Maggie Shayne - An Enchanted Season

Startled, Rachel and Steve exchanged looks before complying; they felt the eyes of the rest of the congregation upon them as they did so, as well as the warmth of everyone’s smiles.

“As we all know, the Bethel Inn has hit some hard times in recent months. Including to the point that this loving couple gave up their dreams of holding a big wedding, because they couldn’t afford it anymore. Well, it being the season for miracles…and aided by the modern miracle of e-mail”—Pastor Jonathan chuckled—“we have managed to pull off a small miracle of our own. Steve, Rachel…if you will permit your friends here in the community to do so, we’d like to give you a big wedding day, right here, right now!

“We already have the civil paperwork from the county, since you picked it up last week…and our three newest guests managed to smuggle in your best outfits,” he added, smiling and nodding at Bella, Cassie, and Mike, who gave unrepentant little smiles and waves to the startled couple. “And since everyone is already here, we all thought, why not celebrate not only a birth, but a wedding as well today? What do you say?” the pastor asked them.

Encouraging words were called out from the sea of faces lining the church. “Go on!” “Do it!” “Don’t let ’er get away!” “Don’t let him get away!”

Laughter greeted that last outburst; then the congregation quieted, waiting for their reply. Rachel glanced at their three conspirator guests, then looked up at Steve. “Well, you want to get hitched a few days early?”

“More than anything in the world,” Steve agreed, before pulling her close enough to kiss. The sound of the pastor clearing his throat broke them apart. Keeping one arm around his fiancée’s shoulder, Steve looked at the community members gathered in the church around them, warmed beyond words. “Thank you all for this incredible surprise. I—”

Several arriving figures at the entry doors caught his attention. And Rachel’s. She squinted, then widened her eyes. “Mom? Dad?”

“We weren’t sure we’d make it, the roads are that messy!” Rachel’s mother called out from the back of the sanctuary, unwrapping the scarf covering her face. The others resolved themselves into Rachel’s siblings. “Sorry we couldn’t make it for the service.”

“God forgives when it’s with good intentions. You’re just in time to get ready for the wedding. Everyone else, there will be a half-hour break while beautiful things are done to the bride, and the groom is wrestled into his suit,” Pastor Jonathan joked. “Tea and coffee are waiting in the fellowship room. God bless you and hold you in His heart!”

A hand on his elbow distracted Steve from following Rachel as she made her way toward her family, somehow brought all the way out from Des Moines for the occasion. Turning, he saw it was Mr. Thomas Harrod, the mustached, stiffly postured bank owner. Fear raced through him. Didn’t we have enough to pay the mortgage?

The older, graying gentleman cleared his throat with a touch of awkwardness. “My, ah, wife pointed out to me that our son, Richard, cannot make cheese. If he cannot make cheese, she cannot eat cheese. Not the Bethel Inn Blue Ribbon Cheese, at any rate. And then she gave me a half-hour lecture on how long the Bethel Inn has been operating, how prosperous it normally is, and…well, she made a lot of sense, once my ears stopped ringing.

“So I’m letting you know that I am going to give the Bethel Inn special dispensation, a full month’s leeway in its mortgage payments. Of course, you didn’t need it for this month,” Mr. Har-rod added under his breath. “But the offer stands. My wife said, you don’t make a business prosperous by trying to pretend your best clients aren’t all that good…and your family has been very good to mine for a very long time. She said I owe you …and I find I’m inclined to agree.”

“She did?” Steve asked, too startled to say anything else, though he did manage to shake the hand the bank owner offered to him.

“She did. That, and she called me nothing but Ebenezer this, and Mr. Scrooge that, for the whole length of the storm,” he muttered, smiling slightly, wryly. “May your own wife not have quite so sharp a tongue, whenever she’s upset with you. Or at least, may you give her no reason to use it on you.”

“Thank you—and a Merry Christmas to you, Mr. Harrod, ” Steve enunciated carefully, making the man laugh. As the bank owner left him, a touch on his other elbow turned him back around. It was Mike; his two traveling companions had vanished, no doubt to bring Rachel her clothes.

Mike clasped his hands firmly, then nodded politely. “I just wanted you to know that Cassie, Bella, and I will not be returning to the Inn after the wedding. It’s time for us to be on our way. But we enjoyed our stay very much, and we’re very happy for the two of you. May the blessings of God—by whichever name you call Him—shine upon you and your new family like the Star of Bethlehem. Love is a miracle we must not forget to honor. It has been a pleasure seeing you honor that love with your wife-to-be.”

“Thank you. Are you sure you cannot stay?” Steve found himself asking. “We’ve enjoyed hosting you very much.”

“Alas, no. We have a long way to go, to get to our next destination,” Mike demurred. “But it was good to see you and your impending bride getting a little good fortune back into your lives.”

“Will you at least come back?” he asked next. He wanted to ask, Did you cause all of these miracles that have been happening? But there were too many people around, and Steve wasn’t going to spoil it by looking the proverbial gift horse in the mouth. It was enough to know that subtle miracles had happened…like this big Christmas Day wedding everyone else had planned.

Mike merely smiled. “If we can, it would be a delight. Now, if you don’t mind, I have your suit waiting in the men’s room. I trust I will not have to ‘wrestle’ you into it?”

Steve laughed at that. “Believe me, I’m more than eager.”

RACHEL GAVE HER SITUATION A LOT OF THOUGHT, AS HERtwo guests, her mother, and her sisters fluttered around her, helping her into her dress, then fixing her hair and face. It wasn’t until they were almost ready that she had a moment alone with Cassie and Bella. “How did you do it?”

The two women exchanged looks before Bella asked, “Do what?”

“Steve and I had a talk the other night. About the one log in the front woodstove that just keeps burning. The spark plugs that were an exact match. The insulation that wouldn’t run out. Having on hand the three helpers we needed to keep our inn running. And now, getting my family here in time for an unexpected wedding on the tail end of a big blizzard—Mike using my e-mail, and the pastor saying it was all arranged via e-mail!” She looked up into Cassie’s blue eyes. “ You somehow did it all, didn’t you? Or at least had a hand in it. It had to have been you. How? And why?”

The two women exchanged looks. Cassie sighed and shrugged. “We do this every winter solstice, that’s why. Northern or Southern Hemisphere, we seek out miracles that need to happen, and make sure they happen.”

“Sometimes they happen on their own, and sometimes we just…help them along,” Bella admitted with a shrug of her own. “It’s been our joy, and our assignment, for as long as we can remember.”

“Assignment?” Rachel asked, confused. “From who?”

Both women just looked upward for a moment, then back at Rachel again with identical smiles. Cassie reached over to where she had laid her coat and muff on the counter in the ladies’ room, pulling a small, roundish, wrapped present out of one of her coat pockets. “Here. One more gift for the two of you. It’s not frankincense, but then that fell out of fashion ages ago. And it’s far more practical for you.”