“Is that what you did in Ohio?”
He told her about the landscaping he’d done, and they talked about the different places he’d lived. She’d traveled a lot, of course, and they discovered they both preferred where they were to just about anywhere else.
They deposited the bag of toys his mother had bought to donate to the Christmas fund under the town tree. The pile of toys always drew attention to the tags hanging on the branches, each listing the Christmas wishes of a child in need. Will wondered if Christina had filled out a form to receive a gift for Nathaniel, but decided she probably hadn’t. She wouldn’t want to take away from a family who had less than they did.
By the time Gail told Nathaniel the spot she’d subtly steered him toward was the perfect place to watch the parade, the boy’s energy was already flagging. He’d even tripped a couple of times on the sidewalk and Will guessed if the kid wasn’t standing up, he’d be asleep.
But the first piercing wail of the police chief’s siren, signaling the start of the parade, seemed to give him a second wind.
“It’s coming! Mom, I hear it!” he shouted, and Christina clapped with him.
It took a while for the slow-moving line of vehicles to get to them. Everything from the fire trucks to the tractors would be decked out in Christmas tree lights, with inflatable decorations strapped to roofs and flat-beds. It was basically the rescue vehicles and many of the town’s businesses battling it out for the dubious honor of having the loudest, tackiest Christmas display on wheels.
“I can’t see!” Nathaniel yelled, jumping up and down.
“They’ll come past here,” Christina tried to explain, but he was too excited to wait. He wanted to see them now.
Will had vague memories of that feeling, so he tapped his mom on the shoulder. It was probably a safe bet the two Forresters didn’t have a lot of experience with piggyback rides, either. “Let’s hoist him up.”
He squatted down and ducked his head as his mom lifted Nathaniel. Once the boy was sitting securely on his shoulders, Will put his hands on his knees and stood up straight.
Nathaniel squealed and clapped his hands. Will knew he’d probably be sorry later, because it was a pretty long parade and the kid wasn’t light, but it was worth it.
It snuck up on him sometimes, at odd moments. Like now, when he was having fun and lost in the moment and then...bam. His little girl wouldn’t have been much younger than Nathaniel and, if things had turned out the way he’d wanted, he’d be standing in this very spot with Emily next to him and his daughter on his shoulders.
But this time, he didn’t let the pang settle into a dull ache or withdraw into himself to nurse the wound. Instead, he let go of one of Nathaniel’s knees and pointed toward the back of the parade, where Hammond’s tow truck was coming into view. Tony’s wife had been hitting the after-Christmas sales for decades and the wrecker was so lit up, it could probably be seen from space. Nathaniel shouted and rocked a little in his excitement, so Will put his hand back on the boy’s knee.
Christina put her hand up, as if to steady the boy, then dropped it to her side when she saw Will had him. She laughed at her son’s excitement, the lights reflecting in her sparkling eyes as she tilted her head to look up at them.
Will grinned at her and let himself enjoy the moment.
* * *
Christina sat on a quilt-covered hay bale and tried to ignore the fact her sleeping son had cut off the circulation in her legs a good half-hour ago. Gail had lifted a corner of the quilt and tucked it around Nathaniel to keep the evening chill off of him before spotting some friends and disappearing.
Only the fact they were in the park surrounded by the town’s entire population kept Christina from flopping down next to him and taking a nap of her own.
“You look like you could use this.” Will appeared next to her, holding out a Styrofoam cup of hot chocolate.
“Oh, thank you.” She blew across the top and then took a sip, feeling the warmth spread through her body. It got a lot colder a lot earlier than it had in Connecticut and, though she’d made sure she and Nathaniel had good outerwear, she wasn’t used to the weather yet.
He sat on the hay next to her and, since there wasn’t a lot of room, the length of his thigh just barely pressed against hers. She would have slid over a little to make more room, but her son felt as if he was made out of cement.
“I don’t know if even the fireworks will wake him up,” she said, pulling Nathaniel’s knit cap down a little further over his ear. His skin was warm, so she wasn’t too worried about him.
“He’ll wake up. And he’ll get his second wind and run circles around us.”
“Both of my feet are asleep, so it won’t take much.”
He laughed and the deep sound seemed to vibrate through her. Will didn’t laugh often, but she loved when he did. “Do you want me to help you slide out from under him?”
“No.” She stroked Nathaniel’s shoulder. “It’s kind of nice cuddling, even if I can’t feel my legs. And this is the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had.”
“When you’re cold and tired, any hot chocolate is the best you’ve ever had.”
They watched people for a while, sipping their warm drinks. Sometimes Will would point somebody out and tell her a story. Some people waved and she saw quite a few curious glances their way. She could only imagine how they looked, sitting so closely together with a sleeping child on her lap. But Will didn’t seem to mind.
When a boom finally sounded, followed by a burst of color in the sky, Nathaniel shot up so abruptly she almost wore the last third of her hot chocolate.
“Did I miss them?”
“That was just the test shot,” Will said. “It looks dark enough, so they’ll start in a few minutes.”
