Chapter 9
Rory
I’m feeling shell-shocked as we sit down to dinner. Cassie has begged off, claiming she can’t bear the thought of food, and has headed over to work at the Christmas tree sales stand.
Minellis burying their feelings under a mountain of work is pretty par for the course.
Dad went with her, so it’s just Mom and Garrett and me.
“Nice to have a moment of quiet with just you two before the hordes descend on us tomorrow,” she says.
Garrett chuckles. “Do you mean the skaters, or your sisters?”
Christmas Eve is always a busy day for our farm. Growing up, my parents would discount the remaining trees to get them all sold before my mom’s sisters and their families all descend upon us.
A couple of years ago, my dad added a skating trail that winds through the forest, and he charges a small entrance fee.
Throughout the month of December, families come for a skate and a hot chocolate before they grab a tree to take home.
But the day before Christmas, the skating trail is free admission—and he’s found that this is a better selling feature than discounting the trees ever was.
Usually, he’s sold the last of the trees by lunch time, and the rest of the afternoon is just the hot chocolate stand and maybe some impromptu wreath sales with left over boughs of greenery.
It’s my favourite day of the year. There’s something magical about it, a real sense of festive community.
Then my aunts arrive and we have a huge feast, followed by everyone “watching Christmas movies” but they’re really just background noise as we read books we’ve swapped with each other. Which is the perfect way to cap the perfect day.
“I mean the skaters,” my mom teases right back to Garrett. “I can’t wait to see my sisters.”
Like us, my mom is one of three girls. Like me, she’s the oldest. Unlike me, she loves being the oldest and most responsible.
My Aunt Mara is an artist who has one daughter, Glory, who she’s raising by herself by choice.
And Aunt Tabitha waited until she was in her forties to have kids, so she has two pre-school boys who are hell on wheels.
As if I invoked their names out loud, my mom claps her hands.
“Speaking of which, my darlings, I have a big favour to ask of you. Tabby was saying that it might be easier if the boys slept in a room with a door. So I was thinking of putting them in your room. Of course you can sleep there tonight, it’s your space until they arrive.
But tomorrow night, would you mind bedding down in the back room? ”
The back room, aka a sunroom on the back of the farmhouse that my dad winterized, is a sprawling family room style space where we typically open presents on Christmas morning, because there’s a nice bar where the grownups can have coffee and breakfast while the heathens—I mean my cousins—tear into all the presents Aunt Tabby will bring for them.
Plus, it has separate couches.
“Sure,” Garrett says at the same time as I say, “We could move in there immediately, in fact.”
“Oh, no, don’t be silly,” my mom laughs. “I won’t make you sleep apart tonight. And you’ve already unpacked.”
“Only me,” I say brightly, about to offer that Garrett could move into the back room immediately when the phone rings.
My mom excuses herself to answer it and Garrett gives me a look across the table.
“Too obvious?” I whisper.
He shrugs. “I’ll sleep on the couch if you want to field the questions about that in the morning.”
I do not.
“I’m not sleeping on the floor, though,” he continues. “You know I’m going to have to be one of the safety monitors on the skating trail tomorrow, and I can’t be stiff for that.”
I narrow my eyes. It’s a reasonable point, but there’s something in the way he’s saying it. “Is this a game of chicken?”
“I’m not afraid to sleep in the same bed as you, Roar.” His expression hasn’t changed, but his voice…that got low. Private. Hot.
I’m staring at him, my cheeks flaming, when my mom comes back. “Eat up, kids. Your dad needs your help with a delivery. Cassie started crying again when your dad told her about it, so…”
“Yeah, sure, I can go,” Garrett offers before quickly shovelling a few more bites into his face.
My mom winces. “And she’s crying again, so she probably can’t be left alone at the stall.”
I push my plate in her direction. “Sorry to bail on dishes, then. I’ll go keep her company.”
“Talk to her, please. I’m worried that she’s making a hasty decision.”
“I—” My mouth flaps wordlessly for a second.
“Come on, Roar.” Garrett grabs my hand and tugs me out of my seat. “These trees won’t deliver themselves.”
He hustles me into my coat and shoves a random Little Tree Farm toque on my head.
“I’m not going to tell Cassie that she’s made a mistake,” I snap hotly as soon as we’re outside.
“I didn’t hear your mom say that you should.”
“She called it hasty. You don’t think that’s a loaded term?”
“Yeah, no, you’re right.” He zips up his coat, then unzips it. “It’s not that cold tonight, eh?”
