Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
ETHAN
T he morning wind whistled through the trees, coming off the higher, already snow-capped mountains to the west and making the collar on Ethan Carter’s flannel shirt ripple. It wasn’t quite cold yet, at least not by Rocky Mountain standards, but he was glad for the warm thermos of coffee waiting for him inside the modified container hut that was his sales office. While he wished he had something more luxurious, it was the nature of the business. Christmas trees grew where you planted them, and didn’t grow fast enough to not have some kind of mobile office if you wanted to do live tree sales.
Still, it wasn’t too bad. His office was better than some of the others he’d seen, with insulated walls, a nice window to let in sunlight, and best of all, an air conditioning unit that was a lifesaver during the hottest days of July and August. Those days were, of course, in the past for now, and as he hung the Christmas wreath with its black memorial ribbon wrapped around it on the door, he cleared his throat.
“You’ll be missed, old man,” he told the wreath.
He’d known David Bennett for over a decade. The next few days were going to be hard. Sure, David hadn’t been around the farm as much over the past couple of years, the man was eighty-one years old and enjoying his well-deserved retirement. He had stayed in the area, living in his family home and staying active in the community. Most importantly, he would drop in regularly to check in on Ethan, to help out, and sometimes just to hang out and shoot the breeze.
He was the father than Ethan never had.
That was why, more than ever, Ethan was motivated about this holiday season. David loved the holidays. You could see it building within him, starting from Halloween, where he routinely gave out the best treats in all of the Rockaways, up through Thanksgiving, where it was all turkey all the time for an entire week. David never got tired of it. But nothing topped Christmas.
Sure, part of it was because he owned a Christmas tree farm. No Christmas spirit, no tree sales. No tree sales, no money. But that wasn’t what motivated David, and it wasn’t what was going to motivate Ethan.
He grabbed the four signs he’d made that directed customers from the main road up to the office and the live lot. Each year Ethan had to adjust them, repainting over the distances.
Ethan just gotten the third of the signs, which said that the tree lot was a quarter of a mile up the road, when he saw something that shocked him, David’s old Chevy pickup coming up the road. It was unmistakable, there weren’t that many old S-10s still on the road, even fewer in forest green, and only one that Ethan knew of that sported a ridiculously chromed out brush guard bumper on the front. He’d bought it on a severe discount, because he didn’t care if the truck looked silly. All he cared about was that the truck had a brush guard.
For half a second wild hope leaped in his heart. Had Doc Franklin had been wrong? Had the hospital been wrong?
It wasn’t David. The silhouette of the person driving was nowhere near large enough, and as the truck passed by, Ethan was sure he saw a flash of long, blonde hair. The driver didn’t slow down, though, so Ethan turned and started up the road at a brisk walk, figuring that whoever was driving the truck could probably wait a minute or two if his eyes weren’t deceiving him.
The truck was waiting for him when he got back to his trailer, but the driver was nowhere to be found. Taking a deep breath, he hollered, “Hello? Hello!”
The door to the trailer opened, and Ethan found himself struck dumb as an absolutely gorgeous woman stepped out. She was blonde. He hadn’t been seeing things. Her long, honey-colored strands hung almost halfway down her back.
Her skin was creamy. Was it natural fairness or lack of sun, it didn’t matter. She had a gorgeous face. Ethan couldn’t tell about her figure given the knee-length puffy coat the woman wore.
He had one problem, though.
“Uhm, excuse me, but that’s my office,” he said as he approached. “Ethan Carter, manager here. And you are?”
“Laura Bennett.” The woman offered a hand. As she did, Ethan remembered seeing pictures of her before. “I’m?—”
“Mr.Bennett’s granddaughter,” Ethan said, and Laura nodded. “I’m… so sorry. I just had dinner with him last week, he was doing so well for a man his age.”
“He wasn’t really all that old,” Laura agreed, looking sad. “I wish I’d been out to see him more these past few years. I just… never did.”
