“If you can keep an eye on the tree and let me know if it looks like it might slide off.”
“Sure, will do.”
The descent down the hill felt steeper, but Daniel seemed to have the cart under control.
“Where are your parents now?” she asked.
“Dad’s still in Brooklyn. A few years after the divorce, he met and married a woman named Alison —she’s great, by the way —and they had a daughter,my half-sister Cora.”
“You have a sister?”
“She’s a college sophomore in New York. Her campus is near my apartment. I see her pretty much every week.”
“What does Cora think about your Christmas essay?”
He sighed. “She pushed me to come up here.”
“Ah.”
“Basically, she said I’m wrong and need to get over my Christmas crusade. ‘Be a lover, not a fighter,’ she told me.”
“So she’s good at quotes, too.”
He laughed.
“And your mom?” Penny asked.
“Mom stayed single for a long time after the divorce. When I started college, she moved to Manhattan to be closer to her job and to me. A few years ago, she met a widower named Harry —a good guy, I like him —and last year they got married and moved to California.”
“All the way across the country?”
“To a small town near Monterey on the Central Coast.”
“How often do you see her?”
“Not as often as I’d like. I visited a few months ago.”
For a moment, she was tempted to tell him about her parents’ upcoming move to Oaxaca. But before she could, he said, “Holly told me your parents live in town.”
“They do. They’ve been here for … gosh, forty-two years.”
“So this is where you grew up.”
“Born right here in Heartsprings Valley, six years after my parents moved here. My two brothers — they’re twins —followed two years later.”
They’d reached the bottom of the hill. Daniel let go of the cart and stretched his arms and shoulders. “Oof, stretching feels good. The cart handles well, but the weight sneaks up on you.”
“I’m glad it was you and not me guiding that thing down the hill.”
“It’s a workout, for sure.”
Stretch completed, Daniel wheeled the cart into the barn and, with Abner’s guidance, set the tree in the shaking machine. After the shaker jolted off the snow and ice, he moved the tree to the jet-engine machine and got it tightly wrapped in twine.
“You want the works?” Abner said.
Daniel frowned. “The works?”
Penny jumped in. “Yes, Abner. We’ll need everything.”
