But never was there a time when the flakes were so darn tiny she couldn’t even see them. It scares her enough to hurry to the hall closet for her coat, and wouldn’t you know it? The doorknob comes right off in her hand as she tugs the sticking door open. She quickly tosses the knob on the closet floor and puts on her jacket, scarf, hat, mittens and shearling-lined boots to hike herself right down to the cove and check on her sister.
Every minute now brings a new urgency. She locks the front door of her old Dutch Colonial, runs down the steps and across her yard out to the street. A motion catches her eye before she even reaches the cove: The food and craft tent walls blow and billow in the wind as though they are taking great gasping breaths.
“Brooke?” Vera yells out, shielding her eyes from those invisible flakes feeling like tiny needles on her skin. “Brooke!” she yells again as she slaps at the canvas wall of her sister’s portable tent, her voice lost in the wind.
Brooke unzips a side wall. “Vera!” She grabs her by the arm and tugs her inside. “Brrrr. Come in, quick, so I can zip this up.”
Vera sees a small table set up with Brooke’s coffee cakes, some sliced and wrapped, others whole cakes in boxes. “I can’t believe the festival isn’t cancelled.”
“I know, I hear those darn snow crystals hitting the tent now. At least nothing’s sticking on the ground yet.” Brooke straightens a plate of coffee cake slices on the table. “Maybe they can get the boats in early?”
“A few are lined up out there on trailers, waiting to launch. It’s crazy, though. The storm’s coming!” As Vera says it, a gust of wind tugs at the tent walls.
“Is Derek out there?” Brooke asks. “Maybe you can talk to him and convince him to postpone.”
“His boat’s first in line to go in the water. But I don’t see his truck, he must have dropped the trailer and left.”
Brooke pulls open the tent zipper a few inches and peeks out. “Do you believe there are already cars parked, reserving their spot so they have a good view of the procession?”
“No way.”
“I’m telling you, Vera. The whole town comes out for this.” She looks out again, then back at Vera. “Well. They come for Derek.”
Vera shakes her head. “Listen. I’m going back home to try to get in touch with him. But I don’t want you driving later in the storm. You’ll stay overnight at my house when you’re done here.”
“What about Mom?”
“Mom?”
“Dad’s dropping her off here on his way in for the afternoon shift.”
“You’re kidding.” Vera checks her watch. “I’ll try to reach her, too.”
“Okay. And hey, take my keys,” she says as she pulls her purse off a shelf. “My car’s behind the tent. Just drive it to your place, okay? So it’ll be safe in your driveway during the storm.”
Vera takes her keys and heads out, amazed at the cars that have since pulled into the cove parking lot. Once home, she first goes up to the widow’s walk to see the conditions from there. And still, still she feels the tiniest of crystals hitting her face, though she can’t really see them.
And what scares her even more is the idea of all the things she cannot see—grocery store parking lots crazy with last minute shoppers; Cooper Hardware selling out of shovels, maybe trying to cover up their remaining Christmas trees; the town sand trucks filling their beds; authorities issuing a snow-parking ban; the untold volumes of snow weighing down the gray clouds; and Derek, Derek somewhere, in his cargo coat, sweater and jeans, snow boots and gloves on, checking in with the weather service, or deliberating the festival options with Bob Hough, not answering her call on his cell, panicked on this one day when he reaches out to his Abby.
Suddenly, as she worries about all she cannot see, there’s a change. The flakes feel softer on her skin, so she pulls the mini-magnifier from her jacket pocket first. Then she extends her arm in the air, straight out over the widow’s walk railing, giving the snowflakes the perfect landing place. When she holds her magnifier to her arm, it finally happens. They’re visible, the first of tiny crystals, glimmering winter stars. What worries her even more, though, is the way her entire sleeve covers with flakes in a matter of moments until there are so many, they are indistinguishable from one another and form a blanket of white. Just like that. Frighteningly fast.
