Chapter 4 Rhett
FOUR
RHETT
I am not nervous.
I am a professional adult man who runs a business with thousand-pound animals and a calendar that fills three months out. My hands are steady, my tack is clean, my loop is mapped. I am not nervous.
I had to pull out one of the older back-up sleighs to run the tours until the new one’s fixed.
I’m checking the same buckle for the third time when Jared strolls past like a smug little groundhog who’s seen his own shadow.
“She’s due at two,” he sing-songs, leaning on the broom.
“Who?” I ask, deadpan.
He points at my face. “Your eyebrows already did the thing. Ivy. The PR lady. The human sugar cookie.”
“Stop calling her that,” I say, testing the bell strap again. Even. No creak. Good. “And go shovel the back path. Seniors don’t need to be climbing drifts.”
“Yes, sir,” he says, grinning too wide to be healthy, and clatters away.
The barn smells like leather and hay and a little bit like the peppermint treats Lolly dropped off “for the horses,” which is a lie we all tell.
I breathe in, out. In for four. Hold. Out for six.
The wind’s up, but the snow turned fine and friendly instead of mean; we’ll keep the ride short, close to the birches where the trees break the gusts.
Donner flicks an ear as if to ask why I’m fussing. Comet stands patient, the weight of the harness familiar across her back. Everything here makes sense. You check your gear. You watch your horses. You time your route to the weather and the riders’ bones.
At 1:58 on the dot, laughter blows in with the cold. Mayor Turner’s tartan leads the way, followed by a line of bundled seniors from Pine Hollow, all boots and blankets and joy that’s been around long enough to know it when it sees it. And behind them—
“I brought permission forms for audio only!” Ivy announces in a stage whisper, holding a clipboard like it’s a golden ticket. She’s wearing different boots—sensible, blessedly dull—and a hat that looks like a marshmallow. The hat makes her eyes too bright to look at for long.
I am not nervous.
“Afternoon,” I say to the group, because it’s easier to talk to a dozen people than to one. “Welcome. We’ve got a short loop today—wind’s playing tricks—so we’ll stick to the birch lane and the lower meadow. Quilts are in the sleigh. Hand me your walkers and canes, and I’ll tie them down behind.”
“Always so thoughtful,” Mrs. Hadley says, patting my arm with a mitten the size of a catchers’ mitt. “This one’s got more manners than a bishop.”
“I can confirm,” Mayor Turner chirps, then turns to Ivy. “Darling, this is Mrs. Hadley. She knitted that red quilt. Get a bit of the edge, close-up. It photographs like a dream.”
“I’m on it,” Ivy says, and points her phone at exactly the inches of wool I would have pointed her at if I were the kind of man who pointed phones. “Gorgeous texture. Lolly said you’re starting another?”
“Always,” Mrs. Hadley says. “Busy hands keep away the winter blues.” She leans in, conspiratorial. “And the boys.”
Ivy giggles. It bounces off the rafters and somehow doesn’t hurt. Which is new.
We load them carefully. Tuck blankets around knees.
Make sure Mr. Levine’s hearing aids aren’t fighting with the bell tones (they don’t, today).
Ivy moves like I told her to yesterday: a half step back from the horses, hands visible, voice low.
She crouches for glove-level shots of fingers curling around quilt edges and the slow exhale of breath feathering the air.
She whispers her puns like confessions. I catch “winter glam-brrr” and hate myself for almost smiling.
Almost.
“All aboard,” Mayor Turner declares, perching on the sleigh step and—saints save us—bell-kissing the air for my benefit. I stare at a knot in the leather until she stops.
“Ready?” Ivy asks, looking at me instead of her phone for this one, like I’m a person and not a walking set piece. It knocks me off balance for half a second, which I resent.
“Ready,” I say, climb onto the box, and cluck Comet into a gentle start.
Donner takes the outside. Bells answer. The sleigh pulls like it’s meant to, runners whispering across packed snow.
The seniors’ voices knit themselves into the sound—soft oohs, a chuckle, the murmur of a song someone half remembers.
Ivy jogs alongside for a few opening seconds, careful to stay clear of hooves, and then drops back, letting us slide into the lane of white trunks. She holds up her phone at chest height, framing bells, wool, hands, sky.
“You doing okay back there?” I call back to the old men in front and also not just to them.