Gail joined them, snuggling up to Nathaniel so he was warm between the two women, and handed him a cup that was half-full of hot chocolate. “I had them put a little extra milk in it so it’s not too hot.”
Her son sipped at it and smiled at her. “Thank you, Grammy Gail.”
“So which was your favorite float?”
Nathaniel thought about it for a minute. “Hammond’s Auto Care was the best.”
“Good kid,” Will said, and they all laughed.
“The library’s was my favorite,” Christina said, but the guys shook their head.
“Not enough lights,” they said almost at the same time.
When another firework went up, Nathaniel downed the last of his hot chocolate and handed the empty cup to Christina. “It’s starting, Mommy!”
She had more fun watching her son than she did the fireworks. Every burst of color made him smile and when a big boom sounded, his mouth would open in awe.
It was cold, though, and she felt like she’d been sitting forever. Gail had told her the town budgeted as much for Christmas fireworks as they did for the Fourth of July, so she knew they still had a way to go.
The temperature had dropped quite a bit when the sun went down and now it felt like the wind was picking up. A chill blew across her neck and she shivered.
Will leaned close so she could hear him over the crowd’s appreciation for the fireworks. “If you’re cold, I can head back now and I’ll drive my mom’s car down to pick you guys up.”
She shook her head. “Once we’re walking, we’ll be fine. It’s just cold sitting still.”
When he leaned in even closer, so his body was shielding hers from the breeze, it was more than the body heat that warmed her. And she found herself, after wondering how much longer the fireworks could last, suddenly wishing they’d never end.
* * *
The Sunday after the Christmas parade was always decorating day at the Broughton house, so Will woke up the next morning already knowing what he’d be doing all day. And who he’d be doing it with.<
br />
During the walk home after the fireworks, which had been a lot less leisurely than the walk to town, his mom had invited Christina and Nathaniel over to help decorate the house for Christmas.
What he didn’t anticipate was Gail sending Christina out to help him with the outside while keeping Nathaniel inside with her. It probably made more sense due to ladders being involved, but he’d mentally prepared himself for spending the day with a seven-year-old shadow who never stopped talking, not for Christina.
He already thought about her too often. He’d even caught himself driving a little too fast on the way home from work, wondering if he’d get to see her for a few minutes. All he could do was keep telling himself it was the novelty of having a new friendship after a few years of avoiding them by keeping on the move. It couldn’t be anything more than that.
“Doesn’t this kind of take the fun out of it?” she asked, looking at the organized reels of Christmas lights he pulled out of the box. “In the movies they’re always in a tangled knot.”
“My dad hated doing the lights and the more carefully he put them away, the faster it was to put them up the next year.”
“I wish I’d gotten to meet him,” she said quietly. “Gail loves to tell me stories about him.”
“I wish you had, too. He would have gotten a kick out of having Nathaniel around.”
And he would have liked Christina, too, as much as he’d liked Emily. His dad had been a laid-back kind of guy, who liked to joke around and have a good time. Going through Emily’s loss with Will had aged him a little, but he’d been strong and in good health. Losing him in June had been a totally unexpected blow.
“I’ve never done Christmas lights,” Christina said, drawing him back to the present. “I was going to hang some on our porch because the Porters told me there were Christmas decorations in the basement, but I don’t know how.”
“You’ve never hung Christmas lights?”
“No. The Monday after Thanksgiving, I’d go do whatever I was doing that day and, when I got back, the house would be decorated.”
“Well, after today you’ll know how because you might have noticed, we have a lot of lights.”
It took longer than it should have because they spent almost as much time laughing at each other as they did hanging lights. Christina learned she had a slight fear of ladders, which she discovered by freezing at the top of the extension ladder. Her legs shaking made the ladder rattle, which made her laugh. He was laughing, too, which didn’t help, so it took forever to get her back down.
Then, because he was distracted, he didn’t check a long string of lights before hanging it along the roofline so it didn’t light up when he was done and plugged it in. When he cursed, she laughed even harder at him than he had at her.
The sun was going down by the time they finally got the lights strung and the wreath hung on the front door. Candy cane garland twisted up the mailbox post and the two main porch posts.
“I think we’re done for now,” he said, standing at the edge of the street to examine their handiwork.
“For now?”
“Mom always finds a few things to add.”
“How come you don’t just leave the lights up and not plug them in eleven months of the year?”
He laughed and started back toward the house. “Not in this neighborhood.”
“I’m starving. Gail said we’d decorate the tree after the outside was done, but that’s a huge tree. We’ll eat first, right?”
“I hope so.”
They lucked out and walked through the door just as his mom was pulling a pan of pork chops out of the oven. They devoured them, along with homemade macaroni and cheese, before turning their attention to the Christmas tree.
She’d gone big, Will thought, and there would barely be room for the star at the top. He’d pointed that out at the Christmas tree lot, but his mom had dug in her heels and he’d realized having a perfect tree this year was about more than just having it look good in the living room. But he had to admit this was a pretty one and it had no bare spots that he could see.
