8. Jenny
JENNY
Alittle while later, Jenny was still walking between Erik and Gael. They were heading beyond the big stone barn and up a slight hill, past stands selling food and treats, on the way to the fields and pens of animals that families could visit with.
“Hot apple cider,” Gael cried, pointing to one of the stands by the barn.
“Would you like some?” Erik asked him.
“Yes,” Gael said, turning to Jenny. “I never had it hot before. Can we?”
“Absolutely,” she told him, glad he wasn’t asking for the candied apples at the booth next to that one.
They stood in the short line, Gael practically dancing in place.
It was so good to see him acting like a kid.
Maybe it was because he’d been raised without siblings, or maybe it was just something he had naturally, but Gael could be so patient and mature that sometimes Jenny forgot he was only nine.
She loved seeing him get silly and excited and ask for an apple cider like a normal kid.
When they each had a steaming paper cup of the fragrant treat, which Gael heartily approved of in its heated form, they continued up the hill. About halfway up, they stopped to watch a man in a cowboy hat leading a dapple pony with a little girl on its back around a paddock.
“Whoa,” Gael said, looking surprised. “That’s a really little kid to be riding a horse.”
“Would you like to try?” Erik offered.
But Gael shook his head, so they continued up the hill a bit to where pens of chickens of every kind strutted, clucked, and cried out to the kids who were buying handfuls of dried corn to offer them.
“Can I feed the chickens?” Gael asked excitedly.
“Of course,” Jenny told him, digging in her bag for some change.
“I brought lots of quarters,” Erik said, pulling a nice handful out of his pocket.
“Yes,” Gael exclaimed, handing Jenny his cider so he could focus on the chickens.
Jenny gave Erik a big smile, hoping he could see how grateful she was that he had thought of this small thing that was bringing Gael such big happiness.
Working together, they carefully placed a quarter in a little machine that looked like it was for gumballs and then turned the knob. Gael laughed brightly when a handful of corn poured out of the little metal door and into his cupped hands.
“Ten-tay,” he called to the chickens as he threw a few kernels of corn into one of the pens. “Ten-tay.”
“What does that mean?” Jenny asked him.
“I’m not exactly sure,” he said, turning to her with a puzzled look. “But my abuela had chickens when she was a little girl, and she told me that’s what she said to make them come get their food. Feeding them was one of her chores.”
“That’s really cool,” Jenny told him. “We’ll look it up and find out exactly what it means.”
That got her a quick smile before he turned back to continue his happy task.
“I’m so glad we came,” she heard herself say.
“Me too,” Erik agreed. “This is really fun.”
After the chickens, they continued on to see the goats, a few deer, and even a duck pond with a little bridge over it.
When they went out onto the bridge, the ducks swam around and scolded them for not immediately offering food.
Once again, Erik put a quarter in the little machine, and Gael threw his handful of pellets across the pond to the happy ducks.
By the time they were finished with the animals, Gael’s cheeks were pink from the cold and even Jenny was shivering a little.
“Should we head out?” Erik asked. “Or did you want to check out the playground or the Christmas shop?”
“Didn’t we already see the Christmas shop?” Gael asked.
“That was the nursery,” Erik told him. “But there’s a Christmas shop upstairs in the barn, and that has Christmas things all year long.”
“Yes,” Gael said immediately. “Let’s do that.”
“Sounds great,” Jenny said, happy at Gael’s choice. Every time the boy showed his Christmas spirit, she was grateful that losing his grandmother hadn’t taken away his love of the holidays.
As they headed back to the stone barn, Jenny couldn’t help admiring the displays of wreaths and bins of apples outside.
When they stepped in, there was a huge market filled with produce and jars of things like preserves and local honey, and also a little sign pointing to a set of stairs.
“This way,” Erik said, heading up the stairs.
Jenny followed with Gael by her side. The stairs wound around the outside wall of the barn and opened up to a beautiful shop.
The center of the octagonal space had displays of handmade crafts. There were beautiful candles, knit scarves and gloves, and gorgeous mugs with wreaths or snowy scenes that were just imperfect enough to be hand-thrown pottery.
The outside of the room was lined with a forest of Christmas trees, each decorated with a theme. The ornaments on the trees had little paper tags and Jenny realized that the trees were offering ornaments that were for sale, like a much nicer version of the racks in an ordinary shop.
The whole space smelled like cinnamon, though whether that was from the candles or the decorations, Jenny wasn’t sure. Twinkle lights crossed the ceiling, giving the softly lit shop the effect of a starry night.
“It’s beautiful,” she murmured.
“Look at that,” Gael said, heading right for the trees.
“Let’s be super careful,” she reminded him as he reached for a miniature wooden nutcracker hanging from one of the branches. “A lot of this stuff is probably really delicate.”
“Okay,” Gael said solemnly, pulling his hand back and just looking instead.
“Thanks for stopping in,” a young woman said politely as she approached. “My name is Melody. Let me know if you need anything at all. Everything is discounted today for our after Christmas sale.”
