her side doubled her over.

By the time she went home it was almost dark. She was drenched in sweat, breathing so heavily that she felt dizzy. Her parents weren’t home, but that didn’t surprise her. She fell on the old plaid sofa that smelled of beer and cheap perfume and wondered just how fast your heart had to beat before it killed you.

The next day she felt better. The horrid feelings that had curdled her insides yesterday were locked down so tight there was no way they could get out again. She was completely calm. She got to school early.

The door to Mrs. Bickley’s class was already open, but the English teacher wasn’t there.

Leslie went over to the woman’s desk and pulled on the top drawer, relieved to find it unlocked. She’d half expected to have to pry it open. Inside were all the supplies Mrs. Bickley treasured, everything tucked away in tidy little compartments.

She fished the jar she’d brought out of her backpack, unscrewed the lid, and dumped a quart of raw honey into the drawer.

She didn’t expect to get away with it. She didn’t really care. She was almost in a stupor, watching the honey spread in a slow, golden river over everything in its path.

When the classroom door opened and closed, she knew it would be Bickley. Drawing a deep breath, she straightened, fully prepared for a shriek of horror and a swift march down to the principal’s office. The wrath of God was about to descend on her pretty quick.

But when she lifted her eyes, it wasn’t Mrs. Bickley she saw coming toward her. It was Matt D’Angelo.

He didn’t say a word, and neither did she. She watched him inspect the damage. His features didn’t give much away. Maybe his mouth tightened a little.

Finally, he looked back at her. “I thought you were just fooling everyone with your grades, that you were really pretty smart. But you’re actually dumber than a box of bent nails.”

Those were practically the first words he’d said to her since February. She crossed her arms and gave him a sullen look. “I wasn’t expecting an audience.”

“Doesn’t matter if anyone sees you or not. Bickley’s gonna know you did this. Everybody will.”

Leslie shrugged. “I don’t care.”

“No reason why you should, I guess. Not after what that bitch said in front of everyone yesterday.”

She blinked. She’d never heard Matt say anything remotely nasty before. Maybe she wasn’t the only one who would end up in hell someday.

He went quiet again, staring down at the mess in the drawer. He shook his head as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“How did you know I was in here?” she asked.

“I watched you from Coach Mitterman’s office. I’m his gopher this semester. I figured you weren’t coming in early just to make points with Bickley, so I thought I’d check it out.”

“I’m glad you didn’t get here in time to stop me,” she said in a determined voice. “You couldn’t. And I’m not going to run away and pretend I don’t know anything.”

He snorted. “No. You wouldn’t want someone to keep you from getting a three-day suspension. If not more.”

“I don’t care if they expel me from school for good. It will just be what everyone thinks I deserve anyway. No one expects anyone in the Meadows family ever to amount to anything. Including you.”

He frowned, looking annoyed. “I’ve never said that.”

“You don’t have to.”

He stared at her, hard, while she continued to throw him mutinous looks.

“You know what your problem is, Leslie?” he said at last. “You’re so busy trying to make sure no one thinks you care about anything that you don’t know how to act normal. You have a chip on your shoulder as big as Mount Rushmore. You never say please or thank you or…” He gave a rough laugh, as though disgusted with himself. “Oh, forget it. Bickley’s gonna come in here any minute and have a cow. You’ll probably make matters worse by spitting in her eye, and then she’ll flatten you but good. That’s probably what you need anyway.”

Surprisingly, his apparent dislike for her hurt more than anything Danny LeBrock had ever said. Tears stung the back of her eyes, but she refused to let them come. “Then you’d better get out of here. I wouldn’t want you to see what happens if she tries to lay a finger on me.”

He sighed heavily and shook his head. “There’s no saving you. Danny was wrong. You’re not Hope-Les. You’re Clue-Les.”

She bristled. “At least I’m not so full of myself that I have to duck my big head to get it through the doorway.”

He gave her that smile that made the girls giggle nervously. “Smart aleck.”

“Over-achiever.”

“Idiot.”

They subsided into a strange silence then, and in that moment the classroom door opened again. This time it was Mrs. Bickley. She approached them both with a frown between her overly plucked eyebrows.

