Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Vanessa turned into her driveway and immediately had to catch her breath.
Her gorgeous Victorian home had been transformed into something that belonged on the cover of a holiday decorating magazine.
Warm white lights outlined every window, wrapped around the porch columns, and outlined the roofline in perfect, even strands.
More of the same were wrapped around the trees framing the house, and garlands wreathed the porch railings, each one dotted with more tiny white lights.
But it was the front yard that truly took her breath away.
The lawn had been bare that morning, but Henry had completely transformed it.
A family of illuminated deer grazed peacefully near the old oak tree, while candy cane path markers that glittered lined the walkway from the driveway to the front steps.
In the hedges out front, Henry had arranged more of the white lights into snowflake shapes, as if they’d fallen onto the greenery.
Henry was standing out front, near an assortment of boxes and half-put together fixtures that looked like they might be reindeer.
Vanessa hopped out of the car, snow crunching under her feet as she got closer and saw the photo of what it would look like when it was finished—the most magnificent reindeer display she’d ever seen.
The finished product would be eight life-sized reindeer arranged in formation as if they were preparing for takeoff, each one crafted from what looked like hundreds of tiny lights, with a curtain of lights draped above them.
“Henry,” she called out as she approached, excitement coloring every word. “This is absolutely incredible. I knew you said you had some ideas, but this is beyond anything I could have imagined. It’s even better than what we talked about.’’
A pleased flush colored Henry’s cheeks. “I’m glad you like it.
Although I do need your input on the placement of this reindeer setup.
I can move it closer to the house, or maybe angle it differently.
We could put it out to one side of the lawn, to spread things out a bit—” He shrugged, gesturing to different spots. “What do you think?”
Vanessa paused, considering as she looked around. He was right; they didn’t want any one spot to be too crowded. And it was a huge display. The reindeer were set up so that it looked as if they were launching into flight, all of their poses dynamic.
“What if we moved them slightly to the right?” she suggested, gesturing toward a spot further off to the side from the framing tree on the right side of the house’s porch. “Just a few feet, so they’re not competing with the deer family, and they take up that blank spot there.”
“Perfect!” Vanessa said excitedly, jumping in to help as Henry started to finish assembling the display.
Each reindeer was apparently constructed on a portable base that allowed for repositioning, although Vanessa could see that each one was still quite heavy.
She handed him any tools that he needed, and helped him to rearrange them carefully so that they didn’t break any of the delicate pieces.
It was almost finished when Vanessa stepped back, took in the whole thing, and bit her lip, wondering if she’d made the right choice after all.
“Actually—” She frowned, second-guessing it. “Maybe they were better where they were originally. But I don’t want you to go to all this trouble just to move them back. I’m just not sure—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Henry said firmly, as he started to move the reindeer back to the original setup closer to the porch. “It needs to be perfect, right? Your Christmas display should be exactly what you want it to be.”
As soon as the reindeer were closer to the porch, Vanessa found herself wavering again. “You know what, though? I think maybe they need to be angled slightly more toward the street. So people driving by can see them better.”
Henry paused in his work, straightened up, and surveyed the display thoughtfully. “I think you might be right. It’ll look less like they’re flying toward the house then too.”
Without a single complaint, he started to readjust the angle of each reindeer, going through the display to tweak it to Vanessa’s suggestion.
She felt a flutter of guilt over being so indecisive as she watched him work, chewing on her lower lip.
“I think—no.” She shook her head. “This is fine. I’m being ridiculous.
You don’t have to keep moving them around just because I can’t make up my mind. ”
“Actually, there’s one more element I’d like your approval on,” Henry said, completely ignoring her protest as he finished adjusting the last reindeer.
He walked over to a large tarp-covered shape near the garage that Vanessa hadn’t noticed before.
“I wasn’t sure if this would be too much, but I thought it might be a nice finishing touch. ”
He pulled away the tarp to reveal a beautifully crafted sleigh, complete with curved runners and an elegant bench seat, all outlined in the same warm white lights as the reindeer.
