Chapter One

      The small town of Hope, Oklahoma, happened to be everything Laurel Adams didn’t want for Christmas. She didn’t want twinkling lights, country cafés decorated with green and-silver garland or people who stood on the street corner and offered a cheery greeting as she drove past. She wanted big-city anonymity and her Chicago apartment, with its view of Lake Michigan. Instead she found herself in a town she had visited only twice in over twenty years.

      When she was nine years old, she and her mother had moved from Hope to Chicago. It had been their fresh start, her mom had said. It was their adventure. Really, it had been their escape.

      Back then, the town of Hope hadn’t been a friendly haven to a single mother who worked as a waitress and did her best to survive. Laurel’s grandmother assured her it had changed. As Laurel drove into town, it was easy to see the cosmetic differences. But the surface wasn’t what mattered to a girl who had been hurt by names and dirty looks.

      You could hang twinkling lights on it, put on a fresh coat of paint and plant flowers. Those things didn’t change the heart of a town. You could put a fancy facade on the front of a building, but if the foundation was crumbling, it didn’t matter a bit.

      She turned on a side road that led along the lake and up into the hills on the northern edge of town. Her grandmother’s old Victorian sat on