Page 7 of Christmas With The Kings
“Sit back and relax. It’s about an hour out, right, Marcus?” I asked as I hit play.
“Yes,” he said, shaking his head.
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year filled the car and my heart with so much joy. I couldn’t stop smiling. Isabella groaned.
“Be thankful it’s not All I Want For Christmas.” I hummed along.
By the time we were halfway there, I’d finished half of my peppermint mocha and was on my second mental checklist of the day.
Lights? Check. Being delivered later today. Ribbons, decorations and sparkly bows? Same. Triple check. By the end of tonight, the house would scream Christmas, come hell or high water.
The tree farm was as magical as I’d imagined. Nestled on the edge of a little village, tucked between frost-tipped hills. Row upon row of evergreens stretched into the gray sky, each one marked with a red or green ribbon depending on size and age.
Twinkling lights were strung between bare oaks. A faint scent of pine and woodsmoke in the air. Families wandered between trees, holding hands and debating branches like their holiday happiness depended on it.
I squealed. Everything was perfect. Well, except for my companions. Isabella pulled her coat tighter, as if she were trying to become one with it. Marcus had already resigned himself to death by pine needles. I handed each of them a candy cane.
“Um, what is this for?” Isabella huffed.
“Eating silly. It’s tradition. You can’t pick a tree properly without one. I don’t make the rules. Owen did. This is what we do. Unwrap it,” I practically growled.
I needed to pace myself. The day was young, and after this, I planned to drag her cranky ass through every tinsel-covered inch of London’s winter markets until she caved and enjoyed herself. Which she would. I knew it deep down. She just needed a little push to join the real world.
“Are you seriously getting three of these damned things?”
“Yup,” I said, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek.
“The men might not have noticed the food, but they’ll damn sure notice six-foot balsam firs. If they aren’t careful, I’ll get an extra one and put it in the Death Squad meeting room.”
“Tell me again why I’m being forced to participate,” Isabella muttered to Marcus.
“Because you love her,” he said. “Just keep repeating it to yourself, it will take root.”
“I’m not too sure about that,” she huffed, looking around.
“But it’s true. You do love me. You know it. I know it. And don’t try to hide it. You’re secretly thrilled by the concept of my controlled chaos and excessive ornamentation?”
She raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “This is absurd,” she muttered, arms crossed. “We’re literally paying to do manual labor.”
“It’s not labor,” I argued as I adjusted my scarf and shimmied my shoulders. “It’stradition.”
“It’s unpaid forestry work.”
“Isabella.” I turned, placing both hands on her shoulders. “I’m trying to manufacture holiday joy with the fragile, unhinged threads of my seasonal childhood memories. Can younot?”
Marcus cleared his throat behind us, axe slung over one shoulder. I turned to him, wide-eyed. “Do you see the hostility I’m enduring?”
“I see many things,” he deadpanned. “None of them surprising.”
We started down one of the worn footpaths between the trees, gravel crunching beneath our boots. The chill in the air turned every breath into steam, and I had to keep myself from reaching out to touch every tree branch.
There was something magical about it all. The silence of it, the bite of the wind, the pine.
I’d forgotten what it felt like to beoutlike this. To be doing something so damned normal without the sorrow attached to it. After Owen died, I couldn’t bring myself to get a real tree or do much of anything.
The first Christmas without him, I grieved so much that eating and even drinking water had been hard to do. Grief can hospitalize you. Did you know that? It did me, that first year. I made myself sick. A week-long stay in a hospital, and I promised I wouldn’t do that again.
The year after, I bought a small fake tree that sat on an end table in my new house in Woodinville. It had never been the same, and a small part of me wanted to embrace the season anew.
