Page 27 of Happy After All

Reunion Romance—a romance plot that centers on past lovers reuniting.

Rebuilding is not a quick process. I know this emotionally. I’m learning how true it is in the context of an actual town as well.

FEMA helped initially. But there are still fields of motor homes, and no completed apartment complexes. Insurance payments have been slow, and most of the businesses haven’t begun rebuilding at all. Funding for the school is even more complex, and for now the students are doing classes in the old Walmart, with cubicle dividers acting as insufficient classroom walls.

In the immediate aftermath, Sylvia had considered canceling A Very Desert Christmas.

Until we’d gotten the idea to make it a fundraiser.

The townspeople had come on board in a big way. Donating time and resources to making this the absolute best festival the town has ever seen.

I’m in charge of the Festival of Trees, which will be a display and an auction, where people in town decorate trees in different elaborate themes and then auction them off to the highest bidders.

There is a planned performance that Reigna, the longtime director of all the local community theater productions, has promised will be the greatest of all time.

The mid-November meeting is especially full, with more and more people in town coming up with ideas to make this event as big as possible.

I get out of my car, balancing several plates of cookies on top of each other. The best part of Christmas gatherings, in my opinion, is the endless variety of sweets that can be taken away from events on paper plates, so the holiday traditions mix and mingle and you get to try different recipes. I love it.

It might not be December yet, but the event is Christmas themed, and that means Christmassy sweets are happening.

It’s the kind of thing I used to see in heartwarming movies. Which my life had never particularly resembled.

Now I’ve made it.

I take purposeful steps through the cracked parking lot and into the small sun-bleached building that also serves as a visitors’ center. It has a rattlesnake painted boldly on the side of it.

I’m still upset there are no armadillos.

I’d prefer them over the snakes.

As long as our world isn’t on fire anymore, I’ll even take the snakes.

I open the door by leading with my knee, then turn sideways, pushing with my shoulder and granting myself entrance.

“Amelia!” Sylvia is there already, looking bright and chipper and wearing what everyone I know in LA would have called an ugly Christmas sweater as a title, not an insult. Sylvia just calls them sweaters.

She’s the epitome of type-A efficiency. The sort of woman you’d expect to see in tailored suits, not in preschool-teacher chic. But she loves a chunky wooden necklace and a seasonal jumper.

“Hi, Sylvia,” I say, setting my cookies down on the table next to the fanned-out array of holly-festooned napkins. There’s a Crock-Pot filledwith cider and some clear plastic cups next to it. Sylvia has brought fudge.

This year’s planning meetings have felt deliberately, intensely warm. Like we’re all determined to make magic wherever we can.

It’s been such a tough few months. Every time I smell smoke, I break out in a cold sweat.

I know I’m not alone.

Doing this, doing something ... at least that makes me feel active.

“Ticket sales are at a record high,” Sylvia says, smiling brightly. “The Festival of Trees has never seen presales like this. The fundraiser getting picked up by the news in LA was such a huge thing for us. Thank you.”

I try to hold back my smile. Let it go just half-mast, as I don’t want to seem too pleased or too eager for her praise. But I am. Sylvia is like the supportive mom I never had, but I have the feeling if I told her that, she’d have to put four walls of reserve back up between us. She’s lovely, kind, and warm, but only after you get to know her.

I’ve experienced the kind of sadness that drives people apart. I’ve never experienced something like what happened in Rancho Encanto after the fires. People came together. They supported each other. They’re still doing it.

I hate contacting people back in LA, but I did it for Rancho Encanto. An old friend of mine is a producer on one of the local news channels, and I got her to feature the festival—and Sylvia—as a local interest piece, to try to draw people out of the city and into the desert for a little bit of fun ... and to support a good cause.

So, I did do a good job, and I feel pleased with myself for it.

---