It didn’t take her long to see the damage. The honey sent up a sickening sweet odor that began to turn Leslie’s stomach a little. When it came right down to it, she wasn’t sure just how she’d handle the woman’s reaction.

Mrs. Bickley, as pale as her crisp, white blouse, ignored Matt completely and snapped her gaze over to Leslie. She knew perfectly well who the guilty party was. “How could you do such a hateful thing?” she asked through the middle of her teeth.

“Actually, she didn’t,” Matt spoke up from behind her. “I did.”

Even after all these years it was still so clear to Leslie—the shock on Mrs. Bickley’s face, her refusal to believe Matt capable of such a trick. He stuck to his story, that he had done it because she had given him a B on the last test when he’d been sure his essay had deserved an A. Leslie had come into the classroom after he’d poured the honey, he told the astonished teacher. When Leslie opened her mouth to protest, he gave her such a threatening look that she clammed up again, so shocked she couldn’t have spoken anyway.

What could Principal Smith do in the face of such a calm, unshakable confession? Matt was suspended for three days.

No one had ever gone out on a limb like that for Leslie. All her fights had been fought alone, and she was shaken by Matt’s gesture, then suspicious. Why had he done it?

Finally, she recognized it for what it was.

On the third day of his suspension, Leslie hitched a ride up to Lightning River Lodge. Mr. D’Angelo was in the lobby, stoking the huge fireplace with pieces of wood as big as the television set at home. She asked to see Matt, and when he scowled and told her Matt wasn’t allowed to see anyone, she begged. He told her she could have five minutes.

She found him around the back of the lodge, chopping wood. There was so much of it piled around him that he looked like he’d been doing that chore for a week. When he saw her, he stopped and waited for her to reach him, wiping sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his shirt.

He didn’t look mad, though she wouldn’t have blamed him if he had. All the words she’d rehearsed up the mountain road deserted her. Panic began a slow crawl up her spine because she knew she wasn’t going to get this right.

He frowned. “Now what have you done?”

She shook her head, unable to speak.

He pointed to her face. “Then what’s with the plumbing problem?”

She realized that her cheeks were wet with tears. Humiliating. Such a stupid reaction. She wished she could turn around and run down the mountain, because she realized that Matt D’Angelo had offered her something she didn’t think existed. With his gesture of friendship, he had changed her whole life.

She remembered the short lecture he’d given her in Mrs. Bickley’s classroom. Plunging in before she lost her courage, she said, “You were right. I do have a chip on my shoulder. But you’re wrong about one thing. I do know how to say thank you, because I’m saying it now. Thank you.”

He stared at her for a long moment, while her heart missed beats. Then his deep, generous smile was all the reward she could have asked for.

From that moment on, they were friends.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE REALIZATION that her feet were freezing brought Leslie back to the present. She checked her watch. She’d been standing—lost in those early memories—on the snowy trail that led down to Lightning Lake for twenty minutes. She turned and trekked back up the path, recognizing this small side trip to the lake as a subconscious delaying tactic.

Why should she delay entering the lodge? The Matt D’Angelo she knew had never been the type to hold a grudge. If he was upset about last night, he’d say so, and they’d talk it out.

But that’s your real fear, isn’t it? What if he’s not the Matt D’Angelo you know anymore?

The sort of thing he’d been through last year could change even the strongest person.

She drew a deep breath. With renewed determination she turned away from those uncertainties. They’d been friends too long to let something like this spoil everything.

Halfway up the trail, Leslie encountered Tessa D’Angelo.

Last year Nick’s daughter, full of adolescent high spirits and hormonal confusion, had inflicted a great deal of worry on the family, but she seemed to have settled down considerably since her father had married Kari. She was normally cheerful and upbeat, but this morning she wasn’t smiling.

“Good morning,” Leslie said as the teenager approached.

“Nothing good about it,” Tessa replied.

“What’s wrong?”

“If you’re smart, you’ll turn around and head back down the mountain right now before it’s too late.”

“Why?”

Tessa jerked her head toward the lodge entrance. “World War Three is about to break out in there between Nonno Sam and Mr. Waxman.”

Leslie gave her a surprised look. Sam D’Angelo had been friends with Leo Waxman, the town electrician, for years. Both men served on the town council together, and she knew that Sam and his wife, Rose, were godparents to Leo’s son. “But they’re like brothers.”

