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“Well, with my folks working, they came down here when they could for the holidays. I’d go up there for the summers.”
“You’ve done such a fantastic job with your imagination, then.” Duke nodded his head down toward his front lawn.
His yard was filled with a snowy Christmas scene that came straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Fake snow was sprinkled on the ground of Duke’s spacious front yard. He didn’t have many trees, which made some decorating easy. It was only hard because she had to use what leftover statues she had in storage. Coming up from the driveway, she created a real bridge that looked wooden from afar but was made of a simple hard plastic. Snow covered the railings.
On one side of the bridge, Macy had carefully put statues of fawns playing. Underneath the bridge, she created a small pond. She hid the extension cord underneath the snow and plugged it in around back. On the other side of the bridge was a snowman equipped with a fake carrot that looked real enough to eat. For good measure, she stuck coal from her grill down the front of the middle ball to represent a shirt.
“It’s a great snowman. It looks like one I built my first time seeing snow.” Duke hammered again and then moved closer. He chuckled to himself and shook his head. “My first snow, I sent my sisters a bag of it.”
“Didn’t it melt?”
“Yeah, even with express mail.”
Macy leaned back and laughed, imagining what it might have been like to get that in the mail. Duke was really turning into someone she couldn’t have imagined. He liked his family, he was kind and he was, in his own way, humble. He wasn’t afraid of hard work or taking orders.
“Have you brought them here to see snow?”
Smiling, Duke slowly nodded his head. “I’ve brought my sisters here. My parents haven’t been.”
&nb
sp; “Ever?”
“No. You see, where I’m from, the Christmas countdown starts in October, and my folks are really busy.”
“I told you I’m the type of person who gets excited about the Christmas displays before Halloween,” Macy said, leaning in, listening.
Duke nodded. “I noticed that. There’s something about being home and smelling your mother’s and aunts’ cooking. Bosses hand out double sueldo...”
“Bonuses?”
With a wink, Duke smiled. “Not just any bonus. It’s pretty much what you make in a month. It helps spread cheer for families that might not have enough to spend on their kids. On Noche Buena—Christmas Eve—we go to a special mass called La Misa del Gallo.”
As he filled her with stories of back home, there was a certain sadness in Duke’s voice that Macy couldn’t miss. “You miss them, don’t you?”
“I do, I miss my city. This sunset reminds me of it.”
“Oh yeah? Mao. Did I say that right?”
“You did. But it was also called Ciudad de los Bellos Atardeceres.”
She looked at him with one eyebrow raised for translation.
“The City of the Beautiful Sunsets. But right now, I’m beginning think it’s the company you keep that makes someplace spectacularly beautiful.”
Her heart lurched in her rib cage. She cleared her throat and tucked a nonexistent strand of hair behind her hear. “Maybe you should go back soon.”
“I will one day. Maybe next year I’ll go.”
Again, Macy was reminded that Duke’s being here was just temporary. She was going to miss him when he was gone.
“You didn’t ask me why I like it here the best.”
“Okay,” Macy said slowly, uncomfortably. A part of her wanted to move away, but if she moved too quickly she would fall. She looked to her left, but the late-afternoon sun was setting earlier, leaving a beautiful orange glow that blinded her. Trees hugged Duke’s backyard, and from this angle there was nothing but dense darkness.
Duke placed a hand on the roof, on either side of her hips. His eyes wide, he touched his forehead to hers. “Because if I hadn’t come here, I wouldn’t have met you.”
“If you hadn’t outed Santa...” she started to remind him, but then forgot all that she was going to say when his lips reached out and brushed hers. He pulled his head back to see if she was okay with it. Macy felt such a shock of pleasure that she smiled. She actually smiled at him.
