They’d started two piles in the living room: one to keep, and another one, nearer the door, to go. The to-go pile was bigger, but not by much. Liv girded her loins and pulled open the hall closet. Nammy’s coats—not easy. Liv kept a bright red car-coat for herself, and Mom kept a cardigan sweater she’d given Nammy for her eightieth birthday. Clenching her teeth, Liv finally packed up the rest.
The boxes on the closet floor and on the top shelf all appeared to contain Christmas ornaments. “I’m surprised she hadn’t started decorating yet,” Liv said.
“She had a rule,” Mom said. “December first. When I was little, I had to wait till December before I could put on the Christmas records. I would have driven her crazy otherwise. I played ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ all month long.”
Liv grinned. Then her heart twisted. She’d heard the same story countless times from Nammy.
Rachel must have seen her falter; bravely, she reached past Liv and pulled out the two metal canisters Nammy had used for her tree decorations.
“Liv?” Rachel said uncertainly. “Maybe you keep one and I keep one? And Mom, you could go through and pick out your favorites?”
Mom nodded, her eyes glistening. “Let’s don’t open them right now.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Rachel said.
Liv silently hauled the two canisters to the to-keep pile. The growing stack would catch up to the to-go pile if they weren’t careful. But she wasn’t ready to sift through the Christmas ornaments either.
When Liv returned to the hallway, Rachel had dragged out a box containing Nammy’s artificial tree and was reaching into the back of the closet. Her muffled voice exclaimed, “Holy cow! Is this what I think it is?”
Rachel hauled out a long blue-and-white box that Liv recognized immediately.
Liv gasped. “I didn’t know she still had it.” A surge of childhood nostalgia hit her. Taking over where Rachel left off, she pulled the box the rest of the way into the dining area.
“Look, Mom.” Liv brought the box to rest at their mother’s feet. “The silver tree.”
For Liv, just looking at the closed box conjured up a host of warm memories. Inside would be the branches and base for Nammy’s old silver aluminum Christmas tree—the kind that came with a color wheel to shine different shades of light on the branches. Four panes of plastic rotated in front of a bulb aimed at the tree, making the metal branches reflect red, blue, orange, and green. Nammy used to put the tree up when Liv and Rachel were little, and the two of them would sit on her living room floor for what seemed like hours at a time, watching it change colors.
Mom viewed the box with a little more reserve. “You’re kidding. She kept it?”
At her less-than-joyful tone, Liv and Rachel exchanged a mutual look of betrayal. “Mom!”
Rachel added, “You mean you didn’t like it?”
Mom flushed, as if she’d been caught in a guilty secret. “Not that much. But I knew you girls loved it.”
Liv remembered her mother helping Nammy set up the tree for them, year after year. She didn’t remember any complaints. “I never knew you didn’t care for it.”
“Maybe just because it was the first tree we had when I was growing up. Sometimes you want what you don’t have. I was always kind of jealous of kids who had real trees. When I was older we started getting them from the tree lot at the home store, and I was glad. Nammy started putting up the old silver tree again for you kids when you were little. You got a big kick out of it.” Mom nodded at the box with a rueful smile. “You’ve got to admit, it’s pretty cheesy.”
Liv lowered her eyes and studied the box reluctantly. Through the eyes of an adult, she supposed, it was sort of hokey. But still . . . “I wonder what kind of shape it’s in by now.”
She hadn’t seen the silver tree since she and Rachel were in their teens. By that time Nammy had switched to a typical green artificial tree, most likely the first one Rachel had found in the closet. But what were they going to do with the trees now? None of them really needed either of the Christmas trees. They needed to start getting more practical, or they’d never make it through this.
The doorbell saved her from continuing the discussion.
“I’ll get it.” Liv nodded at Rachel. “You sit down.”
Rachel hadn’t complained about anything except being cold, but to Liv, it looked like her sister was tottering under all that extra weight around her middle. Sure enough, Rachel plunked into the chair next to Mom with no argument.
