“How can you say that?” she calls after him, and so he stops. Just stops and looks up to the sky while she continues. “I wanted to share a touching Christmas story in the spirit of the season.”
He turns again to face her. “So my daughter’s death is a Christmas story now?” And he sees, out of the corner of his eye, the way the mother nearby puts a hand on each of her toddlers’ shoulders to quickly steer them away and out to their car as the father looks back at him and Vera.
“No! No, Derek.” Vera pushes a blowing strand of hair out of her face and he also sees how she tries to put the right spin on one day that—not often, but sometimes still—taunts his emotions. And he gets the feeling she clearly knows that now. “Stop twisting up my words!” she insists. “Abby’s story is about children, and people coming together.” She steps closer, eyeing a couple watching them from the next row before sliding a mittened hand over a branch, testing it for dry needles. “And love, Derek,” she says quiet enough for only him to hear. “It’s about love. You can’t think—”
“Don’t tell me what I can and cannot think, Vera. It’s not your place.”
“Well I’m sorry,” she answers, and he sees it, the way her eyes tear up then.
“So what is it, you’re looking for a job in Rhode Island now? Addison’s a layover between Boston and Providence, is that it? And what am I, a little entertainment for you?”
They both turn and look at Derek’s father approaching when he calls out to them, pulling on a green jacket as he nears. Zeus trots along close behind him. “Hey! What’s going on out here with you two?”
Derek looks at Vera and waits a second. It’s a second when there’s so much he can do; it’s filled with choices. He can apologize to his father for carrying on too loudly in the tree lot, or he can take Vera’s hand and walk her out to the back of the lot and talk this all out. And he wants to do it all, to make peace with both of them, but his anger at learning about Vera writing a story about his daughter, working on it without telling him, is even greater. Because it means there’s a possibility of losing her now, too.
“She wants a tree,” he tells his father. “Give her a hand, would you? So she can be on her way.”
As he walks back toward the store, Derek hears her. Because still, he’s listening for her voice, and he almost stops at the sound of it. “I’m very sorry, Mr. Cooper. I know you’ve got trees to sell here, and I’m not sure what just happened.”
And Derek can guess that his father does know what happened because he’s seen Derek’s emotion plenty in the past five years. So without even turning, he figures his father gently takes Vera’s arm to smooth things over. “Well let’s find you the right one,” he says—loud enough for Derek to hear—no doubt shooting a glance back after he says it, annoyed with his son for walking away from this beautiful woman who means no harm. “It’s got to be one that speaks to you.”
* * *
“Hold on to your hats, folks! This storm has a lot of potential, but the timing’s still tricky.” A multicolored map of the United States fills the TV screen behind Leo Sterling. With her dinner cooking on the stovetop, Vera watches her father’s early evening forecast. “The areas in blue and purple indicate the greatest snowfall potential.”
“Swell.” She lifts a lid and stirs the pot of simmering green beans.
“Authorities are advising emergency precautions, regardless of the snowfall amounts. Because either way, it’s shaping up to be a strong storm. You can check our website for the list of supplies you should have on hand. Things like fresh batteries and flashlights. Bottled water, too. You might want to stock up on firewood because power outages could leave you without heat. In which case—”
“Dress in layers,” Vera says with him. “Layers and a hat, to keep in body warmth.”
“I’ll be keeping my eye to the clouds all week. Those clouds formed by millions of tiny water droplets. Droplets that, simply put, only have to freeze and become tiny snow crystals to get things going.” The screen pans to photographs of the last winter’s snowstorms, of homes buried in snowdrifts, of icicles hanging like tinsel from rooftops. “Crystals that float through those clouds and keep growing, growing, until finally gravity tugs at them and down they fall, grounded in a blanket of white.”
At the sound of a slow beeping outside, Vera looks out the window to see a Cooper Hardware Store delivery truck backing into her driveway. She quickly throws on her leather bomber, grabs the keys for the barn and rushes out the side door to meet it.