“No, but he told me about every time he went to visit you back east,” Ethan said. “He’d tell me about the restaurants you’d go to, the time he went to a real game at Yankees Stadium and he got to boo his head off at that, as he put it, ‘no good bush league bunch of bums’, and more. He… what is it?”
Laura blinked away tears and cleared her throat.
“I didn’t go with him to those places,” she said quietly. “At least, not the baseball game. I was busy. Working.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sure Mr.Bennett knew that, and he always loved seeing you,” he said. Looking around, he said, “So I guess you’re coming back to… I don’t know, the funeral?”
“Yes, to take care of his body and to settle his affairs.” Laura sniffed. A mask came over her face, and she squared her shoulders. “Like the farm.”
Ethan nodded, looking around. “It’s a great place, isn’t it? Forty years he owned this place, and I promise you, I’ve been doing his memory right. Ever since he made me the manager and sorta retired, I’ve been running this place the best I can. I don’t know if you noticed, but I was putting up the signs for the live lot customers when you drove by.”
“I saw those, and I wondered why you were doing it,” Laura said. “I don’t get it. Why are you trying to run a business when the owner’s now… deceased?”
“What do you mean?” Ethan asked. “It’s what Mr.Bennett would want me to do. He loved this place, you know. He loved Christmas, and if anything, he’d want me to sell even more trees, give ’em away if necessary, so that everyone would have a good tree this year.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Laura says. “What I mean is, you’re operating a business, but you aren’t the owner and can’t act in his stead.”
Ethan scratched his chin with his thumb. “MissBennett, I’ve been the manager here for eight years, and worked here for the past ten. Mr.Bennett put me on all the accounts, on the company card, all of that.”
“But you’re not the owner.”
“No, I suppose not,” Ethan said, still confused. Was she saying she didn’t want the farm open? But why? “I suppose you are now, aren’t you?”
“That’s what the will says,” Laura said. “So?—”
“MissBennett, before you say anything, let me say a word,” Ethan said. “Your grandfather, he loved Christmas. You know that, I’m sure. But he was also a man of his word. Now, way back in summer, we signed a bunch of contracts with suppliers for home improvement stores and supermarkets throughout Colorado and New Mexico. Those folks haven’t arrived yet to pick up their trees, but we’ve happily cashed the checks they gave us for those trees. You get me?”
Laura’s lips pursed. She looked like someone who wasn’t used to be told no. But this was one case though where he was willing to argue with her, if necessary.
Ethan thought she was about to throw a tantrum.
If so, it was going to be an enormously pretty tantrum, at least in his opinion.
But she didn’t. Instead, she took a deep breath, and muttered something under her breath that sounded like “tort” to Ethan.
“You’re right,” she replied. “I suppose I should know that. I’m a lawyer, you know.”
“Didn’t know, but congratulations,” Ethan said. “So we’ll stay open, and don’t worry, the farm’s profitable. Not much, I bet you make a lot more as a big city lawyer, but?—”
“I’m going to be selling the farm.”
The words hit like a punch to the gut, and Ethan literally took a step back.
“What? No! No, you can’t!”
“I can, once the will is probated, and I will,” Laura said. Seeing Ethan’s face, she sighed. “Look, Ethan, it’s not that… I know this is Paw-Paw’s farm. Before you were working here, I did. I know these lots, I played under these trees when I was a little girl. Well, not these trees, but their ancestors.”
“Then you know how important this farm is, not just to your family’s legacy, but to all of the Rockaways!” Ethan protested. “Sure, this is a dusty, countrified little spot, but Christmas means something around here. And Mr.Bennett was a big reason for that. He helped folks remember what Christmas was about when everything else in the world is screaming at them that Christmas is about five hundred dollar video game systems and flexing your latest fashion accessory. He reminded us that Christmas is about friends, family, and community. Please… please, you can’t sell.”
