Chapter 2 #2
My heart soared as I caught that quiet smile at the corner of his mouth. Another reason why we had so much to be thankful for. I wasn’t alone anymore. I would never be again.
“I still don’t understand why I have to come,” Isabella muttered as she climbed into the cab of the truck. “I don’t even like Christmas.”
“You like me,” I said, sliding in next to her. I adjusted the bag between us. She peeked inside and tilted her head.
“Two thermoses of hot chocolate, a laminated checklist, and two cheerful scarves in case it gets cold.”
“Are you aware you’re a maniac?”
“I am not! It’s called being prepared. It’s always best to be ready for anything. Isn’t that right, Marcus?”
He glanced at me through the rearview mirror like a man questioning every decision that led him here. “Yes. So where are we going?”
I grinned and grabbed my clipboard from the tote. “First stop…South London Christmas Tree Farm.”
“Buckle up, please.”
I rushed to obey and checked to make sure Isabella was listening. Content that she was pulling the belt around her, I dug back into my bag. I handed her a hot chocolate.
“Drink. You’ll need the sugar.”
This time, Isabella muttered something under her breath in Italian. I was pretty sure it wasn’t complimentary. Marcus chuckled loudly, which confirmed it. I choose to let it go. No way was I going to let anything get me down. Instead, I connected to the Bluetooth.
“Sit back and relax. It’s about an hour out, right, Marcus?” I asked as I hit play.
“Yes,” he said, shaking his head.
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year filled the car and my heart with so much joy. I couldn’t stop smiling. Isabella groaned.
“Be thankful it’s not All I Want For Christmas.” I hummed along.
By the time we were halfway there, I’d finished half of my peppermint mocha and was on my second mental checklist of the day.
Lights? Check. Being delivered later today. Ribbons, decorations and sparkly bows? Same. Triple check. By the end of tonight, the house would scream Christmas, come hell or high water.
The tree farm was as magical as I’d imagined. Nestled on the edge of a little village, tucked between frost-tipped hills. Row upon row of evergreens stretched into the gray sky, each one marked with a red or green ribbon depending on size and age.
Twinkling lights were strung between bare oaks. A faint scent of pine and woodsmoke in the air. Families wandered between trees, holding hands and debating branches like their holiday happiness depended on it.
I squealed. Everything was perfect. Well, except for my companions. Isabella pulled her coat tighter, as if she were trying to become one with it. Marcus had already resigned himself to death by pine needles. I handed each of them a candy cane.
“Um, what is this for?” Isabella huffed.
“Eating silly. It’s tradition. You can’t pick a tree properly without one. I don’t make the rules. Owen did. This is what we do. Unwrap it,” I practically growled.
I needed to pace myself. The day was young, and after this, I planned to drag her cranky ass through every tinsel-covered inch of London’s winter markets until she caved and enjoyed herself. Which she would. I knew it deep down. She just needed a little push to join the real world.
“Are you seriously getting three of these damned things?”
“Yup,” I said, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek.
“The men might not have noticed the food, but they’ll damn sure notice six-foot balsam firs. If they aren’t careful, I’ll get an extra one and put it in the Death Squad meeting room.”
“Tell me again why I’m being forced to participate,” Isabella muttered to Marcus.
“Because you love her,” he said. “Just keep repeating it to yourself, it will take root.”
“I’m not too sure about that,” she huffed, looking around.
“But it’s true. You do love me. You know it. I know it. And don’t try to hide it. You’re secretly thrilled by the concept of my controlled chaos and excessive ornamentation?”
She raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “This is absurd,” she muttered, arms crossed. “We’re literally paying to do manual labor.”
“It’s not labor,” I argued as I adjusted my scarf and shimmied my shoulders. “It’s tradition.”
“It’s unpaid forestry work.”
“Isabella.” I turned, placing both hands on her shoulders. “I’m trying to manufacture holiday joy with the fragile, unhinged threads of my seasonal childhood memories. Can you not?”
Marcus cleared his throat behind us, axe slung over one shoulder. I turned to him, wide-eyed. “Do you see the hostility I’m enduring?”
“I see many things,” he deadpanned. “None of them surprising.”
We started down one of the worn footpaths between the trees, gravel crunching beneath our boots. The chill in the air turned every breath into steam, and I had to keep myself from reaching out to touch every tree branch.
There was something magical about it all. The silence of it, the bite of the wind, the pine.
I’d forgotten what it felt like to be out like this. To be doing something so damned normal without the sorrow attached to it. After Owen died, I couldn’t bring myself to get a real tree or do much of anything.
The first Christmas without him, I grieved so much that eating and even drinking water had been hard to do. Grief can hospitalize you. Did you know that? It did me, that first year. I made myself sick. A week-long stay in a hospital, and I promised I wouldn’t do that again.