It was clearly designed to be set up behind the reindeer team, completing the scene of Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve.
It was, Vanessa thought, possibly an actual functioning sleigh.
She really was going to have the best Christmas decorations on Birch Street now.
“Oh my goodness,” Vanessa breathed, walking closer to examine the intricate details. “Henry, this is absolutely gorgeous. Did you make this yourself?”
“Jackson helped,” Henry said with a smile.
“And George worked on this with me, back when it was just a project I was fiddling around with. I didn’t really have a purpose for it, and I thought this would be perfect, after I found those reindeer.
I thought it might be nice to have the complete scene.
But if you think it’s too much, we can skip it. ”
“Too much?” Vanessa stared at him in disbelief. “Henry, this is the most beautiful Christmas display I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe you put all this work into making our house look like something out of a fairy tale.”
“Well,” Henry said, his voice taking on a gruffness that Vanessa was beginning to recognize as his way of deflecting emotion, “it seemed like the right thing to do. Your first Christmas in the house should be special.”
Henry moved the sleigh behind the reindeer, and Vanessa waffled for another ten or so minutes on getting the exact positioning right.
With the addition of the sleigh, she realized, the whole setup did need to be further away from the house in the blank space on the lawn, and she winced as Henry started moving the reindeer back to their original position.
“You’re a saint,” Vanessa said as he was finishing up. “Moving things around, adjusting everything until it’s exactly right. Most people would have told me to make up my mind after the first change,” she added with a laugh.
Henry paused, giving her a bemused look.
“I learned a long time ago that the best things in life are worth taking the time to get right. Besides,” he added with a soft chuckle, “my late wife used to rearrange our furniture every other month. Sometimes more often than that, if she was feeling restless or if the seasons were changing. I’ve got plenty of practice with this kind of thing. ”
Vanessa blinked at him, shocked. She hadn’t had any idea that Henry was a widower; Mabel had never mentioned it to her, and she’d never heard anyone talking about it around town.
“You were married?” she asked gently, immediately regretting the surprise in her voice. It wasn’t that she was surprised that Henry had been married, anyone would be lucky to have him, but she was surprised she hadn’t heard about it before.
Henry nodded, rubbing a hand over his chin. “Thirty years,” he said simply. “Daisy and I were high school sweethearts.”
Vanessa felt her eyes mist as she looked at him. This sweet man deserved better than to have lost his wife much earlier than he should have. “Henry, I had no idea. I’m so sorry—how did she pass?”
Henry was quiet for a long moment, and Vanessa wondered if she’d overstepped, if the question was too personal or too painful to answer. But he spoke a moment later, and he didn’t sound upset that she’d asked.
“She had a weak heart,” he said, his gaze fixed off in the middle distance past the light display as he spoke. “Had it since she was a child. Doctors always warned her she probably would have a shorter life than most. We knew from the beginning our time together would be limited.”
“Oh, Henry,” Vanessa whispered, feeling tears prick at the corners of her eyes.
“But she was the love of my life,” he continued, his voice firm. “We had thirty great years together, and she made every day brighter just by being in it. I don’t regret a moment of it, and I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Vanessa felt her heart go out to him as he spoke, and she blinked back tears, not wanting him to feel as if he needed to comfort her.
Henry was sweet and kind and patient, and she wished things had gone differently for him and his wife.
It made her want to drive straight to the diner and hug Jackson and never let go.
She felt lucky all over again to still have the love of her life with her, and she couldn’t imagine him being gone.
She couldn’t imagine trying to go about daily life any longer without him, let alone celebrating the holidays and making them special for others.
“I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been,” she said.
“It is,” Henry acknowledged. “But keeping busy and having things to care about helps. This kind of thing—” He gestured at the house. “It means a lot to me, being able to bring others joy like this. Daisy would have loved it. And I like being able to make others happy the way she did.”
“I appreciate it so much,” Vanessa said firmly. “I hope you know that. This is incredible, and it means the world to me.”