“And you wouldn’t let me,” Rachel said.
“And there’d always be something extra under Nammy’s tree. From Santa. A box that wasn’t there before.”
“Maybe she did that in case we did peek.”
Liv smiled and did something she never would have done when they were ten and seven years old: she reached over and squeezed her sister’s hand.
Rachel hadn’t asked any questions about what happened between Liv and Scott tonight, although theories had to be running rampant in her head. Once upon a time, her present-peeking sister wouldn’t have been capable of that kind of restraint. Maybe curiosity had brought Rachel down the hall to the living room.
But there was nothing to tell. Not really.
“Who gets the tree when we take it down?” Liv asked instead. “Or do we fight over it like we fought when we were kids?”
“No, it’s yours,” Rachel said. “You’re the one who saved it.”
“I’m also the one who put it in the to-go pile to begin with.”
“Christmas trees don’t hold a grudge. Also, Brian would probably hate it.”
Liv wondered if Scott would like it. She should have invited him over to see it. If only she hadn’t caved in to her impulse. Now things would just be strained between them again. Her eyes teared over.
The blurring of the colors in front of her just made the tree look more beautiful. She dropped her forehead to her knees.
“Hey,” Rachel said. “I’m supposed to be the emotional one.”
Liv didn’t dare lift her head, didn’t dare speak. I don’t know what to do.
But she knew exactly what she was going to do. She’d finish up here, spend Christmas with her mom and sister, and go home to pick up where she’d left off. Starting anything with Scott just didn’t make sense.
It was the right thing to do. She was sure of it. Why start something she couldn’t finish? Something that would pull her back toward Tall Pine, when there was no way she could stay here? It wasn’t even fair to Scotty.
Leaving Tall Pine would be hard enough as it was.
* * *
“Next time, leave me the key and I’ll have the tree up and waiting when you get home,” Scott told his parents.
He wrestled the noble fir into the stand, making sure the base of the trunk made it all the way to the bottom so it would take more water.
“What? And miss out on this?” His father adjusted the screws around the trunk of the tree for its preliminary position. “Okay. Let go.”
Scott did, and the tree promptly listed forward and to the right.
Ray and Norma Leroux had been back from their cruise less than two days, and now they were determined to make up for lost time, getting their Christmas decorations in place. Scott was still included—or maybe it was drafted—in the annual ritual of setting the tree up, if only because, unlike his father, he could get through this part of the process without swearing.
“Next year, an artificial tree,” his dad muttered.
Scott had been hearing that since high school. He’d believe it when he saw it. Until then, he didn’t mind being included, with or without the swearing and muttering. And he was pleased to note that although he’d moved out nearly ten years ago, they still made it a point to choose a tree that was significantly taller than his six-foot-five. Even if it made the thing that much harder to get into the house.
“Did you put up your tree yet?” his mother asked.
“Yes, ma’am.” Never mind that his tree was spindly, about five and a half feet tall and looked like someone’s disreputable uncle. He’d gotten it last weekend, while Liv and her family worked on Nammy’s house with Rachel’s husband. Maybe that was why he’d picked out a tree Charlie Brown would be ashamed of. He hadn’t been in the mood to fuss with it.
“What I don’t understand,” Scott said, “is why you want the tree back here in the family room, instead of the front window.”
“This way we don’t have to move all the furniture around,” his mother said.
“Besides, it’ll block our view of the tree house,” his dad said.
Scott looked past the drawn-back curtains, through the window, to the remains of his first-ever carpentry project: a dilapidated tree house resting uncomfortably on the limbs of the weathered oak in the backyard.
“You really should take that down,” his mother added gently.
It was an old discussion. During the winter, cold and snow kept him from getting around to it; summer was his busy season; in between, one distraction or another got in the way. Besides—
“Hey,” he said, “it’s a historical landmark. A Leroux original.”
“It’s the work of a ten-year-old.” His father’s eyes gleamed. There was affection behind the old harangue, as well as the unspoken comment: a talented ten-year-old.