* * *
Derek drops the plow on his pickup truck and pushes through the snow in the cove parking lot, a white plume of powder flying off the plow. If he can just keep a path cleared to the water, they can get the boats in. It doesn’t really matter how many people arrive to see the decorated boats. It doesn’t even matter if all the trailered boats make it into the water. All that really matters is his. His boat with the Christmas tree mounted in the bow, this time with colored twinkling lights. For the first time. His boat with Vera’s swags of jeweled lights along the sides, looking like an elegant boat necklace. He’s sorry now for the words he said outside the hardware store. If it weren’t snowing this hard, he’d have had a few minutes to stop at her house when he’d driven past. Lamplight was shining in her windows, a large balsam wreath hung on her door and the two small fir trees outside her barn were illuminated with twinkling lights. Some part of him was glad for that, knowing that she was home, safe and sound, in this monster storm descending upon them.
A small crowd of people gather toward the back of the cove parking lot, huddled in the blowing snow and clutching thermoses of hot chocolate and coffee. They don’t see his worry, his panic to get that boat in the water for Abby, to light up her Christmas tree. They never heard his words to her when he held her body in his arms, feeling the weight of her waterlogged clothes, touching her damp face. They didn’t know he’d promised to love her always and that she shouldn’t be afraid, that he’d always be with her somehow. They didn’t know that the only way he could figure to be with her was here, on the water. Because what child should be alone at Christmastime?
Now if he can just keep the pathway to the water cleared. His truck plow pushes through another swath of snow that is coming down faster than he can keep up with. If it weren’t for headlights on the far side of the lot, he could hardly make out Bob Hough’s truck over there, plowing too. Between the both of them, they might be able to get a couple of boats out on the cove. But as long as he gets at least his boat idling out there for a little while, with its tree lit up, that’ll be enough. Abby will be remembered.
After plowing the path from his trailered boat to the boat ramp, the windshield wipers brushing rapidly across the windshield, the defroster blowing fully, he puts his pickup into reverse and starts to back up so that he can give the path one more go-through. But he’s forced to stop when a red-plaid pea coat appears in the distance in the rearview mirror. A red-plaid coat with white snowflake mittens, over jeans tucked into lace-up snow boots with a fur cuff, headed cautiously, but directly, toward his truck. He rolls down the window when she nears.
“Derek!” she calls out, her voice cutting through the wind, her eyes squinting against the blowing snowflakes.
“Vera, what are you doing out here?”
“That’s what I came to ask you,” she answers, breathless in the cold. She stands close beside his truck. “Derek,” she says, a sad smile pausing her words. “I’m sorry about the other day, and I want to talk to you. But first, well, I think you should cancel the festival.”
“What?”
“It’s too dangerous. The way that wind’s blowing over the water, it’s so rough out there. And the currents are strong. Please, Derek, please don’t do this.”
“Vera, you don’t understand. I have to. And we’ve got things cleared, Bob and I. We’ll be all right.”
A strong gust of wind blows, making Vera turn away from it, from the stinging bite of its cold on her skin, from its force whipping her hair. When she turns back, she’s either crying or the wind brings tears to her eyes. “Derek, it’s not safe.” She holds her mittened hands to her face to block the blowing sn
ow. “You could be hurt out there, or need help, and no one could get to you,” she says, huddled into her scarf and coat, her words nearly lost in the noise of the storm, of Bob’s truck plow, of the waves rising.
“I’ll be okay, Vera. I know what I’m doing.” He glances through the windshield at the snow piling up again in the parking lot. “I just can’t really talk now.”
Vera backs up a step. “But what about the others? You can’t risk losing another life on the water. Please, at least postpone.”
“Don’t you get it? Today’s the day. This is the day Abby died. Even if I go out there alone, I have to do this, for her.”
“But can’t you find another way? These people need to be home before the roads are impassable. If you give the word, they’ll leave, Derek. They’ll listen to you. It’ll be quiet, then. We can, I don’t know, you and I can light up the widow’s walk. We’ll do something else to commemorate Abby.”
