Snowflakes and Coffee Cakes

by DeMaio, Joanne

  As he talks, Vera leans back into his arms, listening closely over the other voices and the high school band playing a familiar carol.

  “She’d be in her pajamas already and get real quiet,” he goes on, bending low to Vera’s ear, feeling her soft hair against his cheek while watching the girl sitting with his father turn her face up, wide-eyed. Derek knows that expression; he’d seen it on his daughter’s face, too. And it’s funny how it happens then, how he envies his own father, who might be seeing a little bit of Abby, still, in the awe in these kids’ faces. “And her eyes, man, they lit up. They just sparkled.” He takes a breath and shifts his stance, his arms still around Vera’s waist. “Abby and my dad sat in a big chair near our tree,” he says, watching his father now waving at the children nearby, “and he’d ask her if she’d been good all year.” He stops then, not really able to say more. Because what can he say? Everything, and yet nothing.

  Vera turns to him, brushes her mitten across his cheek and waits.

  “The last time we were here, it was the year she died. And she sat up on my shoulders to see the view. Like the girl over there.” He hitches his head to the right and she looks over and smiles sadly.

  “Aw, Derek. I’ll bet she loved that.”

  “What I wouldn’t do to have a few more of those moments.”

  “You always will have them, though, with your own memories. Because isn’t that what life is? It’s all memories, when you really think about it.”

  He looks past her to his father and the sea of families and faces, all softly illuminated and so excited for what’s to come as they watch the shadowy tree on The Green. Something about their hope and laughter and the twinkling maple tree branches on the outskirts seem to make the darkness all the more noticeable. He wonders how much longer until the tree is lit, pulling away from Vera to check his watch. It’s so cold out tonight, and the cold has a way of making the dark look even darker.

  “Ten! Nine!” The tree lighting countdown begins, led by Santa.

  The crowd chants along, “Eight! Seven!”

  Vera reaches to him and takes his hand but there’s an urgency to the countdown as the moments of darkness and cold tick away with each second and he knows that for everyone here, that darkness and cold will end in seconds. The magnificent light of Christmas will erase it all.

  “I’m sorry, Vera. I can’t do this.” He pulls away and quickly pushes through a swarm of families. She calls out his name, only once. Derek! The concern in her voice almost stops him, almost, but he keeps walking through the crowd, thinking it was wrong to come here, to meet Vera for the festivities. Because in too many faces, in too many moments, he still sees Abby.

  * * *

  “Vera?”

  Vera notices a car pulling up to the curb as the crowd thins. She squints into the darkness, looking around a family hurrying past in the cold. “Greg?” she asks, stepping closer.

  “Hey,” he says, parking and getting out. He wears a long dark coat and leather gloves. “It’s good to see you.”

  “You, too.” She wraps her arms around the waist of her pea coat. “Brrr, what a cold night. Did you catch the tree lighting?”

  “No. I just got off the evening shift. Over at the hospital.”

  She nods.

  “Would you like to get a drink, maybe? Or a coffee somewhere?”

  “Oh, no. I’m here, well, I was here with Derek. Derek Cooper. Something came up and he had to leave early.”

  Greg looks past her shoulder, as though he’ll see him. Or as though giving her a chance to say more. And so she does. “I’m kind of seeing him now. Derek.”

  He looks at her again, stepping closer. “He’s a lucky guy, then.” He takes one of her mittened hands in both his. “Can I at least give you a ride home?”

  “Oh! No, that’s okay. My car’s close by, I was just headed there now.” She points to her car parked near his. “There was an emergency, sort of. And Derek had to leave,” she finds herself explaining again. And it was an emergency, she’s sure. She’s sure he didn’t plan on whatever beautiful Christmas memories he has of sweet Abby tormenting him tonight, seeing all the other children still here, still happy, still with their families. “So anyway, thanks Greg.”

  “Well listen,” he tells her, backing up a step. “You have a nice Christmas, if I don’t see you before then.”

  She nods quickly.

