Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Magnolia
The difference between my family and Luke’s was once again front and center as Luke and I made our way to the house, with him carrying a large Christmas tree and me opening doors for him.
In my family, we’d hired people to decorate our assortment of artificial trees so they’d be showpieces for my parents’ holiday parties.
In Luke’s family, decorating the tree was a special occasion that Addie was being allowed to stay up late for, the perfect ending to the very best Thanksgiving I’d ever had. Not that there was a lot of competition for that title…
We stopped outside the door to the house so Luke could text his dad to make sure he had Addie in the living room. As soon as he got a response, I opened the door and followed Luke and the tree inside.
“You’re still here!” Addie said when I entered the living room first.
“I’m still here,” I said, smiling.
The next moment was one I wouldn’t soon forget.
As Luke came through the doorway carrying the tree as if it weighed nothing, Addie’s entire face lit up and she sucked in her breath, her mouth gaping open.
In her earnest face I saw glimmers of the magic of the holidays.
Excitement. Love. Anticipation. Pure joy.
“We’re doing it tonight?” she asked in a hushed voice.
“We’re doing it tonight,” Luke confirmed.
“Miss Magnolia’s staying?” she verified.
“Is that okay with you?” I asked her, hoping for her approval in a way I’d not known was possible.
“Yes!” Addie ran to me and hugged my legs.
My eyes inexplicably teared up as I bent down to hug her and hide the impact her acceptance had on me. I’d had no idea a child could affect me this way. I couldn’t explain it other than…she was Luke’s daughter. That meant everything.
“Are you too tired to do this tonight?” Luke teased his daughter. “We can wait till later.”
“I’m never too tired for Christmas trees!” Addie said, jumping up and down.
“I hope your enthusiasm remains when you’re old enough to work the tree farm with me,” Luke said.
“She’ll be the best worker we’ve had for years,” Luke’s dad said from his recliner.
I walked closer to Mr. Durham. “Are you okay with me joining your family tonight?” I asked him quietly as Addie helped Luke lug in the boxes of ornaments.
The older man chuckled. “Rather have you than my hardheaded son, to be frank.”
“Well, lucky you, you get both of us.” I squeezed his arm affectionately.
“You’re okay, Miss Magnolia,” he said, his eyes sparkling with kindness.
When Luke asked him if he was going to help with the lights though, his father grumbled, “You can handle it without me.”
Between Luke, Addie, and me, we wrapped so many strings of colored lights around the tree that I wasn’t sure how we’d fit on any ornaments.
While we’d been wrangling lights, Mr. Durham had sneaked out to the kitchen and popped popcorn for all of us. We took a few minutes to stuff some in our mouths. It’d been a long time since our huge Thanksgiving dinner.
“You must be famished,” I said to Luke as Addie skipped over to the ornament boxes and started digging through them.
As he chewed, his eyes lit up, and he roved his gaze slowly down my body. “Famished. Yes, I am,” he said in a low promise of a voice.
“Your muscles must ache too,” I said, making sure the other two weren’t paying attention to us.
His brows went up, and he nodded.
I moved even closer and said in his ear, “If you follow me home later, I’ll give you a full-body rubdown.”
Luke kissed me, tasting like salt and man, then raised his head and mouthed, “Hell yes.”
That’s all it took for my body to react, anticipating when we’d be alone in my apartment.
“I found it,” Addie called out.
Luke wiped off his hands and went toward Addie and the ornament stash. “Your baby ornament?”
Addie held up a kitten with a little plaque that said Baby’s First Christmas.
“That’s so cute,” I said, coming closer to look at it. “It must be getting pretty old if it’s as old as you.”
“Not as old as my daddy’s,” she said, giggling.
Luke pulled out one with a teddy bear in a Santa hat with a candy cane. It too said Baby’s First Christmas, but it was indeed showing its age.
“I love that you still have those,” I said. There’d not been any decorations in the James house celebrating my first Christmas, which was just as well. I didn’t really want any family souvenirs from my childhood.
Addie attached a hook to her ornament, then carried it over to me. “Will you hang this up really high for me, Miss Magnolia? It has to go up first.”
“Your ornament goes up first?” I repeated, glancing over at Luke.
“Tradition,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t want to hang it yourself, bug?”
“This time I want Miss Magnolia to do it. Real high up.”
“I can’t get it quite as high as your daddy can,” I told her. “You want him to do it?”
She shook her head. “You.”
“Okay.” Again, I looked over at Luke, whose smile was swoony and full of affection.
I hung the ornament on the highest branch I could reach, earning applause from Addie.
“That looks real good,” Mr. Durham said from his chair.
“Are you going to hang your favorite one, Dad?” Luke asked him.
The older man’s face flipped to a frown. “Addie can do it this year,” he grumped.
That there was friction between father and son was obvious. Still left from the cooking argument at dinner?
Luke shrugged and rifled through the ornaments until he found an antique-looking, breakable ornament of a bride and groom. He handed it to Addie.
“Where do you want yours and Gran’s hung, Pops?” she asked.
“Wherever you think it would look nice,” he told her, just as laidback as could be—in absolute contrast to his tone with Luke.
Luke didn’t let it bother him as he unwrapped and unpacked the ornaments one by one and handed them to me and Addie to hang. She covered the lower branches, and I did my best to fill the top ones.
When we finished overstuffing the tree with years’ worth of ornaments, most of them attached to memories, we turned out all the lights except the ones on the tree.
