Drake Sisters 02 - The Twilight Before Christmas

beside him. Apprehensively, he glanced out the large window to the sea. He already knew what he would see.
    Anytime anything strange happened, the fog was back, settling over the town like a smoky monster crouched and waiting.
    “What is it, Sarah?” El e asked from her position on the couch. She had pil ows piled around her, a comforter over her, and strict orders to remain where she was.
    “The wax is forming something as it runs down the sides,” Sarah explained. “It looks like a hook to me.”
    “Or a candy cane.” Matt was morepragmatic.
    “It’s a staff,” Hannah corrected. “A long staff, or maybe a cane. Something used to walk with.”
    “This is getting more bizarre by the minute,” Abbey said, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. “And while we’re on the subject of bizarre, Joley, I’m sorry, but there was no excuse for your not tel ing the rest of us what happened. You take shielding al of us way too far.”
    Sarah’s smile at Joley was gentle. “She’s right, hon. You should have told us what happened. Do you have any other bad news you don’t want to worry us with?”
    Joley hesitated for a brief moment, then shrugged. “I’m sorry, I should have mentioned the strangling fog. Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?” She burst out laughing.
    Kate joined her. “I have to admit, it threw Christmas wreaths at me.”
    “And no one is going to believe the fog pushed me over the cliff,” El e said with a smal grin. “This one wil go into our journal and nowhere else!”
    “I plan on tel ing our children,” Matt announced. “It’s a great story for around the campfire, and they aren’t going to believe us anyway. They’l think I’m a bril iant storytel er.”
    “Children?” Joley raised her eyebrow. “I love the idea of Kate having children. Don’t the Granites produce boys? Very large hungry boys?” Her sisters erupted into laughter while Kate covered her face and groaned.
    “You aren’t helping, Joley,” Matt said, putting his arms protectively around Kate so she could hide her face against his shoulder. “She hasn’t even agreed to marry me yet. Don’t be scaring her off with the idea of little boys running around.”
    Sarah continued to study the wax flow over the sides of the candle. “Do you see anything else that could be helpful in that book, El e?”
    El e rubbed at the bump on her head and frowned at the thin pages. “There was no single predominant religion in the town at the time people first settled here. A faction celebrated the birthday of a pagan god. This is very interesting.” El e looked up at her sisters. “Many of the settlers here came together to celebrate their differences, unable to live anywhere else. The founding fathers wanted a safe haven by the sea, a place they envisioned would one day have a port for supplies. It actual y says a lot about the town’s founders and perhaps gives us insight to why the people here are so tolerant of others.”
    “And it explains why our own people settled here.”
    Kate nuzzled Matt’s throat. “If I remember my grandmother and her history lessons correctly, she said Christmas was slow to catch on in America, that the colonists didn’t celebrate it, and in some instances actual y banned it.”
    “That’s right.” Joley snapped her fingers. “It was considered a pagan ritual in some places. But that was a long while before this town was settled, wasn’t it?” She swept El e’s hair away from her face and fashioned it into a ponytail. “Does that have anything to do with al of this?”
    “Thanks, Joley,” El e said. She smoothed the worn pages. “The townspeople wanted to celebrate the Christmas season and settled on a pageant.
    They asked everyone to participate regardless of their beliefs, just for the fun of it. They treated it more as a play, a production that included al town members, meant to be fun rather than religious.” She looked up with a smal smile. “Libby, our however-many-greats-grandmother has your very interesting handwriting. Aside from the language, I have to decipher the worst handwriting on the face of the earth.”
    “I do not have the worst handwriting on the face of the earth.” Libby tossed a smal pil ow at her sister, missing by a great distance.
    “There’s something else in the wax,” Sarah said. “Al of you, look at this! Tel me what you see.”
    The sisters crowded around the cranberry candle. Kate tilted her head, studying it from