Christmas In Eagle Bend

By Kathleen Shoop

It’s the week before Christmas and the historic McFarland home is buzzing with the return of four adult children and their young families. Pop made sure this was the year they all came back to town.

Newly married and postpartum Ivy, a TikTok famous bus-life wanderer, struggles with the best way to parent her teen son with special needs. Ava’s seemingly perfect life and marriage are wearing thin. Oliver’s accidental wealth makes the perfect breeding ground for doubts about his professional abilities. Levi’s recent firing from a prestigious university and his wife’s petition for divorce shatter him.

And then there’s Mum...

Her new bread-making hobby with mysterious sources for centuries old bread starters only hint at what the kids will discover. For good and for bad. A glamorous Christmas Eve party, a reward for a dog who won’t stop pooping all over town, a tavern crawl, and surprises at every turn force the McFarlands to re-examine their place in the world. As snow piles up and the family snuggles in, a blend of joy and tension mark the renewing of relationships and the realization that nothing stays the same. Is it too late to reconnect when they need each other most? Is it too late for them to realize there’s no place like Christmas in Eagle Bend?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kathleen Shoop
• Release date: Nov 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215567722

Kathleen Shoop

Kathleen Shoop is a Language Arts Coach with a PhD in Reading Education whose work has appeared in The Tribune Review, four Chicken Soup for the Soul books and Pittsburgh Parent Magazine. She lives in Oakmont, Pennsylvania with her husband and two children.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Brothers

Levi

’Twas the week before Christmas, and Levi McFarland wanted a drink. No. Not true. He wanted a dozen. Booze might be the only thing that would get him through it all. He stood in the circle drive closest to what had once been the noble carriage house of what had once been the grandest Victorian property in all of Eagle Bend.

He slipped his mallet into the front pocket of his mortar-spackled canvas apron and waved. Oliver, his younger brother, slowed his shiny red Wagoneer to a crawl, crunching over freshly fallen snow. The front bumper was decorated with a wreath, Christmas music came muffled from behind closed windows.

Levi gripped the mallet handle, hoping the urge to down a shot of Old Grand-Dad and chase it with Coors Light would pass. He eyed the spare refrigerator in the back corner of the carriage house where they housed holiday booze. A rope of pine boughs outlined it. Not much escaped holiday décor at the McFarland home.

Levi should be happier to see his brother, to be home, to have family to go to. Oliver slammed on the brakes, threw it in park, and hopped out. He ran toward Levi and tossed him over his shoulder, whooping as he spun, making Levi laugh, even though it was the last thing he wanted to do. He’d been determined to hold tight to the anger and resentment that had crusted inside him. Why? It felt good to feel something, a sensation deep and solid, something to divert his attention from the details of the mess he’d made.

Oliver set Levi down and turned toward the woman emerging from the passenger side. Slender, wearing knee-high boots, caressing the neck of a pink fur coat, she stalked forward with the ease of someone who’d never felt a moment’s insecurity. So what the hell was she doing with Oliver?

She extended a white leather-gloved hand and smiled warmly. A true pleasure.

Levi nodded and shook her hand, searching her gaze for something to indicate she knew the circumstances that had brought him home months before. But all he saw was sincerity. So what in the hell was she doing with Oliver?

Oliver pulled her close. "Tenley, this is my big brother, Levi. But only by eleven months, so don’t let him pull that I’m the big bro so I’m in charge bullshit on you."

She regarded Oliver, her brown-eyed gaze exuding the adoration of someone in love. Levi pushed a hand through his hair, growing more confused, and also lonelier at the thought he would probably never have a woman look at him that way ever again. How’d you two meet? he asked.

Harvard.

Levi spit out a laugh, making Tenley snap her attention back to him, her brows furrowed. Levi held up a hand, laughing for the second time in what had felt like... well, what actually had been months. I’m sorry, Harvard? The actual one?

A glint of hurt flashed over Oliver’s face before he recovered his confidence. Yes, Levi. I may not have a PhD like you and Mum, but, he looked at Tenley with all the reverence she’d shown him, Tenley does, so that sort of confers the honor on me, right? Success by association. Isn’t that how things work?

Levi narrowed his eyes. His brother was handsome in that six-foot-four burly Adonis way. Levi was only two inches shorter, but wiry and studious and more along the lines of Hephaestus—god of fire and blacksmithing, an ancient scientist of sorts, and way less well-known.