“Coming,” Liv called.
She opened the door and stepped aside to let in Scotty Leroux. Today he definitely looked the part of the handyman, wearing a warm-looking tan winter vest over a plaid flannel work shirt. Liv quickly closed the door after him, although the air outside didn’t seem any colder than the air inside.
Were Nammy’s ceilings lower than normal? Either the small home made Scotty seem even bigger, or he made the house feel smaller. Liv held herself up as straight as she could.
“I got Rachel’s message,” Scott said. “She wasn’t kidding. It’s like an igloo in here.”
“You got here fast.”
“I check messages every time I stop by Coffman’s Hardware. It’s a decent system.” Scott looked over her head into the dining room. “Hi, Rachel. Hi, Mrs. Tomblyn.”
“Call me Faye,” her mom said. Scott already called her grandmother Nammy. Now he was going to call her mother Faye?
Liv walked past him to lead the way to the thermostat. It had to be her imagination, because he’d just come out of the cold himself, but the air around him felt warmer as she brushed past. “The thermostat’s right here,” she said unnecessarily. Scotty flipped down the plastic cover of the little wall-mounted box and gave it a cursory glance. She went on, “And I think the main unit is on the right as you go into the garage.”
“That’s the water heater. But thanks for playing.” He quirked a smile at her as he took one long step down the hall to the door that opened to the garage. The rush of air that came in from the garage was definitely colder than the air in the house.
“Wait here,” he said as Liv started to follow. “You guys can—burn some kindling or something.”
Liv stared at the door as it closed after him, hugging herself against the chill. Like Mom and Rachel, she hadn’t taken her coat off. She returned to the dining area, arms still folded.
“He knows his way around here, that’s for sure.” Her lips felt almost numb, and she wondered if they were as blue as Rachel claimed her fingernails were.
“Well, he would,” Rachel said. “He’s been here a lot.”
Liv wrapped her arms more tightly around herself—not just against the cold this time, but a strange, niggling feeling she couldn’t put a name to. Except that Scotty had been here—for Nammy and maybe for the rest of her family, too—when she hadn’t.
She shouldn’t hold that against him. Holding it against herself... that was a different matter.
* * *
When you were six-foot-five and wore size fourteen shoes, sometimes it was hard not to stumble into the wrong spot. So Scott did his best to tread lightly when he came back into the roomful of women.
They were huddled around the kitchen table, as if for warmth. Liv was still standing, and his eyes went down to her shoes. Sneakers today. Patterned with blue roses.
“I think I got it going,” he said.
Faye Tomblyn nodded. “I heard the click.”
From overhead, Scott felt the initial rush of air from a vent in the ceiling, cold against the back of his neck. It would take a minute or two for the chilly air to clear out of the ducts; longer than that before the house felt habitable.
“It might be a good idea for me to wait a few minutes and make sure the heater keeps behaving itself,” he said. “Do you have anything ready for me to take out? For donations or anything?”
He hated to ask, but after all, that was what they were there for.
“There’s a stack over
here,” Liv said.
Arms folded, back straight, she led him toward a modest-size pile of boxes near the front door. Of course, they’d barely started. They’d been working just long enough to give the always-orderly home the disheveled look of a house where someone was moving in or out. A heck of away to spend the Christmas season.
Scott loaded the boxes into the back of his truck, waving off Liv’s offer to help. Three women, one of them pregnant, the other one on crutches—no wonder they’d hardly made any headway.
By the time he finished transferring the boxes, Liv and Rachel were boxing up dishes from the cabinet, embroiled in what sounded like a series of momentous decisions over coffee mugs. He wondered how and when they were going to deal with the furniture, but decided this wouldn’t be a good time to bring it up.
Instead, he nodded at two stray boxes in the dining room near Faye’s feet. “What about those?”
Glances between the women bounced around the room like an unleashed ping-pong ball.
