Текст книги "My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories"

Автор книги: Stephanie Perkins

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

The apartment had two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen, a dining room, and a living room. When the front rooms were clear, North explained their next move. They were standing in the center of the small dining room. Marigold had never stood on this particular patch of carpeting before.

“We’re gonna turn this room—since it’s divided from the others—into your storage space. We should be able to fit almost everything in here, including the stuff from your bedrooms, and we’ll stack the rest alongside that wall.” He pointed toward the longest wall in the living room.

Marigold frowned.

“It’s all about how it’s packed and stacked,” he said. “What I saw when I arrived was a complete mismanagement of space.”

She understood his logic, but after how she’d been living for the last year, she still couldn’t imagine anything different. Or, she had to acknowledge, maybe she wasn’t allowing herself to imagine it. Maybe that would only lead to disappointment.

“The movers did that,” she said. “They’re the ones who put everything up here.”

“But you left it.”

Marigold was too ashamed to answer his unasked question. Why? She wasn’t even sure she understood the full answer. Thankfully, North was already walking through the apartment again. “We’ll need the biggest, flattest pieces first,” he said.

“Like the china cabinet?”

“Exactly.”

They carried it together, stiffly and clunkily, but the instant it was in its new place, Marigold felt … lighter. The sliding-glass door was free and clear. She could see outside—the tree lot, the grocery store, the December sky. The crescent moon. She could step onto her balcony, if she wanted. If it weren’t so cold and windy.

And now there was a place for the tree.

“What’s next?” It was hard to downplay her excitement. “The bookcases?”

North shook his head. “That’s an empty china cabinet. Wasted real estate.”

“Oh.” Marigold hesitated. The cabinet usually held a mixture of hand-thrown pottery crafted by her mother’s friends and heirloom china that her grandparents had actually brought here from China. But she had no idea where these items were currently located. “I’m not sure where we packed the nice dishes,” she admitted.

“We don’t need the nice dishes. We just need to fill it.”

North pointed out the correctly sized boxes and bags, and they used them to pack the interior. They moved on quickly, removing the large farmhouse table from her mother’s bedroom and resting it on its side across from the china cabinet. Into this arrangement, they inserted the bookcases—stacking their shelves with still-packed boxes of books—and two overstuffed living room chairs. A porch swing, two rocking chairs, four patio chairs, a lawn mower, and half of the regular dining room chairs were further tucked in with expert precision.

The way North stacked everything—some things upside down, some things on their sides—was Tetris-like. Blocky. Stable. Every piece of furniture was padded with linens and towels, and every remaining crevice was jammed with knickknacks and small appliances. Everything was dusted before it was slid into place. North only vetoed a handful of items—a lamp, a table, a rug, and a few others. Those were set aside.

The air was cleaner. Emptier. As more space was created, Marigold became more aware of her breath, became aware that she could breathe. Her lungs felt hungry.

“What about the couch?” she asked. “It’s still in my bedroom.”

North mopped his forehead with his shirtsleeve. He was sweating. “It’s going in the living room so you can use it.”

The thought—that incredibly simple thought—felt peculiar.

“You guys need something to sit on beside your beds. Somewhere to relax when you come home from work.” He unbuttoned his red-plaid flannel shirt. “Something to sit on while you admire my tree.”

Holy mother of Earth. Marigold was thankful she was already flushed from exertion. She tried to remain focused, but the sight of North undressing was monumentally distracting. “You keep calling it your tree.”

He grinned. “I grew it, didn’t I?”

“I bought it, didn’t I?”

“And I’m very glad you did.” North tossed aside the flannel shirt. He was now wearing a black T-shirt … with an NPR logo on it.

Marigold was doubly tongue-tied.

She knew, on some level, that North must like her. Guys just didn’t do things like this if they didn’t like you. But this was the first out-loud acknowledgment that maybe he was here for something more than utilizing his superhuman organizational skills.

It was thrilling.

And then … there was the T-shirt. National Public Radio seemed like something a boy who liked indoor activities would be interested in. Maybe they had more in common than she thought they did, more than a mutual appreciation for verbal sparring.

But the fact that Marigold hadn’t immediately given him a smartass retort took North’s own smartassery down a notch. He looked unsure of himself, like maybe he’d misread the situation. Maybe she wasn’t interested in him.

Oh, Marigold was interested.

Marigold was definitely interested.

