On Monday morning, John got a call at his office from Charlie Wexler. “I ought to tell this to Janice directly,” he said, “but you’re probably more able to deal with it. I finally got those jokers from the drug task force out of her house. I hate to say this, but they really trashed it, not that it wasn’t pretty well trashed already. At least they got the HAZMAT stuff cleaned up, so I can turn the key back over to her.”

“How bad is it?”

“Bad, not that it wasn’t pretty bad already. Really, there’s a lot of work there.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” John sighed. “After those guys got caught breaking into our house I figured they’d pull out all the stops over there.”

“No shit,” Charlie agreed. “Janice might have grounds for a lawsuit. You might want to talk to Matt about it.”

“I think I will. I probably ought to talk to Janice before I check it out, though.”

“Oh, they’re done with the cars, too. They didn’t get trashed anywhere near as bad, since I had them towed over to the impound lot at George’s Towing before the task force people went apeshit. I’ll give you the keys and tell George he can release them.”

As it turned out, John wasn’t all that busy, at least not so bad that he couldn’t run home for a few minutes and explain the situation to Janice. “I really don’t care about it,” she told him once he’d passed along the news. “That place is nothing but bad memories. All I really would like to have is some pictures of my mother. They were in the top drawer of the dresser in my room, but if the place is as bad as you say they could be anywhere.”

“I can understand,” he replied sympathetically. “Still, you really shouldn’t just turn your back and walk away from it. There has to be some value left in it, no matter how badly it’s beaten up. That’s money you could use for college expenses or something.”

“That would be all right,” she agreed, “but I really don’t want to even ride past the place. There are too many bad memories.”

“Cody,” John asked, “would you like to come with me and check it out?”

“Not really,” he shook his head. “There’s some bad memories for me there, too. I guess I’m with Janice on this one.”

Shay wound up going over to the house with John – at least he didn’t have any bad memories of the place. “Holy Christ,” he said as soon as his father had unlocked the door. “Were they raising pigs in here or what?”

The place was indeed a mess. John hadn’t seen the place before the drug task force had gotten to it, but he’d been told it was pretty bad. However bad it had been, this was worse. Not only was stuff scattered randomly all over everywhere, there were places where the wallboard had been pulled down, apparently because someone thought it might conceal a hiding place, however unlikely. “This is totally uncalled for,” John said.

“I’ve seen better looking landfills,” Shay agreed.

“I suppose we’d better go upstairs and look for those pictures that Janice wants,” John shook his head. “But I think before we do anything else I want to get the camera and get some pictures of just how bad it is. And I think I want to talk to Matt Schindenwulfe, too. I don’t know if those jokers can be sued or what, but I would sure like to see him give it a try.”

It wasn’t much less of a mess upstairs; the only way they could identify Janice’s room was that there seemed to be more girl clothes spread around than there were elsewhere, although they were all over the place, too. From what John could see, the clothes were little better than rags, anyway. They did manage to find a few pictures of an older woman scattered on the floor, and John hoped those were the ones Janice wanted. Both of them searched around for a while, but found no more than the handful they already had. “Well, I suppose we might as well call it good enough, at least till we find out if these are the right ones,” John said finally. “But I’ll be damned if I know what we’re going to do with this mess.”

“If you want my suggestion, I’d suggest a large dumpster.”

“It’ll probably come down to that,” John agreed. “There might be a few things worth salvaging and passing along to Goodwill or something, but there might not even be that much. I’ll tell you what, though, I’m not any more anxious to deal with this stuff than Janice is. Right now, I’m pretty well tempted to shut off the water and the gas, drain the pipes, wait till spring and see if maybe I can find someone else to do it.”

“Might not be the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard,” Shay agreed.

“Well, before I go too far I suppose I’d better talk to Matt. And I think maybe talk to Binky Augsberg, to see if she thinks she can sell it, either as is or at least cleaned out.”

“How about the cars? I mean, I know they belong to Janice now, but maybe she would let me drive one of them while I’m home.”

“She probably would,” John nodded. “But I don’t think it’d be a good idea to park them anywhere near around home. I’ll bet those are about as bad a memory for her as the house. Probably the best thing to do is to just sell them, maybe down at the auto auction in Camden, although I don’t know how you’d get a car into one of them.”

“When you put it that way, it probably was a dumb idea. I can make do.” Shay shook his head and continued, “She really was beat to shit, wasn’t she?”