I growl under my breath and stomp faster down the side lane between the house and the public part of the farm.
It’s not cold, actually. The wind that blew us all the way here has died down, and in the stillness, you can hear people skating on the trail that winds along parallel to this lane. Laughing, chasing.
Murmuring.
I trip over my feet as I realize people are doing…something…just on the other side of the thick hedge.
“Keep moving,” Garrett rumbles in my ear as he catches me and propels me forward.
“I’m fine.”
“Of course you are.”
“I don’t care if people make out on the skate trail.”
“Sure.”
“I don’t.”
“If anything, you’re jealous.”
I whirl around on him. “What?”
“Come on, Roar. Your mom’s comment got under your skin because of us. Not your sister. And we hear people having fun….” He shrugs. “I’m jealous.”
“Don’t project that on me.”
He holds up his hands. “Fine.”
“We didn’t break up hastily.”
“Oh, I’m painfully aware.”
But I am very grateful that I didn’t show up here alone, in a hatchback with a bad battery, and have to explain why I didn’t have the ever-helpful boyfriend in tow.
Dodged a bullet there.
So I’m not going to pick a fight with Garrett when he’s ambling along beside me, pretending to be mine even when I’m in a terrible mood.
“Do you want a hot chocolate before you leave with the delivery?” I ask. “A peace offering, if you will.”
He bows, exaggerating his gratitude. “I’d love that.”
I pick up my pace, speeding ahead of him into the clearing at the public entrance.
I love the tree lot so much. There are a few temporary huts that we re-purpose throughout the year with removable decorative pieces.
In the fall, they’re pumpkin and apple themed.
Throughout December, they’re straight out of the North Pole.
After the holidays, they’ll pivot to a maple sugar bush aesthetic, which stretches the skating trail season all the way to March Break
My dad keeps the delivery truck right at the front gate. It’s a classic cherry red pickup that Garrett helped restore when we were in high school.
It has his fingerprints all over it—and so did I, back in the day.
We used to leap at the chance to do evening deliveries. We’d race through them as fast as we could to steal some make out time in the community centre parking lot before returning to the farm.
My dad is nowhere in sight, so Garrett turns right to find him deeper in the trees, and I go left to the pop-up coffee stand.
Cassie appears beside me as I’m leaving the counter, two hot chocolates in hand.
“So…” She scuffs her boot against the frozen dirt. And then she bursts into tears.
Oh, shit. “Um…” I wish I wasn’t holding the hot chocolates. “Damn it, I can’t hug you with my hands full!”
“I’m sorry,” she mumbles.
“Let’s go to the delivery truck.”
She leads the way and opens the driver’s door for me. It’s a vintage truck with a bench seat, but when they were restoring it, they built in flip-out cup holders. Thank God.
I ditch the hot chocolate and then squeeze my sister again. “Hey, hey, it’s okay.”
“I know,” she says, but she sounds miserable.
“Of course you’re sad,” I whisper. “Let me just get Garrett out of my hair and then we can talk.”
She shakes her head. “I want to help Dad. You go with Garrett on the delivery.”
“I don’t need to do that.” I don’t want to do that, but I’m not going to dump that on her right now.
“You should.” She sucks in a breath. “It’s Jake and Dani who want the trees.”
Oh.
Dani is our cousin. She’s a few years older than me, happily married to a local contractor, and they have a big house on the outskirts of town.
And Cassie and Nate live just down the street from them. Or, as of this afternoon, maybe just Nate does.
Yikes, what a mess.
“Go,” Cassie urges. “And when you get back, we’ll open a bottle of wine. Maybe if we get Mom tipsy enough, she won’t try to meddle tonight.”
Before I can gently suggest that booze may not help, my dad and Garrett appear, each of them carrying a tree.
And somehow I find myself climbing into the passenger seat.
I tell myself it’s because I want to see Dani. Growing up we weren’t very close—my dad and his brother had a falling out when we were little—but as adults, we’ve discovered we have a lot in common.
She’s a paramedic, and twelve years ago, she moved back home after completing that training when I decided I wanted to set my sights on medical school.
She was my biggest cheerleader in that final year of high school, when I was dating Garrett and torn about what universities to apply to, because some of them were really far away.
If he’s a good one, he’ll follow you wherever you go, she told me.
And he did.
But I fucked it up.
I keep fucking it up, and there aren’t enough hot chocolates in the world to fix that.
“What do Jake and Dani want with four more live cut trees?” Garrett asks, interrupting my spinning thoughts as the truck climbs the hill from the harbour, back into town.