She gave him a cocky smile. “NPR, huh?”

Her expression made him straighten his shoulders, and Marigold couldn’t help but notice—really, really notice—the shape of his upper body. The fact that it had a shape. But as her question sunk in, he grew embarrassed. He turned around to shove a shoebox filled with nuts and bolts into one of the last remaining crevices.

“I got it during their last pledge drive,” he said, meaning the T-shirt.

“Mm-hm,” Marigold said.

“I like keeping up with the news. I like learning things.”

“My mom listens to NPR.”

His back was still turned. “So I should have asked this earlier, but are there any boxes of Christmas”—he shook his head—“Yule decorations that we should be looking for?”

He was changing the subject instead of playing along. Interesting. Until now, he hadn’t seemed like someone who could resist a comeback.

“Or are solstice trees bare?” he continued drily. “The way nature made them?”

There was the North she knew. But … she didn’t know him, did she? Marigold was suddenly struck by how badly she wanted to know him.

She moved toward him. “We decorate ours.”

North turned around, not realizing how close she was standing behind him. He didn’t step backward, and his confidence didn’t waver. “So you’re saying there’s a box.”

His voice was so deep that it rattled through her. “Yeah. There are two.”

North smiled. “Care to describe these boxes?”

“One is for an old Fisher-Price castle. The other is for a Fisher-Price Tudor house.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen those yet.” His voice had gotten even deeper, somehow. Even—okay, she could admit it—sexier. Deep and sexy … about Fisher-Price boxes.

She turned away from him, smiling to herself. “Can I get you something to drink? Water? Coffee? Tea?”

He seemed amused by her amusement. Even if he didn’t understand it. “Yeah. Coffee, thanks.”

The kitchen was a wreck, but—unlike how the rest of the apartment had been—it contained more room to maneuver around in. As Marigold brewed the coffee, North grabbed a round patio table and two dining room chairs, and he made a cozy new dining area in one corner of the living room. Marigold usually ate standing up or at her desk. She couldn’t remember the last time she and her mother had eaten together.

North appeared behind her, pointing at her coffee-making device. “What’s that?”

“A French press.”

“Fancy.”

She shrugged. “My mom doesn’t believe in electric coffeemakers.”

“At least she believes in coffee.”

Marigold laughed as she removed two mugs (handmade, her mother also believed in supporting local artists) from the cabinet. “How do you take yours?”

“Black,” he said.

“Figures. A hearty lumberjack like yourself.”

North snorted.

Marigold grinned. “I take mine black, too.”

He leaned over the island in the kitchen, leaned his tall body toward hers. “And here I had you figured for an herbal-tea kind of girl.”

“Right.” Marigold rolled her eyes. She handed him his coffee. “Because of the restaurant.”

“Because of the solstice. And your name. And this pottery.” He held up the mug. “What’s the restaurant?”

She’d forgotten that she hadn’t told him. It seemed like he should already know. Marigold sat down at the patio table, and North sat across from her. “My mom owns a late-night vegan comfort-food restaurant downtown,” she said in one breath. “Yes, I know. It’s very Asheville.”

“Henrietta’s? Is your mom Henrietta?”

Marigold’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.

North shrugged. “There aren’t many late-night restaurants—and there aren’t any in Sugar Cove—so I’ve wound up there after a ton of movies and shows. Everyone knows your mom,” he added. “Or, at least, her reputation. Helping out the homeless and all. It’s pretty cool.”

Marigold had expected him to tease her. Instead, she felt a lump in her throat. It had been awhile since she’d heard anyone speak well of Henrietta. Her mother’s employees were as sick of the sadness and anger as Marigold was. But her mother had built her reputation on feeding everyone well, regardless of how much money they had in their pockets. Included on her menu was a simple beans-and-rice dish that customers paid for on a sliding scale. Those who paid more than the dish was worth, their money went toward those who had little or none. People were surprisingly good at paying it forward.

“Thank you.” Marigold could barely speak the words.

“Are you a vegan?”

“Not even a vegetarian. But,” she admitted, “I eat mainly vegan by default. I’m not allowed to have meat in the house, so I used to eat it in the school cafeteria.”

“School-lunch meat. That’s desperation.”

Marigold smiled. “You have no idea.”

“So … you aren’t a student anymore?”

“Not since I graduated high school. You?”

“Same,” North said. “How old are you?”

