Snowflakes and Coffee Cakes (13 page)

“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.”

“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 throw 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.

“And the caboose,” she adds, pointing to the other car. “It doesn’t light up. It’s supposed to, isn’t it?”

He studies the red and gold caboose with green garland painted along its edges. “Seems it,” he says, looking up at Vera then and waiting.

She smiles quickly. “Well. I know you’re busy and all. But I thought if you could stop by to try them on the track, maybe you could get them running for me?”

“You’re sure they don’t work? You tried the controls properly, plugged things in?”

She nods. “I can wait, while you polish the boat.”

“You want to do this now?” He looks from the train cars to his boat. “All right. I can finish up here later.”

“No! No, wait.” She reaches into another brown bag and pulls out a long string of white twinkly lights. They hang tangled and bunched up from her hand. But she smiles hopefully while shaking them out and says, “You finish waxing and I’ll help, too. With your boat.”

He looks at her lights. “Vera, I’ve got Christmas lights for it already.”

“But I’ll bet not this kind. Look.” She walks to his boat and clips two ends of a three-strand swag of lights along the side rail, then turns to him with a raised eyebrow.

“Those are pretty fancy.” He laughs. “Really, I only use a single strand of lights, Vera. Just to outline the shape.”

“Yup, that’s what I figured. Typical man thinking.” She looks from him, to her swag of lights, then back at him. “So I brought enough to line both sides of your vessel. Because really,” she says, her eyes tearing up as she drops her voice to a whisper, “these look like jewelry, like a sparkling necklace. And what little girl doesn’t love jewelry?” She stands there holding another set of the lights, waiting for his answer. Which he doesn’t give, she notices.

Not until he glances at his watch first, then rubs his knuckles along his jaw. “Okay,” he relents.

“Perfect. So anyway, I’m just going to start hanging these on the sections you already waxed.” And she does, lifting the next strand to the boat side. “Because Abby would
love
them.”

When she hears him moving, she takes a peek and sees that he’s put his work gloves back on and is picking up the buffer, glancing at her as he does, too, oh she doesn’t miss that.

“I’m sorry about the other night, Vera. When I left you at the tree lighting thing.”

“That’s okay.”

“No, it really isn’t. And I want you to know that even though it doesn’t always seem it, I
have
made peace with Abby’s death, I really have. It’s just that this time of year is different. You know, it triggers stuff.”

“Well of course it would.” Vera strings along her swag of twinkling lights, fussing with them to straighten each strand precisely. “So many special times must come back to you, when you think
Oh, I remember when
, or
Hey, Abby used to hang the tinsel this way,
or
That’s a Christmas carol she loved
.” She shrugs while looking at her lights. “Things like that.”

“You know,” he says, buffing a small circle on the boat, then stopping. “I don’t talk about Abby much because most people are uncomfortable with it.” He looks at the boat and lifts the buffer again, circling it over a small section. “They don’t really know what to say. But with you, it’s different.”

She smiles and nods as she clips on another swag. “So this boat must be the lead boat at the festival, right?”

“I thought I was done finalizing the procession, but I got a few more calls from interested boaters, so I’ve got to work them in. But my boat always leads the way. Always.”

“I thought so. So the thing is, Derek, it has to be grand. You want it to really stand out as the most significant boat on the cove.”

He polishes a section of the boat side, talking over the sound of the buffer. “I actually map out the procession ahead of time. Whoever’s participating registers first and I set it up like a boat parade. Each vessel is lined up based on size, how its decorations fit with the theme, and even how it’ll look visually on the cove once all the lights are turned on.”

“Sounds like quite an operation.”

He steps back and checks the section he buffed, lightly running his hand over it. “We start out on the water in the dark with very few lights. Just enough to see. And one by one, the boats light up. In order.”