Page 55 of Lighting Up Christmas

“You’re not going to stay too long, are you, boss? Storm’s about to hit. Coming up fast.”

“I’m out in fifteen,” she said. “Zhang…Mr. Shi said I could look through some of the ‘junk,’” she made air quotes, “in the garage to see if I want any of it.”

“Treasure hunt. You want help?”

Jake was a good guy, but he chatted a lot. So did she. It was perfect on a job. He was smart and a lot of fun, and she’d started training him when he was still in high school, but when she was in her “artistic brain” as Sophia and her stepmom insisting on calling it, she needed quiet so she could hear herself think.

“I’ll only be a little while.” She cast an experienced gaze at the black clouds that had boiled over the costal range earlier and were crawling, heavy with snow, straight toward the valley before moving into Eastern Oregon and beyond.

Another storm was backed up behind it, waiting to unleash a combination of high velocity winds and more snow.

“Looks like a white Christmas market,” she shouted out cheerfully as the first icy breeze hit her.

“Seriously, Riley, let’s get your junk—I mean, treasures—and go. I can help.”

He stopped his truck. She laughed and waved. “Fifteen minutes.”

“That means thirty.” He narrowed his eyes.

“Yes, Mom, it does.”

“Not Dad?”

“My mom wielded the axe and hammer and everything else in our house. Me and my brothers and Dad just did what she said.”

“That explains it.” Jake looked at her, hard. “Seriously. This storm is going to be fast moving and brutal, and then there’s a small window before the next one hits.”

“I’ll text when I get out of here.”

His hard gaze softened, and Riley smiled. Jake was so sweet. He’d just turned twenty-one. He still lived with his single mom and two younger sisters who were in high school, and helped his mom out with the bills and everything else that needed doing around the house. A real good kid, and he was worried about her.

“Promise,” she added.

“Okay then. Get a move on.”

Riley waved and hustled to the shop. She loved the fury Mother Nature could dish out to remind them all who was boss.

“Wow, treasure trove,” Riley whispered as she found an old toolbox filled with well-used, rusted—some broken—tools and a bucketful of old farming implements. Her mind sang with opportunities. Zhang had said she could take anything. She’d already loaded her truck bed with seven more old vines he’d pulled out and placed on a burn pile. She took a picture of the toolbox and the bucket of rusted farm implements.

Zhang seemed so much of a minimalist aesthetically that she would have thought he would have had all this hauled away before he took possession of the property. The fact that there were still finds, years later, was an unexpected bonus. She saw a collection of wire baskets. Those could be fun. She could string them together in a graduated style, and then add a few targeted lights. It could serve as a kitchen or garden decoration light or even as storage.

She took a picture, frowning. She’d been here fifteen minutes, and she’d barely started looking. She didn’t want to get stranded on Zhang’s property for the afternoon. The storm was supposed to dump snow for a few hours and then move on; the bigger storm was supposed to hit sometime around midnight.

Riley hefted the toolbox—even the wood on it was worn down and gorgeous—and the stacked wire baskets. She’d come back for the bucket of farm implements, maybe take one morepeek, and then drive home. She loaded her truck and then ran back to the shop just as the first icy needles of the howling snow began to pelt.

The storm sounded furious as it battered the metal roof and sides of the shop. Dang it. She’d pushed her luck. Nothing new there. But Riley had been driving the country roads of the Rogue Valley for well over a decade. She was accustomed to fierce storms. Pippy was classic, but she was a heavy beast and well-maintained. Her truck would handle anything.

She gathered up the bucket of farm implements and spotted an old bicycle, upended against the wall.

“Yes, please,” she said. But that meant one more trip. So be it.

“What are you still doing here?” a dark voice demanded, and Riley, for the first time she could remember since her father and brothers had turned their garage into a neighborhood haunted house when she was six, shrieked.

*

Zhang jumped, lookingaround for the danger before he realized that he was it. He’d startled Riley.

“Whoa. Sorry for deafening you. That should probably knock ten percent off my bill.”

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