He paused as he took the bulb from her. “Do you think so?”
She seemed a little surprised at the intensity of his question, and her eyes widened before she looked across at where his mother was sitting down, drinking hot chocolate and talking to the mayor’s wife.
“Yeah, I guess. She just always has been in the thick of everything before, and today she’s sitting down. Just seems odd.”
“I keep telling my siblings something’s wrong, and I keep asking Mom if she wants to make a doctor’s appointment, and everybody keeps stonewalling me. It’s a little vindicating to hear that you at least noticed.”
“Well, I guess if your siblings think she’s okay and your mom won’t go to the doctor anyway, there’s not much you can do.”
“No. There’s not, but it does seem nice to have someone else noticing what I’ve been noticing for the last several weeks.”
They didn’t say anything else as he took the bulb from her hands and hung it on the tree.
“Do you think this will satisfy Mrs. Tucker?” he asked, knowing it was unnecessary.
“I don’t know, I think I would move it over to the left a little bit,” she said, and he looked at the branch, realizing that there was nothing but air to the left of the bulb, and then he looked down at her and saw her eyes twinkling.
Nelly Bushnell was teasing him.
He laughed. “I don’t know. Do you think it’ll look good hanging in midair?” he asked, pretending to consider the idea.
“I don’t know. You’re a magician—you can do it, right?” She grinned. And for just a second, he wondered if she knew that he was the Secret Saint.
Then he dismissed that as a possibility and thought he was just being paranoid.
“I don’t think anyone, magician or no, could satisfy Mrs. Tucker.”
“I agree with you. Because I think that group includes the late Mr. Tucker, who never seemed to be able to do anything right, although I’m holding out hope that eventually she will amend her ways and be satisfied with the sincere effort that people put in, instead of insisting that nothing is correct unless it is done entirely her way to her specifications.”
He smiled. Nelly wasn’t saying anything unkind—she was just pointing out that some people needed to have everything done their way and never really learned to compromise. Probably if Mr. Tuckerhad had a spine and said no to his wife once in a while, she wouldn’t be the way she was. Or maybe it was her parents… Or maybe it was just her, needing to teach herself that kindness was more important than perfection.
“So, I think we just found something we agree on.”
“Mrs. Tucker?” Nelly said as she handed up another ornament.
“No. That kindness is more important than perfection.”
“Oh my goodness. This is getting dangerous. You and me, getting along? Agreeing?”
“You defending me?” he said, his voice slow, and maybe there was a little extra emotion in his gaze.
He thought maybe he was being too vulnerable, because she paused, an ornament dangling midair between her two fingers.
He dropped his gaze to her hand, noticing the slenderness of her fingers and the delicate translucence of her skin.
Her nails were tapered, and she held the bulb gently but firmly. While her fingers looked delicate, they also seemed capable.
Maybe he was focusing on her fingers to keep from focusing on their conversation.
“You know, we had a pretty good competition going for a lot of years, and maybe it turned into something a little bit more than what I had intended, or…maybe I was just hurt and it always came out, but I never thought you were a bad person. Ever. And I didn’t say anything to Pastor Connelly that wasn’t absolutely true,” Nelly finally said, and sometime as she spoke, his eyes went to hers again.
“I appreciated it.” At the time, he’d wondered if he would have been as ardent a defender of her as she had been of him. He’d like to think he would have been, but he wasn’t entirely sure. She had defended him like he was her brother or husband, like she knew him better than she actually did or…just believed in him. It was something that made his heart, his whole soul, feel amazing, to think that she would stand up to the pastor of all people to defend his good name.
“Well, I appreciate it,” he said, taking the bulb from her and hanging it on the tree.
Soft snowflakes had begun to fall, and they shimmered and glittered in the lights that hung around the tree, and they talked about the weather, and whether they would have a white Christmas, and light topics like that, but underneath there was a bond between them that hadn’t been there before.
He finished hanging the bulbs and got off the ladder, and soon the decorating was done, and people congregated around, admiring how beautiful the town square looked, holding steaming cups of hot chocolate, and watching the snow glitter down.