Historically, Oliver had lines of women popping into his bed for a night or a day or even a month. And, adding to his good looks, Oliver had come into money—mounds of it. Levi glanced at the car and Oliver’s fine peacoat. So... Harvard?

Tenley’s on tenure track for English Lit, and I was asked to speak there on crypto.

Levi had certainly known the word crypto, but as a chemistry professor—no, former professor—he wasn’t schooled in its intricacies. Oliver lecturing at Harvard did not jibe.

Oliver pointed back over his head at the vehicle. Yep. Just bought the Wagoneer using ye olde slush fund. You know. The extra. Oliver winked, irritating Levi.

Levi put his hands on his hips. Yeah, the crypto. Lucky as always. Hey, Ol—how exactly—

Hey there, darlings!

The three turned toward the voice. Mum and Harvey, the golden retriever, trotted toward them. It was then Oliver finally noticed Mum’s truck parked in the yard. He gestured at it with his free hand and glanced at Levi, questioning, but with Mum edging nearer, Levi shook his head. Tell you later, bud.

Oliver took the cue to overlook an obvious issue as the McFarlands always had. He let go of Tenley, rubbed Harvey behind the ears and then rushed toward Mum. He hooked his arms around her and spun, her legs flying out. She giggled, actually giggled. Levi thought it the happiest sound he knew. Relieved at finally hearing some lightness in her voice, he was for once not jealous at how his brother and mother shared a special bond that could never be explained by any one thing. They were just mother-son soulmates of sorts.

After the spinning and laughing, they turned their attention to Tenley, who’d removed her gloves to pet Harvey. Mum fingered the tinsel she’d fashioned into a necklace, then swallowed their guest into a hug. After several pats on the back, Mum pulled away but stayed close enough to touch the woman’s cheeks, telling Tenley she was an angel descended for Christmas, just like the Bible said.

Levi pulled the mallet out of his apron and tossed it from one hand to the other. That’s not the Christmas angel story, Mum, not at all.

’Course it is, Levi. The story can be anything we say it is. Don’t be a traditionalist about every damn thing.

He puffed his cheeks and blew out air. Okay, Mum, play fast and loose with the Christmas tales. Have at it. He would not have counted himself as religious and certainly not brimming over with holiday spirit, but this irritated him. Just another way he and Mum had been rubbing each other the wrong way.

But none of the three in front of him heard his criticism. Arm in arm, they trudged toward the house, Harvey leading the way, Oliver singing Deck the Halls, Mum joining in, then Tenley, in what looked like movie-made holiday joy.

They entered through the back porch door, Pop’s voice from inside the kitchen carrying as he added a line of harmony. The door slammed shut on Pop’s bellowing, Who do we have here, Oliver? and Levi could imagine his father turning on the charm for their holiday guest.

One sibling down, two more due to arrive.

Levi shuffled his feet, wanting to head back to the carriage house to finish the bricks he’d been molding that morning. Instead, he opened the trunk of the Wagoneer and pulled out the luggage. Oliver’s beat-up duffel bags in contrast to seven pieces of Louis Vuitton luggage just added another piece to the puzzle that was Tenley. He slung the straps of the duffels over his shoulders and hauled three pieces of luggage to the back porch.

He headed back for the rest, and as he lugged them toward the house, his gaze caught on the peaks and valleys of the storybook Victorian. This Christmas marked 130 years that his family had owned it. Levi was still in the process of festooning it with Mum’s traditional decorations and despite his own project, he’d gotten much of it completed. Levi recalled the scandal years back when Mum had ordered the home painted red after it boasting, historically accurate pastel hues most of its life. She’d declared that this was a house made for Christmas and it was about time they dressed her up for it properly. She was right. The house could be drawn into any fairy tale, card, or TV advertisement. Everything about it screamed holiday wonder and magic happens here.

Levi neared the porch. Mum and Oliver plucked the first mound of bags. Oliver hadn’t seemed to notice their mother outfitted in red farmer’s overalls when she normally wore sophisticated clothes ordered from catalogs that hired writers to make up origin stories about each piece as though a wardrobe itself could be a human adventurer.

Nor did Oliver see that despite the fairly recent red paint job, that the wood had begun to rot, obscured by the holiday flourishes. Tenley reached through the doorway and snatched up her smallest bag, giving Levi a wave. She hadn’t seemed to notice the home’s fragile façade either, or Oliver’s empty insides that had defined him, allowing him to just roll through life picking up no silt, no dirt, no tiny pebble embedded in his shoe, agitating, embittering. Nothing like that for him.