  “Hey, how’s your mom’s foot?”

  “So much better! I’ll tell her you asked for her.”

  He quickly grasps her arms. “Merry Christmas, Vera,” he says quietly then, giving her a kiss on her cheek. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your car.”

  When she gets in, Vera waves goodbye to Greg and lets the car engine warm up for a couple minutes. She sits with her hands clasped, holding them to her chilled face. The sky outside her windshield is vast tonight. It always seems that way, so much more expansive on bitter cold nights. Tiny, tiny stars sparkle far, far above, too far away to lighten the winter sky. They look like the tiniest of snowflakes just waiting to fall. There’s not a cloud in sight to help, either, to bring a soft hue to the night.

  Her father’s been searching for snow clouds for weeks now, eager for that first, sweet snowfall. She leans forward and looks up to the clear night sky. One day soon, those clouds will roll in, heavy with precipitation that will fall gently to the earth, little winter stars tumbling down from the clouds, spinning and blowing, changing shape dramatically during the course of one snowstorm.

  She puts her car in gear and pulls out of the parking space near The Green. The town tree is so pretty, twinkling in the night, and it breaks her heart that Derek couldn’t stay. That he couldn’t see the light of it. The Green is quiet now; the families who had sung along with the high school band, taken happy pictures and strolled a little bit in the cold had finally made their way home.

  But Vera waited behind, just in case. Maybe she’d see Derek on the outskirts. Maybe he needed a little space, that’s all, to think about Abby in a different way now, one he can cherish instead of resist. Maybe he needed to be alone to find her in his own personal way at Christmastime.

  She glances back at the tree sparkling brightly in the night, then drives toward Cooper Hardware before going home. Her eyes spot the building from a block away. The Christmas tree lot is strung with small lights, the balsam and white pine and spruce trees propped up in the cold, but the lot is empty. And a couple dim lights are on in Derek’s apartment above, but whether or not he’s home, she can’t tell. The little window-tree they decorated together is dark tonight.

  It all makes her worry as she sees Derek struggle to come to grips with one long-ago horrible day. Because what it seems like is this: He’s still falling through that dark cloud, still tumbling and faltering as his life changes shape dramatically during the course of one ongoing storm.

  Chapter Sixteen

  VERA HOLDS THREE WREATH BOWS, one plaid, one gold satin and one burgundy velvet. There’s just enough space on the barn beam to pin these on, leaving the wooden beam completely covered in bows of all shapes and styles: candy cane striped and gold-edged velvet, eight-loops and fifteen-loops, sparkled sheer and country plaids, two tails and four, and her favorite, blue and white snowflake patterned.

  She steps on a footstool to hang the very last one high up on the beam and sees the nearby wall of shelves lined with every type of Christmas star imaginable, including winter stars of silver and gold in the snowflake ornaments. An idea comes to her then, a little sales promotion for her tag sale. She’ll offer shoppers her own version of Buy One Get One Free: Buy one star ornament, either real star or snowflake winter star, and get one wish free. Because shouldn’t every star come with a wish?

  “Knock knock!”

  “Mom?” Vera moves carefully off the step stool.

  “Hi, honey.” Her mother closes the barn’s red door behind her, but not before a drafty wind of icy air blows in. “I’m here to pick up that music box.”

&
nbsp; “Music box?” Vera walks over to the doorway and takes her mother’s coat.

  “For the toy drive at the TV station, remember? It’s today. Dad and I are dropping off a bag of goodies.”

  “Oh, the teddy bear music box. It’s right there,” she points further down the counter. “Near the door.”

  Her mother pulls off her gloves, one finger at a time, while looking around the barn’s interior. “Oh my God! Would you look at this place?”

  Vera realizes that her mother hasn’t been to the barn in weeks. With her astonishment at its Christmas transformation—at its pinecone reindeer and squirrels, its needlepointed stockings, its old horse stall decorated with gold garland around the half-open top—well, her mother’s stunned reaction clues Vera in to the wonderland the barn has since become.