Mr. Durham remained in his recliner. Luke and I sat on the sofa with Addie cuddled between us at her insistence, with instrumental holiday music playing quietly in the background.
I listened as the three of them reminisced about holidays past, from the time when Addie was three years old and Santa brought her a Barbie condo that was taller than her and had her in wide-eyed awe, to a Christmas from Luke’s childhood when his mom had insisted on having a live Christmas tree in every room in the house.
Even with the tension between Luke and his dad, there was so much love and care among the three of them.
This was how it should be.
This was what the holiday season should be about. Family, memories, love, togetherness.
I was too afraid to think about the future, to wish for something like this to be mine beyond right now, but I sure could soak it in while I had it.
When the conversation slowed down, Mr. Durham put his recliner upright and eased himself to the edge. “I’m gonna hit the hay, kids,” he said, then slowly stood.
“Night, Pops,” Addie said, sounding drowsy.
Luke and I told him good night as well.
“Good night, everyone.” He shuffled off toward his room. His shoulders were hunched, but I could still tell he was extra worn out, probably from helping with trees.
“Pops is tired,” Addie said as she leaned her head on Luke’s chest. He brushed his fingers through her hair repeatedly in a slow, mesmerizing rhythm.
“He worked too hard tonight,” Luke said.
“He loved being a part of it though,” I said.
“Yeah.” Luke frowned.
I was starting to understand the dynamics between them. His dad wasn’t allowed to do the things he’d always done, and that had to be hard for the older man, but it was also difficult for Luke to watch. I felt for both of them.
A few minutes later, Luke stirred. I realized Addie was sound asleep.
“I’m going to put her to bed,” he whispered, then picked her up and carried her off to her room.
I pulled my knees up and hugged them into my chest as I gazed at the tree. It was homey and beautiful in a very different way than the James household trees used to be. They’d been designer trees, with color schemes and themes and perfection.
This one was a hodgepodge of colors, Durham family milestones, love, and hundreds of lights.
I stood to look more closely at the ornaments.
Addie had mentioned one from Luke’s childhood, something he’d made in preschool.
I found it and grinned at the photo of Luke as a little kid.
He’d written Ho, ho, ho on the laminated construction paper and drawn a candy cane on each side of his pic.
“Hey,” Luke said as he came back into the room. When he saw what I was looking at, he shook his head with an embarrassed smile. “Don’t look at that.”
“You drew a mean candy cane back in the day.”
He came up behind me and wound his arms around me, peering at the ornament over my shoulder. “I was so proud to give that to my parents.”
“I’m sure they loved it.”
I didn’t remember whether I’d had a similar project. If so, the ornament definitely had not been preserved and kept through the years. I knew now that was a reflection of my parents, not me. Their loss.
“So what was up with your dad tonight?” I asked.
Luke let out a slow, frustrated breath. “Pretty sure he’s mad about Mrs. Haines cooking.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“Because he’s a stubborn old man who’s still upset about his back.”
“Which is why he can’t work the farm anymore, right?”
“Right. He’s in constant pain. Doesn’t complain about it. I’ve wondered how many years he was uncomfortable before it got so bad he couldn’t ignore it anymore.”
“He’s a tough guy,” I said.
“He is. Typical farmer. He’d rather work the land until he keels over.”
“So you’re paying your neighbor to cook for your family?”
“Mrs. Haines is an old-school farm wife who cooks like a dream. She’s actually the one who suggested the agreement. I had to argue with her just to get her to accept money to cover the ingredients. She wouldn’t hear of me paying her extra for her labor.”
“She sounds like a gem.”
“She is.”
I hesitated before asking, “Do you want my opinion?”
“Sure,” he said, sounding anything but sure.
I turned around to face him, weaving our fingers together between us. “Your dad’s whole purpose was taken from him when he had to quit farming. He still needs to feel useful though, and cooking might serve that purpose for him.”
“Sure, but working in the kitchen is hard on his back too. He’d never complain about it, but he sits down to rest whenever he can.”
“And then he gets back up and finishes?”
He nodded.
“So you’re looking out for him.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Of course. I hate to think of him hurting all the time.”
“I agree, but what if you think of it like he might be hurting in other ways besides just physical?”
“I can’t help his emotional pain, and he won’t see a therapist about it. I tried several times.”
“Your intentions are admirable.”
He raised his brows as if waiting for me to say more.
“Your goal is to help him, but what if cooking and caring for Addie are the purposes that keep him getting out of bed in the morning?”
“Maybe they are, but if he doesn’t take care of his physical body, he won’t be able to cook or look after Addie or get out of bed at all. Then where will we be?”
I took both his hands. “Luke, you’re a problem-solver. A fixer. Even back in high school, you wanted to help me find volunteer opportunities to show people I wasn’t so mean.”
He smiled. “Problem-solving is what I do. It’s how I’m wired.”
“And I love that about you. It’s a wonderful trait to have. But this thing with your dad, it’s not just about you, you know? Maybe this is one of the times when you have to reel yourself in and let him do what he needs to do. Cooking but not farming.”
“Maybe,” he said with a shrug.
“Will you think about it?” I asked.
He peered down at me, his eyes sparking with heat even as he said, “I’ll think about it.” Then he kissed me.
When we came up for air, I said, “Nice diversion tactic.”
“I thought so.” We kissed a few more times. Then he said, “How about if I follow your pretty little rear end to your apartment and divert you for hours? How’s that for problem solving?”
My body responded with a telling ache deep inside. “In my opinion, that’s the very best kind.”