Chapter 28
Remy
Ican smell the salty sea air before I see the harbor.
The whole town carries that scent tonight, mixed with wood smoke and cocoa and the cold bite of snow that has been threatening all afternoon.
Lights lace the eaves of every shop and strand across Main like a net of stars.
My favorite part about town is when it looks like this right at Christmas.
Finn and Ivy joked that I hate Christmas, and it couldn’t be further from the truth.
Christmas has always felt magical to me.
When I was little, sure I loved presents.
But it was always my favorite time of year when my mom would make it so much fun for me and my brother.
She would take us sledding for hours, bake our favorite cookies, and we’d eat pizza and watch Christmas movies several times a week.
We’d get together with Pete and whoever else needed a place to go at Christmas and we’d make so many memories. Christmas is my favorite.
Willa’s bookstore looks like a snow globe that someone shook and forgot to set down. People are already drifting toward the gazebo with paper bag luminaries in their hands, the little flames breathing inside.
Junie swings between us, careful with the unlit candle she is determined to carry like a grownup. My heart feels so full. I try to tell myself it is only the cold.
“You look nervous,” Ivy says, soft enough that only I hear.
“I am.”
She tips her face up to study me. Snow freckles her dark lashes. “He is going to love this.”
“I hope so.” I tell her. But what I don’t say is that I am more afraid of loving her this much and knowing how fragile and short life can be.
I have learned how to hold a family together with my own two hands.
But what I’m going to have to learn is how to let go of a man who raised me to be the man that I am.
I’m afraid of losing Pete. And it’s happening sometime, and I hate that I can’t fix this, or fix him.
My mom catches sight of us first. She is a red-lipped general in a winter coat, clipboard tucked under her arm like a medal.
Pete is at her side, hat on and bundled up, already shaking his head like he cannot believe anyone would bother to throw a night like this in his name.
He looks good. Smile lines dug deep, good that comes from being loved and celebrated.
“About time,” Mom calls. “My headliner arrives unfashionably on time.”
“I am not a headliner,” Pete mutters.
“You are the whole show,” Donna says, then turns to me and smooths my scarf like I am seven. “You. Smile. Tonight matters,” she says, making a joke, but I know it’s a reminder that she’s nervous, too. We want to celebrate Pete tonight and give him a night where we pour love into him.
Her eyes shine when she says it. I nod. “Yes, ma’am.”
Willa waves us over to the cocoa booth. She looks like an advertisement for winter in her moss-green sweater and knitted cap, cheeks pink from the cold.
Tate stands behind her, double-fisting marshmallow containers and pretending he is not having fun.
He winks at Ivy. He narrows his eyes at me like he is deciding if I have earned the right to hold the woman I am holding.
Then he grins and hands Junie a cup with a mountain of whipped cream.
“You two look disgustingly in love,” he says.
“We are,” Ivy says, not missing a beat. Her smile is small and private and aimed at me. It hits like a hand to the chest.
Finn and Rowan arrive in a swirl of cold air and mischief. Finn claps me on the shoulder hard enough that my teeth click.
Finn mutters, “Behave,” and gets a kiss on the cheek by our mom.
The square fills. The high school choir mills in a cluster, blowing steam into their hands and trying to look dignified while Tate hands them candy canes. Lights burn against the cold. Laughter hops from group to group like a warm animal.
My mom steps up onto the gazebo and lifts one hand. Everything settles.
“Friends,” she says. Her voice carries as if it has always belonged to ceremonies.
“Thank you for coming. Tonight we gather to celebrate a man who is the quiet hinge on which this town swings. He will tell you he is not special. He will tell you he just does what needs doing. I will tell you he is wrong. He is everything and so important to all of us.”
A ripple of laughter moves through the square. Pete looks like he might disintegrate and drift away with the snow.
Gladys tells the porch-step story. The one about the storm and the slick ice and her foot going through the third board.