He just looks at her, then looks in his rearview mirror only to see a line of cars pulling into the parking lot. “It’s too late,” he yells out to Vera over a gust of wind. “They want to see it, they want to be a part of it.”
Vera looks over her shoulder at the traffic. He wonders if she understands that nothing will stop all of Addison from showing up. There’s something about this night, this festival, that brings them all together. Maybe it’s because they couldn’t come together one day five years ago, and they pay their respects now by meeting up once a year, right here. No matter what.
She turns back to Derek. Tears streak her cheeks, her eyes squint against the icy snow. “Please don’t do this,” she whispers against the wind while stepping closer. Her mittened hands, mittens caked with snow, grip the edge of his open window. If he’s not mistaken, what he sees in her face, too, is a new insistence. And with her next words, words that can’t come easy, words he doubts she’d have said except for the danger he’s facing, well he knows exactly why there’s an urgency now. The thing is, they’re words he never saw coming, and they work, those words. They stop him. “I love you, Derek,” she says, her head tipped.
He looks at her long enough through the biting snow for her to whisper Come back with me. Long enough for the thought of cancelling Deck the Boats to become a possibility. How easy it would be to tell her to get in the truck and then head back to her house with her. It’ll be warm inside, they’ll light the fireplace, they’ll talk this out.
He shoves his coat sleeve up and checks his watch, then looks out to Vera, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Vera. Really, it’s best if you head back where you’ll be safe.” He puts the truck in gear and hitches his head in the direction of her house, a huge home that is now just a looming faint shadow behind the thick snowfall.
She starts to say something, then whips around, her arms crossed in front of her against the cold and wind, and walks away. He watches her go, watches her pass the food and coffee tents battened down, pass the craft and sweatshirt tents zipped up tight against the gale-force wind, watches her glance back once, only once, before picking up her pace, first to a slow trot through the deep snow, and finally to a full-out run, slipping as she nears her house.
And when he loses sight of her in the late afternoon darkness and the descending storm, he turns toward the water, drops his plow and pushes his truck through the encroaching snowdrifts, the engine straining with the effort.
Chapter Twenty-One
WHEN VERA CAN’T EVEN SEE her house in front of her, she knows the white-out conditions have arrived. The tall maples and oaks along her street bow their limbs to the wind and her boots sink deep into powdered snow, making walking treacherous. As she leaves the cove parking lot, something does catch her eye through the turmoil of the swirling storm. The entire street she lives on is aglow; all the old colonial houses on either side are lit up with twinkling wreaths on their doors, candles in windows, a few illuminated waving snowmen, and decorated picket fences. It looks like a Christmas gateway to the cove, and for her neighbors, she is so thankful. At least Derek has that much now.
And seeing all those pretty lights leading to the water, an idea comes to her, one that has her climb her front steps and run into the house to grab her keys to the barn. Jingles follows along behind her snowy boots, batting at a small clump of snow as she snatches the keys from the kitchen countertop and heads out back through the side door, sliding down the snow-covered steps to the long driveway leading to her barn. The twinkling lights on the small fir tree standing beside it light the way in the stormy evening.
But she stops when a noise carries on the wind, a long, plaintive cry. It has her spin around and look back toward her house, peering through the falling snow. When the noise comes again, her eyes barely pick out Jingles sitting on the top step of the side-stoop. She rushes back, sinking so deep the powder soft snow reaches the top of her boots, scoops up her big raccoon cat and tucks her coat around him as she treks to the barn, bent over against the wind.
Once safe inside, she takes a deep breath, turns on a lamp that casts a golden light on the space and heads straight for the cross-beamed double doors facing the cove, Jingles following close behind. First she lifts the heavy latch, and with all the muscle she can muster, slides the wooden doors open against the snow. The winter storm rages on the other side of them, and still she’s mystified by so many car headlights filling the cove parking lot, waiting for the Christmas festival. The townsfolk are as insistent on being there as Derek is, honoring his child.