Well, gravity may ground snowflakes, but a good dose of reality is all it takes to ground Vera. Because one look at the senior Mr. Cooper and a part-time high school worker getting out of the truck to deliver her huge Christmas tree brings her right down to earth. Any vision, any hope of Derek stepping down out of that delivery truck in his cargo jacket and jeans, scarf and hat over dark brown hair, maybe holding a hot coffee, checking out the cove water, kissing her, standing beside her, helping her center the largest, tallest, biggest tree she could find in the barn double doorway so that she has a place to hang the remaining boxed ornaments, maybe staying for dinner, well that vision is long gone and her heart grounded by the reality of his absence, but good.
Chapter Nineteen
SOMETIMES VERA THINKS IT’S EASY to time travel while walking along the street that leads to her house at the cove. Usually it happens beneath the slant of late afternoon sunlight, the low golden rays throwing long shadows. Strolling past olive green and brick red and dark brown historic colonials with their paned windows, steep roofs, center brick chimneys, clapboard siding and white picket fences, she thinks she can just as easily be in the nineteenth century as the twenty-first. Why, a horse and buggy clip-clopping through the covered bridge on the other side of The Green and heading down the street wouldn’t seem so out of place.
But today she doesn’t have time for any of that easy daydreaming. Today, her father’s latest words ring in her head. Snow will fall at a rate of two inches an hour. Gale force winds during the height of the storm can potentially bring visibility to near-zero.
With three days until Saturday, and until Derek’s Deck the Boats Festival, and with the storm expected to hit over the weekend, there’s still enough time. She hopes to convince her neighbors, each one of them, to bring Christmas back to their street in honor of the heart and soul of one little girl. A wreath, candles in the windows, lights on the picket fence—anything, anything at all to decorate this small street that serves as the entranceway to Addison Cove, to set the Christmas spirit for everyone who’ll be driving by on their way to the Deck the Boats Festival—anything at all would be a touching tribute to Abby’s life.
And so, walking up to each cape cod and saltbox and Georgian colonial doorway this Wednesday morning, ringing the doorbells of neighbors—some familiar, some not—Vera opens her own heart to them in her request. To decorate, once again.
* * *
Red felt cardinals with red glitter wings. Glass poinsettia ornaments. Sparkled snowmen and hand-stitched Santas. Clear glass balls filled with tiny green jingle bells. Frosted pinecones topped with striped ribbons. Glitter candy canes and miniature red mittens. Silver twig reindeer and gold bead garland.
This is the last of it all. Every box has been pulled out of the barn’s storage room, opened and emptied except for these remaining ornament cartons. For the past two days, Vera continued to carefully decorate her twelve-foot-tall Cooper Hardware Store Christmas tree. Now if Jingles would just stop batting off the ornaments from the lower branches, she could finish up here.
“Anybody home?” Brooke calls out while shouldering open the barn door with her arms chock full of boxes. “Other than my favorite cat,” she adds when a shining round ornament slides past her feet, Jingles in hot pursuit behind it.
“Back here!” Vera calls out from the other side of her towering tree. “Just follow the ornament trail.”
“Ha. Jingles must be helping you decorate?”
�
�If you’d call it that,” Vera says as she clips a felt cardinal to a lower branch for the cat to ponder while she visits with her sister. “Do you need help carrying stuff in?”
“The more the merrier. Because TGIF, I’m ready to jingle all the way into this weekend and my trunk’s overflowing with cakes for Deck the Boats.”
They bring in all the boxes of pastries that Brooke fit in her car this trip. “It’ll be so much easier to restock my tent at the festival tomorrow by having these right here,” she says then. They carefully line boxes and boxes of Christmas coffee cakes on a long side counter, sorting them by flavor. “I’ve got one more carload to bring later.”
“Wow,” Vera says. “That’s a lot of coffee cakes.”
“Last year I had the only Pastry and Coffee tent, and sold out in no time. So I went a little overboard this year. I’ve got cherry-streusel, cranberry-nut, raspberry-chocolate chip. Heck, I even have a Christmas tree-shaped coffee cake decorated with candied cherries for ornaments. Now what I really need is for Dad to get the snow to hold off till Sunday, and I’ll be in good shape.”