Levi put his hand on the doorknob and exhaled. Perhaps this was exactly what the holidays were for—a chance to pretend that the world, and the people you loved most, were exactly as they appeared to be.

Chapter 2

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Diamond Dust

Levi

Levi poured coffee and watched through the kitchen window as snowflakes materialized out of thin air. Diamond dust. He spread the worn, plaid Christmas curtains farther apart and turned his face up at the sky. A temperature inversion, probably—the invisible circumstance where warm air sat on cold air, keeping it low. When the warmer air mixed with the lower cold, little bursts of diamond-bright snow formed right in front of your eyes, even if the sky was blue.

He pulled the junk drawer open beside him and dug through it, setting aside a magnifying glass. He burrowed further into the drawer to the bottom. Yep—black construction paper. It was what he and Mum used to use to capture snowflakes and log what they found, seeking endless snowflake designs and shapes.

Huh. Diamond dust.

Levi startled and swept the displaced junk back into the drawer and shut it. He hadn’t heard Tenley come into the kitchen. He raised his eyebrows, impressed that she knew what was happening outside.

Just appears out of nowhere. Like love, I guess.

Levi stopped himself from rolling his eyes. You know snow, huh?

She moved one curtain panel aside. I’m an English professor, but I hail from a robust bunch of science guys. Half my family works in a lab, a classroom, or for corporations, all helping to advance the world one miraculous science discovery at a time.

The tinge of sarcasm in her voice made Levi smile, but he hadn’t meant to edge dangerously close to having to discuss his greatest shame and demoralization—the incident, the firing. He lifted an empty mug. Coffee?

Buckets full, please.

He poured her a cup. Ah, the lavender room’s bed. It’s notoriously unfriendly.

They leaned against the countertop, facing each other. He couldn’t remember feeling this comfortable with another person in ages.

She sipped, then tapped a nail on the mug. Yeah, it’s an odd combination of too soft and way too hard.

He laughed. How’s that even possible? But yes.

Like blue-skied snow diamonds. Anything’s possible, I guess.

Hmm. Perhaps that was right, but not for him.

This is such a beautiful kitchen—the whole house. I can’t stop looking at it all. Her gaze swept over the weathered white marble floor with its gray tiles in the shape of flowers. It’s like some little girl walked through the kitchen when they were laying the floor and just tossed flower-shaped tiles here and there. Exquisite in an almost accidental way.

I’m sure the original McFarlands were very specific about every detail. They were a little starched, from what family lore tells.

She took in the subway tile backsplash that marched between Prussian-blue window frames spanning the back wall. Her gaze swept over the imposing antique clock on the oven hood, its loud ticking still strong after a century of work. She surveyed the walnut-topped island and the eggplant-hued velvet settee set near a roaring fire in the stone fireplace.

She pointed and giggled. How wonderful is that? Just a massive brass teapot hanging here, delighting all who enter.

Levi regarded the tearoom relic they’d bought decades before with the point of view of someone new to the house, and he felt a jarring sense of appreciation and wonder that he’d stopped experiencing over the years. Somehow since he’d returned that fall, he’d only noticed the falling plaster, slow pipes, and spongy wood. He’d focused on rotting wood, the chill in the kitchen unless a fire was lit.

She nodded and finally made eye contact again. This is the most beautiful house I’ve ever been in.

Say that loud enough and Mum will immediately write you into the will.

My family leans toward cold, modern homes. Sort of like how they are. I see a parallel here, too.

Just because we’re wrapped in all this welcoming, cozy decor doesn’t mean we’re warm and snuggly people.

She sipped, looking over the rim of the cup. From where I’m standing, it all tracks. It’s inviting and fairy-tale like, and your mom and dad and Oliver are the sweetest people. The blend of rustic elegance is, well, you can’t fake that. It’s simply the result of living a true life. People and places. They’re genuine or not.

Or, he lifted his mug, the condition of cozy and rustic is just where things teeter between holding themselves together and crumbling into bits.

She tapped the mug again appearing as though she were considering a scholarly problem. Well, I feel very welcome here. And though I adore romance in every sense of the word, I’m not dumb.

Levi took her elbow and led her to the kitchen table with the pot of coffee. That is clear as day, he said.

He tossed the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Wall Street Journal on the table and gestured toward fat cinnamon rolls, in a basket and loosely draped in a linen towel. On behalf of the McFarland family council, I accept your high praise and offer you sweet rolls in return.

