A Trip Back to Snowy Pines (Book II in the Christmas Village Trilogy) Read Online Free PDF

and Josh and
I fell in love… with both of you. And just when I’d decided I
wanted to stay here I woke up in a hospital bed at Johns Hopkins.
But here’s where it gets interesting. The woman I was going to see
was there at the hospital. They’d called her because her address
was in my GPS. She came to the hospital and tells me that the
Christmas Village was a replica of her home town. Then she calls
her grandson to come and check on me because he’s a doctor there
and he walks in my room and it was Josh. He always said he couldn’t
shake the feeling that he knew me so finally I told him he did know
me. That we met in my dreams. We come home to Snowy Pines every
Christmas and no one remembers me or anything that happened during
those first few weeks. I’m just Josh’s wife from the city. I
honestly thought that they were my dream and you were part of my
dream. So what do you know?”
     
    Lola sighed. “My memories aren’t as clear as
yours… I was a little girl after all. But the best I can piece
together, sixteen years ago my mom and I had a wreck. She went to
rehab and I went in the hospital and took pneumonia. I was here in
this hospital with you and Josh. Most of my memories were hazy till
I got here, but they’re all coming back in startling clarity now.
We had dinner at Appleby’s that you cooked and we went to the
carnival and you gave me clothes. We spent a perfect day together
decorating a tree that we cut down from the woods, and then you
taught me how to bake cookies. And when we went back to the
hospital Josh told me I was going home to my mom. I woke up the
next morning at Johns Hopkins from an extremely high fever and
found out I was going to be spending Christmas in foster care. I
hardly ever even thought about that… I just thought it was a dream.
But I’ve had a tough time lately, and I started thinking about it
the other night when I was driving home from work. I’m a nurse at
UMMC. I got lost, stopped for gas and directions and walked in on a
robbery. I fainted and woke up here… but everything is different!
Were you different when you were here before because I don’t think
I was different?”
     
    “Just my hair.” Kellany answered, clearly
trying to think back.
     
    “Your hair?” Lola asked skeptically.
     
    “Yes. In real life I had short bright red
hair. All my life I’d been coloring my hair ridiculous colors just
so I wouldn’t look like my mom. But when I woke up here it was long
and blonde. Then when I woke up in the hospital it was short and
red again.”
     
    “I have a five year old son and I’m fifteen
weeks pregnant and Chris and I are separated… I woke up here and
we’re childless and all honey-moony and rich because he’s a lawyer.
We live in Inner Harbor! This outfit costs more than my entire
wardrobe. I don’t get it!”
     
    “Okay, slow down. I think we come here
because we need to learn something. When I came here before, I came
to meet you and Josh; to find out that I could fall in love and be
a wife and a mother and all of those things that I thought I
couldn’t do because my mother was such a nightmare. The truth is… I
thought you were my daughter.”
     
    “What?” Lola asked, looking confused.
     
    “When Josh and I got married and I pictured
us with children I always pictured us with you. And then we got
pregnant and I had no doubt she would be a girl, and she’d be Lola
and she’d be you. And she was a girl and she was Lola and she had
long beautiful blonde hair, but somewhere along the way I realized
she wasn’t going to be you. Don’t get me wrong… she’s the love of
my life and the most amazing little girl on the face of the earth,
but she’s her own person. Which means… I didn’t just meet you for
me. I met you for you. So what did you learn from our last
encounter?”
     
    Lola thought about it for a moment and
finally said, “I was safe… I mean my mother wasn’t like yours. I
wouldn’t describe her as a nightmare. I