The wishing bridge, p.1
The Wishing Bridge, page 1
Select praise for the novels of Viola Shipman
“A beautifully written story about second chances. Fans of women’s fiction won’t be able to put this down.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Secret of Snow
“Viola Shipman knows relationships. The Clover Girls will sometimes make you smile and other times cry, but like a true friendship, it is a novel you will forever savor and treasure.”
—Mary Alice Monroe, New York Times bestselling author
“The perfect winter warmer!”
—USA TODAY bestselling author Sarah Morgan
on The Secret of Snow
“Viola Shipman has written a love song to long-lost friends, an ode to the summers that define us and the people who make us who we are. The minute I finished The Clover Girls, I ordered copies for all my friends. It’s that good.”
—Kristy Woodson Harvey, New York Times bestselling author
“Reading Viola Shipman’s novels is like talking with your best friend and wanting never to hang up the phone. The Clover Girls is her most beautiful novel yet, and her most important.”
—Nancy Thayer, New York Times bestselling author
“Oh, the joy! The Clover Girls may be [Shipman’s] best yet.... A redemptive tale, celebrating the power of friendship while focusing on what matters most. Perfect for the beach!”
—New York Journal of Books
“Every now and then a new voice in fiction arrives to completely charm, entertain and remind us what matters. Viola Shipman is that voice and The Summer Cottage is that absolutely irresistible and necessary novel.”
—Dorothea Benton Frank, New York Times bestselling author
“A blissful summer read sure to please the author’s many fans, and fans of writers like Elin Hilderbrand or Kristin Hannah.”
—Library Journal on The Heirloom Garden
Viola Shipman
The Wishing Bridge
Viola Shipman is the pen name of Wade Rouse, the USA TODAY bestselling author of thirteen books, including The Secret of Snow and The Clover Girls. Rouse chose his grandma’s name, Viola Shipman, as a pseudonym to honor the woman whose heirlooms inspire his fiction. He lives in Michigan and California, and hosts Wine & Words with Wade, a literary happy hour, every Thursday.
ViolaShipman.com
To Kathy Talsma
One of my most beloved readers, a friend and bright light in this world taken too soon, whose love of family and Michigan’s beauty was as big as the lake and will inspire me forever.
Table of Contents
The Wishing Bridge
Christmas Angels
The Wishing Bridge
Contents
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Part Two
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part Three
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Part Four
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Part Five
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Dear Readers
Reader’s Guide - The Wishing Bridge
Questions for Discussion
prologue
If there were one sound that defined my childhood, it would be the chiming of the glockenspiel.
Every hour of my youth was punctuated by the sound of the five-bell Westminster chime. Clarion bells echoed through my little Bavarian hometown of Frankenmuth, Michigan, across the Holz Brücke and the Cass River, through the woods and directly into my heart.
Memories serve as the voice to our souls, the soundtrack to our lives.
I bet you can remember—clear as those bells—the following sounds: the call of a whip-poor-will off the cabin’s screened porch, your grandmother’s singing as she baked after Sunday church, the crack of a baseball off a bat as your father watched a game, the crunch of fall leaves under your boots, your brother’s giggle, the sound of tires on a gravel road and the scratching of a mouse that’s found its way inside your home on the first frigid day of winter.
You can, can’t you?
No matter how much time has passed, you can recall that memory—just as clearly as you can smell your mother’s perfume right now—as if it were yesterday.
The glockenspiel became as ever present as the sound of my own heartbeat drumming in my ears.
I ran as far away as I could from the sound of those bells.
But, like any memory, there was much more to the glockenspiel than its sound.
There was a history.
There was a myth.
There was a story.
There was a fable that unfolded before your eyes, wood figurines that told the tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
The glockenspiel was a constant reminder of home and Christmas that scratched in my ears, just like that winter mouse and the ones that danced on its bell tower.
And from that...
Well, from that memory, I could never run.
Part One
1
December 7
I hit the brakes, my car fishtailing on the slippery road. I come to a stop just inches from the car before me.
Ah, the hazards of winter in Michigan and Detroit drivers who think snow is a reason to hit the gas.
I cock my head and see an accident just a few cars in front of me. A man is out of his car, screaming into the window of the car he hit.
Merry Christmas!
I take a breath, sip my coffee—which miraculously didn’t spill—hit my blinker and wait to merge into the next lane.
That’s when I notice it: the abandoned house I drive by every day to work.