The sound of feet pounding down the back staircase made Levi pause to watch Oliver, their parents, and Harvey enter the kitchen. Levi put on a second pot of coffee. Oliver plugged a kiss on top of Tenley’s head. Pop patted her shoulder and Mum stood behind her, embracing her, leaning in and rubbing her cheek against the new (but temporary?) addition to the family. Her overt affection toward a virtual stranger made Levi stare, surprised at yet another onion layer peeling off his mother. Surely Tenley would see the truth about them eventually. It wasn’t surprising that a professor of literature would romanticize the historic house, but surely she would see past the nostalgia.

Mum. Of all the things that had aged from sharp edged and shiny to rustic cozy, she had been transformed the most. Thinking back, he’d classify her conversion as quiet, steady erosion met with a lightning strike that instantly finished the job. When had it started? He hadn’t been home for years and only saw his parents in New York a couple times since she retired. And it was unsettling for more than one reason. But Levi had his own transformation underway. Or was simply ugly destruction? He shook his head, not wanting to think about Jennifer or his job. Lucky for him he had an unexpected obsession to keep his mind busy. The bricks.

Pop snapped open his first paper of the morning. Mum topped off Tenley’s coffee, and Oliver leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his sandy-blond hair, which was tousled in a mischievous way that had always led to every teacher giving him second and third chances on things he didn’t care a bit about. With his wide grin, Oliver was the picture of bliss.

Levi pulled on his Steelers tossle cap and work coat and sat on the bench to push into his boots.

What the hell? Oliver shifted in his seat, gaping, his voice rising an octave.

Greg. The sight of their old friend standing shirtless in the kitchen made Levi smile. He bent to re-thread the laces, waiting for Mum and Pop’s explanation for Greg Morrison materializing out of nowhere for morning coffee.

Greg lifted his mug. Cheers. How’s everyone this morn?

Oliver shot glances at Mum and Pop, then at Levi, who simply shrugged. Good old Greg.

Greg’s just bunking here, Pop cleared his throat and lowered his paper, peering over it, now and then.

Oliver leaned forward, the movement causing the coffee mugs to jiggle. He glanced between his parents who ignored him. Only Tenley tuned into his agitation. She put a hand on his arm.

Levi smirked, glad there were finally other family witnesses to the developing McFarland insanity. He needed some allies to go up against his parents, and though it made him a little sad that it would come to a head that holiday week, his parents’ favorite time of year, there was no way to stop it.

Greg stretched and scratched an armpit. The McFarlands certainly had room for Greg, but Levi knew every single unspoken question that was running through Oliver’s mind. Soon there would be too many to keep from asking. The truth, the answer—would that be told?

Well, good to see you, Greg, Oliver said, sliding his chair over to make room at the table. There it was. Just pretend this is all perfectly normal.

Levi wasn’t going to sit there while it all stewed. Off to the carriage house. Things to do. Levi pulled on gloves and whistled for Harvey. Man and dog pushed into the cold, puffs of air crystalizing with every exhale.

And just before the storm door slammed shut, he caught the first questions.

"What the hell is Levi doing in the carriage house? What the hell is going on here?" Oliver asked.

Chapter 3

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Big Sister

Levi

The McFarland Carriage House was once just that. But since Levi could remember it had been used to store cast-off furniture, tools, supplies, landscaping equipment, Pop’s old hockey rink contraptions—anything that didn’t have a place in the house or that needed to be used by handymen charged with helping to keep an old house in decent shape. Even the second-floor apartment that was once home to the original McFarland chauffeur and his family was used for storage. Since coming home, Levi had been reorganizing the lower space and that was where he found the thing that he figured was keeping him alive.

He turned on the space heaters and mixed the clay, sand and water, kneading it into loaves. When ready, he slapped each loaf into a wooden mold. The monotonous process, now that he’d perfected it, felt easy, meditative, a way to channel his energy into something constructive instead of destructive.

When he’d finished mixing what he’d come to think of as brick dough he settled them into their molds and put them near the space heaters to set. He wandered outside, studying the property beside the carriage house where his project had been taking shape before the snow came. Eagle Bend, a suburb just miles out of Pittsburgh city limits, often enjoyed stretches of biting cold weather and heaps of snow. Until ten days before, autumn had been mild, allowing Levi to complete some of his plan, at least to feel as though he accomplished something.

The project came to him by accident. When he showed up at his childhood home, mind empty of academic pursuits, heart shattered by Jennifer’s absence, he wandered, boozing it up, avoiding probing questions from his parents beyond saying he just needed to stay there for a while. They didn’t push and he didn’t reveal.