“Hell, she looks good now compared to when we saw her in the hospital for the first time.” John let out a sigh and continued. “Your mother, Cody, and I, well, our hearts went out to her. I mean, she was just so pathetic that it really made us want to help. I still think there’s a good kid there, but we’re still bringing it out.”

“She’s really hooked on Cody, isn’t she?”

“Well, not hooked as in love, at least I don’t think so, but very dependent on him, yes. You’ve seen that, and considering what she’d gone through, what she was going through when Cody shot her father and brother, well, I don’t blame her one damn bit.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I would, either,” Shay agreed, “but I can’t help but wonder if you guys are ever going to be able to make a whole person out of her.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” John admitted, noticing bloodstains on the floor and deciding not to comment about it. “In fact, I’ve lain awake nights worrying about it, and I’m mostly worrying about what happens if we fail.”

It proved that dealing with the sale of the house and the cars wasn’t going to be quite as simple as just doing it. Although Janice was the only heir of her father and brother, since they’d both died without a will, the estate was going to have to go through probate, which Matt Schindenwulfe agreed to handle. He also agreed to look into a lawsuit against the drug task force, although he didn’t hold out any hope of a big settlement. “It doesn’t happen very often, especially if they find something, and they for sure found something in that house.” It was clear, though, that it was going to be spring before anything could be sold because of the legal issues. If there were claims against the estate – which seemed likely – it was possible that Janice would receive nothing at all from it.

A call over to Binky Augsberg at Northwoods Real Estate was enough to tell John that the house was probably worth something, even in its bad state, but that it would at least bring a little more if the mess was cleaned out. Because of the legal issues, there really wasn’t much more that could be done along those lines for a while.

Later that day, John and his brother Josh went back over to the house carrying a couple of cameras to document the damage. While they were there, Josh figured out how to shut off the water and drain the pipes, then shut down the furnace entirely. Whatever else happened, the house would keep till spring, when maybe the emotions involved would have died down a bit. Later on, John had a talk with the guy at George’s Towing, who explained how to arrange to have the cars auctioned once the titles had been transferred into Janice’s name, which would take a while. He wanted to charge for storage, but Josh suggested the cars could be stashed at his place, so that solved that problem.

Predictably, Janice was just about completely uninterested in any of it, and just told John to do what was needed to get rid of everything; she didn’t want to know any of the details. After thinking about it a little, he wondered if perhaps she didn’t have the right idea in just ignoring it. He wouldn’t have minded just ignoring it himself.

That wasn’t all that needed to be dealt with, for later that day Janice received a call from the morgue in Camden. They’d had a tough time tracking her down until someone finally got the bright idea of calling Charlie Wexler. They wanted to know what was to be done with Jack and Bobby Lufkin’s bodies. Predictably, Janice renewed her suggestion from earlier: “Just throw them in the nearest dumpster.”

The functionary that made the call protested that they couldn’t do that. “Then just get rid of them however you can,” she told them. “I don’t care, and I don’t want to hear any more about it.” It was probably the most fire that John had seen out of the girl since he’d first met her.

As it turned out, the caller suggested that they could be donated to the Athens University medical school at no cost, and Janice’s comment was, “Fine, whatever you want. Just get rid of them.” There were no more phone calls on that subject, so John had to assume that the issue had been taken care of.

However that wasn’t the end of it. The next morning Cody quietly reported that Janice had had a nightmare, gun by the bed or no gun by the bed. He’d managed to wake her up before it got too far out of hand, but she’d lain awake, and in his arms, for at least a couple hours before she finally managed to drift off to sleep again. He reported that he’d held onto her tightly for the rest of the night, and that at least the nightmare hadn’t recurred.

That taught John a lesson, and for that matter taught them all a lesson: while there were still realities from Janice’s past that had to be dealt with, it was best to not make her have anything more to do with them anytime soon.

That morning, Tuesday, Cody made the suggestion that Christmas was awful close, and that Janice might like to go Christmas shopping with him if she felt up to a drive down to Camden. She agreed that it might be fun, and she could manage the trip down there and back all right, except that she didn’t have any money to buy presents. Cody said he’d cover her on it, just so she could feel right about the holiday, and of course John slipped him half a dozen twenties when she wasn’t looking. That seemed to put the dismal memories of the day before behind her, at least a bit, and she seemed excited to be able to make a trip out of town, even if it was just to Camden. It turned out to be a big deal for her; she hadn’t ever even been to Camden except for her time in the hospital down there. She seemed excited at the prospect, and she and Cody bustled around getting her ready before heading off to the big town in the Escort, just about the same time that John and Candice left in the minivan to go to work.

