It was on her Monthly List, though. She had it scheduled, so it would happen.
She parked, grabbed her purse, and glanced at her watch as she speed-walked into The Home Improvement Store. Since she already knew right where the wreath was, she could just hurry to the aisle, grab one, race to the self-checkout, and she’d be pulling into her driveway not too much later than the time she’d told Bria, the sixteen-year-old who picked Aiden up from school and stayed with him until Rachel got home. Aiden was going to be so excited when she showed up with the wreath that seemed to speak to his soul.
Once she was inside the store, she turned right down the main aisle. This was no Home Depot or Lowe’s—Mountain Springs wasn’t big enough for that—but they sure tried to be. She passed by the aisle of electrical supplies, past plumbing, past the paint department, and then turned the corner to seasonal.
The display of wreaths with the colorful bulbs and bells sat at the end of the aisle, and a man’s cart was literally caught up in them. It looked like he’d maybe turned a corner, gotten stuck on one, then the other wreaths took the opportunity to join in on the fun.
The man was good-looking, too. He was wearing a light blue polo shirt and dark wash jeans, both of which fit him extremely well. His hair was a wavy auburn and one lock curled down just above his very frustrated expression. It was actually kind of endearing, seeing him covered in Christmas like that. Maybe Lucy wasn’t so off when she said that the Season of Yes could bring a man into her life. She was going to say yes to helping him out of the mess.
She headed toward him to help just as he tried to free his cart from the decorations. The rest of the display came down on him, covering him in wreaths, their bells jingling up a ruckus and causing not only everyone nearby to stop to watch, but even brought people from other aisles to see what was going on. A woman with a toddler in the cart stopped, and the toddler put both hands over his ears to block out the noise.
The poor guy’s face was reddening and the harder he tried to break free from the holiday embellishments, the worse it seemed to make things. She was maybe a dozen feet from him when the man seemed to summon herculean strength and shouted “Stupid Christmas decorations!” as he threw his arms out, sending wreaths flying.
One of the wreaths came straight at her, like a missile targeted on her. She ducked, covering her face with her arms, but it still hit her right in the forehead before falling to the floor with a tinkling clatter. It hadn’t hurt at all—the clanging sounded so much worse than it actually was. Bulbs clinked and bells rang, but the thing was fairly light-weight.
She picked up the wreath. It wasnota stupid Christmas decoration, and his saying so made him so much less attractive. If she was going to meet a guy in her Season of Yes, it wasn’t going to be this guy. After growing up with a dad who hated everything to do with Christmas and wouldn’t let any of it into their home, she wasn’t interested in a Grinch.
No matter how good he looked in that polo.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He looked like he was going to take a step toward her, but the mound of wreaths surrounding him stopped him.
She just held up the wreath and nodded. “Thanks.”
Then she turned and headed toward the registers and away from the Christmas-hating man.
two
NICK
Nick walkedout of The Home Improvement Store with barely a sliver of dignity intact. He opened his trunk, put in the gallons of primer and the bag of painter’s tape, tarps, spackle, and the wreath inside, then shut it and got into his car. He couldn’t believe all that happened during an innocent trip to the hardware store. He ran his hands over his face, let out a long, slow breath, then picked up his cell phone.
The background image on his phone was a picture of his wife, Clara, that he’d taken just two weeks before she’d passed away. He’d been on a business trip and just like he and Clara did every business trip, they’d video-chatted at night.
She’d already taken off her makeup and had her hair pulled up in a messy bun— something she only did in the evenings—and she had loose strands framing her face. She’d looked beautiful. He’d snapped a screenshot so he’d always have it, not knowing that it would be one of the last times he’d ever video chat with her.
Like he did whenever he felt like he needed to talk to Clara, he swiped to the last page of apps on his phone, a page with a single icon, so he could see more of her face. It kind of felt likehe was actually video chatting with her, and hopefully, anyone walking by would assume he was on a video call, not just that he was talking to his dead wife.
“Hi, Clara. I’m in Mountain Springs right now, and I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed when we’ve visited your parents before, but the home improvement store is actually namedThe Home Improvement Store. Those are the exact words on the building. So when you’re talking to someone and say, “Bye, I’m going to the home improvement store, they don’t know if you’re saying it in lowercase or title caps.”
He chuckled. “But since you grew up in the next town over, and I doubt that Nestled Hollow has their own home improvement store, you probably already knew that. But if that’s the case, then we should’ve laughed about this together before now.
“I’ve told you that I hope that in heaven you get to watch what’s going on down here like it’s a TV show. If you do, I hope you were watching what just happened in there and that you were busting a gut from laughing so hard at it. Because if nothing else, I want someone to be able to laugh about it.”
She probably laughed. She was probably chuckling about this conversation, too. He shook his head. “But Clara, I was kind of a jerk in there. I felt like such an uncoordinated fool, and everyone was watching and the cursed jingle bells just wouldn’t stop jingling. I shouted something negative about Christmas decorations, but I’m ninety-something percent sure I didn’t swear. And I should get some kind of gold star for that because I really wanted to swear—it was that bad. And then I sent a wreath flying and tagged some poor woman right in the head with it. I felt awful.”
He paused for a moment and looked down Main Street at all the decorations each store had out for Christmas. Colorado Springs—where he and his six-year-old daughter, Holly, hadlived until just recently—put on a pretty good display of Christmas, but nothing like Mountain Springs did. Even though Mountain Springs was probably one two-hundredth of the size, this town went all out.
He looked back at the image of Clara. “You always made Christmas so magical. I don’t think I ever fully recognized all you put into it. Now that it’s all my job, I realize that I have no idea how to do the same. I was at the store getting paint supplies for the new house and figured I’d just take a little stroll down the Christmas aisles to see what caught my eye. And Clara, I barely turned onto the first aisle and the decorations practically attacked me.”
Nowhewas laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. He scratched his forehead with his thumb. “Anyway, I just wanted to say that I miss you. Holly misses you. Last Christmas I was still so buried in grief that I did a terrible job at making Christmas good for Holly, but I want you to know that this year, I’m going to find a way to make it magical for her. I even bought one of the wreaths after I extricated myself from them, so I’ve taken the first step. If you can, maybe jingle some bells near me now and then. I’ll consider it you cheering me on.”
He gave her one last smile, then turned off his phone and pulled out of his parking space. His last “video call” with Clara was a week ago, as he told her that he and their daughter had moved near Clara’s parents as she had always hoped. Well, technically they were livingwithher parents at the moment, but the house he’d bought was just a block away.
In the week since they’d moved to Mountain Springs, he’d fixed the plumbing and some electrical issues on the new house and started cutting and installing baseboards and trim. Before long, he’d be able to paint and replace some flooring. He didn’t care how hard he had to work, he would have the house ready for him and Holly to move into before Christmas.
He pulled up at his in-laws’ home, which had lights on the house and trees and a manger scene out front, even though December first wasn’t until tomorrow. The house he’d bought was still completely empty and didn’t have a shred of Christmas decorations, so he was glad they could stay with Ben and Linda for a bit so Holly wouldn’t be missing out.
When opening the door, he was immediately greeted by the smell of pot roast and… was that baking cookies? As much as he wanted to finish getting his new house ready, he couldn’t deny that Linda’s cooking was a huge perk of staying with them. When he got to the kitchen, Linda was at the island counter, decorating sugar cookies with Holly, and Ben was sitting at the kitchen table, reading on his tablet.