“I understand, but, for a second, put yourself in my shoes please,” Laura said. “I’m a lawyer. An associate lawyer, to be exact. And I want to make partner. Do you know what that takes?”
“Uh, I’ve watched a few TV shows. You need to be invited or something like that, right?” Ethan said, and Laura shook her head. “No?”
“It’s more than that. You see, law firms are like corporations, stock market companies,” she explained. “To become a partner literally means buying into the firm, buying a seat at the table. You have to invest and buy a ‘share’ of the firm. The benefits are, of course, immense. But you’ve got to have that money up front before you’re allowed to sit at the table.”
“Sort of like a poker game.” Ethan started to understand her situation a bit better. “You’ve gotta ante up before they deal you the cards.”
“Exactly,” Laura said. “And so… for all that you’re telling me about, and I understand it more than most folks considering I live in a city where materialism is above all else, I still need to sell. The buy-in for the firm I work for couldn’t even be covered by a decade’s worth of profits from this farm, and I am going to become a partner sooner than that.”
Ethan swallowed, blinking to hold back his emotions.
“Look, I hear what you’re saying, it’s just that …. can you hold off a bit? Maybe let me sell the live lot, give the folks in the Rockaways one last Bennett farm Christmas? We’ve already paid for the ads, after all.”
Laura took a deep breath, and nodded.
“Sure. I haven’t finished Paw-Paw’s paperwork anyway, so I need time to handle that. And I need to go through the paperwork on this place, which will take time. So while I’m handling all of that, let’s keep operations going.”
“Thank you.” Ethan felt relief.
He hoped that if Laura stuck around the farm, and saw what her grandfather had built in the Rockaways, she’d come around.
After all, there had to be other ways to become a big-shot lawyer than selling the farm.
“So are you staying in the area?”
“I decided I’ll stay at Paw-Paw’s house for now,” Laura answered. “I need to go through his things anyway, arrange for the rest of the estate to be taken care of. On that note, I can tell you’re interested in keeping the farm open. Would you consider purchasing it yourself?”
Ethan didn’t even need to think before laughing bitterly. “No offense, MissBennett, but the down payment on a property this size? I’d have to sell my soul in order to scrape that much money together. And I’m not the sort of person banks give that size of a loan to anyway.”
“I understand.” Laura’s shoulders slumped. “Well, then, I suppose I’ll go home now.”
“Okay,” Ethan said. Laura turned and headed for Mr.Bennett’s truck, and on a total whim he called out, “Would you like to have dinner with me?”
Laura paused, and looked back. “Excuse me?”
“Dinner. Tonight.”
She was trying to take his life away, but she didn’t deserve to be treated poorly, not after the tragedy of losing her grandfather.
“Look, I’ve been to Mr.Bennett’s place. The man’s idea of a full pantry was a case of store-bought mac n’ cheese, deli ham slices, and a gallon of milk. That’s not a real dinner, no matter how much I tried to convince him otherwise. And with all the memories and stuff all around the place, maybe you’d like to get out for a couple of hours tonight. That’s all.”
Laura thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Sure. Paw-Paw’s place, seven o’clock. Unless the farm’s open that late?”
“Nope, this early in the season I shut down sales by six,” Ethan said. “I’ll be there. Nothing fancy though, okay? There’s no big city restaurants around the Rockaways.”
Laura chuckled, and nodded. “I remember. Are there any restaurants at all?”
“Sure! We’ve got one now, and it’s even got forks and knives and napkins, too!” he said sarcastically, and for the first time Laura laughed. It turned her from pretty to gorgeous, and Ethan was suddenly looking forward to this dinner all the more. “Okay, see you at seven.”
She drove away, and Ethan watched the truck go. He wanted to yell in frustration, to cry at the loss of a friend and mentor, and to cheer that he apparently had a date with a very pretty woman, even if it wasn’t really a date.
In the end, he just kicked the dirt in the parking lot, and started back down the road to where he’d left the signs. They still had to be put up, after all.