Looking For You All My Life.
Melody Carlson.
To Gabriel Douglas Carison
Love always,
Mom noDDUO
B.
I o3~ to
000.
0 ~ 11~UDUU.
IA' <1.
uring the first week of November, traffic through
town had dwindled to a thin trickle. Besides the
coming and going of the locals, there were only a
few late-season elk hunters cruising down Main Street on
their way back home, some with elk heads and large antler
racks displayed proudly on their hunting rigs (a habit a city
girl found slightly disturbing).
Maggie diverted her attention from the "trophy" tied to
the hood of a dust-covered pickup parked along Main Street
by watching her breath come out in little white puffs that lin-
gered for a moment on the crisp midday air before they dis-
appeared. The novelty of such a simple thing as frost was not
lost on her as she walked toward Galloway's Deli. It was not
something she'd seen much of in southern California.
The atmosphere had suddenly changed in Pine Mountain.
A quiet hush wrapped itself around the streets of this little
town until it seemed that even the normally energetic mer-
chants had become unusually subdued. Maggie waved
across the street to Elizabeth Rodgers as the older woman
pushed a broom across the sidewalk in front of the book-
store, lethargically sweeping dead leaves over the curb and
intO the gutter below. In some ways the feeling in town reminded Maggie of last spring when she and Spencer had
first arrived to discover a dreary and dying business district.
Only now she sensed a real spirit of hope and expectation
resting beneath this temporary veneer of quiet. And no one
could deny that the town looked better than ever with all its
recent renovations and face-lifts.
Still, Maggie wondered how this little slump might affect
commerce as she passed by the recently refurbished Pine
Mountain Hotel. She peeked in the front window to see a
perfectly decorated lobby completely void of guests. Of
course Brian and Cindy Jordan, with their high-earning com-
puter software stocks, could easily afford a slow season at
the hotel, but few other businessowners in town were so for-
tunate. Even with last summer's boom and the better-than-
usual fall season, an unprofitable winter could be the
undoing of some of the more fragile businesses. Maggie
knew it was silly to feel so overly protective of the town, but
whether she could openly admit it or not, the truth was she
felt an almost maternal sort of concern.
"Hey there, Maggie," called Rosa from behind the tiled