“Like I said,” Scott said lightly. “A piece of local history.”
More history than they knew.
After the Christmas tree had been properly straightened, lit, and decorated, Scott went out to see his old handiwork in the gathering dusk. Not a bad piece of handiwork at the time, although it had always tilted about ten degrees to the south. But years of neglect and weather had turned it into a bit of a hazard as well as an eyesore. He ought to get out here, the next warm day, and dismantle it for useful firewood before any prowling neighborhood kids got too adventurous and sneaked in to explore. The rungs leading up the tree weren’t as secure as they used to be, there’d be splinters everywhere, and who knew how well the floor would hold by now.
But oh, the memories.
In spite of the stiffening evening breeze, Scott tested the flat boards that served as rungs and made a tentative climb, high enough to rest his arms on the floor through the open doorway. As long as the rungs and the floor didn’t both give out at the same time, he should be all right.
He breathed in the scent of damp wood—at least this time of year, any bugs that lived up here were dormant—and remembered secret club meetings with Dane and Ron when they were ten, eleven, twelve. Once puberty hit, the old hangout was forgotten, until it dawned on Scotty that the former boys’ hangout would be the perfect make-out pad. He’d tried it once, with Michele Fitzsimmons, the literal girl next door. His clumsy attempt at a first kiss had ended with a shove that almost landed him flat on his back in his own backyard. So much for his bachelor’s lair.
Women in high places, he thought. He’d fared better with Liv yesterday. At least, until it was time for her to escape.
He needed to accept that some things weren’t meant to be.
* * *
When Scott arrived at Nammy’s a few days later, Liv almost let Rachel answer the door. But that would be cowardly. And obvious. So she answered it. As long as I’m not alone with him, I’ll be fine.
“Hi.” She stepped back to let him in, her smile firmly in place.
He returned her smile with an equally fixed one of his own, one that looked so inconsistent with his usual easy grin. After just a few days without seeing him, it was ridiculous that he should seem so much more three-dimensional than she remembered.
Then his eyes went past her as he stepped inside. “Wow.” His voice echoed.
They had been busy, and it showed.
By now the house was picked clean, except for the living room furniture they were leaving in place, the stacks of boxes, and the kitchen table in the room beyond. They’d even shrunk the to-keep pile down to a more manageable size.
“We’re pretty much done,” Liv admitted.
It was hard to admit. As difficult as the job had been, it was even more painful to see it end. After today, there wouldn’t be much reason to come back here, unless they brought a real estate agent to make arrangements to list the house. Liv wished her mom would let her help with the process of putting the place up for sale. But Mom didn’t see any point in doing that until the Christmas season was over, and Liv couldn’t argue with her logic.
“You guys have done a great j
ob.” Scott’s deep voice resonated as he walked through the nearly empty kitchen and into the hallway, the ladder still waiting under the trap door.
Liv hugged her arms against her ribs, feeling as hollow inside as the house was starting to feel. Eighty-three years on the planet, and soon the only evidence of Nammy would be the scattered mementos they’d kept. When Mom and Rachel greeted Scott as he passed through the kitchen, Liv heard that rare quaver in her mother’s voice.
Mom really shouldn’t be here anyway. With all the packing and sorting taken care of, there wasn’t much left for her to do, and it was hard on her emotionally. Still, she was determined to see this through to the end.
Scott set up a system of handing the boxes down the ladder. He climbed the ladder, reaching up to get the boxes down from the attic floor; then he handed them down to Liv, standing at the base of the ladder. She set them on the kitchen table, pushed to the edge of the hallway so she wouldn’t have to handle their weight for more than a moment. It took less than ten minutes. After that, he carted them to the truck.
When they got to the box of Liv’s grandfather’s painting supplies, Faye said, “Wait.”
Scott turned to her, questioning. He hadn’t looked directly at Liv since he first arrived. The effort of not looking at her was starting to give him a crick in his neck.
