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As soon as everyone had crowded into the small kitchen, Sara lifted a birthday cake from the box. “I heard this was your birthday, so we all came out to celebrate. What do you think—isn’t it pretty?”
His eyes widened in wonder as he studied the decorations. “Mine?”
Sara had instructed Blenda’s Bakery to decorate the cake with a picture of an upright piano. The baker had gone a little further, adding musical notes that Leon probably didn’t even recognize, but the overall effect was bright as a rainbow.
When she lit the candles and started a chorus of “Happy Birthday,” his hands trembled and tears trickled down his cheeks.
The women exchanged glances. “I wonder how long it’s been since someone did this for him,” Donita, the housekeeper, whispered.
“Who knows? Maybe never. But I think we’d better mark our calendars for next year,” Linda, his social worker, whispered back. “Poor guy.”
Leon’s face was lit with sheer delight as he consumed his second bowl of cake and ice cream, but when Sara brought three brightly wrapped packages out of the cardboard box, his expression changed to awe.
He opened the first with the excited haste of a child, then lifted the lid to reveal a dozen brightly colored fishing lures. He smiled broadly.
“Careful—they’re sharp!” Sara winked at him. “I noticed your fishing rods on the front porch and figured a fisherman never has enough of those lures. Think you can catch some big ones?”
He nodded vigorously.
From the other packages she gave him, he withdrew new coveralls, several soft plaid shirts, and new socks. The last box held a dozen Twinkies. Laughing, he gathered up his new clothes and hugged them fiercely.
“One more thing,” Sara announced. She pulled a five-dollar bill from her pocket and smoothed it out on the table. “Tomorrow, we’re coming back, and you can put on your new clothes. Linda and I are taking you downtown so you can buy Twinkies on your own. But better yet, get fresh things like milk and bread and meat. Won’t that be fun?”
“By myself?”
“Soon, by yourself. If you’re going to stay out here on your own, you have to cooperate with these ladies. You need to learn a few things, and you also need a little help. What do you think?”
He’d folded his arms across his chest and lifted his chin as she spoke. Now his gaze drifted back to the cake and ice cream and the women who were all giving him encouraging smiles. After a long hesitation he nodded.
Feeling as if she’d just won a gold medal, Sara stood and gave him a quick hug. Now she knew he’d be okay. “I feel like singing another round of ‘Happy Birthday,’ don’t you?”
* * * *
THE RYANSVILLE CHRISTMAS committee marshaled the cooperation of nearly every able-bodied person in town, and by the end of the Thanksgiving weekend, greenery and banners hung from every lamppost on Main, while decorations blossomed in store windows.
Homeowners competing for prizes were filling their yards with Santas and sleighs and reindeers, and had enough lights on their houses to surely make them visible from Mars.
And Nathan, caught in a weak moment, found himself helping on one of Yvonne’s committees nearly every night. It hadn’t been her batting eyelashes and flirtatious smiles that caught him. It had been the earnest pleadings of the little Shueller boy. The kid, he thought, had a great career ahead of him in either politics or law.
Now he and Josh stood outside the town’s community center in a stiff wind from the northwest, with snowflakes pelting them like icy buckshot at four-thirty on Wednesday afternoon.
The heavy skies were already darkening and a good four inches of snow was predicted with blowing and drifting, followed by windchills in the minus-twenties.
An excellent night for snuggling up under a pile of blankets. Maybe someday, with the woman who’d taken over most of his waking thoughts and all of his dreams.
During the six days since Thanksgiving, he and Sara had cross-country skied, snowmobiled, and gone out for dinner twice.
The best of all had been the lazy Sunday they’d spent at his house, making lasagna and salads, then playing gin rummy and Scrabble and watching old movies.
Unlike most of the women he’d dated, Sara preferred quiet nights alone or being outdoors to dinner and dancing at fine restaurants—probably the first woman in years who preferred his company to his bank account.
No matter how much time they shared, he wanted more.
“Come on!” Josh peered at him over an overflowing box of Christmas tree lights. “We get to do the trees over by the library.”
When the boy staggered under the weight of the box, Nathan lifted it from his arms. “Maybe we should wait until tomorrow, kid.”
“But it’s easier to tell where the lights are if we do it when it’s sorta dark out. And my mom says the weather will be really bad tomorrow.”