The barn windows rattle in a sudden gust of wind. “Gosh, I hope those tents hold up, too,” Vera says. “That wind is really picking up.”
“I know. We double staked everything and Brett’s checking the other tents as we speak.” Brooke pulls off her hat and mittens, slips out of her coat and walks over to the soaring, glimmering Christmas tree. “Would you look at this tree? It’s magnificent!”
Vera follows her. “As soon as I’m done with the last of these boxes, I can schedule the tag sale. The whole Christmas Barn inventory is on display, top to bottom.”
Brooke picks an embroidered snowman from the ornament box and considers where to place it. “How’s Derek? He must be so busy getting the boats ready.”
“I’m sure he is, but I wouldn’t really know.” Vera straightens the gold beaded garland as she walks the perimeter of the tree.
“Uh-oh. What happened?”
“We had a little falling-out, that’s all.”
“That’s all?” Brooke picks up a glitter acorn and touches one branch before lifting another, looking for just the right spot. “I hope it’s not serious?”
“I’m not really sure where we stand anymore. Haven’t seen him in a few days now.”
“Come on, Vee. Are you kidding? I thought things were good with you two.”
“They were, until we didn’t see eye-to-eye on something and, well, I’m not sure it’ll work out.”
“Huh.” Brooke picks up one of the jingle bell-filled glass balls and gives a little shake so that the cat comes running. He sits at her feet watching her jangle the ornament bells. “I better put this one up high. Don’t need Jingles getting his paws on it.” She finds a space after slowly walking around the tree. “Maybe Derek’s just busy,” she finally says, lifting a soft, round, cat-toy-sized ornament from the tree and rolling that one across the floor for Jingles to bat. “This Deck the Boats is a big thing around here.”
“I don’t know, Brooke. I was actually writing a profile of the festival for that Providence paper your mother-in-law sent me to. He found out and didn’t like it.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not sure. What he does with the boat festival just warms your heart, especially the way so many people come together for it. I really wanted to share that part of Abby’s story. Her memory deserves to be honored, and celebrated, by more than just one town. Imagine the good it could do! Well he thought I was just commercializing it.”
“Ouch. A sensitive subject, but when I think about it, he probably overreacted. You know what it is? He must be mad because he thinks you’re leaving. On your way up and out of Addison. Because seriously, Vee? He tells everybody about the Deck the Boats Festival, so he’s got no issues sharing and spreading the word.”
“Whatever it is, we really argued and it wasn’t good.”
“Well everybody has a tiff now and then. But still. You should talk to him about it. I was so happy that you two found each other, I’m sure you can work it out. You had good intentions, he has to know that.”
“I’d love to explain, but I couldn’t get through to him the other day. He wouldn’t listen.”
“Maybe because he’s under so much pressure right now. If you could’ve seen the turnout last year, you’d understand. There was no space left to park so people left their cars on your street and walked down to the cove. And it keeps getting bigger every year.”
Vera wishes it was only that. That Derek was simply distracted and feeling stressed by the whole thing: the festival, the holidays, the busy hardware store.
“I mean,” Brooke is saying as she walks with a glitter reindeer in her hand, “people come from everywhere to see these decorated boats. It’s amazing, because the first year, it was just Derek on his one boat with a lit Christmas tree, all by himself. Floating in the middle of the cove at night. And some people saw it, you know?” She hooks the deer on a branch, then lifts it off and looks for another spot. “And the next year, there were maybe four boats. And the next, well, it just got so big.”
Vera opens the box marked tree topper while Brooke keeps explaining. She knows her sister is trying to distract her, to make her feel better, to think that Derek will come around, he’s just busy. Because that’s what sisters do; so she’s quiet while Brooke does her sister thing.
“And then we started serving pastries. And another tent sells Addison sweatshirts. And hot chocolate. And what happens is that afterward, all the money raised goes to the Children’s Hospital in Abby’s name. And now carolers come, too, singing during the procession. And, well. You’ll see.” She hangs a snowman and turns to Vera. “You’ll see.”
