Free Welcome to Icicle Falls by Sheila Roberts Page A

that she was supposed to be sulking.
    Bailey and Cecily exchanged smiles. They’d heard the story back when they were fighting over a man. It looked as though it was time for a new generation to learn the importance of love and loyalty.
    Muriel had both of the younger girls’ attention now. “What happened?” Aurora asked.
    Dot and Olivia had drifted into the living room area now along with two other young girls. “Tell ’em,” Dot said. “I always like a good story at Christmas, especially when it has a happy ending.”
    â€œAll right,” Muriel said. “It happened a long time ago, but sometimes it seems like only yesterday.”

Chapter 1
    Summer, 1969
    â€œW E NEED MORE CUTE BOYS in this town,” Olivia Green complained as she and Muriel and Pat Pearson walked home from Icicle Falls High.
    â€œWe have more than we used to,” Muriel said.
    By the late fifties, most of the cute boys and their families were all moving away. So were a lot of the girls, including her best friend, Doreen Smith. Muriel and Doreen wrote regularly for years, determined to stay best friends via the post office. But it wasn’t the same as having her in town.
    The town hadn’t been much then. Icicle Falls had been dying for years, thanks to the railroad leaving and drying up the lumber business. After that there wasn’t much left—a ramshackle downtown with derelict buildings housing a general store, a bank and a post office. There was a run-down motel and a diner to cater to people going over the pass. Add to that a few houses, a church, a grade school and tiny high school, and that was about all there was.
    When Muriel was eight, she’d eavesdropped on the conversation of various grown-ups gathered in her parents’ living room.
    â€œWe’ve got a mountain setting as nice as anything you’d find in the Alps,” her daddy had said. “We could turn this place into a Bavarian village, make it a real destination town. We’ve already got the mountains and the rivers to lure skiers and fishermen. Let’s give ’em a reason to stay and spend their money.”
    â€œI don’t know, Joe. It’s a big gamble,” Mr. Johnson had said.
    â€œIf we don’t take this gamble it’s a sure thing Icicle Falls will be nothing but a ghost town in another ten years. We’ve got more people moving away all the time,” her daddy had pointed out.
    Ghosts? Were there
ghosts
haunting the place?
    She’d asked her mother about that later. Mother had kissed her and assured her there was no such thing as ghosts.
    â€œWhat did Daddy mean, then?” she’d demanded.
    â€œHe meant that we need to find a way to make our town a place where people want to be.”
    â€œ
I
want to be here,” she’d said. She’d wanted her best friend there, too.
    â€œSo do I, darling,” her mother had said. “Don’t you worry. Your daddy’s going to fix everything.”
    Daddy made chocolate. She had no doubt he’d be able to fix this problem, too. The one all the grown-ups were so concerned about.
    And he had. In the summer of 1962, while her friend Doreen was enjoying the Seattle World’s Fair, Muriel was helping with town cleanup, collecting old cans in a field with Pat Pearson and Olivia Green. That had been a bonding experience.
    And while they bonded over bits of garbage, other townspeople bonded hauling away old tires and abandoned cars from empty lots. Architects and builders were put to work, and the ramshackle buildings began to get a face-lift, changing Center Street from a Wild West ghost town to a quaint Bavarian village.
    Muriel’s correspondence with Doreen finally dried up, but life in Icicle Falls moved on. The following year new faces began to show up in town. They came in a slow trickle at first, like the drip from icicles on their roof when the snow began to melt. These visitors sometimes