How she cursed and Pete appeared like a knight with a toolbox, how he fixed it in ten minutes, then salted her whole walk while she pretended not to cry.
People laugh at the punch line and then sniffle five seconds later, which is exactly how Donna planned it.
Willa takes the mic next. She clears her throat and pushes her cap back and says, “He came in last year and asked if I had more large-print romances. I said, ‘For whom?’ He said, ‘For everyone who needs love to be easier to see.’ So I ordered a whole shelf. He was right. We sold out in a week.” The crowd laughs and claps.
Willa’s eyes shine. She looks at Pete and says, “Thank you for seeing what people need before they know they should ask.”
All these stories don’t surprise me at all. I know Pete did so much for everyone in this town.
Tate saunters up. He announces he has prepared a Top Ten List of Things Pete Has Taught Me About Life.
Number ten: always measure twice and flirt once.
Number nine: oak splinters are a conspiracy.
Inside joke. Number eight: coffee should be black enough to scald a lie.
The list gets worse and funnier. Number three is not fit for church.
Rowan hollers, “You never listen to him, anyway.”
Tate bows. Pete shakes his head and tries not to laugh and fails, coughing and covering his mouth, his eyes shining with emotion.
Lilith steps forward with a paper in her hand and then does not look at it once.
Her voice has the steady comfort that I’m surprised she has right now.
“When we needed a ride early to an appointment in the city, you were there. When the power went out and we could not keep the herbal tinctures from freezing, you brought your generator and did not leave until the lights were steady. When Ivy came home with a heart in pieces, you looked at her and you looked at me and you said, ‘She will be okay.’ I believed you.”
She finds Ivy with her eyes. Ivy squeezes my fingers.
Rowan follows with a grin that tries to hide the fact that she is swallowing hard. “You listen, and I talk a lot, so that is impressive. You bring so much happiness and joy to this town. We all love you so much.
The crowd is warm and wet-eyed. Breath rises like prayers in the cold air.
Donna tips her head at me. It is my turn.
I step up. The boards under my boots creak. The air feels thin. I look at Pete. I look at Ivy. I look at Junie. The words arrive like they were waiting for me to be brave.
“You made the world feel steady,” I say.
“When I thought it was falling apart. You gave Junie a grandpa to look up to who is someone she can be proud of. You told me the truth when I needed to hear it. You loved my mom and my brother and me like we were your own. You made space for Ivy and me to believe that love after loss is not only possible, it is an everyday work that is worth doing. I am proud to call you my dad.”
I don’t realize my voice has gone rough until the last sentence. I clear my throat. It does not help. Pete blinks fast and fails at not crying and presses his hat harder against his chest.
Ivy climbs the steps. She does not take the mic. She just turns to face him, the lights making a halo of her hair.
“You kept our town safe and always made people feel welcome,” she says.
“You told me that belonging is not a door that opens on its own. It is a thing people hold for each other. Thank you for holding it for me.” She laughs a little and wipes her cheek with the back of her glove.
“Also, you bullied Willa into buying more romances, which is my favorite thing you have ever done besides loving Donna.”
The square laughs and sighs at the same time.
Donna lifts a taper. “Let us light the night.”
The first flame is small. It touches a second wick and becomes two, then four, then twenty.
Candles tilt toward each other like they are hungry to be kin.
The beeswax smell floats up, warm and honeyed.
The choir begins a carol, low and sweet.
It is an old song that Pete has always loved.
Snow begins to fall, gentle and certain.
The flakes catch in Ivy’s hair. I want to kiss each one before it melts.
Junie stands on her tiptoes and shields her candle from the breeze with her mitten. “The snowflakes look like stars close enough to catch,” she whispers.
“Catch one,” I say.
She opens her free hand and lets a flake land on her palm and smiles like the world is brand new.
Rowan sniffs loudly on purpose. “I warned you all. Yule Be Crying.”