The year after, I bought a small fake tree that sat on an end table in my new house in Woodinville. It had never been the same, and a small part of me wanted to embrace the season anew.
He’d want that for me. In my heart of hearts, I knew he would love my guys. And if by some small chance he was looking down on me, I wanted him to know I remembered him and loved him still.
“Alright,” I said after a few minutes. “Here’s the deal.
I need one tall and majestic—like it would be cast as the romantic lead in a Hallmark movie.
Then one proud, perfectly symmetrical. Regal in the way only a Christmas tree can be.
And the third needs to be ginormous, the tallest one we can find.
With soft full branches, I can add bows and ribbons to. ”
“I’m not even going to ask how your brain got there,” Marcus muttered.
Isabella trailed a step behind me, eyes flicking between the trees like she was sort of invested now. We trudged deeper into the tree rows, and for a few blessed minutes, there was only the wind and the sound of boots on the ground.
Then I saw it. The first one. Tall. Stoic. Strong trunk. Branches that looked like they could hold the hopes of a hundred ornaments.
“There,” I said, pointing. “That’s Alek’s tree,” I added, already assigning a personality to it.
Marcus came to stand beside me, sizing it up like a threat. “Alek’s, huh?”
“Yes, it’s perfect.”
He nodded and knelt beside the trunk, pulling the axe from its leather sheath with a practiced motion. He tested the weight and settled into a steady rhythm. The sound of blade against bark was oddly comforting. Reliable. Grounding.
I walked a little way down the row, letting the wind whip against my cheeks and the silence expand around me. And maybe that’s what cracked me open.
“Owen always let me pick,” I said, quiet.
I didn’t look back to see if they were listening. I didn’t need to. The silence behind me said enough. It wasn’t part of the mission, sharing with them, but the truth slipped out, anyway. Isabella stepped closer, her pinkie snaked out and wrapped around mine. Encouragement to go on—so I did.
“He always made a big deal out of Christmas. Even though it was just the two of us.” I smiled to myself, blinking fast. “We’d watch old Christmas movies on DVD or go to the show if there was anything playing.
We’d transform the cabin. Make hot chocolate with four kinds of cookies. A bake-off competition.”
Behind me, the sound of the axe slowed.
“He used to sing,” I went on. “Terribly and always off-key. Classic carols only. He said the newer ones were ‘overproduced garbage.’” I let out a choked laugh. “He’d get the silliest ornaments. Like…a gnome wearing a scarf. And he’d call it our ‘tree goblin.’ Said it brought luck.”
The wind picked up. I felt the weight of grief rising in my chest. A tear slipped free before I could catch it.
“He was good to me. Gave me everything. A new start. A real home again. He taught me how to bake, how to hold a knife, and how to love the sky again. And every holiday, he’d do something to make up for the ones I didn’t get to have.”
I swallowed. My hands curled into my coat sleeves.
“He liked to play old Russian folk songs. He’d make blini on Christmas Eve and cover them in powdered sugar until they looked like snow. And he’d wrap gifts in brown paper because he thought the store-bought kind was ‘capitalist glitter trash.’”
I let out a soft laugh. “I used to decorate them with stickers. He was quiet, a bit gruff and swore too much. You remind me of him,” I said, lifting my eyes to Marcus. “Just a younger version,” I added.
Marcus had stopped. He sat there, axe resting across one knee, watching me with a soft expression. Even Isabella’s face softened in a way I hadn’t seen since—God, maybe ever.
There was grief there. But more than that, there was recognition. Because I wasn’t talking about a stranger. She knew how significant he was to all four of us girls.
I looked down. My chest ached. “I miss him every day,” I whispered. “But at Christmas? It’s like he’s in the walls. Like if I decorate enough, sing enough, bake enough…maybe I can feel him again. Even if for only a second.”
I don’t know when, but Marcus had set the axe down, and suddenly his arms were around me—one across my back, one around the back of my head, pulling me tight. The warmth and solidness broke me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, burying my face in his jacket. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Don’t,” he said, voice low. “You don’t ever have to apologize for loving someone.”
I held onto him and sobbed. The slow ache I’d held onto for so long leaked out the edges. Eventually, I pulled back.
“What happened to the gnome?” Isabella breathed.
It took me a second to catch up. “The what?”
“The tree goblin.”
“Oh.” I wiped at my eyes with the sleeve of my mittens. “It’s still in Washington. At the cabin. God, I’m sorry. I’m a mess again. Marcel would call this healing. I’ll be fun in like five minutes, I swear.”
Marcus ruffled my hair. “Don’t sweat it.” He smirked. “Christmas is messy at times.”
I looked back at the tree, still upright, partly cut through. He followed my gaze and then cleared his throat. “We should get one more. For Owen.”
“Oh yes, can we?” I exclaimed. “A nice quirky one would be perfect for him.”