Vera pulls out the tree topper, and would it be anything else but a large six-sided silver sparkle snowflake? “I guess our bigger concern right now is that Dad gets Mother Nature to hold off on that snow until Sunday,” she says, holding the topper up for Brooke to see. “So the Deck the Boats Festival can go on as planned. For everyone’s sake.”
“No kidding,” Brooke says with a worried glance over at her supply of festival coffee cakes. “That topper is all the snow I need to see before then.”
Chapter Twenty
GET OUT YOUR SHOVELS, AND put away the rakes. Because that’s what you’ll be needing, folks, from the looks of these snowflakes.”
Vera pulls a coffee mug from her cabinet and pours a fresh cup, turning to watch her father in all his snow glory, sporting a snowflake wool cap this time as he unveils snow statistics to accompany this season’s first storm.
“Billions of snowflakes can fall during a single storm, and from the looks of these clouds,” the camera pans out to the ominous sky behind him, “we might not be able to keep up with the snowflake numbers. If I was a ship captain of yore, I’d cancel my voyage for this one.”
Her father has taken the station’s cameraman up to the widow’s walk to give his Saturday morning forecast from that vantage point, and oh boy, the dramatic cove view will not disappoint his viewers. As chief meteorologist, he’s definitely one-upping the competition with his exclusive on-site report.
Gray clouds hang low over the cove’s dark water. Piles of them, pressing on top of each other, getting more threatening each time Vera looks out. All she thinks is that they are so huge, and so heavy-looking, they must be weighed down with an incredible amount of snow that is about to bust out and blanket Addison.
“Three miles per hour. That’s the average speed that a snowflake falls to the ground. And I’m sorry to report, that’s the average speed we’ll be driving once this storm hits. It’s a doozy, folks.”
Vera stands still, holding her steaming coffee cup close, sipping it and listening to her father talk about the largest snowflake ever documented, a flake nearly fifteen inches in diameter. If she could only make a wish on that documented winter star, just one wish bestowed on the grandest snowflake of them all, it would be this and only this: Please. Please hol
d off on dropping any snowflakes on Addison—one fifteen-inch flake or millions of tiny ones—just for one day, just for one man who needs this wish the most.
“Many of you are emailing the station asking if the Deck the Boats Festival is still on. As of now, yes it is, but stay tuned for updates because the latest models call for significant accumulations, with the potential for a foot or more. It’s the timeline of this storm that is still uncertain. Light snow will overspread the state late morning. But some models show the storm stalling, so conditions may not deteriorate until late tonight and into early tomorrow.”
Yes, Vera thinks, her wish has been heard! She crosses her fingers on both hands and glances out the window hoping Derek can get his boat in the water, then looks back to the television set and her father, who is actually standing two floors above her on her widow’s walk, trying to decipher the skies.
“Other models show heavy snow by dinnertime. Regardless, it’s coming, and once the storm hits full-force, all that snow combined with gusting winds will produce white-out conditions. Which will have you waking tomorrow to a magnificent winter wonderland.”
The camera pans out to those bulging clouds over the sky, bulging with those billions of flakes.
* * *
It’s the sound that worries Vera. By early afternoon, she notices it. It’s almost a hiss, the soft yet insistent noise that comes seemingly from her windows. Her single-paned, inefficient windows that do little to keep out the cold, and apparently little to keep out sound, too. Because she’s hearing a soft, fluctuating hiss that is foreboding.
Diamond dust, she thinks. They’re the smallest snowflakes of all, so small the human eye can’t usually see them. And she knows what can produce them. Storms. Epic snowstorms. But mostly at high altitudes. If diamond dust ever makes it to the ground, well, this must be what it sounds like.
What is most frightening is that when she goes to the window, any window, whether the kitchen window where Jingles takes up the entire sill—and then some—looking out at the barn, or the living room window opposite her brick fireplace, or the dining room windows on her newly-painted gold walls, it’s always the same. The noise is there, but when she looks out, she doesn’t see anything. That’s how tiny the snowflakes hitting the windows are; it doesn’t matter if they’re branched crystals or sectored plates or split-stars or needles or diamond dust, they’re invisible to her eye. And she remembers her father’s rule of thumb: The smaller the flakes, the bigger the storm.
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