Page 53 of The Christmas Box

“It’s not roast beast,” she says, pretending not to understand. “It’s a star. Now come on.”

Reluctantly, he steps up and takes a shiny gold star from her hands. That’s the thing I’ve noticed about Travis—though it’s often done with a characteristic reluctance, perhaps from years of trauma, he always steps up.

And as he climbs on to the stool and reaches over to place the star carefully atop the tree, I feel like we’ve come full circle—a few short weeks ago, I placed a star on a tree with a wish, and now I see more evidence of that wish coming true by the very placing ofthisstar.

A few minutes later as the party rollicks on, he arrives at my side with a slice of pumpkin pie on a plate. “Pie, Mrs. Claus?”

I take it, remembering that other piece of pie from him. “Thank you, Mr. Claus.”

He draws back to look at me and I realize I’ve just accidentally suggested we’re an old married couple. But, thankfully, that’s not what he tuned into. You got it wrong. I’m Mr. Scrooge, Mr. Grinch. I’m a mean one. Remember?”

But I just shake my head. “Not anymore. You’re totally Mr. Claus now—don’t even try to deny it.”

And he doesn’t get a chance to before Mariah Carey’sAll I Want For Christmas Is Yousuddenly blasts through the speakers and Helen calls out, “Let’s all dance!”

Of course, most people are in wheelchairs, but that doesn’t stop her—she takes the hands of an elderly lady and begins to swing her arms in a dancing motion. Gabbi follows suit by grabbing another chair’s handles and turning it this way and that to the music.

Travis’s dad sits near me nibbling on a cookie, so I turn to him. “May I have this dance, Mr. Hutchins?”

“Now, I’d be a fool to turn down an invitation from such a pretty girl,” he says, so I set my pie on a table and take his hands in mine, moving us both to the happy beat.

Nearby I see Travis, indeed no longer a mean one when it comes to Christmas, bend down over an old lady holding a babydoll. He whispers something in her ear that makes her smile. Then he takes hold of her wheelchair handles and dances her around the Christmas tree.

Christmas. Magic.

It’s late by the time we leave. The snow is deep on untouched streets, but it’s stopped falling. Dressed in a mantel of white that glistens beneath streetlights, Winterberry has become a still, quiet Thomas Kincaid painting.

We make the only tire tracks in the snow as we head back toward town. “Looks like everybody else stayed home tonight, warm and safe from the bad weather,” Travis says.

“Can’t blame them, but…I can’t think of anyplace I’d have rather been,” I reply. “I’m glad we braved the storm. It was a nice night.” I smile over at him and he smiles back.

“Yeah, I’m glad we did it, too.”

As we roll onto Main Street and Travis pulls the old truck to his usual spot along the curb, I look out on my little town in wonder. “In all my life,” I tell him, “I’ve never seen Main Street like this.”

“Like what?” he asks, but the softness of his voice tells me he already knows because he sees it, too.

Not one car has sullied the fresh-fallen snow on Main. To see the old buildings rising up from both sides of the pristinely snow-covered thoroughfare, the Christmas lights glowing in windows, is unexpectedly beautiful.

“Perfect after a snowfall,” I answer anyway. “Like a meadow or a hillside, but it’s Main Street. There’s alwayssomeoneon the road,someoneleaving tire tracks. And then the snowplows come, and it gets slushy and dirty. But this…this is as perfect and unblemished as a little old town could ever look, don’t you think?”

“Let’s get out,” he suggests. “Soak it in.”

I plant my snowboots in ankle-deep snow, almost sorry to make footprints, but there’s no avoiding it. Our truck doors slam, and a moment later, we stand side by side, taking in the splendor.

The air is cold but clear after the storm, leaving the sense that the wind swept away anything bad to leave Winterberry crisp and clean. Colored lights on the tree in the park glisten even through the snow adorning its limbs, and the greenery wrapped around streetlamps is snow-covered, too, but held strong through the blizzard.

“It’s a Christmas card,” I say. Then I pull out my phone and snap a picture. Which I already know I’m going to frame on the wall of my shop—well, if my shop exists beyond another month or two. But I refuse to think about that now.

Back in Winterburger with Travis, when Helen called, I realized I just have to let it go. I have to take my own advice once and for all and simply believe. I have to embrace each day, each moment, for what it brings. That approach to life has always served me well—I just occasionally have to remind myself of that.

So I embrace it—all of it. I embrace the uncertainty. And I embrace the winter beauty, and the sparkling snow, and the silence that never seems so pronounced as after a snowfall when nothing stirs. Main Street belongs only to the two of us right now—it’s a private place no one will ever see the way we’re seeing it in this moment.

“We should do something,” Travis breaks that silence to suggest, “that you’ve never done on Main Street before and will never get to do again.”

I look over at him, intrigued by the notion. “Like?”

The expression on his face becomes a playful one. “Wanna make snow angels?”

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