“We might be able to use those,” Faye said.
Scott shifted the box in his arms. It wasn’t very heavy, but it was cumbersome. “The to-keep pile, then?”
“I was thinking we could use them here.” The way the words rushed out of Faye, coupled with her suddenly straight posture despite the crutches, made Scott see Liv in her.
Faye turned to indicate the end of the hallway, where the mystery cabinet stood, still filled with Nammy’s never-completed home improvement projects.
“Do you think—” Faye went on with that odd mix of tentativeness and determination that was so much like her daughter. “I’d want to pay you. But the house really could use a facelift after all these years. It’d be easier to sell.”
Her voice wavered faintly at the last words, and like a flash, her two daughters were flanking her, ready to offer support.
Rachel said, “I think it’s a good idea.”
Liv said, “Mom, are you sure?”
She seemed to be trying to catch her mother’s eye, and Scott could guess at her thoughts: More Scotty Leroux in my life?
Scott leaned against the displaced kitchen table, waiting for the three women to kick this around before he weighed in. Maybe the decision would be taken out of his hands. It wasn’t typical for him to turn down a job. It also wasn’t in his nature to say no to a friend or neighbor in need. This proposition combined the two, with Liv thrown into the mix.
Liv, who was looking steadfastly at her mother, not at him.
Faye’s voice remained just a touch unsteady. “It would be nice to have the house done the way she wanted it,” she said.
And Scott knew what this was really about, at least for Faye: she wasn’t ready to let go. Closing up this house was like another funeral for her. But at some point, a person did have to let go.
“It’s a nice idea.” He kept his voice as gentle as he could, trying not to disturb the delicate equilibrium of three sets of female emotions. “But you do know that whoever moves here next might want something entirely different anyway.”
“Yeah,” Rachel said, linking her arm through her mother’s. “But right now people who come to see the house would probably walk away calling it ‘the one with the ducks in the living room.’ It’s probably a good idea to update it.”
“I love the ducks,” Liv protested.
Scott knew the answer to that one. “Actually, she wanted to keep the ducks as sort of a border across the top of the wall,” he said. “It’d look nice.”
Apparently he’d paid more attention to her decorating talk than he realized.
Faye nodded, her eyes shimmering. “That would be nice.”
Scott swallowed hard.
He knew what shimmering eyes meant. They meant there was no way he could bring himself to say no. He had no doubt that a home makeover project loomed in his future. But first, they had to decide they were going ahead with it.
Scott shoved his hands awkwardly into his pockets. “Why don’t the three of you talk it over and give me a call,” he said. “If you want me to do the job, I’m in.”
Chapter 16
“His eyes are lopsided,” Rachel said in mild dismay.
Sitting next to Rachel at Mom’s kitchen table, Liv leaned over to inspect the snowman cookie Rachel was decorating.
“One of the red hots is bigger than the other,” Liv said. “That’s the problem.” Liv snatched the bigger of the snowman’s two red-hot eyes off the cookie, leaving behind a smeared white dot of the icing Rachel had dabbed on to hold the red hot in place.
“Hey!” Rachel swatted Liv’s hand and turned to their mother, who sat at the head of the table. “Mom!”
“I was helping,” Liv said innocently.
“Girls,” Mom said reflexively in the admonishing tone she’d used since Liv and Rachel were kids. Which they’d pretty much reverted to. Mom didn’t miss a beat as she turned a wreath, with green sugar frosting and more red hots for berries, into a work of art.
This was what Christmas should be like. In the background, Dean Martin warbled on the living room stereo. And roughly two hundred wafer-thin sugar cookies sat in the center of the table in intimidating stacks, waiting to be decorated.
“Besides”—Mom set down her finished wreath cookie and glanced up at Rachel with a glint in her eye—“if one of them isn’t perfect, you’ve got a dozen more tries to get it right.”
