Chapter 1

      “Bah, hamburger!” Ethan Malloy shouted. His skinny arms were wrapped around his chest, lips poked out and still red from the punch he’d had during the break.

      Morgan Hill rubbed her temples and held back a sigh.

      “It’s humbug, Ethan. Say it slower this time and remember the word is humbug.”

      He wouldn’t remember. Or rather, he did know the correct pronunciation, but Ethan thought he was a five-year-old Kevin Hart, minus the cursing. So everything he said or did was in search of a chuckle or a laugh from those around him—his audience, so to speak. His personality worked Morgan’s last nerve. She’d chastised herself more than once about feeling this way about a little boy. She was trained to deal with children, as she’d gone to the University of Maryland and received her bachelor’s degree in elementary education. Unfortunately, there were no classes that would have prepared her for Ethan Malloy.

      He was the only child of Rayford Malloy, the sixty-three-year-old president of the Temptation town council, and Ivonne Danner-Malloy, his twenty-five-year-old video-dance-queen wife. Between his father being too busy and too tired to discipline him and his mother being too young, too conceited and too everything else to be bothered, Ethan never had a chance. Those were the reasons Morgan used a good portion of her patience with the child. Morgan’s granny always said—whenever Ida Mae Bonet had the displeasure of being in the presence of her brother’s children—“we don’t get to choose who our parents are.”

      That was certainly the truth, Morgan thought as she watched Ethan continue with his rendition of the scene where Ebenezer Scrooge continued to refuse heat or any other comfort for his only employee, Bob Cratchit, played by seven-year-old Wesley Walker. Wesley, unlike Ethan, knew his lines and probably the lines of everyone else in the play. He was a perfectionist and determined to prove himself to everyone in this small town, despite the fact that his father had run off and left his mother with four kids, a broken-down old Nissan and a mountain of debt. It was a shame, Morgan thought as she watched the young fella on stage, walking around and holding his head up high—even though Bob Cratchit wasn’t such a proud man. But a boy at such a tender age shouldn’t be faced with the gossip and cruelty that could be dished out in a small town.

      They lived in Temptation, Virginia, population 14,364 as of the last census, two years ago. Temptation had a rich history and struggled to catch up with the modern world. With its ten-member town council—the majority of whom were descendants from families that had been around since the town’s inception in the 1800s—and the newly elected mayor, Cinda Pullum, going toe-to-toe in battles over everything from revitalizing Mountainview Park to the weekly trash pickup, Temptation could be as lively as any of the reality shows that littered today’s television channels.

      The town could also be as traditional and heartwarming as an old black-and-white movie with things such as the annual Christmas Eve celebration, which included the play that Morgan and her crew of youngsters were now painstakingly rehearsing. There were two things Morgan loved about living in Temptation—the traditions and the resilience of the citizens. No matter what the people of this town had gone through—from the Civil War to the dark days of the Great Depression and the hostile times of the Civil Rights movement—they’d always bounced back and they never stopped doing the things that made the town so special in the first place. The families were the heart of Temptation, as they were determined to live in harmony in their little part of the world. More recent and localized catastrophes had hit Temptation and now, sadly, Morgan found herself living through her own test as a citizen of the town.

      “You should put him out, Mama.”

      The soft voice of Morgan’s five-year-old daughter, Lily, interrupted her thoughts.

      “What?” Morgan asked.

      Lily looked up from where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor with an unruly stack of twinkle lights in her lap. Her little hands had been moving over the strands in an attempt to separate the tangled mass for the last half hour. There hadn’t been much progress but Lily was much more patient than Morgan would ever claim to be. She was also the prettiest little girl Morgan had seen in all her twenty-eight years.

      Her daughter shook her head, two long ponytails swaying with the motion.

      “He’s a mess,” she told Morgan. “A hot mess, like Aunt Wendy says all the time.”

      Morgan couldn’t help it, she smiled. Wendy, her older sister by barely a year, talked a mile a minute and Lily always seemed to be around soaking up each and every word that fell out of Wendy’s mouth, good or bad.

      “He’s trying,” Morgan told her, knowing without any doubt who her daughter thought was a hot mess. “We have to give him a chance.”

      Lily shook her head again. “No, we don’t. You’re in charge.”

      She was, Morgan thought, even if she didn’t feel that way. She hadn’t wanted Ethan for the lead in the play in the first place. But Rayford had stopped by her house the Monday before Thanksgiving and told her in no uncertain terms that he expected his “boy” to have a prominent part in the play this year. Especially since this was most likely the last year the community center would be open to house the play and the Christmas celebration. Morgan and a good majority of the town had been worried about this hundred-year-old building and two others—the Plympton House, which had been converted into a hospital during the war, then restored, expanded and renamed All Saints Hospital in the sixties, and the Taylor House, a now almost dilapidated Victorian that had once been the home of the town’s biggest financial benefactor. She’d been so concerned with the possible loss of three of the town’s historic buildings that she hadn’t had the energy to fight with Rayford about something as trivial as his son’s part in a play. Now, however, she wished she’d mustered up some resistance because Lily was right, Ethan was a hot mess.

      “I wanna load the presents,” another child’s voice called from behind Morgan and before she could move a hand, there was tugging on the hem of her shirt.

      “Didn’t you say it was my turn to load the presents in the sleigh, Mama? You told me last night, ’cause I’m tall enough to do it.”

      Morgan turned around ready to reply to her son with his dark brown eyes—slanted slightly in the corners as a result of his father’s half Korean, half African American heritage—and butter-toned complexion, courtesy of Morgan’s mother and grandmother, who were descendants of the Creole-born Bonets of Louisiana. His twin sister had the same features. Jack and Lily were different, not only by their gender, but they also had opposite personalities. Where Lily was quiet and somewhat serious, Jack was boisterous and playful. They were sometimes like night and day, but always the very best of Morgan and her late husband, James. Each day she looked into their precious little faces she was reminded of that fact and, at the same time, overwhelmed with love and grief.

      James Stuart Hill