Page 43 of Sweet Silver Bells
“You can decorate however you wish,” he said, bowing slightly.
Bowed. You bowed.
A full smile spread across Olivia's face, her nose scrunching a little. The confidence his approval gave her sent butterflies into a vortex formation inside his core. He smiled back as she skipped over to the mantle, placing what she could carry of the elongated mistletoe along the back, humming and coaxing the plant into hanging. It grew and slid into several feet of corkscrew-shaped vines, hanging onto the textured walls in the living room once there was no room left.
After a few blinks, yards of green graced the entire living room, wrapping around the beamed ceiling overhead.
“Wow,” Hunter said, “the house is already so different.”
He knew that the forest responded to her voice, her song, but seeing the magic that laced her vocal cords in action with natural light in a familiar space was a new level of surreal. Hunter stared at her in awe, doing his best not to allow his mouth to hang open.
“It’s filled with life now,” she whispered.
Hunter’s mood plummeted, triggered by the words from the lips he so carefully studied.
Life.
Like when Sarah was alive.
It was a sobering sentence, uttered from the first woman he felt pulled to get to know since the tragedy. The haze of Olivia’s song did what it could to push the grief out of his mind, focusing him only on this black-haired beauty, but Hunter couldn’t allow himself to forget. He would never forget.
Am I ready for this? If she wants me, too, can I move forward, Sarah?
“What are your hobbies?” The question felt small, but it tugged him out of the quiet cocoon of his grief.
Smooth, Romeo.
Olivia only blinked at him, her smile waning. “Hobbies?”
“What did you do for fun before you went into the forest, before you decided to never come back out?”
“You want to know me, Hunter?” Her head tilted, considering. “Is that why you sang for me?”
She’s crazy and terrifying; why can’t I let her go?
He nodded.
“What is this box?” she asked, moving her finger across the dusty screen.
“It’s called a TV, a television. It plays stories that move. Should I turn it on?”
Olivia frowned at it and shook her head no. “Your tree doesn’t like it.”
“My tree outside?” Hunter looked out the window.
“It doesn’t like the noise. Its hum is too loud when the sun goes down.”
“I didn’t realize.”
Who would?
“I don’t think I had any hobbies. I worked in my little garden, the one my mother had made for me under the window to my bedroom,” she finally answered his question. “When I was sure that I was alone, I would sing to the plants—the jasmine, the pink alliums, the lavender, and the thick vines that grew up the side of the brick. It was the only time I was allowed to sing, when there was no one there to hear.”
Hunter looked for sadness in his eyes, but he only saw acceptance.
“I studied with my tutor," she continued. "I went to dance lessons. I was regularly fitted for new dresses as I tore mine running barefoot. I was always purposely losing the strings to my corsets.”
Olivia’s focus moved on to the coffee table that was still alive with the seven poinsettia plants. Hunter winced, just a little, imagining the house filled with hundreds of them if she took the same route with the festive red leaves as she had with the mistletoe.