Mom had warned them that baking the cookies from her time-honored recipe was the easy part. But Rachel had seized on the idea, and Liv had taken it up. The cookie project brought a welcome relief after the sobering sight of Nammy’s nearly empty house this morning. Trouble was, it looked like they’d be up until the wee hours decorating the cookies.
Liv welcomed the chance to keep busy. Sitting here with Mom and Rachel, this could be any Christmas from her teens. In the face of something so normal, those moments with Scott in the dark attic felt far away. Like someone else’s out-of-body experience.
Liv watched her sister carefully position another red hot on the snowman’s face. At the rate Rachel was going, it might take till New Year’s. “Maybe you should concentrate on one-eyed critters.” Some of the animal shapes were done in profile; Liv looked over the stacks. “We’ve got camels, donkeys, Scottie dogs . . .”
She bit her tongue.
“That reminds me.” Mom picked up another wreath and began applying the white frosting with a butter knife and a deft hand. “You can take some cookies over to Scotty when he starts on the house tomorrow.”
Did Mom really not know? Or was she still trying to set Liv up?
Liv bit her tongue again and didn’t comment until Mom left the table for a bathroom break.
She hissed to Rachel, “Can’t you take the cookies instead?”
“I’m a married woman.” Rachel dotted frosting into place for a camel’s eye. Her mouth had a smug set. “I have my reputation to think of.”
“Very funny.”
“She wants me to take her Christmas shopping for you tomorrow, nimrod,” Rachel whispered. “She’s having a hard time coming up with ideas. She’s not sure what you like anymore.”
Ouch. “She doesn’t have to get me anything.”
“Yeah, right. How many times has Mom said that to us? You know that’s not how it works.”
“I know.” And shopping ideas or not, neither of them wanted Mom trying to trundle herself into a car and navigate the sidewalks of Evergreen Lane alone on her crutches.
Avoiding Scott was silly. She could handle it. She was only here another week and a half. Resolutely, she seized her next cookie to decorate. A Scottie dog. They’d always been a favorite, decorated with lo
ng, chocolatey sprinkles that simulated a dog’s shaggy coat.
What did Scottie dogs have to do with Christmas, anyway?
* * *
It felt strange to knock on Nammy’s door when Nammy wouldn’t be the one answering it. But Liv had her hands full. She had to do the knocking with her foot.
In addition to the big platter of Christmas cookies, she’d picked up a bag of fried chicken from the Pine ’n’ Dine, since she was getting here around lunchtime. She wasn’t sure which would be the bigger loss if she fumbled, the platter or the cookies on top of it. They’d taken until nearly three AM to complete.
Scott opened the door and looked down at her burden. “I was going to say we don’t want any,” he said. “But if that bag has what I think it has . . .”
His tone sounded nearly normal. Nearly. See? Liv told herself. No problem.
Scott took the bag of chicken with one hand and tried to relieve her of the cookie platter with the other. He seemed surprised when she wouldn’t let go.
“Sorry.” Liv kept the plastic-wrapped plate gripped in both hands. “If either of us drops these, I’ll cry.”
Scott stepped aside to let her pass by. She walked in and looked for a place to set the platter. An end table still stood at the end of the living room next to the doorway leading into the kitchen. Just beyond, the kitchen was already turning into a new type of chaos. The big stepladder had taken up residence near the dining room wall, tarps were spread on sections of the floor, and the room had a scent of wet paper and—was it glue? Wallpaper paste, she realized.
She set the cookies down. “So you’re starting with the wallpaper?”
“I figured I’d tackle the ugliest job first. That way it’s all downhill from there.” Scotty bent to inspect the cookies through the clear plastic wrap. “You guys made these? They’re too pretty to eat.”
“The wreaths are really good. You get the sugar frosting and you get four red hots. And I like the chocolate-sprinkled ones: the donkeys, the teddy bears . . .”
He squinted at the array of cookies in front of him. “Scottie dogs? For Christmas?” He looked up, crooked smile in place, and her heart flip-flopped.
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