“Nineteen. You?”

“Same.”

They smiled at each other, shyly. Pleased. The moment grew bigger and bigger, until it was too big. North shifted in his seat. “I was a vegetarian for a few months. I had to go back to eating meat, because I needed that level of protein and energy for the farm work. But the moment I’m out of here, I’m gonna try it again.”

“You aren’t interested in the family business?”

“No way. You?”

Marigold shook her head. “The restaurant gene did not pass on to me. My grandparents also own a restaurant,” she explained. “Down in Atlanta.”

“That’s cool. My grandparents started our tree farm.”

“Family owned and operated since 1964,” she said, quoting their sign.

Something flashed inside North’s eyes. As if he were feeling the same thing she’d felt when he’d spoken highly of her mother. Pride, maybe relief. “That’s right,” he said.

“So why don’t you want to be a farmer, North Drummond?”

“Just not in me.” He sipped his coffee. “Like you and restaurant-ing, I suppose.”

But there was something in his tone that he couldn’t quite hide. Something that was more distressed than indifferent.

“So,” she asked again. “Why don’t you want to be a farmer, North Drummond?”

He smiled grimly. “It’s true that I’m not interested in it. But Nick—my older brother who was supposed to inherit the farm—it turned out that he didn’t want it, either. About two years ago, he left in the middle of the night. Packed up everything he owned and moved to Virginia to live with his girlfriend. Now they breed designer dogs. Puggles and Labradoodles.”

Marigold was struck by the excessive bitterness in his pronunciation of these words. “But … wasn’t he getting out, like you want to do?”

“My dad had just been diagnosed with Parkinson’s.”

“Shit. Oh, shit. I’m sorry.”

North stared at his coffee mug. “It’s getting harder for him to work, and my parents have been relying on me more and more. They want me to take over the farm, but my sister is the one who actually wants it. My parents are good people, but … they’re kind of old-fashioned. There was a big fight last summer. Now Noelle’s gone, too.”

Marigold wished she could reach through the table to hug him. She understood everything—the love, the shame, the needing to stay until things were okay again.

“I’ve been trying to convince her to come back—and trying to convince my parents to give her the farm—so that I can leave.”

“Why can’t you just leave anyway? Like your brother and sister did?”

“The farm barely turns a profit as it is. My parents would go broke without me.”

Marigold swallowed. She’d made the same decision. She had also put her future on hold. “I—I’m staying home to help out, too.”

North looked up. His hardness, his edge, dissolved. “Does this have something to do with your father?”

“It has everything to do with my father.”

“And the reason why you’ve been living like this?”

Now Marigold was the one staring at her coffee. “You know those stories about women who didn’t know that their husbands had secret, second families?”

“Yeah.”

Marigold shrugged.

There was a beat. “Are you serious? You can’t be serious.”

“In Charlotte. A wife and two daughters.”

North looked appropriately shocked.

“They weren’t happy to hear about our existence either,” Marigold said. “And now he’s living there. With them. Making amends. To them. Maybe starting a third and fourth secret family, I don’t know. We found out just before Christmas, last year.”

North shook his head. “I didn’t know things like that happened in real life.”

Marigold hadn’t known either.

“So why didn’t you get to keep your house?” he asked.

“Because my mom and I … we were the second family.”

North’s eyes widened with understanding.

“He married the other woman before he ever met my mom. We were his exotic, wild-child, hippie side project.” Marigold spat this like poison. “So now his wife, his legal wife, is taking all the money in lawsuits. He had to sell our house, and we had to move.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t even know what to say.”

She pushed away her mug. “We’re gonna find a new house this spring.”

“And … you’ll stay here in Asheville? Helping your mom?”

Marigold had almost forgotten why she’d approached North in the first place. Almost. She’d decided that even if he couldn’t do it—or, more likely, even if she never asked him to do it—having another person to talk to was enough. Tonight was enough.

“It’s hard, you know?” she said. “I love this town. I love its art deco architecture and its never-ending music festivals. Its overly friendly locals. But … there’s no future for me here. No career. When my mom’s settled, I’m moving to Atlanta.”

North frowned. “To work with your grandparents?”

“No.” But her smile returned, because he’d remembered. “Animation.”

