Page 24 of Meet Me at Christmas
“I have,” she replied. “You make pottery with it.”
“You used to do that when you were a kid,” he said. “You made plates and mugs.”
“Yes, I did.” She rose and walked over to him, trying to guess how long it had been since she’d stopped using it. About fourteen years ago, she decided. “This is actually mine. One of the metal bearings had come loose, and you promised to fix it.” Wanting to move it to her new home at the cabin anyway, they had put it into Henry’s truck and brought it here. She’d left only a few days later.
Henry ran his hand along the loose carriage. “Right here,” he said. “This is what needs to be fixed.”
“Yep.”
“I’d forgotten it was you who made pottery.”
“I used to love it.”
“What made you stop?”
Phew. That was certainly a loaded question. “I just… got too busy.” Busy with falling in love, busy getting married, then busy with trying to carry on despite what she was going through, pushing away her feelings for Henry.
“That’s too bad.” He lifted the contraption into his strong arms easily. “I’ll leave it in the attic until I have a chance to look at it. Maybe I can fix it after all, and you can try your hand at it again.”
She smiled, their old world colliding with their new one. “That would be nice.”
“Be right back with some Christmas decorations.”
“All right,” Stella said.
Henry returned with a stack of boxes and set them on the floor. He pulled out a string of lights and plugged them in to test them. They lit up in bright colors just as they had the last time she’d wrapped them around a tree. While he checked each of the bulbs, it occurred to her that he was going through the motions, but the absolute joy he used to have doing this task was absent.
She wanted to tell him that they’d blared holiday music while they decorated together that last time and that he’d pulled her into the middle of the room and dipped her, nearly setting the house on fire when he knocked over one of her cinnamon candles. She eyed the dark spot still on the rug where he’d stomped out the flame before they fell on the sofa together in relief.
Henry picked up the lights and reached toward the top of the tree.
“Wait,” she said.
He stopped and looked her way.
“It’s Christmas.” She walked over to the radio. “We shouldn’t decorate the tree without some music.” If anything, the sound would lift her mood and take her mind off the fact that this Christmas was very different from any other. She clicked on the radio and tuned it to the local station playing festive music on a twenty-four-hour loop.
Without a reaction, Henry tried again to reach the highest part of the tree. As he worked, Stella could feel his inability to relax, and she considered that, apart from the accident, she didn’t have a clue what he might have gone through in the military. She remembered once more what Dr. Astley had said when they met:“The subject experiences conflicting information about things he has done in his life that directly oppose his values.”
For her article on cognitive dissonance, she’d studied the effects of brain health on people who chose to do things that didn’t fit their beliefs. One patient had been battling lung cancer and he had struggled so much with the diagnosis because he’d chosen to smoke even though he’d known that smoking was bad for his health. Faced with the repercussions of his actions, he had to undergo therapy to manage the intense remorse. What had Henry dealt with in his recent past that conflicted with his values?
He wound the lights along a branch at the top, the cord hanging loosely to the ground. “I’m not sure how to do this,” he said over the music. His eyebrows pulled together. “Have I ever known?”
She went over to him and took the strand. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I can confirm that you didn’t know how to do it before your accident either.” She offered him a consolatory grin.
“Have we done this before?”
“Yes. I helped you decorate a tree a long time ago…” Curiosity appeared in his expression, but she didn’t want to answer any questions, so she moved the conversation along. “Do you mind bringing in one of the kitchen chairs so I can reach the top?”
His gaze lingered on her before he turned away and retrieved a chair. He set it next to the tree and she climbed up on it.
“The trick,” she said as the music pulsed, “is to wind the lights in and out of the branches.” She pushed the strand into the center, encircled one of the limbs and then wound it back out. She continued—in and out—around the tree. “Could you hold this for a second while I move the chair?”
He came up from behind, leaning around her and taking the lights, his familiar woodsy scent overwhelming her senses. She wanted to turn around and wrap her arms around his neck, but she knew better. He needed to focus on his recovery, and she should definitely not let her memories contribute to impulsive decisions. She climbed down, scooted the chair into the correct position, and then took the lights back from him.
“So…” He gathered the cord that trailed the floor. “We were… friends?”
She found it difficult to pull in a full breath of air. “Yes,” she managed. She wasn’t lying. For many years, they were just friends.