It escaped no one’s notice that Bethany and Shay were present at the time the decision had been made for Cody and Jan to go shopping, and that they’d have several hours to themselves, but no one made mention of it. No one doubted what would happen while the two were alone. When John and Candice got home, they found Cody and Janice busy working on school work at the kitchen table, while Shay and Bethany were sitting on the living room couch, watching a movie on the DVD, and being very cuddly.

Then it was Christmas.

Candice was one of those people who really liked Christmas, and she’d had the inside of the house decorated and the tree up even before Janice came to stay with them. Janice had remarked early on that this was the first time she’d had a Christmas tree in years, and she’d missed them. If that hadn’t been enough by itself, she’d been moved to tears to glance under the tree and see gift wrapped presents there with her name on them! It was something else that had been missing from her life for many years, since she was a small child in fact, and then she’d never gotten much in the way of gifts. Although Shay and Cody had long gotten past the need to get up well before dawn to tie into the loot, there was a little bit of kid left in Janice, and this year they didn’t escape. She had Cody up very early, and insisted on waking the others so she could go see what Santa had brought.

She soon discovered that Santa – and the Archers – had done pretty well by her. Granted, a lot of the presents proved to be clothes, but that was just fine with her. It had been a long time since she’d had new clothes or nice ones, with the exception of the things that Candice had bought her when she left the hospital, but now she really made up for that. This Christmas morning was something that had been an unattainable dream for her for a good many years, and it didn’t surprise anyone that she spent much of the morning in tears, and blessing Cody for her good fortune in coming to find her when she really needed it. It was far and away the best Christmas she’d ever had, and none of the Archers could help but be moved by it.

But that wasn’t all. In fact, one of the best parts was yet to come.

Once the presents had been opened and everyone was dressed, Candice turned to in the kitchen. Janice offered to help where she could, although she admitted that she wasn’t much of a cook. Candice managed to find some things for her to do that were within her abilities, and she started to get a feeling for what it meant to prepare a big Christmas dinner.

The Archers aren’t a terribly big clan as families in Spearfish Lake go, but they were close and everyone still lived there, unlike a lot of families that had scattered to the four winds. In fact, this year the clan was a little bigger: in addition to Janice, John’s half-sister Jackie Gravengood and her husband Mark had taken in two of his grandnieces who had been orphaned when their single mother was killed under mysterious circumstances down in Decatur. It had been a trying period for Mark and Jackie since they had been childless all through their marriage. Then, as they were both nearing the age of sixty, they’d become instant parents to a pair of energetic teenagers. Becca and Bree were getting settled into Spearfish Lake after six months, but there had been some trying times all around.

In addition to the Gravengoods, John’s father and mother, Walt and Sarah, were at the festivities, along with his brother Josh, his wife Tiffany, and their two kids: Michelle, who was in lower elementary school, and Curtis, who was still a preschooler. What with everybody, it made for a full house.

In years past, Walt and Sarah had hosted the family Christmas gathering, but they were starting to get a little old, and in recent years the honor had been passed around between the rest of them. This year, it had been Candice’s turn; considering Janice and all, Jackie made the offer to do the dinner out of turn. Candice protested that it would be just as big a hassle for Jackie with Becca and Bree new to the family, too, and Jackie had to concede the point.

That meant that Candice was going to be facing a busy morning with a lot of cooking to do, although she’d only be doing a minority of the food preparation, for when people started to show up it proved that everybody brought not merely something, but brought a lot. Jackie’s pies were especially anticipated; she had the knack of making good ones, and brought several, apple, cherry, peach, and mince, enough to make a meal for most of them even if they ate nothing else. But there was a lot more than that, traditional foods that this family automatically considered normal at the holiday.

As Tiffany and Jackie and Sarah showed up, Janice found that she had less to do in the kitchen and was mostly getting in the way; besides, she was getting tired and needed to sit down. She soon found herself talking with Becca and Bree, and the three soon discovered that they had a lot in common, despite the Gravengood kids being several years younger. All three of them were orphans, although under different circumstances, and life had been a lot easier for the younger girls than it had been for Janice. Still, they found they had a lot to share in having huge changes come to their lives unexpectedly.

