Nothing else had changed.
It didn’t matter—she felt good for saying what she knew was right. There had to be another explanation. Maybe the camera blanked out, or maybe someone had cut a wire like what happened in the movies. She didn’t know; she just knew that it couldn’t be Roland.
“Good evening,” she said as her Secret Saint partner stepped out from the shadows. She was twenty minutes early, and her partner was already there. It made her smile—she loved that he was dependable and conscientious about his work.
“I’m sorry about the change of plans.” He spoke immediately.
“No. I’m happy about them. I am super thrilled that people will wake up in the morning and see that there’s a tree, and nothing has to be canceled.”
“Yeah. The Christmas tree lighting ceremony is one of my favorite things about Christmas.”
“Mine too,” she said, shocked that he would admit it. And then, the thought went through her head—her Secret Saint partner would be at the Christmas tree lighting ceremony.
Wow. That made her anticipate it even more. She could look around, try to see if she could find someone who was the same size andstature as him?
No. She didn’t want to know his identity, but the idea that he would be there filled her with warmth and anticipation.
“I have my truck parked closer to the town square. I’ve got a tree in the back and a stand to go with it.”
“That’s great. I brought fifteen strands of lights. I heard that there were ten, and I wanted to be safe rather than sorry.”
“All right then. I’ve got a ladder in my truck too, so we should be good to go.”
“Awesome.”
They walked together side by side, toward the town square. She adjusted her cape to make sure it didn’t fall down, and he put a hand on his ski mask, as though to make sure it was still there.
“How was your day?” she asked casually as they strolled. It almost felt like they were just out for an evening walk together. She almost wanted to reach over and thread her fingers through his.
Except…that would be entirely inappropriate. She didn’t even know who he was.
“I actually had a really good day. I mean, not every day is perfect, and…I suppose something happened that could have ruined it. But it didn’t. You know how bad things sometimes become good things?”
“Yeah. I know what you mean.” She didn’t really have anything like that right now, but it was like God gave them something that could totally derail them, but if they just waited, patiently, with their hand in His, He turned things around.
“Yeah, well, that’s kind of what happened. Something that could have been really bad, and then…someone else made it so that, even though they didn’t take the problem away, they made it better,” he said, his voice kind of trailing off like that wasn’t exactly what he wanted to say, but he wasn’t exactly sure how to say it.
“That’s perfect for around this time of year. Christmas is definitely not a season where we want to wallow in all the bad and evil.”
“No. That’s why I was so interested in getting this tree back up. We can sit and mope about the fact that we’ve got a thief among us,or we can just get to work and pull together, and the camaraderie of the community coming together kind of outshines the fact that sometimes there are people who ruin things by displaying a complete and total lack of character.”
She laughed. That was one way to put it anyway. “I think, most of the time, the good outweighs the bad. It’s just that the bad looms so large in our heads.”
“No, I agree. For some reason, it does, but I do think that the good definitely outweighs the bad. Always.”
It took a little wrangling from them to get the tree in position, but it helped that the tree was wrapped. It was much easier to put in a stand that way. And her Secret Saint partner was obviously very familiar with handling Christmas trees. She assumed that he had put a lot of Christmas trees up for people, either as a Secret Saint, or as himself, or both.
Part of her brain wanted to go down that trail, thinking about people in town who would have had a reason to put a lot of trees up. But she didn’t allow it to do so.
Finally, they decided the tree looked straight from all angles, and her partner took his pocketknife out and cut the wrapping off.
The branches burst out, full and beautiful and perfect.
She walked over to where she had set the bags of lights down and got the first bag out.
“Do we start at the top or the bottom?” she asked.
“My mom always started at the bottom, but I don’t know that that is the way the rest of the world does it.”