So one morning with a carload of beer he wanted to stash in the carriage house like they used to do as kids (his parents didn’t need to know the extent of his drinking after all), he ended up shocked that the space was so cluttered he could barely reach the refrigerator. Just a few moments inside and he’d started digging around, moving things, organizing items into categories.  

While making piles and stacks and tunneling toward the refrigerator, he discovered that portions of the brick floor were damaged. It was then he found the mold. At first he thought it was just an old wood box with the bottom carved with letters. He dug away old clay, turned it over and saw what it said. McFarland 1892.

His mind locked on something he’d seen near the front corner—a brick with the family name engraved in it. When he saw it matched the wood carving he realized the box was a mold for brickmaking.

He had searched the carriage house, moving the tool bench, lawn mowers, and porch furniture until he’d found more. Dozens of bricks laid into the floor had been molded with the McFarland name or decorative designs. He had stared at the floor a good while, marveling at how something could last that long, that it was part of their family history. He eyed the mold on the tool bench and an idea took shape.

He’d googled and gone to the library and Theodore’s Books and Booze where he ordered historic books, studying how to make bricks by hand. Having not grown up using carpentry tools he wasn’t so sure he could manage. He started by using scrap wood and made molds and then experimented with brick recipes, digging for clay behind the carriage house as his ancestors would have done. Once he started, he couldn’t stop, spending morning ’til night in the carriage house, only emerging for meals or to help with the dog or chores he noticed needed to be done. And though strange, he did find discussions with Mum about her newfound love for breadmaking to be enjoyable.

He even built a forge behind the carriage house, digging several trenches that radiated from a center pit where he stacked the bricks that needed to be fired, and covering them with spares from inside the carriage house, then lit it up, finding that the antique system was quite good at making fine brick if he didn’t say so himself.

Now that the weather turned cold and snowy, he did most of the work, save firing, inside the carriage house—the latter would have to wait until it warmed up again. He’d already repaired and replaced bricks inside, carefully removing the original family bricks to be used as part of his plan. If only he could cobble his actual life back together with the same ease.

Back at the workbench, bent over his drawings, he altered the design. Someone closed their arms around him from behind, gripping tight and squealing.

What’re you doing back here in this mess?

Ivy.

He turned and returned the embrace, pulling back quickly to study her. The Luxurious Hippie has returned!

The oldest sister, third sibling, tilted her head, long, loose brown curls bouncing. She grinned. You little rat. You saw that Luxurious Hippie thing, did you? I take exception to the title. I’m just a plain old hippie. I live in a school bus, after all. Luxury is the overstatement of the century.

He hadn’t seen anything. The guys at the Main Street Tavern had reported the story to him. At first, he’d barely registered what they were saying as he tossed darts through a Jack Daniel’s haze.

The bus is here?

’Course. Couldn’t very well leave my home sweet home just sitting on the turnpike and Uber across the bridge for the holidays.

He scratched his chin, studying her. That was true. Where’s my nephew?

House. Mum lured him with sugar cookies.

The perfect plot.

She nodded. I have a surprise.

She pulled Levi out of the carriage house and into her bus parked behind Oliver’s Wagoneer. The bus’s whitewashed exterior was Ivy’s trademark finish. As they entered, he surveyed the space, immediately understanding why Ivy’s social media fans—and especially her detractors—had decided she was living a luxurious life even if it was as a single parent on the road, a self-proclaimed minimalist hippie.

He tapped the infamous backsplash that started the controversy that had grown her TikTok presence from ten thousand serene devotees to ten million who vehemently loved and hated her. "That is real marble, Ivy."

It is, but... Her voice snapped to the high register of a person who’d grown tired of defending herself. I traded for the tiles and mortar and did all the work myself. Well, most of it, because halfway into the tiling I met—

The squeal of a baby interrupted Ivy.

Levi’s eyes went wide, and he looked past her to the part of the bus that was clearly a bedroom. She tilted her head and gave one of her Oh well, you caught me expressions that she’d employed her entire life.

Levi followed the sound of the baby, and Ivy followed him. They poked their heads through a set of curtains. There in a little bassinet lay a baby with a full head of tight coils of black hair and brown skin. The baby contorted its face further at the sight of Levi, but when Ivy leaned closer, cooing, There’s my baby girl, the infant turned toward her voice and smiled, kicking her feet, the snowflake footed pajamas covering plump little limbs.

Levi drew back. "You’re just gonna drop a baby into the holiday like it’s nothing? There’s my baby girl, like she’s a new tablecloth