There are many abandoned homes in many forgotten neighborhoods in this proud city whose shoulders were slumped by the mortgage crisis, layoffs in the auto industry and never-ending winters that used to be as brutal and mind-numbing as a Detroit Lions football season. Neighborhoods stand like ghost towns, and, in winter, they look even sadder, the grass dead, the green gone, broken glass shimmering in the sun before the snow arrives to cover their remains.
This particular home is a three-story redbrick beauty that looks like a castle. The windows are broken, the walls are collapsing and yet the wooden staircase—visible to the world—remains intact. I slow down just enough every day to admire the finials, worn and shining from the hands that have polished them over the years.
There is a line of shattered windows just above the ground, and as you pass by, you catch a glimmer of red in the basement. Coming the opposite way, you swear you can see a man smiling.
I stopped years ago to investigate. I parked, careful to avoid nails, and wound my way in high heels through the weeds to the broken window. I knelt and peeked into the basement.
Santa!
A plastic molded Santa smiled at me. It was a vintage mold—like the one my grandparents centered in the middle of a wreath on their front door every year—of a cheery Santa with red cheeks, blue eyes, green gloves, holding a candy cane tied in a golden bow.
I scanned the basement. Boxes were still stacked everywhere. Tubs were marked Christmas!
In the corner of the basement sat a sign overrun with cobwebs that read Santa’s Toy Shop!
December 1975
“They’re here! They’re here!”
My voice echoed through my grandparents’ house. I ran to the front door, grabbed the first catalog, which seemed to weigh nearly as much as I did, and tottered down the steep basement stairs. Back up I went to retrieve the next one from Mr. Haley, the postman, who looked exactly like Captain Kangaroo.
“Don’t move!” I said, disappearing and returning moments later.
Then back down the stairs I scrambled once again.
Mr. Haley laughed when I returned the final time, out of breath.
“Last one,” he said. “Oh, and a bunch of Christmas cards for your grandmother.”
I bent over, panting, as if I’d just done wind sprints on the track.
“Tired?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No! Think of what Santa carries! Not to mention what you carry every day!”
“You got me there,” he said. “Here’s the cards. I’ll see you tomorrow. Merry Christmas!”
I watched him trudge through the freshly fallen snow, just enough to dust the world in white. If there’s one thing we never had to worry about in our town of Frankenmuth, it was a white
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Haley!” I yelled, my breath coming out in puffs.
I shut the door, tossed the cards on the telephone desk sitting in the foyer and hightailed it back down to the basement.
I looked at the catalogs where I’d set them on the shag carpet and ran around them in a happy circle doing a little jig.
I turned on the electric fireplace. It was so cool, fake brick, and it just faded into the Z-BRICK walls. The flames seemed to dance, even though they weren’t real.
I went over to the card table where my grandparents played games—bridge, canasta, hearts—and I grabbed my marker from a cup.
The red one.
The one I used every year.
The one Santa would recognize.
I took a seat on the orange shag and arranged the catalogs in a semicircle around me: the Christmas catalogs from JCPenney and Monkey Wards, and my favorite, the Sears Wish Book.
The catalogs were heavy and thick, big as the Buick my grandpa drove. They were brand-new and all mine. I began to flip through the crisp pages, turning quickly to the ones that showed all the toys, clothes and games I wanted for Christmas.
I was lost for hours in the pages, dreaming, hoping, wishing.
“Yes, yes, yes!” I said, my marker in constant motion.
“Are you using a red marker so Santa will see?”
I looked up, and my dad was standing over me. He was tall, hair as fair as mine. He had just gotten off work. He was an accountant at a car dealership, and he never seemed happy when he got home from work.
Until he came down to my grandparents’ basement.
“Of course!” I said. “Finn gets green. I use red!”
“So what do you want Santa to bring you this year?”
I patted the carpet, and my dad took a seat next to me. I began showing him all the things I’d marked in the wish catalogs.
“I want this eight-room dollhouse, and, oh! this Shaun Cassidy phono with sing-along microphone and this battery-operated sewing machine! It’s the first ever like this!” I stopped, took a deep breath and continued, “And this dress, and this Raggedy Ann doll, but—” I stopped again, flipping through pages as quickly as I could “—more than anything I want this game called Simon. It’s computer controlled, Daddy! It’s like Simon Says, and you have to be really fast, and...”
“Slow down,” he said, rubbing my back. “And what about your brother?”
“What about him?”
“What does he want?”