“They’re Christmas trees,” Rachel said, looking uncertainly from Liv to her mom, and Scott could feel emotional undercurrents as surely as the warmish air that was beginning to spread its way through the house.
Women were always filled with undercurrents—unspoken thoughts that Scott had spent the past several years of his adult life trying to keep up with. Take those currents, multiply by three, then add in the grief over losing Nammy and the stress of sorting through her belongings. It was the perfect storm.
Nammy had been free of undercurrents, as far as he could tell. What you saw was what you got. Did women have to live that long to get rid of all those complex, unspoken nuances? It seemed like a waste of time to him.
While Scott waited for a judgment call, he noticed that Faye and Rachel’s eyes had landed on Liv, as if they’d elected her their new, unofficial team captain.
“Okay.” Liv closed her eyes. “Let’s think about this. A Christmas tree spends eleven months out of the year boxed up in a closet . . . and you already have one, right, Mom?”
Faye nodded.
“Rachel?”
Rachel bit her lip. “Brian likes getting fresh ones.”
“Okay. And I don’t need one either. We can donate the green one, all right?”
Two nods. What other colors did Christmas trees come in? He supposed he’d seen some trees flocked with fake snow, but . . .
Liv nodded toward the older, blue-and-white box on the floor. “Now, what about the silver tree?”
A thick silence fell, and Scott did his best not to move.
“Well, I can pass,” Faye said. “Do either of you girls want it?”
“Rachel?” Liv prompted gently.
Rachel slowly shook her head. “I guess not.”
Liv sighed, and Scott thought he saw her shoulders drop as she bent to pick up the box, preparing to carry it to the door.
“I can get that,” he said, taking it from Liv as she straightened.
It weighed practically nothing. Strange, for something that seemed to be a topic of such heavy debate. But then he realized she hadn’t completely let go of the box, and something was swirling in her hazel eyes as they locked with his. Not as simple as tears; he’d seen signs of those yesterday.
If this house was the perfect storm of female turmoil, Liv was the epicenter. Liv, with her straight posture, practical thinking, and determination to get this job done.
They stood facing each other, supporting opposite sides of the long cardboard box. Liv didn’t want to let it go, and Scott held on to his end as if, by doing so, he could help to hold her up. He didn’t want to sway her and make what was obviously a hard decision harder. Then inspiration struck.
“I have an idea,” he said. “There’s a new little Christmas hotel in town. It just opened over the summer, and they’re trying to put a tree in every room. Last I heard, they were still taking donations. I’ll bet they could use these trees. That way you’d know someone was enjoying them.”
Liv’s lips quirked up a little. “A Christmas hotel?”
It was as close to a smile as he’d seen on her today, and some of that cloudy look seemed to clear from her eyes.
Liv’s mom said, “It’s really cute.”
Liv turned toward her mother, her lips widening into a definite smile. “And what are you doing hanging out at hotels, Mom?”
She’d loosened her hold on the box; Scott set it down, gently, on top of the box that held the green artificial tree.
“They had a big grand opening this summer,” Rachel chimed in. “Brian and I went there with Mom and Nammy. It was kind of a big deal around here.”
“A Christmas hotel that opens in the summer?”
“It’s a long story,” Scott said. “But it’s pretty cool.”
“You really ought to see it,” Rachel said.
And just like that, for some reason, his big old feet blundered ahead, probably straight into his mouth. “Want to see it now? You could ride along while I drop the trees off.”
Rachel and Faye looked at Scott; Liv looked at her mom and sister.
“Go ahead,” Faye said. “We’ll wait here.”
“I shouldn’t leave you guys,” Liv said, but Scott didn’t hear any conviction.
“No, you should go,” Rachel said. “It’s adorable.”
Liv cast her eyes around the room, and that invisible weight seemed to return to her shoulders. “We’ve got so much to do.”
“No, go,” Rachel said again. “We’re good. The house is warming up, and we’ve got that pasta salad we brought from the memorial.” She grinned. “We won’t work too hard while you’re gone.”