“Nothing hurts when the bells go,” Mr. Levine says. He taps his knee. “Even this traitor.”
We take the corner slow. Birch branches lift like cathedral ribs.
Snow sifts down in quiet applause. I listen for evenness; I hear it.
Ivy drifts ahead to catch the sleigh coming toward her and almost collides with a birch because she’s watching the shot instead of the tree.
I clear my throat. She hears me and flashes two fingers in apology.
The absurd urge to smile shows up again.
Don’t.
The loop is shorter than usual, but no one complains.
They pat the horses and tell them secrets they don’t tell their kids.
Ivy takes audio of bells echoing under the bridge, of Mayor Turner thanking Mrs. Hadley for the quilt “with twenty years of story knitted in.” She never once lifts the phone to a face. It matters.
Back at the barn, we unload slowly. Jared materializes with hot cider like he’s appeared off a Hallmark craft services truck.
Ivy takes cups from him and passes them to cold hands with a running commentary of which quilt corner is best for drips.
People laugh. They’re warmer for her being here.
I hate that it’s true and love that it’s true and hate that I love it.
“Thank you, Rhett,” Mrs. Hadley says, patting my arm again. “Tell your granddad’s bells we still hear them.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, and mean it.
Mayor Turner collects permission forms from Ivy like they’re raffle tickets. “How marvelous! Audio for days! And look at this one,” she adds, peering at Ivy’s screen. “I can feel the wool.”
“Texture sells,” Ivy says, and for the first time since she tumbled into my sleigh yesterday, I hear the edge under the sparkle—the part of her that’s keeping ten balls in the air and trying not to drop a single one. It sits me up a little straighter.
She looks over, cheeks pink from the cold, eyes ridiculous. “Can I grab a few shots of you unhitching? Just hands and bells. Promise.”
“Make it quick,” I say, and she does. She gets the loop of leather sliding through my palm, the little nod Comet gives when the weight comes off, the way Donner leans into the curry when Jared gets the brush out.
She gets the steam rising out of their nostrils and the frost that gathers on whiskers.
“Perfect,” she whispers to herself. “We can build around this.”
“Build what?” I ask gruffly, because I can feel Jared smirking from across the barn.
“A minute that makes people breathe,” she says, then blinks like she didn’t mean to say it out loud. “And donate. And show up.”
She tucks the phone away, and for a second we’re just standing there with horses between us and something that feels larger than either of us is ready for.
“So,” I say, because standing there is not a sport I like. “You got what you needed?”
“For the seniors’ ride? Yes.” She hesitates. “Could I—this is probably pushing it—but could I get a few atmosphere shots up at your place? Exterior, woodpile, your stove, that kind of thing. Texture and context. I won’t show your face. I won’t move anything. Promise.”
My cabin is not for public consumption. It is four walls and a roof where December can’t get at me much. It is quiet I carved out of a rough few years and a road that knows my tires. Letting anyone point a camera at it makes my back teeth feel weird.
But I also hear the way her voice shadows on “pushing it,” and I see the little checklist running behind her eyes, and I remember Mrs. Hadley saying the bells still carry.
“Fine,” I say. “Rules: no faces, nothing personal, no staging. If you need a mug in frame, it’s the mug that lives by the stove. If you need a fire, we use the one that’s already there.”
Her smile is immediate and ridiculous. “Sure thing, Captain Grinch.”
“Don’t,” I say automatically.
“Sorry. Captain…Cabin.”
“Worse.”
She bounces a little, which the sensible boots do not deserve. “Do you want me to meet you there? I can follow.”
“No,” I hear myself say, a shade sharper than planned. Her eyebrows pop up and I add, “Roads glaze in the shade. Your rental’s got summer tires pretending to be all-season. You ride with me. I’ll bring you back after.”
She opens her mouth like she might argue and then, mercifully, nods. “Okay. Thank you.”
Jared makes the international symbol for “ooooooh,” which is to say he makes no symbol at all and just lets his face do it.
“Thirty minutes,” I tell Ivy. “I need to bed the horses and check the fence line.”
“I’ll grab my bag and Keely’s candy canes,” she says, already backing away and nearly tripping over a hay bale. She catches herself, straightens, salutes with two mittened fingers. “See you soon.”
I watch her go long enough to be irritated with myself for watching her go. Jared drifts into my periphery like fog.