“Okay,” Gail said, popping the lids off the three plastic bins she kept the tree decorations in. “The adults will do the glass and fragile ones, but there will be lots for you to put on the tree, Nathaniel.”
Will mostly watched, though there were a few special ones his mom always made him get off the couch to hang. Nathaniel admired each ornament, asking Gail questions about them as he hung each one. Will could see his mom loved telling the stories of the ornaments, like the one about the porcelain frog in the Santa hat. They’d gone camping one year and Erin, who’d only been five or six at the time, had been terrified by strange noises. When their dad had finally realized she was talking about the frogs, he’d laughed so hard he tipped his chair over.
When Christina got up, rather abruptly, and walked to the kitchen, Will got the feeling something was wrong. Maybe it was the set of her shoulders or how fast she walked, but she wasn’t just looking for a refill on her decaf.
When she was gone a few minutes, he decided to go after her. She might need a shoulder to cry on and, as much as he hated dealing with tears, he’d brace himself and be that guy.
As he suspected he would, he found her standing at the sink, mopping at her eyes with a paper towel. Because he wanted to keep his voice low, he crossed the kitchen to stand next to her.
“I guess it’s an emotional night for everybody,” he said quietly.
Turning to face him, she smiled. “No, these are happy tears, I promise. But Nathaniel can’t always tell the difference and I didn’t want to ruin his fun.
“Happy tears?” He gave her a skeptical look, but she nodded. “You probably had some pretty extravagant Christmases in the past.”
“We had four formal trees, each decorated to match the theme of the room. Custom crystal decorations. Hand-tied bows. They were visually stunning.” She sniffed and wiped at her face again. “Now I know they weren’t really Christmas trees at all.”
“I’m not really getting the happy tears from this.”
“We put our tree up Tuesday, after he got home from school, because he couldn’t wait anymore. It’s a really tiny tree, but we both loved it. We made the star out of aluminum foil and gold glitter, which was quite a mess, and we have three decorations.”
“You could probably borrow some of ours, you know.”
She shook her head. “We have a little plastic moose that has a red nose because they’ve been his favorite animal since we moved to New Hampshire. A wooden book with A Christmas Carol stamped in gold letters because the library was selling them for a fundraiser. And your mom knit Nathaniel a tiny red sock with a white heel and toe to represent the Red Sox because some of his friends are into baseball and she’s afraid he might be a Yankees fan.”
“Sounds like Mom.”
“That is a Christmas tree,” she said. “And I was sitting there, listening to the stories and thinking about some day when Nathaniel’s an adult and our tree is as full of memories as yours is.”
“Ah. And therein lies the happy tears.” He reached up to wipe away the lingering trace of her happiness.
She blinked, looking up at him with soft blue eyes as he stroked his thumb over her cheekbone. Her skin was soft and her lips parted slightly when his fingertips trailed down her cheek.
All he had to do was lower his head and he could kiss her. He was thinking about it. And so was she.
It would be a huge mistake, he told himself. Everybody was feeling all warm and fuzzy from nostalgia and family togetherness, and if he kissed her right now, she might read more into it than a constantly growing sexual chemistry.
“I should go,” she whispered. “I should...Nathaniel...”
He stepped back, letting his hand drop to his side. “Yeah, Mom usually saves the b
est ornaments for last. You don’t want to miss those.”
She practically ran, pausing only to drop the paper towel in the garbage on her way out. With a heavy sigh, Will braced his hands on the sink and stared out the window at the front of her house.
It would be easy to tell himself he just needed to get laid. He could go into the city, hit a few bars. He was a good-looking guy with a trustworthy face and he rarely had problems finding company.
But he knew if he went to a bar, he’d sit there nursing a beer and think about Christina. If he was going to torture himself, he may as well save the five bucks.
Chapter Five
December 12th. The date was Will’s first waking thought and, instead of heading for the coffee pot, he just lay there and stared at the ceiling fan.
Six years ago tonight, he’d been sitting on the front porch, having a beer with his dad, when a police cruiser had pulled into the driveway. Officer Brennan, whom Will had gone to school with, had stood there with his hat in his hands and tears in his eyes. There’d been an accident. A drunk driver. He was so sorry, but Will’s wife and baby were dead.
Then there was nothing but a haze of pain and anger and his mom guiding him through the hell of burying the woman he loved, along with the baby he’d barely had a chance to.
With a weary sigh, he threw back the covers and forced himself to get out of bed. It would have been nice to distract himself with oil changes and clogged carburetors, but things got slow leading up to Christmas and Tony had him working four-day workweeks. Usually having Fridays off was a bonus, but not today.
Once he was dressed and realized the worst thing he could do was stay in his apartment moping all damn day, he went in search of his mom. There had to be a project around the house that needed doing.
She was sitting in her rocking chair, watching some kind of talk show and knitting what looked like it might be a sweater for Dani or Alicia. He plopped on the sofa and put his feet on the coffee table with a thump. Then he crossed one ankle over the other and sighed.
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