Page 23 of The Holiday Honeymoon Switch
“There’s a bridge heading into town that gets icy when the weather’s like this. I can’t let you go out there in that car in this weather. I’ll take you in my truck, okay?” He glances at his watch. “I have an errand to run out here first. It won’t take too long.”
He shrugs on his jacket and stands waiting, and she realizes he thinks they’re going to leave right then.
“I’m not quite sure I’m ready to debut my sleepwear to an entire town, even a small one,” she ventures.
“Oh, right.” He laughs. “You need to change. I’ll wait in the truck.”
Upstairs in the loft, Holly ducks down as she changes quickly into yoga pants and a gray-and-white Fair Isle sweater, feeling a small flare of irritation. Surely it’s not that bad out. Couldn’t she drive herself? She steps over to the mirror and attempts to tame her morning hair, finds mint gum in her purse to deal with her morning breath, and tells herself that will have to do. The pulled-together, ultracompetitive, brainy girl he met in high school doesn’t seemto exist anymore anyway—and no amount of lying about her current circumstances is going to change that. Holly draws a shaky breath and shoves another piece of mint gum in her mouth for good measure. Then she pulls on her snow boots and parka and heads out across the satisfyingly crunchy snow to Aiden’s truck—but just as she approaches, he opens his window.
“There are reusable shopping bags in a basket by the door,” he calls out. “So you don’t have to get plastic at the store.”
Holly retrieves the reusable bags from the cabin and takes out her phone, quickly texting Ivy, her fingers flying across the screen.Not that it was on the table anyway, but there will be no fling with Eco Superman, she types.Because: 1. This morning he saw me in my Mr. Snuggles pajamas, and not because he slept over. 2. He is the Tracy Flick of environmentalism, not to mention road safety. A bit annoying.
She puts her phone away and gets in the truck. For a while, the only sounds as he drives are his wheels on the snowy road and theshushof his windshield wipers doing their job against the falling flakes. “This truck is so quiet,” she finally ventures into the silence.
He glances at her. “That’s because it’s electric.”
After another few minutes, she tries to make conversation again. “Wow, it really is coming down out there.”
Aiden glances over, and it’s almost as if he’s forgottenshe’s there. “This is just a regular day around here, which is why it’s good to have a truck.”
It happens so suddenly it surprises even her. “Look, I didn’t plan this out!” she explodes, all the pent-up emotion she brought here from the city bubbling forth like the mountain spring Aiden showed her the night before. “I don’t have a car with snow tires! I didn’t bring any food! Ialwaysforget my reusable shopping bags when I go grocery shopping, and I didn’t know what a hybrid woodstove even was until yesterday. I would love a case of bottled water because I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to get water from a stream without falling in. I don’t know what I’m doing! I’m not the smart girl you used to know in high school! But people change, okay?”
He doesn’t say anything in response to her outburst, which makes the fact that it happened at all feel ten times more mortifying. Holly runs her hands over her face and swallows hard, blinking away the tears that have sprung to her eyes. She feels awful. But she’s also aware that something amazing just happened. For the first time since Matt told her the wedding was off and she realized that the happy ending she’d been marching toward for the past ten years of her life was nothing but a mirage, Holly experienced something other than a dull, aching chasm of nothing. Shefelt.
“I’m sorry, Aiden,” she says. “I’m going through a hard time right now. That wasn’t fair.”
He’s silent for another long moment, and she worries he’sgoing to pull over and tell her to get out of his truck. “Actually, itwasfair,” he finally says. “You already told me you were going through some stuff and needed a quiet getaway. You’re on your own during the holidays, and that can’t be all that easy, but I pressed you on it when it was none of my business. I can be a little…blunt, sometimes.” Now there’s something in his tone that makes Holly wonder whathisstuff is. She has her head so firmly buried in her own problems—but Aiden has a life, too. And no one’s life is perfect. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad about anything. I guess I’ve spent a lot of time on my own, doing things my way.”
They’re pulling down a residential driveway now. It winds and meanders through dense rows of evergreens, which shed feather-like flakes of snow in the gentle wind that rustles through their branches. Aiden stops talking and negotiates a particularly sharp turn in the driveway while Holly takes in this startlingly magical new setting. Moments before, they were on a rural road, but now it feels like she’s entered another world—a world out of one of the fairy tales she read as a child. The truck is approaching an old Victorian house that looks like it has been decorated with thick icing rather than snow. It’s tucked into a backdrop of snowy hillsides and more towering pines that look like they’re wearing cozy white fleece jackets. The brick of the home is a soft yellow-gray shade, the gingerbread trim and wraparound porch a vibrant red. It all looks straight out of a Trisha Romancepainting. Holly reads a faded and peeling yellow-and-green-painted sign just beyond the house: “Plaskett’s Christmas Tree Farm.”
“But all the trees here are huge,” Holly says, the intense moment with Aiden all but forgotten now. “Is this a Christmas tree farm for giants?”
“It’s not exactly operational anymore. Carole Plaskett died a decade ago, and George kept it all going as best he could, but he’s pushing ninety now—though you’d hardly know it, he’s doing great. The town uses his trees for all the events we can manage where larger ones can work, in the town square, for example, but mostly this place is just a forest now.”
“A Christmas tree forest,” Holly breathes. “Howmagical.”
Aiden is smiling. “Everyone in town agrees with you on that, which is why we all do what we can to help George stay out here, where he’s happy. We’ve had a few town meetings about it, and everyone is unanimous that he should stay in the house as long as he can—in part because care homes don’t let in cats, and his cat, Mrs. Claws, is the other love of his life, since Mrs. Plaskett died. So we’ve basically divided up his care. He has a trusted live-in personal support worker—Drew Winchester, from town—and then we also make sure he gets at least one visitor per day. We’ve got a rotation going. Which makes it sound like work, and it isn’t. We all love George.”
“You have town meetings about how to take care of someone? That’s really sweet, Aiden.”
“It’s just what the town is like.”
He shuts off the engine and turns to her. “Holly, before we go in, I want to finish the conversation we were just having. We’re adults now, not kids, and life has happened to both of us. In many ways we aren’t the same people—but for the record, I still feel sure you’re the smartest woman I’ve ever met. I’m sorry if I did or said anything yesterday or today to make you feel otherwise.”
His words catch her off guard. But he doesn’t appear to need or want her to respond, even if she could think of something to say. With that off his chest, he reaches into the back seat and pulls out a small doctor’s bag while she feels a sensation that is growing familiar: that of her heart being slowly but steadily warmed by his presence. “Okay, let’s go. George will be happy to meet you. He always loves guests.”
“Why the doctor’s bag?”
“Recently, Mrs. Claws developed a kidney issue. Every three days, she needs what I can only describe as a form of cat dialysis. I’m not sure how that job fell to me.” He shrugs. “So…that’s what I’m here to do.”
“You’re here to give an elderly man’s cat dialysis?”
“Yes.”
“And the entire town has meetings about how best to care for this man and keep him in his home?”
“Yes.”
