Snowflakes and Coffee Cakes (12 page)

“Oh! Jingles, you rascal!” Brooke says to the cat. “You scared the daylights out of me.”

Vera picks up the swan carousel and gently sets it back in its box.

“Yoo-hoo!” Brooke calls out. “Vera?”

“Back here,” Vera answers, walking out of the storage room.

Brooke sets her boxes on the old checkout countertop near the door and begins opening them. “I’m glad I caught you. The library bake sale is this weekend and you have to sample these and tell me which ones to make.”

Vera looks into the boxes laden with jam-filled coffee cake muffins, some strawberry, some raspberry, blueberry, and peach. “For the love of muffins, why oh why are you tempting me like this? I’ll put on ten pounds.”

“Well, don’t have them all at once.” She sets out a couple muffins on a napkin on the counter. “I wanted to drop them off for you on my way to work. Maybe you can bring some to Mom’s later on?”

“I’m really pressed for time, Brooke, so I can’t promise anything. I’m working on an extended profile piece and have to interview the Fire Marshal.”

“Another article? That’s good news, Vera!”

“Except there’s lots of research with this one, keeping me super busy. I can maybe swing by Mom’s after the interview, for a few minutes anyway.” Temptation gets the best of her, convincing her to pick up an overloaded muffin and take a big bite. “Mmh, these are sinful,” she says, wiping a smear of jam from the corner of her mouth. “I swear, if you’d bring these in to Tom’s, you know, and sell them in the reception area, your boss would be the most popular lawyer in Addison.”

“I wish. But unfortunately in the real world, I’m a paralegal, not a baker.” Brooke takes a raspberry muffin covered with drizzles of raspberry jam and bites into it, saying around the food, “But let me tell you, if I could find a way to bake like this all the time …” She glances around the space filling up with artificial Christmas trees and snow villages and eight sparkling reindeer and twinkling lights winding up the bannister to the loft where a mechanical, life-size pair of carolers stands, their mouths in a permanent O-shape as they look from sheet music in their hands and then up to the heavens in imagined song. “Well, baking full-time would feel like Christmas,
all
the time.” She sighs and stuffs the rest of her muffin in her mouth. “Got to run,” she says then. “I’m so late for work.”

“Here, take a couple of these. That way Tom won’t be mad.”

“Good thinking.” Brooke closes up one of the boxes just as Jingles runs across the floor after a sliding bell. She pulls her car keys from her purse, glancing after the cat, then surveying the whole barn. “It’s amazing how festive this place is looking.”

Vera knows exactly what her sister means. Because what she’d been thinking lately is that the barn, filled with its Christmas displays, looks fitting more to the North Pole, or Santa’s workshop, than a tag sale. Ornaments hang on the trees, wreaths line the wall behind the checkout counter, silver spray-painted pinecones fill crystal vases. Then she looks at the muffins set out on the counter, sitting on pretty scalloped napkins.

“You know, Brooke, would you ever think of selling coffee cakes at my tag sale? Christmas coffee cakes, maybe? I’ll bet they’d go over really well.”

Brooke eyes Vera, eyes her bakery box, then looks out at the Christmas wonderland taking shape in the barn. “Now that’s not a bad idea.”

Chapter Fifteen

CONNECTICUT WAS THE FIRST NEW England state to make Christmas a legal holiday. And from the crowd here, I can see why,” Santa Claus calls into a microphone near the unlit tree. “Addison’s Christmas spirit just fills me with joy. Ho, ho, ho!”

Derek keeps an eye out for Vera, meeting him here after he closed up the store. The maple tree trunks and branches along the edge of The Green are wrapped in white twinkling lights, casting a soft glow in the dark night. They light up smiling faces and brightly colored caps and scarves and mittened hands cupping hot drinks. Finally he sees her waving to him from across the lawn.

“You know who that Santa is, don’t you?” Derek says into Vera’s ear, leaning down close.

Vera looks out at the Santa Claus standing beside the high school band tuning up for a Christmas concert. “No.”

She looks up at Derek, and he can’t help it. He gently brushes a strand of hair off her face, his hand touching her fluffy earmuffs, then reaches behind her neck as he gives her a quick kiss. “Don’t let on to any of the kids here. It’s my father.”

“No way!”

Vera walks closer to the tree lighting festivities, squeezing through the crowd until they have a front-row view. People bundled in warm coats press close around them and Derek stands behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist.

“Christmas trees take about seven to ten years to mature,” Santa continues to the crowd. “Judging from the size of this grand tree,” he continues, leaning back and looking up toward the top of a dark unlit tree looking like only a shadow in the night, “I’d say Addison knows how to grow ‘em, regardless of how many years it’s been here!”

Applause breaks out from the families all looking up at the towering pine tree.

“Cold?” Derek asks over her shoulder when he feels Vera shiver in her red buffalo-plaid pea coat and white mittens covered with sequined snowflakes, cupping a steaming hot chocolate.

“A little.” She takes a sip of the drink. “Want some?” He takes the cup for a quick taste. “Your dad makes a great Santa,” she says while he does.

In front of them, his father leads the crowd in a verse of
Jingle Bells
. “They’re playing your cat’s theme song,” he tells Vera, and she laughs, swaying slightly to the music.

A man beside Derek lifts his young daughter onto his shoulders to give her a better view of Santa and the hardware store sleigh brought in for the festivities. The sleigh is filled with wrapped presents next to a long line of children waiting to have their picture taken on it with Santa.

“Hey, is that your sleigh?” Vera asks him over her shoulder.

Derek nods. “Dad always loved playing Santa on Christmas Eve,” he says when his father sits in the sleigh and a young girl climbs up to have her picture taken. “He’d come over to the house in full costume and Abby never suspected it was him.”

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.