Janice soon learned that Becca and Bree didn’t share the same father, and were about as unalike as sisters could be. Becca, the older one, was a relatively athletic girl who liked to get into things – she sought new experiences wherever she could get them, even if they sometimes got her into trouble. The only thing that kept her somewhat in check was that her sister, Bree, was the kind of kid who liked things they way they were, so that helped keep things in balance. Despite everything, they were both very loyal to each other, and presented a united front against the world. Despite the age difference, Janice soon found herself making friends with the two. That was a strange experience of itself, because up until a few days before she would have said that she didn’t have any friends at all, until Cody had proved to be the best kind of friend.

There were other interesting people there than just the two sisters. Janice had known that Candice, along with Josh and Tiffany, was involved in dogsled racing, but it wasn’t until then that she realized that it was more than just a little race across a city park or something. Each of the three of them had raced dogsleds across Alaska, over a thousand miles through weather that was a lot colder than Spearfish Lake! That was something incredible to her, that Candice could do something as brave and as tough as that! Cody, she thought, had to come by his bravery naturally.

Mark and Jackie were pretty interesting, too. Among other things, Janice learned that the two of them had spent their honeymoon many years ago flying around the country in an antique airplane, one that they still owned, and that they’d spent eight months on that trip. Mark was a dogsled racer too, although not quite as ambitious as Josh, Tiffany, and Candice, but he often helped train dogs for them.

Walt, it proved, had taken off on a hobo trip around the country while he was still in high school and not long after he got back had gone to work for the railroad. He’d been a railroad engineer for many, many years, and still filled in from time to time for his son Josh, who managed the local short line railroad that was modeled in the basement. All in all, it turned out that she’d not only fallen in with a pretty awesome guy in Cody, but with a whole family of pretty awesome people!

When Candice and the others finally got dinner on the table – and with the addition of Janice, Becca, and Bree, it was the largest table the Archers had ever set – it was both huge and sumptuous. There was food, food, and more food! There was so much there that looked so good to Janice she had to try everything she could, even if it was just a little taste. After literally having been starved for so long, this seemed like it was out of a dream! Although she’d been eating pretty well in the days she’d been in the Archer household and had managed to put on some weight, everything was so good that she found herself not merely eating, but overeating. She wasn’t alone though; most of the people around the table were doing a pretty good job of stuffing themselves.

For the first time that she could remember, and most likely the first time ever, Janice felt the strange sensation of being overfull even before they got to Jackie’s pies. As often happened, the common opinion was that they should take a break, let things settle a little in order to get the full flavor experience of her masterpieces. That was just fine with Janice; it was good to lie back in the recliner and just listen to the talk going on around her. What with everything, including the weight of the food, she found herself falling asleep. She didn’t wake up until later in the afternoon when Heather showed up, Christmas or no, to take her upstairs to change her dressings, take her vitals and all the other little things that she did for her. She had to be a pretty neat person, too, she thought, to come out to help someone on Christmas when she could have been home with her family. Heather told her that this was the only call she was making today, she needed a break from the noise and the football games at her house, and that it made a nice change for her. Besides, Heather said that it looked to her like Janice was improving daily, and that was nice to see those changes.

When Heather helped Janice down the stairs, Candice announced that it was time to try out the pies, and invited Heather to hang around and have a slice or two. Of course, Heather wasn’t about to turn that down. Even though Janice still felt so stuffed that she didn’t think she could eat a thing, Candice cut a narrow sliver of each of the four kinds of pies so she could try them all. All of them were great, and Janice couldn’t figure out which one of them she liked the best.

It had been a big day for Janice, just to be a part of this family celebration, and best of all everyone had treated her like family. Still, it was a tiring day for her, and she found herself falling asleep again in the recliner before everything wound down.

Later that evening, as she and Cody went to bed, she was still overwhelmed by it all. “Thanks, Cody,” she said. “Thank you for everything. Everybody was wonderful to me and I had a great time, but I’m not going to ever forget that it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t come to rescue me. I’m going to have to thank you forever for doing that and being so wonderful to me.” And then, totally to his surprise, she rolled over and kissed him on the lips – a nice kiss at that, one that hit both of them harder than either of them expected.

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