She scooted forward with a new eagerness and told him about the studios that were only three-and-a-half hours away. How the market in Atlanta had been growing for years—how the major television networks were all creating shows down there. She told him about her YouTube channel, her success, her aspirations. Marigold told him everything. Everything except the crucial role that she’d wanted him to play in this.

North leaned in. “Do you want to go to college for that? For animation?”

“I want to work. I’m ready to work.” Marigold paused. “Do you want to go to college?”

“Yeah. I do…” But he trailed off, embarrassed.

Marigold leaned in. Mirroring him.

His words came out in a rush as he gestured at his T-shirt. “I know it’s a dying art and all that, but I want to study broadcasting. I want to work in radio.”

An alarm sounded, full blast, inside Marigold’s head.

“Someone once told me I had a good voice for radio,” he continued. “I’ve never been able to get it out of my head. And I love radio. And podcasts. I listen to This American Life and WTF and Radiolab all day long, obsessively, while I work.”

“You do have a good voice. You have an amazing voice.”

North looked taken aback by her level of enthusiasm, but it was too late to stop.

“I have a confession,” she said. And the rest of her story poured out, the one that revealed that this whole night had been about the sound of his voice.

North was frozen.

“—and I’ve clearly freaked you out, and I’m totally mortified, and now I’m going to stop talking,” she said. And now I’m going to die.

There was a long and painful silence. And then North’s features slid back into their usual state of composure. “First of all,” he said, as smoothly and sardonically as anything he’d said yet, “I’m flattered that you came looking for me and not a tree. This shows excellent taste on your behalf.”

The corners of Marigold’s mouth twitched. “I came looking for your voice.”

“Second of all, I can’t believe it took you an entire month—not to mention, me physically entering your apartment—for you to ask me that question. Which, by the way, you still haven’t formed into an actual query, so I couldn’t possibly give you my reply until you do.”

Marigold sat back and crossed her arms.

North grinned. “Obviously, I don’t have anything else to do tonight. So I can sit here as long as it takes.”

“North,” she said through gritted teeth. “Would you please consider lending me your voice for my new video?”

“That depends.” He placed his hands behind his head. “How much does it pay?”

Marigold’s heart staggered. She couldn’t believe it, but she’d never even thought about paying him. Her friends and coworkers had always done it for free. But of course she should pay him. Of course.

“Marigold,” he said, after she’d been silent for twenty seconds. “I’m kidding.”

“What?”

“I’m kidding. Of course I’ll do it. It sounds awesome.”

“I could pay you in food,” she said quickly. “From Henrietta’s.”

North stared at her. “You know what’s the strangest thing about tonight? Tonight, being an astoundingly strange night?”

“What’s that?”

“That you still don’t realize I’m willing to do anything, anything”—he gestured in a full circle around them—“to stay in your company. You don’t need to pay me.”

Marigold’s heart was in her throat. It’d been over a year since she’d been in a situation like this with a boy. A handsome boy. Suddenly, she couldn’t think straight.

North nudged one of her boots with one of his.

Her boot—her foot—tingled.

A pounding on the door startled her out of her trance. “Keep it down in there! Some of us are trying to sleep!”

“Jesus,” North said. “She doesn’t stop.”

“Never.” Marigold got up and trudged to the door.

“I mean, this is the quietest we’ve been since I arrived.”

“She does this even when my mom and I are asleep. She’ll wake us up.” Marigold opened the door and plastered on a fake smile. “Ms. Agrippa. How can I help you?”

“It’s midnight. I can’t sleep with this racket—” Ms. Agrippa cut herself off. “Oh my lord! You’ve been robbed!”

“No!” Marigold took a step forward.

Ms. Agrippa bolted back—one shaking hand on her chest, the other pointing at North. “That man! There’s a strange man in your apartment!”

“That’s my friend.” Marigold steadied her voice. “He works at the tree lot next door. You saw him up here earlier? He’s been helping me clean. Doesn’t it look nice?”

“Do you need me to phone the police?” Ms. Agrippa hissed. “Are you in danger?”

“Really and truly, everything’s fine. That’s North. He’s my friend.”

North waved.

Ms. Agrippa’s expression changed. “Does your mother know he’s here?”

“Of course she does,” Marigold said firmly. Better to lie about that one. “Good night, Ms. Agrippa.”

“Will he be leaving soon? You’ve been so loud tonight—”

“Yes, Ms. Agrippa. We’re sorry to have disturbed you.”

