“Plain, maybe. Decorated? No. White siding and ivory paint do not count as decorating.”
“Clearly not to you.” He nodded toward the window, where multicolored flashes were turning the glass pane and the snowflakes beyond it red, then blue, then green, then yellow.
“Man, look at it snow.” She slugged down the last of her cocoa, and got to her feet.
He did the same.
“Well,” she said, turning, “where to begin. I guess you’ve figured out that this is the living room.”
“Yes, that much is obvious. The picture window is going to be a selling point.”
“Mmm. As would the plank floors. Dad was always going to sand them off and refinish them. Seven coats of poly, he used to say. He never got to it, but—”
“Vinyl flooring would be faster. Probably cheaper, too.”
“They’re maple,” she said. “Maple floors are rare. Probably would be another…selling point.”
“It’s a thought.” He examined the wide, worn-looking planks that made up the floor at the moment.
She ran her palms over the walls. “The Sheetrock does need replacing. But after sitting here unheated for so long—”
“It’s to be expected.”
“The sofa used to be here, by this wall. Most of the year there was a big old antique stand in front of that window, all covered in Mom’s knicknacks. But once Thanksgiving passed, we’d move the table out, and that’s where the Christmas tree went.”
She turned. “There was a chair there, another one here, love seat over there. And the mantle was cluttered with pictures of my mom and dad and Aunt Sheila and Noelle and me. At least, it was most of the time. During the holidays, they got moved, too, and the mantle hosted Mom’s Christmas village—until the collection got too big for it. That was the year Noelle was born.”
“And then what?” he asked, sounding amused.
“Then we got a second dining room table. A giant one.” She led him into the dining room as she spoke. It was just a big empty room now. Same plank floors, and worn-looking walls. “The one we used for actual dining was on this side of the room. And the one on the other side was Christmastown, USA. Mom would cover the table in that white, sparkly fabric that looks like fluffy fake snow. All her little buildings would be set up, just so. The church, the general store, the houses and shops, the ice-skating rink, the little miniature carolers that really sang. And there was a train that wound and twisted through the whole thing, with Santa in an engineer’s hat, and a whistle that really blew.”
“Wow.”
It wasn’t, she thought, an impressed wow. It was more of an “I-had-no-idea-people-were-so-sappy” sort of an exclamation.
She looked at him, awaiting a comment. He shifted as if slightly uncomfortable, then said, “I think the woodwork around the windows can be salvaged. That’s a plus.”
“Oh joy. Oh rapture.” She said it in a deliberate monotone. “Kitchen next, I need more cocoa.”
“Yeah, me, too,” he said. “Make mine a double.”
SHE SIPPED HER COCOA AS SHE LED HIM THROUGH THE REST of the house, filling every room with stories about her happy, idyllic childhood, and it began to seem as if every major event in her life was linked, somehow, to the holidays. Every Christmas memory ended with, “And that was the year Daddy got his raise.” Or “And that was the year I learned to ride a bike.” And so on.
She was a cheerful little thing, he had to give her that. Cheerful people, in his considered opinion, were only so because they didn’t understand hardship. If you knew what life was really about, you couldn’t go dancing through it with a butterfly net in one hand and an ice cream sundae in the other. Life sucked. It made you hard, once you saw that. This little thing, though pretty—okay, freaking gorgeous—and friendly, hadn’t seen anything yet. Give it time. See how long her positive attitude bull lasted once she’d tasted the grit of real life.
She’d finished the tour. They were on the second floor, where she’d just given him a painstaking description of how she’d decorated her baby sister’s room for the holiday with a miniature tree she’d picked out and decorated all by herself. It seems the young Noelle hated to go to sleep at night because she loved looking at the big tree downstairs and its twinkling lights so much. So little Holly had used her allowance money to purchase a small tree and a string of lights, which she had then erected in little Noelle’s bedroom.
It was all so damn special, he thought with an inner grimace.
And then she added, “That was the Christmas they died.”
They’d been standing there in that final room, which had been a toddler’s bedroom, when she said it, and Matthew thought the bottom fell right out of his stomach.
He stared at her, and tried to speak, and thought he must have heard her wrong. “They…who?”
“Mom. Dad. Noelle. All of them.” She gazed around the room again, her eyes damp in the glow of the single dim bulb. “Car accident. Icy roads, it was no one’s fault. I almost went with them, but Mom sent me back.”
“In the car?” he asked, thinking she’d narrowly escaped death because her mother hadn’t let her go along on that fateful drive.
“No. I was in the car. I meant, I almost went with them to…well, you know. The other side.”
“But your mom sent you back,” he muttered.
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “Aunt Sheila came and took me home from the hospital, to her place in Binghamton. This is my first time back here since.” She sighed, and turned to look up at him.
He was shocked to see a fine sheen in her eyes, and yet, a wobbly little smile on her face. “You know, Ms. Sullivan said there was probably still some of our old furniture up in the attic. And I’m getting sick of having nothing to sit on besides that stone hearth.” She turned and marched into the hallway as if she hadn’t just revealed her deepest pain. “Come on, Matthew, you might as well see the attic.”
The hat tumbled to the snowy ground when the wind let up, and moments later, a laughing child grabbed it and scooped it up.
“Look! I found the hat!”
“Aw, man, where did you get that?”
“It just came rolling up out of nowhere. Just like on Frosty!” The little girl’s eyes grew very big then. “Hey, do you think it’s a magic hat?”
“Yeah, Gracie. The snowman’s gonna come to life and say ’happy birthday’ the minute we put it on his head.” Her older brother shook his head at her. “There’s no such thing as a magic hat.”
“I don’t believe you!” she huffed. Then she marched over to the snowman they had built together, and tried to put the hat on his head. She couldn’t quite reach, though. She was hopping, and swinging the hat uselessly. Then her brother lifted her up high, and she plopped the hat on the snowman.
And then she waited.
Her brother was waiting, too, she thought. Even though he said he didn’t believe, he must wonder. They stood there, quiet for a long moment, but nothing happened.
“I guess you were right,” the little girl said. “No such thing as magic.”
“Hey, you never know,” her brother said. “There could be. I mean, it’s almost Christmas, right? Anything could happen.”
He took her little hand in his, and led her home for dinner.
Six
HOLLY LED MATTHEW ALONG THE HALLWAY, CARRYING A flashlight she’d dug out of her backpack, which she’d left in one of the bedrooms, until she stood underneath the square in the ceiling that marked the entryway to the attic. It had always seemed a mysterious portal to her as a child. The attic was a whole other world; darker than the rest of the house, cooler in the summer months, hotter in the winter, when the heat gathered there and hung around. It was dusty, not as neat, filled with clutter and cobwebs and dust. It even smelled differently than the rest of the house.