Liv’s shoulders relaxed a little, and Scott knew the battle was won.
Chapter 6
What had he been thinking? Scott wondered.
Once again, Liv sat in the passenger seat beside him, long hair cascading down her shoulders, a faraway look in her eyes. But he’d had the feeling Liv needed to get out of that house for a while, and the weakness of her protests had confirmed it.
He only knew one way to deal with it. The way he dealt with most things in his life: try to lighten the mood.
He broke the silence. “So, did you find any gold bricks yet?”
Liv turned from her weighty contemplation of Evergreen Lane. He wasn’t sure she was really seeing anything outside her window. “What?”
“I was just thinking, with the amount of time Nammy lived there, you could run across just about anything in that house. Like buried treasure, or . . .” He trailed off. “Sorry. Lame joke.”
Liv answered as if she hadn’t heard him. “You really don’t have time for this,” she said. “We really appreciate everything you’re doing. Be sure to let us know what we owe you.”
“It’s not about money. You know that.”
He got the feeling Liv would have been more comfortable if it were about money. Something that clearly delineated what she owed him. One thing about her that clearly hadn’t changed: she was an orderly, organized, list-making kind of gal. She probably didn’t like balances left outstanding.
What this was about, Scott wasn’t sure anymore.
Helping Faye and Rachel by picking Liv up at the airport was a no-brainer. It was what neighbors did for each other, and the fact that they were related to Olivia made the decision even more clear-cut.
Liv . . . not so clear-cut.
She was a complicated mixture of vulnerable and resolutely self-reliant. He couldn’t tell which side tugged at him harder. He did have a soft spot for vulnerable women. But the way she’d taken over yesterday’s kitchen crisis—that had been impressive. Even so, he’d caught that glimpse of the vulnerable girl trembling under the weight of it.
This morning, with her tousled hair and oversized college sweatshirt, it was obvious she hadn’t expected anyone besides her mom and sister to see her today. She looked tired, distracted, and frazzled. And gorgeous. Probably even more so today than yesterday, because she wasn’t even tryin
g.
“Seriously,” Liv was saying. “We’re cutting into your time.”
He waved her off. “Forget it. You know how things work around here. Next time I’m in a pinch, I’ll hit your family up for . . . I don’t know, a casserole or something.”
That got a smile out of her.
“You want casseroles?” she said. “We’ve got casseroles. Mom’s fridge is full of them. She says people were bringing them in all week. Then last night, we spent an hour trying to fit in a bunch of leftover side dishes from the potluck. It was like a jigsaw puzzle.”
Scott remembered. By the time he pulled Rachel’s car up to the front of the church last night, several women had caught up to the three women to offer them a small arsenal of casserole dishes and Tupperware containers. Liv and her family had been visibly weary, but gracious, as the well-wishers loaded down the backseat.
After a moment of silent contemplation, Liv said, “I shouldn’t have left them at Nammy’s like that.”
“You know something? I think they knew you needed a break.”
“We just barely started, and there’s so much . . .”
“Know something else? I think they needed a break, too. Unless they were just really dying to get into that potato salad.”
“Pasta salad.”
Whichever. “It’s a lot to take on, Liv. It’s okay to pace yourself.”
“It needs to be done.”
“I get that. But remember, your grandmother’s memorial was yesterday.”
She looked out the window again. “You think I’m pushing too much?”
Scott fingered the steering wheel. He wasn’t trying to be hard on her. Just the opposite. “I think you’re pushing yourself too much. Just remember, you’re only human. And the first day is probably going to be the hardest. I imagine it’ll get a little easier as you go.”
“At least Rachel balances me out a little bit. She’s so supportive with Mom.”
At the word supportive, Scott saw the two younger women flanking their mother on the way out to the church parking lot, ready to steady her at the first wobble.
“You don’t have any brothers or sisters, do you?” Liv asked.
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