“He’ll want all the stupid stuff boys like,” I said. “Stars Wars figurines, an erector set, a Nerf rocket and probably a drum set.”
My father winced at the last suggestion.
“Maybe a scooter instead,” my dad suggested. “What do you think?”
“Good idea, Daddy.” I placed my hands over my ears.
He laughed and stood up.
“Hey?” I asked. “What do you want for Christmas?”
My dad headed over to the workshop he had on the other side of the basement. We lived in a small ranch house on the other side of town that didn’t have a basement, much less any extra room. My grandparents let my father convert this space a few years ago so he could pursue a second career and his true passion: Christmas.
“You know what I want,” he said with a smile.
My dad picked up a sign and turned it my way. It was a hand-carved wooden sign that read Frohe Weihnachten!
Frankenmuth is a Bavarian town filled with all things German: a wooden bridge flowing over a charming river, a glockenspiel that—on the hour—played the Westminster chimes followed by an entire show complete with dancing figurines, a cheese haus and competing chicken-and-noodle restaurants. I was named Henrietta, my father Jakob, my brother, Finn. Only my mother, Debbie, escaped the German name game with the very American moniker.
“What’s this mean, Henri?” my dad asked.
“Merry Christmas,” I said.
“And what do I want?”
“Christmas all year long.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Just like you. Except as a grown-up.” He looked at his sign. “That’s my Christmas wish.”
For a long time, everyone thought this was just a hobby of my father’s, sort of like other dads tinkered on car engines, went fishing or coached baseball. For an even longer time, people thought my dad was nuts.
Why would a man spend all of his time creating Christmas signs in July, or designing ornaments in March?
They didn’t know my dad.
They didn’t how serious he was, that he often worked until three in the morning from October through December and countless weekends the rest of the year.
“You have a good job, Jakob,” friends would tell him. “Don’t ruin your life over some silly notion.”
But my mom and grandparents believed in him just as much as I believed in Santa.
I watched my father work. As he did, he began to whistle Christmas tunes.
The world was finally catching up with my father’s dream. He was now creating window displays for two of the biggest stores in town: Shepherd Woolen Mill and Koch’s Country Store.
My dad picked up a big piece of lumber.
“Do you know what this is going to be, Henri?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“This is the same as having a dream,” Dad continued. “No one knows what it’s going to look like. But I do.”
I smiled.
“Let me ask you another question,” my father said. “What do you think of the holiday decorations downtown?”
I crinkled my nose. In my mind, I could see the tired old wreaths, no longer green, wires protruding through the lights, only half of which worked.
“They’re icky,” I said.
“That’s why I’m designing all new Christmas decorations for the downtown lampposts,” he said. “This wood I’m holding will become miniature Christmas cuckoo clocks that celebrate Frankenmuth’s history.”
My dad set down the wood and looked at me.
“Did you know Franken is in honor of the province of Franconia in the kingdom of Bavaria and Mut is the German word for ‘courage’? Our town’s architecture is inspired by Germany—our shops and homes are recreations of the timber-framed buildings found in the Franconia region of Germany. My decorations will honor our heritage. Christmas should continue our beloved traditions and memories.”
My dad came back to where I was sitting.
“One day, I will be the Christmas König,” he said. “The Christmas King.” My dad took a seat on the shag next to me. “And you will be the Christmas Prinzessin.” My dad smiled. “The Christmas Princess. You love Christmas even more than I do. And what I start, you will make it your own. Not out of obligation to me, but because you have the spirit of Christmas inside of you. I can feel it in my heart.”
My dad tapped the wish catalog with his finger.
“One day, I will have one of these for the entire world,” he said. “All my own Christmas decorations—signs, ornaments, villages. Can you imagine, Henri?”
I looked at my dad and then down at the wish catalog.
Did he realize the world was changing? Games were going from batteries to computer controlled. What would be next? Would people always love Christmas the way we did now? Or would that change, too?
“And you will be on the cover of that catalog, because nothing embodies Christmas more than the innocence and joy of a child.” My father took my hand in his. “I want you to know something, Henri.”
I looked into my father’s eyes.
“When we go to see Santa downtown this year, and you tell him all the things you want for Christmas, I want you to ask yourself after you see him what you wish for, more than anything in the world.”
I cocked my head. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s not things that make our lives meaningful and our Christmases happy—it’s what we already have. Each other.” My dad’s voice deepened into a hum as low and vibrating as the fireplace. “Just remember to always keep a catalog of wishes and dreams right here.”