“Thank you, Melody,” Jenny said. “This place is magical.”
“Almost everything here was made locally,” Melody said proudly. “Our new shop manager wants it to be a place where people can come to purchase gifts from local artists and artisans.”
“What a great idea,” Jenny said, looking around. “I didn’t know that Trinity Falls had so many talented people.”
“We have long, cold winters here,” Melody said with a smile. “A lot of folks find themselves starting up new hobbies to pass the time.”
“Puzzles,” Gael chirped, darting across the shop to a selection of wooden puzzles.
“Enjoy,” Melody said to Jenny. “And let me know if you need anything. Good to see you, Erik.”
“So, you’re a regular here, huh?” she asked Erik with a smile as Melody headed back to the counter.
“I got all the decorations for the tree at the Center here,” he said. “And some of the gifts for the vets too.”
“You bought them all gifts?” Jenny asked.
“Nothing big,” he said, shrugging. “I just wanted everyone to have something to open.”
She nodded, too moved for a moment to say anything.
“Do you run on donations?” she asked him, wondering if there was anything she could do to help.
“We do accept donations,” he told her. “But we don’t take in enough yet to run the place. That may come in time though.”
“So how do you run the place?” she asked him.
He swallowed hard and then turned to her.
“When I was serving, a couple of us who didn’t have anyone back home to send it to decided to invest most of our pay,” he said.
“We took some risks, but in the end, we did really well, better than any of us expected. I guess it was a good time to be in the market. Anyway, I’m doing just fine now—enough to fund the Center. ”
“Oh,” Jenny said, surprised. “It’s good that you can run it until donations pick up.”
“Even if they don’t,” he muttered. “We’ll still be fine.”
She blinked back her surprise. Running a center for as many veterans as he had here, paying for some of them to stay at the inn, buying Christmas gifts, and paying a full-time employee as well as covering his own living expenses indefinitely was a little more than fine.
“I’m still the same man I was before,” he said firmly. “When we saw our numbers going up, everyone had a plan but me. A lot of the guys cashed out early, which was probably the smart thing to do. But I just let it ride, and I got really lucky. Now my only wish is that it won’t change me.”
Jenny nodded. That was understandable.
“Using the income from my investments for a good cause makes me feel better about having something I didn’t really earn,” he went on.
“Of course you earned it,” she said, shaking her head. “It all came from investing your own pay.”
“To be honest with you, the whole thing felt unreal,” he said, shaking his head. “It was all legal and proper, but watching the money grow that fast just felt kind of wrong to me. Paying it forward makes it feel right again.”
“That’s really nice,” she told him. “For the people you’re helping and also for you.”
“It’s a horse,” Gael said, heading over to them with a wooden puzzle in the shape of a horse cradled in his hands.
“That’s beautiful,” Jenny said, taking it when he held it out to her. “I can’t imagine how long it would take someone to make something like this.”
“Look at the decorations on that tree over there,” Gael said, pointing to a tree that seemed to be covered in tiny snow globes. “They’re really cool.”
“Let’s go see,” Jenny said, carefully setting the horse puzzle among the other wooden animals as they passed the table where Gael had found it.
Sure enough, the tree he was approaching was decorated with tiny snow globes. As she got closer, Jenny could see that each one had a different little scene inside. There were little houses, animals, and even shops from the town.
“Wow,” Gael whispered. “That’s where we are right now.”
Jenny smiled at the tiny octagonal stone barn in one of the globes. The miniature barn was even hung with pine boughs and Christmas lights, just like in real life.
“These are so cool,” Gael said, looking up at her with pleading eyes, but not quite daring to ask her to buy one.
“There’s a tradition some families have,” she said carefully. “They buy one new ornament for their Christmas tree each year, so they have a special memory of that Christmas. Do you think we should be that kind of family?”
Gael nodded enthusiastically.
“Well, then we have to choose really carefully,” she told him. “Do you want to choose for us this year?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Okay,” she told him. “I think this is the right place to get our ornament. You find the best one.”
His eyes lit up and he began scanning the tree, carefully considering it from each angle, leaning in to check out one or two more ornaments before darting off to examine the next one.
“That was a really nice idea,” Erik said to Jenny.
“I want as many memories with him as I can get,” she said, her eyes on Gael as he crouched to see the ornaments on the lowest branches of one of the trees. “He was already eight when I met him. I missed those early years. So now I want to appreciate every minute I have with him.”
Erik grabbed her hand and squeezed it, and she squeezed back, feeling a rush of gratitude that he really understood.
For a moment, Jenny didn’t feel like she was pretending anymore.
In that magical little bubble, she just felt like she was having a nice time with her family.
Is this what it would be like every day?
But she pushed those thoughts aside before they had time to do any real damage. She and Gael would be going home soon enough. Until then, she just had to keep herself from falling too hard for this wonderful man.
She had a feeling it might already be too late for that. But as long as he didn’t know that, everything would be fine.