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      A Virgin River Christmas is dedicated to Kris and Edna Kitna, with deep gratitude for your help, your incomparable hospitality and your friendship.

       Prologue

      Marcie stood beside her lime-green Volkswagen, shivering in the November chill, the morning sun barely over the horizon. She was packed and ready, as excited as she was scared about this undertaking. In the backseat she had a small cooler with snacks and sodas. There was a case of bottled water in the trunk and a thermos of coffee on the passenger seat. She’d brought a sleeping bag just in case the motel bedding wasn’t to her standards; the clothes she’d packed in her duffel were mostly jeans, sweatshirts, heavy socks and boots, all appropriate for tramping around small mountain towns. She was itching to hit the road, but her younger brother, Drew, and her older sister, Erin, were stretching out the goodbyes.

      “You have the phone cards I gave you? In case you don’t have good cell reception?” Erin asked.

      “Got ‘em.”

      “Sure you have enough money?”

      “I’ll be fine.”

      “Thanksgiving is in less than two weeks.”

      “It shouldn’t take that long,” Marcie said, because if she said anything else, there would be yet another showdown. “I figure I’m going to find Ian pretty quick. I think I have his location narrowed down.”

      “Rethink this, Marcie,” Erin said, giving it one last try. “I know some of the best private detectives in the business—the law firm employs them all the time. We could locate Ian and have the things you want to give him delivered.”

      “We’ve been over this,” Marcie said. “I want to see him, talk to him.”

      “We could find him first and then you could—”

      “Tell her, Drew,” Marcie implored.

      Drew took a breath. “She’s going to find him, talk to him, find out what’s going on with him, spend some time with him, give him the baseball cards, show him the letter, and then she’ll come home.”

      “But we could—”

      Marcie put a hand on her older sister’s arm and looked at her with determined green eyes. “Stop. I can’t move on until I do this, and do it my way, not your way. We’re done talking about it. I know you think it’s dumb, but it’s what I’m going to do.” She leaned toward Erin and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Erin, so sleek, beautiful, accomplished and sophisticated—so nothing like Marcie—had been like a mother to her since she was a little girl. She had a hard time leaving off the mothering. “Don’t worry—there’s nothing to worry about. I’ll be careful. I won’t be gone long.”

      Then she kissed Drew’s cheek and said, “Can’t you get her some Xanax or something?” Drew was in med school and, no, he couldn’t write prescriptions.

      He laughed and wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tight for a moment. “Just hurry up and get this over with. Erin’s going to drive me nuts.”

      Marcie narrowed her eyes at Erin. “Go easy on him,” she said. “This was my idea. I’ll be back before you know it.”

      And then she got in the car, leaving them standing on the curb in front of the house as she pulled away. She made it all the way to the highway before she felt her eyes sting with tears. She knew she was worrying her siblings, but she had no choice.

      Marcie’s husband, Bobby, had died almost a year ago, just before Christmas, at the age of twenty-six. That came after more than three years in hospitals and then in a nursing home—hopelessly disabled and brain damaged, with injuries incurred as a marine serving in Iraq. Ian Buchanan was his sergeant and best friend, a marine Bobby said would do twenty. But Ian exited the Marine Corps shortly after Bobby was wounded and had been out of touch ever since.