“You gonna clean the cabin?” he asks.
“It’s clean,” I say.
He raises a brow. “It’s…Rhett-clean.”
“Meaning…?”
“Spartan,” he says diplomatically. “Maybe put out the quilt your grandma made so the video doesn’t look like a minimalist survivalist brochure.”
“Do your chores,” I say, but I’m already thinking about the quilt folded in the trunk at the foot of my bed and how it wouldn’t kill me to pull it onto the back of the couch like I didn’t plan it there on purpose.
I get the horses settled. Check the latch twice. Check the sky once. The wind is nosing down from the ridge, not mean yet but curious. I set a second log in the stove in the tack room so the chill stays off the leather. The routine unknots whatever my face is doing.
When I step outside, Ivy’s waiting by the truck, bundled in her marshmallow hat and a coat that looks like a duvet. She’s holding a reusable tote with “THIS BAG CONTAINS SNACKS” printed on it, which I assume is true.
“Seat warmers?” she asks, hopeful.
I grunt, which she apparently interprets as yes when the heat kicks on. “Remember,” I say as we pull out, “no faces.”
“Not even the elk head over your mantle?”
“There is no elk head over my mantle.”
“Darn,” she says. “I had a pun loaded.”
“Save it,” I tell her.
“Okay,” she says cheerfully, then folds her hands in her lap like someone who is trying very hard to follow the rules.
We pass the square, where the big tree waits for the lighting tomorrow, and the Peppermint Inn, where Keely waves with both hands like we’re a parade of two.
Ivy waves back like she’s known her for years.
The town likes her. I can tell. It’s both a problem and a solution.
The road turns from plowed to packed within a mile, then to dirt disguised as winter.
Icicles spear down the rock cut, and the river throws gray light between the trees.
Ivy is quiet in the way that makes me pay attention, and it’s not her thinking of puns quietly, it’s her recording with her eyes.
She’s memorizing this and I don’t know why that sits fine in my chest, but it does.
“Cabin’s up there,” I say when we hit the last bend, pointing with two fingers on the wheel. “No neighbors close by, so don’t tell the internet where it is.”
She turns that on me. “I wouldn’t.”
I nod. My ears settle. We climb the last hundred yards between pines, tires biting, and the cabin comes into view: dark wood, metal roof, split-rail fence sketched in snow.
I parked the truck this morning in such a way that an exterior shot will catch the corner of the porch and the stack of wood and not much else.
“Can I just say,” Ivy breathes, already reaching into her tote for the phone-and-stabli-thing, “this is…cinematic.”
“You say that like it’s a compliment.”
“It is,” she says, and for once there’s no sparkle glued to the words. Just truth.
I unlock the door and stand aside. She steps in, and I watch her see it the way people do when they’re trying to genuinely look: stove, boots, hooks, the rifle locked high and out of frame. I move to the trunk at the end of my bed, retrieve the quilt and lay it across the back of the couch.
“Perfect,” she whispers again, more to the room than to me. “We’ll end on the stove door. Close on the glow. Let the bells carry it.”
That should be my line. I let it stand.
She takes five shots in six minutes and tucks the phone away. “Thank you. I know this is…private.”
“It is,” I say.
“I won’t take advantage of that.”
“I know.”
And I do, which is the problem.
She looks around once more, not filming now, just looking. “You don’t decorate.”
“I don’t.”
“Not even a sad little Charlie Brown tree?”
“Nope.”
“Good,” she says, and I blink. “If you had a tree, people would think I made you put it up for the video. This way, it’s real.”
I huff something that’s not a laugh and not not a laugh. “You really think about the angles.”
“It’s my job,” she says softly. “And maybe the way I stay out of my own head.”
We stand in the quiet for a second, the way you do in a place that keeps time a little gentler than the rest of the world. Then I point at her boots.
“Better,” I say.
“Traction included,” she says proudly. “I am a reformed Bambi.”
“Good,” I say, reaching for my coat again. “Storm’s changing its mind. I’ll take you back before it decides it likes drama.”
She nods and follows me out, and as I lock the door I catch myself doing something I don’t plan to make a habit of: smiling.
I stop it before it shows. Or I try to.
I am not nervous.
I am, annoyingly, looking forward to seeing what she makes out of nothing but hands and bells and a stove door.
I am also determined to keep my face out of it.
One of these goals is easier than the others.