Of course, she couldn’t help it when she departed her office. The white fir was a big presence inside the small shop. Its appearance hadn’t changed from when Mason had departed a few days earlier. Although she did add fabric at the bottom of the tree for a makeshift tree skirt. Other than this, the tree decoration was as pitiful as ever.
Natalie cleared garbage from a table nearby, and she couldn’t resist touching a branch, releasing the light spicy scent of citrus in the air. This was getting to be a bad habit. How was she supposed to work without the white fir? January depression was already setting in.
That’s when she saw it.
Tucked between branches was a small blue jay glass ornament. It glinted from the nearby string of lights when she touched it, the wings covered in a dusting of glitter. She turned, searching the faces of the coffee patrons around her and, though she recognized many regular customers, none of them were him.
“Did Mason come in this morning?” Natalie asked Diego.
“Who?” her cousin replied, not raising his head and paying more attention to the drink he was making.
“Big, tall guy with brown hair, beard, has a dimple in his chin.”
Her cousin glanced in her direction, confusion spreading across his face. “I don’t know. I hardly look at anyone. And what the hell is a chin dimple?”
“It was the Nutella latte guy. I think his name was Mason,” Crystal, their coworker, interrupted.
“Oh, yeah,” Diego said once his memory had been jogged. “I think that was forty minutes ago or so. I don’t know. You were in your office. He didn’t ask for you or anything. Just took his drink and left.”
Natalie’s gaze drifted back to the tree. Now that she knew the blue jay was there, she couldn’t see anything else.