  “This is just beautiful, Vera. Dazzling!” She stops at the wreath bow beam and looks it up and down, smiling. “Can I help? I’d love to put out some of the old Christmas Barn decorations too. Be a part of the history.” She turns to Vera with an expectant glimmer in her eyes.

  Vera smiles in disbelief because there it is again, that magic that overcomes people when they step into the barn now. With Brooke, it’s gotten out of control as she methodically builds a Christmas village whenever she’s here, spellbound with adding pine trees and antique coach lights and glittering snow to her festive tabletop town.

  “Where’s Dad?” Vera asks as her mother walks around, lightly touching glittering ornaments and sighing at wintry displays.

  “He let himself into the house and went straight up to your widow’s walk. There’s a change in the air that he’s certain means snow and he wants to see the clouds from that vantage point.”

  “I’ll go say hi to him.” She eyes her mother, who is still entranced by the barn. “Listen, Mom. I have so many boxes of ornaments but no more artificial trees to hang them on. Do you have any idea what I can do with them? I’d hang them from the ceiling beams, but I’ve got the gold snowflakes up there.”

  Her mother looks up at the gilded, delicate constellation hanging from above. “Wow.” And then she spots a shelf of old clay flowerpots stacked right below the loft area. “What about those?”

  “The pots?”

  “They’ll be so pretty! Point me to the ornaments and I’ll stack some in the clay pots, add a little baby’s breath and cotton snow and voila!”

  “You sure you’re okay on your feet now?”

  “Of course, it was only a sprain. Go on up and see your dad and I’ll deck the pots with balls of jolly.”

  And quicker than Vera can say Fa la la la la, her mother’s digging into a new box of green and gold striped ornaments.

  * * *

  “Lots of blue sky out there,” Vera says as she climbs onto her widow’s walk. The early afternoon sky is royal blue, with high wispy white clouds moving across it. “Fair weather, Dad?”

  “For now,” he answers, leaning on the railing facing the cove. “Those are cirrus clouds, Vee. And they can be a signal that the weather’s about to change.”

  Vera moves beside her father, pulls her thick cardigan close and leans on the railing, too. “They’re pretty, that’s for sure.” They watch the early December sky over the water for a moment before Vera continues. “The view alone was worth buying this property for. I never get tired of it.”

  “You’re looking at one of nature’s best canvases. Because let’s face it, sights like this one here have inspired the great masters.”

  “Now there’s an idea. Maybe some day I’ll set up an easel and try my hand at painting. In my spare time,” she adds with a wink. “I’ve been so busy lately, with work and now the barn, too.”

  “And how about that doctor, Vee? Have you been seeing him?”

  “Greg?”

  “That’s the one. It’s Saturday, I thought you might have a date tonight.”

  “No, Dad. We’ve known each other since school days, and really? He took me out for a birthday drink, but that’s all it was. We’re just friends.”

  Her father only nods, and Vera circles around the widow’s walk, glancing at the sky over the water, then in the other direction at the sky over town. “I have been seeing someone, though. Derek. Derek Cooper.”

  Her father had been leaning his elbows on the railing, studying the sky intently. Now he turns his head to look at her. “From the hardware store?”

  “You know him?”

  “The one whose little girl died.”

  “Abby. Yes. We’ve been seeing each other a little bit. He did some work here on the house, and, well … it just sort of happened.” She takes a long breath and turns up her sweater collar. “I really care about him. But then, I don’t know. This is a hard time for him, around the holidays, especially since it’s when his daughter died. I understand that. But Dad? I’m not sure if he’s ready for a relationship. It seems like he’s got a lot to deal with still, whether it’s Christmastime or not.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Vera stands beside her father, crosses her arms in front of her and looks out over the cove so calm under the afternoon sky. “It’s just that he’ll be fine, and we’ll have a nice time at dinner, or decorating, and then he gets really quiet and pulls back. It’s so traumatic to have lost a child the way he did, and I know he’s still grieving. I don’t want to get in the way of that, to take away from whatever he needs to deal with.”

