“I don’t know that one,” he said, shaking his head, pulling his attention away from me as though I was the most irritating thing in the room.
“It’s a fairy tale,” I said as I got down, sensing he wanted me off the desk. “But I could go get a chair from the kitchen.”
“I’ll get it,” he said.
He got a kitchen chair for me to sit in, and the way the room and desk and supplies were laid out meant that when I was sitting in it, we were just about thigh to thigh. Which meant that I could feel the warmth of his body, feel the dense lines of leg muscle, as I looked over his shoulder while he fiddled with his paper and pencil and tried to solidify his ideas for the designs.
“Santa’s face is too complicated,” I said, for some reason imagining I was an expert now.
“What do you mean?” he asked, waving his hand over the sketch that had been erased and redrawn at least a dozen times. “It’sSanta.”
“Sure, Santa’s great and all,” I said, mentally squinting for memories of any Christmas I had actually participated in.
What came up was not a tree, or a hearth decorated with boughs of holly, or anything remotely like that. What came up was a red-haired boy and a dark-haired boy smiling as they handed over a small package wrapped in the most wrinkled holiday paper I’d ever seen.
We found ‘em,the red-haired boy said, his voice breathless with excitement.
Yeah, the dark-haired boy said.They were by some trash cans, so we washed ‘em and dried ‘em. Stretched ‘em while they dried so they wouldn’t shrink.
The object of all this attention turned out to be a pair of fingerless gloves made of dark, soft wool. They kept my hands warm, but left me dexterity. I’d worn them for a long time, though I didn’t know where they were now. A thoughtful gift from two people who had, quite possibly, cared for me. Maybe they were Nimble and Star, only I couldn’t be sure. And I wondered where those gloves were now.
“Blue?” Wolfe asked, his voice coming at me as though from a distance. “You okay?”
The expression in his eyes told me that he was willing to give me the last donut if it would make me feel better. “Yes, just dizzy. It’s very warm in here.”
Wolfe reached over my lap to reach the space heater beneath the desk, then turned it off. He’d have to turn it on again in a little while because I could feel the cold coming through the windows, which weren’t as sturdy as the ones in the cabin.
Rubbing my head, I focused on his fuzzy drawing of Santa’s face.
“You don’t want faces,” I said. “Just do—you know, Christmas colors. In patterns. Green and red. Pink and white, like a candy cane. White and blue for snow. White and blue and gold for snow angels. Gold and brown for beeswax candles. Like that. Patterns and colors of Christmas.”
“That’s a good idea,” he said. His gaze was focused on me, and his tone was warm, and I felt my shoulders go down. “How’d you figure that out?”
“Art class?” I said, purely guessing.
He made a sound in his throat. “I have those colors,” he said. “Sure, there’s a lot of pastel in those boxes, but I think we can make it work.”
We worked the whole morning. Wolfe drew patterns, and I practiced my box braids. Once in a while, as I produced several lopsided pink and orange lanyards, he would reach over with a sturdy finger and point where I’d flipped a braid when I should have flopped it.
My box braids grew straight, and Wolfe came up with amazing designs. I particularly liked the candy cane one, where the red thread would circle around the white thread, the result looking a whole lot like a real candy cane. We both made some lanyards with the Christmas colors, lumpy but serviceable. It was well past lunch when Wolfe nodded, as if satisfied that half a dozen holiday-themed lanyards would be enough.
“I’ll show these to Mabel, make sure she’s on board,” he said. “Then we can produce.”
Lunch was sandwiches made of half-frozen slices of ham that Wolfe hadn’t gotten out of the freezer in time. There was onion and mayo and mustard on slices of bread that were two days away from going stale, but we toasted those slices so it was fine. I certainly wasn’t going to complain. Wolfe had been planning for himself but instead had to provide for a second personwho hadn’t done anything except pull on resources that simply weren’t there.
“I’ll make a bunch this afternoon,” I said. “For Mabel.”
“I’d rather she approve of the designs and samples before they get made,” he said. “Besides, I need to work on some things this afternoon. By myself.”
After he’d done the few dishes we'd used, he went out to the workshop, shutting the door firmly behind him. For a long moment, I stood in the open doorway of the cabin as the super cold air rushed inside, skirting past me like someone who was late.
I rubbed my arms and wiggled my toes in the oversized rubber boots. And wondered what I could do to make myself useful. The small cabin was spotless.
I peeked into the bedroom. The bed was made. There was a small shelf of books. A small pile of laundry, neatly folded on the dresser, to be put away. There was nothing out of place. Except me.
Going to the front door, I opened it to see that Wolfe had cleared the little cement landing and sprinkled salt on it, green and white chunks glistening in the cleared area. The sun reflected like blades across the waves of white, and way off in the distance and, as I leaned out, I thought I could see purple humps to the west. Mountains.
We were miles from anywhere in all that vast, white emptiness. Except for a few cottonwood trees and two large lumps that I expected were Wolfe’s truck and maybe a small tractor, there was nothing to break the surface of the snow, and nothing in the silence except stillness that seemed to crawl all over me.