“Yeah, well, that was before a chipmunk somehow got in the back door and Mr. Waxman’s German shepherd chased it all over the place and destroyed everything in its path. It looks like someone took a chainsaw to the lobby.”

Leslie noticed that Tessa gingerly cradled a dish towel in her arms, and suddenly the material moved. “Is that it?” Leslie asked.

As though the chipmunk wanted to acknowledge her interest, it squeaked softly.

“Yep. Poor thing is scared to death, but it will chill out once I let it go down by the lake. I just wish it hadn’t climbed up the Christmas tree.”

“Not the big one in the lobby?” Leslie said, almost in a whisper.

“That’s the one.”

Leslie’s eyes widened. After all these years she knew the D’Angelo family Christmas traditions very well. Sam D’Angelo’s hunt for the perfect blue spruce—one for the lobby and one for the family’s private quarters—was treated like a mission handed to him by God. And Rose spent hours decorating them, insisting that every ornament be hung just right, that every light be held erect with a pipe cleaner so that it stood like a candle.

“The tree fell over,” Tessa continued. “Dad and Uncle Matt are trying to get it to stand again, but I think it’s a goner.” She placed a gentle hand on top of the towel, as though offering comfort to the little creature inside. “Really, if you were a chipmunk being chased by a big dog, wouldn’t you head up the nearest tree to escape? And it’s not like it planned to come into the lodge. It was probably looking for somewhere out of the cold.”

“Let’s just hope it’s the only chipmunk with that idea.”

“Don’t even think it,” Tessa said, starting off down the path again. “Good luck. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

The chaos Tessa had described met Leslie when she entered the lobby. The Christmas tree, which topped out at twelve feet so it wouldn’t be dwarfed by the high, beamed ceiling, was awkwardly being held upright by Nick. Leo Waxman hung on to the collar of his excited dog, who barked repeatedly at nothing in particular. Kari and Rose D’Angelo were picking up fallen ornaments. Broken tree limbs dangled, raining needles everywhere. Decorations swung back and forth on the tree as though trapped in a gentle wind.

Leslie caught sight of Matt on the floor, half-hidden by the limbs. He was on his stomach, trying to replant the tree in its stand and evidently meeting with little success. The massive spruce tipped every time Nick loosened his hold.

“Can’t you make that beast be quiet?” Sam D’Angelo growled at Leo from his wheelchair. He held a cardboard box on his lap, filled with broken ornaments.

“He’s excited,” Leo explained, stroking his dog’s head to no avail. “When that damned thing came charging at me, he thought I was being attacked. He’s trained to protect me.”

“From a rodent no bigger than your fist?” Sam exclaimed in disgust. “That dog is blind as well as stupid.”

“Brutus isn’t to blame if—”

“Leo!” Rose spoke up. “Take the dog outside. Sam, sit there and be silent. Shouting at one another doesn’t help.” As Leo hurried out the front door with Brutus, Matt’s mother caught sight of Leslie and nodded. “Hello, Leslie. As you can see, we’ve lost a little of the Christmas spirit this morning.”

“I heard. Anything I can do to help?”

“Can you grab one end of this?” Kari said from the side of a huge leather couch that sat in front of the fireplace. “I think some ornaments rolled under it.”

Hearing her request, Nick stopped fiddling with the tree and stuck his head around the spreading limbs to shake his head at his wife. “No, you don’t. You’re not lifting the couch. With or without someone’s help.” He threw an irritable glance toward the floor, where Matt was groaning now under the effort of trying to wedge the tree back in the stand. “Come on, Matt. What’s taking so long? Trade places with me if you can’t manage it.”

“Damn it. Just give me a minute,” Matt called up at him.

That impatient cross exchange made Leslie realize that the brothers were out of sorts with one another. Did Nick think he could make a faster job of it? Was a lack of dexterity and strength in Matt’s left hand making him feel as though he wasn’t up to the task? Or was it all just the frustration of the situation?

Rose picked up a delicate-looking silver sleigh ornament and saw that one of the runners dangled. She made a little sound of distress. “This was given to me when I was a little girl,” she said. “By my grandmother.”