  “You? Get in the way?”

  “It feels it, sometimes, mostly when he withdraws. It’s like he doesn’t want to share that part of his life with me.”

  Her father looks out at the sky and the wisps of white crossing it like streaks of paint. “Vera. Did you ever think that maybe it’s something else? It could be that it’s all new to him, having you in his life, and he’s not sure how to share something so deeply personal with someone special.”

  “I don’t know, Dad. It might be an issue he can’t get past. Or maybe it’s me who can’t get past it.”

  She pulls a scarf up around her neck beneath the sweater and leans on the rail beside her father. They’re quiet for a couple minutes.

  “I think those clouds mean a change is coming,” her father finally says. “Not right away, but they’re an early sign.”

  “Of snow?”

  He doesn’t answer at first, and she waits, watching the sky until he speaks. Then she silently watches her father talk about what he loves most.

  “Snowflakes are so beautiful. Their symmetry and delicateness is something to behold. Especially the perfect crystals. But you know, Vera. Most snowflakes are actually distorted or disproportionately shaped. So much happens to any single one as it moves through the clouds and deals with the different elements, the humidity and wind and temperature.” He stops then, watching those distant cirrus clouds for a long moment, then turning and looking directly at Vera. “Very, very few make it to the ground in perfect shape.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, VERA PUTTERS in her kitchen. She straightens and glues a loose tile on her backsplash, tightens a screw in one of the white-painted Windsor chairs, but keeps returning to the window, regardless. The view, across some of the yard and driveway, is of her big brown barn, nestled on a gently sloping hill. From this angle, she can’t see the cove. But the far side of the barn, with its large double doors accented with cross-beams and wrought iron handles, opens completely to the water view. Her thought is that at one time—maybe a century ago—ships came into the cove with deliveries of grains, or goods, and warehoused them in her barn. One thing’s for certain: The planked, distressed walls belie all she’s found stored inside it.

  She’d gotten a lot of research done this past week and talked to a few more sources for her latest article, this one for the Providence Post. A freelance piece that could be significant. And she has to finish it up, but makes a quick decision before it’s too late, one that has her put away her small toolbox and instead tuck her jeans into shearling-lined suede boots and thr
ow on her red-plaid pea coat, before rushing out to the barn with a few large brown bags. It’ll only take a minute; she knows exactly what she needs. Now if only Derek is where she hopes he’ll be, her plan will work.

  The drive through town is short, and she pulls into Cooper Hardware just after it closed for the day. But she’s relieved to see Derek is still there, out back. He’s crouched beside his boat in jeans and a warm cargo jacket and hat, with work gloves on, moving a power buffer over a wax compound he’d applied. His arm works methodically and carefully in a circular motion as he brings the boat fiberglass to a pure shine.

  “Derek,” she calls out, hurrying over with her brown bags.

  He stops the buffer and stands, holding it in his hands. “Hey, Vera.”

  She sees how intently he looks at her, as though trying to believe she’s here. After leaving her behind at the tree lighting ceremony, it’s not surprising. That was reason enough to stay away. Instead she steps closer and reaches into one of the bags. “I hope you don’t mind,” she says, pulling out a couple model train cars. “But I was putting out this pretty train set in the barn. You know, for my holiday tag sale?”

  He nods and sets the buffer down on the ground near the boat, then takes off his gloves.

  “There’s a nice spot for it. A shelf runs completely around the loft, so it’s a good place to run a Christmas train, around and around. And you know, I set out some pine trees and little snow banks along the track. Well anyway, a couple cars don’t seem to work and I was wondering if you could take a look at them?”

  “Now?”

  She shrugs.

  “What’s the matter with them?”

  “The locomotive won’t move on the track.” She points to one of the two red cars he holds. “And its horn doesn’t work.”

  He turns the locomotive car over and looks at the bottom, running his thumb over the silver wheels beneath it.