Where the Lovelight Gleams

By Victoria R Gatto

This Christmas, home will find him.

Entrenched in the midst of the jungles of Vietnam for almost three years, Corporal Stephen Winters counts the days until he can finally be home again for Christmas. When his promised furlough is delayed indefinitely, Stephen's family must find a way to bring home to him. Ho

• Language: English
• Publisher: Victoria Gatto
• Release date: Dec 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781087981987

Victoria R Gatto

Storytelling, in one way or another, has always been a part of Victoria's life.​Whether it was playing dolls with her sisters or writing late into the night in one of her many notebooks, it's been her passion. With her stories, she endeavors to deliver all of the drama, romance, and suspense that readers crave, while still keeping it clean.She began writing when she was about ten years old. After years of writing, studying, reading, and researching, she finished her first novel, Hidden, with a plan to make it the first book in her first series, Silent Voices.Seen and unseen...what does that mean? It's the stories of the people and the situations that, to the naked eye, look so usual and unassuming, and yet, under the surface, hide a story worth sharing, a story that might not only entertain but might heal, might inspire.​When she's not writing, spending time with her family, or playing her violin, she works as a medical secretary. History, film, and reading are a few other passions of hers.

Book preview

1

Memories & Mire

  C innamon...and nutmeg.  That's what it was.

Stephen drank it in with every breath.  Coupled with the toasty warmth which permeated his family's ranch-style home, a feeling of contentment steeled over him with a constancy that warmed him further still.  His mother and three younger sisters were busying themselves between the kitchen and last-minute gift wrapping.  Soon, he, his little brother, Joey, and his father would finish stringing the lights on the house.

Stephen!  Stephen!  Someone called him from outside.

Moving toward the front door, he hadn't walked two steps before it felt like someone held him back.  Trying once more, Stephen still found himself rooted to the ground beneath his feet.  The voice calling him became louder and more incessant.

Stephen...Stephen!

His eyes flew open, his cold, wet hands gripping the hard metal of his M16 rifle.

Sorry, Stephen.  It's your turn as the lookout.  Plus, you were starting to kick in your sleep.

Stephen gave Louie a look and straightened his stiffened back, as much as he could sitting in the clammy foxhole that they had dug for themselves.

I get it. I get it.  Stephen slapped another mosquito, or whatever it was, off his neck.  How much longer did the colonel say we had here?

Louie pursed his lips and whistled the first few notes of Jingle Bells, adding, Or at least that's what it will feel like.

Please, don't talk to me about Christmas now, unless you want me to start dreaming and kicking in my sleep again.

Louis nestled into the depression in the ground as he and Stephen switched positions.

Christmas makes you kick in your dreams?

You'd be kicking too if you were smelling my mother's pies.

Louie wagged a finger at him as only he could, with that Italian flair.  "Oh no, my mamma's baking is the only thing that makes anybody kick like that, you understand. He gave a nod.  Just don't tell my wife that."

Stephen smirked and rolled his eyes.  Oh, I think every Italian boy is required to say that.

"You don't keep your trap shut, you're going to see what else we're required to do when smart guys try to knock our Mamma's cooking...or our wife's cooking...the only one who's allowed to joke about that is her husband, and not even I mean it."

Stephen chuckled and shook his head.  Oh, go to sleep, Louie.

Louie mock stared him down for a moment before tilting his helmet forward and settling in.  Within minutes, Stephen could hear the steady rumble of Louie's snoring, which mingled with the light patter of the drizzling rain which had just then started to fall.  Stephen rested his chin on the butt of his gun and stared out into the misty, dark night.  Around him on all sides was thick brush along with trees that, in the dark, Stephen could imagine were the same evergreens and king maples from back home, and, not a wet, Vietnamese jungle.

This year would be his first back home for Christmas, since his draft notice three years ago.  Between training, inclement weather, and then being deployed out to the middle of this jungle, Stephen had little more to rely on than his dreams and memories at Christmastime.  His family wrote to him probably more often than anyone else's, but he only received them in spurts.  Mail delivery out here wasn't exactly timely.

In the last letter, his sister Mary Jane had detailed her new volunteer position at the Red Cross hospital, filled him in on all of their younger siblings' latest fancies, and told