Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Today was one of Roland’s favorite days of the year—the community Christmas tree lighting ceremony.
Roland loved that he had been able to, with the help of his Secret Saint partner, get another tree, so none of the festivities had to be canceled.
“I don’t know who got this tree, but it’s pretty amazing.”
He smiled to himself as he overhead one woman talking to another as they passed him on the sidewalk.
“I think it was the work of the Secret Saint,” another older lady said as they stopped in front of him. He was adjusting the ladder, since he would be hanging decorations from the top of the tree.
Judd had a ladder and was going to do the other side.
There were various people below with boxes of ornaments, and someone would be handing things up to him.
He knew his partner was around here somewhere, and while he wanted to kind of keep an eye out for her, to try to figure out who she was, most of him wanted to just stay anonymous.
He wouldn’t appreciate it if she were trying to figure him out, although…
maybe there was a part of him that wouldn’t mind.
Regardless, he kept his mind on getting up the ladder without tipping it over, and making sure it was sturdy at the bottom.
He noticed Nelly Bushnell with a box of ornaments in her hand.
She had started to put them up on the bottom of the tree when Mrs. Tucker came over to her, her hand out, hurrying as though Nelly were going to ruin everything if she put an ornament in the wrong spot.
“No! You cannot put those small ornaments there. They belong at the top. Here, come over here and hand them up to Roland. Roland, make sure that you arrange these not too close to each other, but all the small ones go at the top.”
Mrs. Tucker bustled away without saying anything else.
Maybe it was his imagination, but she seemed to have given him a side glance, almost as though she was afraid that he was going to walk off with the ornaments or something, like she believed he walked off with the money at the church.
He heard whispers around town, and honestly, there was a small, very small, part of him that had considered not coming today. But that would have made it look like he was guilty, and he was not.
“I’m sorry. I guess I’ve been volunteered to work with you,” Nelly said, shrugging her shoulder. “You would think I bother you enough at the Christmas program practice.”
“You’re not bothering me. I actually don’t mind working with you at all,” he said. And he realized that was true. The last Christmas program practice had not gone badly, and he actually might have been looking forward to the next one, to his surprise.
“Your mother is looking a little peaked—is she okay?” Nelly said as she came close, lifting a bulb to him.
He paused as he took the bulb from her. “Do you think so?”
She seemed a little surprised at the intensity of his question, and her eyes widened before she looked across at where his mother was sitting down, drinking hot chocolate and talking to the mayor’s wife.
“Yeah, I guess. She just always has been in the thick of everything before, and today she’s sitting down. Just seems odd.”
“I keep telling my siblings something’s wrong, and I keep asking Mom if she wants to make a doctor’s appointment, and everybody keeps stonewalling me. It’s a little vindicating to hear that you at least noticed.”
“Well, I guess if your siblings think she’s okay and your mom won’t go to the doctor anyway, there’s not much you can do.”
“No. There’s not, but it does seem nice to have someone else noticing what I’ve been noticing for the last several weeks.”
They didn’t say anything else as he took the bulb from her hands and hung it on the tree.
“Do you think this will satisfy Mrs. Tucker?” he asked, knowing it was unnecessary.
“I don’t know, I think I would move it over to the left a little bit,” she said, and he looked at the branch, realizing that there was nothing but air to the left of the bulb, and then he looked down at her and saw her eyes twinkling.
Nelly Bushnell was teasing him.
He laughed. “I don’t know. Do you think it’ll look good hanging in midair?” he asked, pretending to consider the idea.
“I don’t know. You’re a magician—you can do it, right?” She grinned. And for just a second, he wondered if she knew that he was the Secret Saint.
Then he dismissed that as a possibility and thought he was just being paranoid.
“I don’t think anyone, magician or no, could satisfy Mrs. Tucker.”
“I agree with you. Because I think that group includes the late Mr. Tucker, who never seemed to be able to do anything right, although I’m holding out hope that eventually she will amend her ways and be satisfied with the sincere effort that people put in, instead of insisting that nothing is correct unless it is done entirely her way to her specifications. ”
He smiled. Nelly wasn’t saying anything unkind—she was just pointing out that some people needed to have everything done their way and never really learned to compromise.
Probably if Mr. Tucker had had a spine and said no to his wife once in a while, she wouldn’t be the way she was.
Or maybe it was her parents… Or maybe it was just her, needing to teach herself that kindness was more important than perfection.
“So, I think we just found something we agree on.”
“Mrs. Tucker?” Nelly said as she handed up another ornament.
“No. That kindness is more important than perfection.”
“Oh my goodness. This is getting dangerous. You and me, getting along? Agreeing?”
“You defending me?” he said, his voice slow, and maybe there was a little extra emotion in his gaze.
He thought maybe he was being too vulnerable, because she paused, an ornament dangling midair between her two fingers.
He dropped his gaze to her hand, noticing the slenderness of her fingers and the delicate translucence of her skin.
Her nails were tapered, and she held the bulb gently but firmly. While her fingers looked delicate, they also seemed capable.
Maybe he was focusing on her fingers to keep from focusing on their conversation.
“You know, we had a pretty good competition going for a lot of years, and maybe it turned into something a little bit more than what I had intended, or…maybe I was just hurt and it always came out, but I never thought you were a bad person. Ever. And I didn’t say anything to Pastor Connelly that wasn’t absolutely true,” Nelly finally said, and sometime as she spoke, his eyes went to hers again.
“I appreciated it.” At the time, he’d wondered if he would have been as ardent a defender of her as she had been of him.
He’d like to think he would have been, but he wasn’t entirely sure.
She had defended him like he was her brother or husband, like she knew him better than she actually did or…
just believed in him. It was something that made his heart, his whole soul, feel amazing, to think that she would stand up to the pastor of all people to defend his good name.
“Well, I appreciate it,” he said, taking the bulb from her and hanging it on the tree.
Soft snowflakes had begun to fall, and they shimmered and glittered in the lights that hung around the tree, and they talked about the weather, and whether they would have a white Christmas, and light topics like that, but underneath there was a bond between them that hadn’t been there before.
He finished hanging the bulbs and got off the ladder, and soon the decorating was done, and people congregated around, admiring how beautiful the town square looked, holding steaming cups of hot chocolate, and watching the snow glitter down.
As was custom, Bernard had brought his guitar, and soon they were singing Christmas carols.
Somehow, Roland had ended up not that far from Nelly, and as her voice lifted in harmony with his, their eyes met.
The harmony was unexpected. He certainly wouldn’t have expected someone that he had not cared for his entire life to have a voice that blended so well with his, but as they sang the familiar Christmas hymn, there was no doubt that they sounded good together.
She gave a little smile, and he returned it with a full-on grin, never breaking from the notes they sang.
He was pretty sure that he and Nelly were officially friends. And that was the most unusual thing that had happened all year.