Well there’s no way those decorated boats are going in the water this stormy night, not if she has anything to do with it. And so she turns back and considers her twelve-foot-tall fully decorated Christmas tree dripping with sparkling ornaments and garlands, rising in the open double doorway of her barn. Her dark tree. After another glance out to the cove, she reaches to the side wall and throws on the light switch.
If she’s not mistaken, the change is instant as thousands of twinkling lights come on, unfurling their resplendent glow through the storm’s blowing snow to the cove. And the night stills, somehow. The trucks plowing, the cars sliding through the parking lot, squeezing in and looking for a space amidst snowdrifts and boat trailers, all of them, every vehicle comes to a stop. As sure as snowflakes—and there’s no missing those tonight—every pair of eyes has turned to her magnificent Christmas barn rising through the dark storm.
With no time to waste, Vera works her way through the barn to plug in every display, every mechanical caroler, every decorated tree, every Christmas village including Brooke’s extravagant miniature town crowded with pine trees and storefronts and bakery after bakery, every swag of green garland draped along shelves and bannisters, every candle in each barn window, every snowman and reindeer, everything, until she arrives at the sparkling swan carousel, saving that one for last.
Before she can look outside again, she grabs her cell phone from her purse and calls Brooke, knowing she’s out there in her tent with their mother in the midst of a raging snowstorm.
“Brooke!” she says when her sister answers.
“Vera? Holy cow, your barn, what a sight it is!”
“Never mind that for now. Listen, Brooke. I want you and Mom to leave, right away. Just close up your tent and get out of there. The snow’s really coming down and it’s dangerous to be out in it.”
“I had the same thought. We’re about to pack it up.”
“Wait! Because what I want you to do is this. Direct everyone up here to the barn. Everyone! It’s warm and safe inside and there’s plenty of room for people to wait this thing out.”
“Are you sure?” Brooke shouts into her phone over the sound of the whistling wind.
“Absolutely. Get as many of those people here as you can. Hurry!”
By the time Vera gets to the double doors again and looks out, Brooke’s husband Brett is standing in the cove parking lot, a flashlight in each swinging hand directing traffic toward her home. And ahead of him, Bob Hough is plowing a clear path through the snowdr
ifts straight from the cove to her driveway.
Before long, Vera turns to see Brooke and her mother walking into the barn, their coats and hats covered in white snowflakes, faces rosy-red, their arms filled with boxes of coffee cakes from the tent. “That was fast,” Vera tells them as she takes some of the pastries and sets them out on a counter.
“We got a ride from Bob.” Her mother glances out the door behind her. “And get ready, Vee. The whole town’s on its way.”
Vera looks past them and sees a couple of her neighbors using their snowplows to clear the walkway from the house to the barn, while her long driveway is being cleared by Bob. But the best part? A line of headlights slowly snakes its way out of the cove parking lot, driving up the street, and if she’s not mistaken, heading straight to her barn.
Chapter Twenty-Two
IT DOESN’T TAKE LONG. EVERYBODY was ready to seek shelter, Vera can see that now. Her barn double doors are still open to the cove, the massive Christmas tree casting its glittering light on the swirling snow outside. That view, the image of endless white snowflakes spinning against a midnight blue sky, side-lit by the glow of her tree, becomes almost celestial.
But inside, the Christmas Barn has taken on its own magical glow. Vera stands up on the loft watching the families crowd in. Ooohs and aaahs rise to her as they set their gaze on the miniature villages and snowmen and reindeer and sleighs and the hundreds of glittering snowflakes hanging from the ceiling beams. Her brightly-lit Christmas train that Derek fixed up chugs around and around the loft through valleys and hills of snow and pine trees, and the candy cane alley is like a Christmas funhouse for the young children.
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