Page 447 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
“Now to get the thing inside. Here, can you take the top? I’ll carry the base. We’ll drag it in.”
Tinsely nodded, crouched down, gripped the trunk of the fir near the top, and waited for me to say go. I lifted the base and the tree promptly bent in the middle, making it impossible for us to drag it through the snow as the branches plunged in deep and held like anchors.
Tinsely gave it all she had and pulled with all her might.
“This might be harder than I thought,” I managed through clenched teeth.
Suddenly, she lost her footing and, with an adorable squeal, pitched face first in the snow.
I roared with laughter and plunged through the snow to help her, finding her completely swallowed up by snow. I grabbed the back of her snow jacket and pulled her up, dusting her off as she spat a mouthful of snow out. It clung to her eyelashes, and she blinked furiously to clear it away.
I tried to stop laughing as I brushed snow off her back. “Are you okay?”
“I’d be better if you were the one who tried to nosedive into tiny ice particles.”
I grabbed her hand.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Trust me.”
Bending at the knees, I let myself fall backward. She fell with me, letting out a short and breathless laugh when our backs hit the snow. I fanned my arms out and started making a snow angel. Her eyes lit up as she watched me, and soon she was doing the same thing, sweeping her arms and legs over the snow like she used to when she was a young girl. Laughter bubbled out of her, and it sounded truly magical surrounded by the dense quiet of the snow.
Perfection, I thought.
Breathless, we both struggled up out of the snow and turned to see our masterpieces.
Only they weren’t really masterpieces at all.
The snow was too light, too deep, and the angels looked more like sloppy bats. I frowned, but she just kept on laughing, cut a path through the snow back to the tree, and challenged me to try again. This time we both took the trunk and dragged. It wasn’t easy going by a long shot, but once we got it up on the deck it slid easily. We lifted it up so I could shake it roughly and try to dispel as much water as possible. Needles showered the deck, and Tinsely ducked inside to go to the linen closet and fetch towels, which we laid out beside the fireplace in the pit.
By the time we got the tree inside and in the base I had to rummage through the garage for, it was nearly four o’clock, and we were both soaking wet, sweaty, red-faced, and famished. With not many groceries in my fridge and no ability to order food, we scoured my freezer and found a frozen flatbread as well as some other appetizer-ish snacks like spring rolls, gyoza, and mini quiche.
It would be more than enough to get us through the evening.
While the tree dried out a bit by the fire, which I’d opened the glass doors to, we sat at the island and ate the mini quiche and finished off the bottle of wine we’d opened last night.
By six o’clock, we started decorating the tree with the boxes of decorations I lugged out from under my stairs.
Tinsely slid a hook through the top of a wreath-shaped ornament. “I didn’t expect you to have so much Christmas stuff. Where did you get it all from?”
“My mother, actually. She gave me half of our old ornaments. She and I used to put up our tree every year, so a lot of these have sentimental value to me.”
She hung the ornament on a branch near the front of the tree. “I love that.”
I unwrapped an angel made out of pasta noodles and smiled. “If I’m being honest,” I said as I hung it near the wreath, “I haven’t seen any of these in a long time.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t usually put up a tree.”
She found a box of icicle ornaments in spiral shapes and rainbow colors. “How come?”
I shrugged. “Since it was something my mother and I always did together, I’ve had a hard time doing it without her. It doesn’t feel right. And, well…” I trailed off.
Tinsely moved toward me and caught my wrist. She knitted her fingers through mine and squeezed. “It’s okay to miss her and for it to hurt during the holidays. That’s completely normal. One day you’ll be able to do this and think of her and smile, and I’m sure she would want that for you. Maybe you can share some of the traditions you had with her with your future family.”
Family?