People laugh. A few do cry harder. Finn slings an arm around her shoulders and kisses her temple. Lilith lights Gladys’s candle. Willa touches hers to mine. Tate’s goes out, and the choir director glares at him until he relights it.
The carol ends. The silence after is peaceful and soul crushing at the same time.
Ivy looks up at me, cheeks pink, eyes laughing.
I tuck a knuckle under her chin and kiss her.
It is not a long kiss. It is not a show.
It is a promise set to candlelight and snow.
The town cheers, anyway. Junie groans and then giggles like she has been waiting for this.
Pete laughs so hard he hiccups. He wipes his face with the back of his hand.
“I am not crying,” he declares. “My eyes are thawing.”
“Liar,” Rowan says, delighted.
Donna presses her shoulder to his. “Hush. Let yourself be loved.”
He does. I watch it happen. I watch a man decide to stand in the warm middle of the circle and let us tell him who he is to us.
This is us celebrating and showing up for him while he’s still here. Some people have funerals after someone dies, and everyone talks. Not us. We’re going to love him well past when he’s gone. And he’s going to know it, feel it, and remember it for the rest of eternity.
After the candles gutter and people drift toward cocoa and the choir breaks ranks and steals candy canes, after Lilith tucks a scarf tighter around Willa’s neck and Tate pretends he is not cold and Finn loads a stack of folding chairs under one arm like a show-off, after Rowan leads an off-key chorus of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and nobody bothers to correct the tempo, after Donna announces that the after party is at the bookstore whether or not anyone has RSVPd, we walk there with our hands linked and our girl tired and happy between us.
The library windows glow like a lantern in the snow. That sight will always make my throat feel tight.
Inside, the air is warm and full of paper and pine. The plaque of a lighthouse waits on the counter, a tiny brass rectangle that catches the light. Willa ordered it. Tate drilled the holes this afternoon while pretending not to tear up. The inscription is simple.
For Pete.
I hold the tiny screws while Ivy steadies the plaque, and I turn the driver slow. The metal kisses wood. The engraving shines. My chest does that thing again, the hurt that is not pain.
Junie hovers, swaying with tired pride. “It looks fancy,” she says.
“It looks perfect,” Ivy says, and rests her head against my shoulder.
People trickle in with wet boots and laughter, as if Donna’s decree has the weight of law.
Willa brings a tray of gingerbread and a thermos she swears is only hot chocolate and not spiked.
Donna and Pete arrive last and stand in the doorway like a couple who have just walked into their own surprise party.
I watch his face as he takes in the plaque.
He looks like a man beside himself with happiness.
I have never been happier to witness this.
Later, after we make it home, I carry Junie to bed. She is heavy with exhaustion from a long week. She wakes enough to mumble, “Merry Christmas, Pete,” and is gone again. I stand there and watch her for a minute, because I won’t take these moments for granted.
I find Ivy back in the library, barefoot on the rug. She looks up when I step in. Her eyes are soft with a mix of tiredness, contentment, and sadness.
“How is she?” she asks.
“Dreaming about cocoa and candlelight,” I say.
I sit behind her and pull her into me, and we lean on the canvas of the three of us like we are leaning on a future we just started painting.
“I love you,” she says, simple as a breath.
“I love you,” I say back, because the best things are not complicated.
She tilts her head toward the window. “Look.”
The snow is falling harder now. The flakes streak through the lamplight like silver threads. Our windows glow like a house that has decided against darkness.
“We are really doing this,” she whispers.
“Yeah,” I say, tucking my chin into her shoulder and breathing the clean scent of her hair. “Forever.”
“We’re going to build a beautiful life here,” she says softly.
We don’t speak for a while. We listen to the small sounds a house makes when it is warm and full.
When I stand to turn off the lamps, Ivy catches my sleeve. “Leave the window light,” she says. “For him.”
“For Pete?”
She nods.
I leave the window light.
We walk the hall to our room with our shoulders touching. I look back once, because I want the picture in my head. The look on Pete’s face tonight when he felt the love of a town that treasures him.