Marigold wanted to slam the door shut, but she waited. Stared down her neighbor. It had gotten chillier outside, brisker. It felt … almost like snow weather. At last, Ms. Agrippa relented and headed down the stairwell. Marigold exhaled.

“Hello, friend,” North said, right behind her ear.

Marigold startled.

And then she chanced it—she bumped his chest with her shoulder, lightly. North looked delighted. “Is that…” He sniffed the air. “Snow. It smells like snow.”

“I was thinking the same thing.”

It didn’t snow often here, but when it did, most of it happened after New Year’s. They’d only had one brief snowfall, back in November. The flakes didn’t even stick.

“I love snow.”

They said it at the same time. They glanced at each other and smiled.

“I hope it snows,” Marigold said.

“I’ve always felt lucky to live someplace where snow is rare, you know? It’s the rareness that makes it so special.”

“That could be said about a lot of things.”

“True.” North stared at her. His smile widened.

Marigold felt it, too. The rareness, the specialness, of North. Of this night. She wished it could last forever.

“Oh, no.” The wonderful thought had triggered a nerve-wracking one. She pushed North inside. “My mom! If it snows, she’ll close the restaurant early.”

They glanced at the lingering items in the hallway—and the tree—and hurried back to work. As fast as they could, faster than Marigold would have thought possible, everything was stacked flat against the living room’s longest wall.

Only the tree remained.

North hefted it inside—a groom carrying his bride across the threshold—and placed it proudly before the sliding-glass door. As he adjusted it in its stand, Marigold vacuumed away the fallen needles. She did another quick sweep of the bedrooms while he rearranged the last of the furniture—the couch, a coffee table, the Moroccan end table, a glass lamp—into an agreeable living space.

She was almost done when she spotted them in a newly cleared corner of her own bedroom. The Fisher-Price boxes.

Marigold carried them into the living room as if they were sacred.

“Look,” she said.

North turned on the lamp, and Marigold’s heart jolted. The area he’d created—everything on top of her favorite floral tufted rug—looked warm and snug and inviting. He’d even found the rainbow afghan that they used to wrap around themselves while watching television. He’d draped it over the back of the couch.

It looked perfect there. Everything looked perfect.

“It’s not much…” he said.

“No. It is.” This was, perhaps, the greatest gift she’d ever received. Her eyes welled with tears. “Thank you.”

North smiled. “Come on. Let’s decorate your tree.”

Marigold laughed, dabbing at her eyes with her sweater sleeve. “Oh, so it’s my tree now? I’ve earned it?”

He pretended to look shocked, as if it had been a slip of the tongue. Marigold laughed again. She felt happy—the kind of happy that reached every part of her body—as she opened the first box. It was filled with neatly bound strings of white and blue lights.

North peered over her shoulder. “Ha! Go figure.”

“What?”

It was as if she’d caught him doing something wrong. He looked uneasy, but he answered with the truth. “I was surprised by how carefully these strands were put away. Christmas lights are usually this big, tangled mess. But this—this—is the tidiest thing in your entire apartment.”

“When we put those away two years ago,” Marigold said, “our lives were a lot different.”

North removed a string of pale blue lights and began to unwind them. “You can tell a lot about a person by looking at the state of their surroundings.”

“If that’s true,” she mused, “then my life is looking significantly better.”

“But does it feel any better?”

Marigold met his gaze. She smiled. “Without a doubt.”

*   *   *

They strung the tree with lights. Tons of lights. Marigold wanted to use all the lights, and when they were done, it shone like a beacon—marvelous and sparkling and bright.

North opened the second box and removed a pinecone on a white ribbon. He raised an eyebrow.

“You won’t find any Santas or angels in there,” Marigold said. “This is a scientific household, remember?”

He laughed.

Each ornament was bundled in tissue paper. They gently unwrapped them one by one—red cardinals and spotted deer and black bears. Suns and moons and stars. Apples and pears and roses. And snowflakes. Lots and lots of silver snowflakes.

“Did you know,” North said, as he hung a feathery blue jay, “that real trees are better for the environment than fake ones? A lot of people think the fake ones are better, because you have to throw out the real ones every year, but real trees produce oxygen and provide wildlife habitats while they grow, and then, when they’re done, they can be ground into mulch to fertilize the earth. While the plastic ones just … rot in landfills. They can take hundreds of years to decompose.”

Marigold waited until he was done with his rant. “Yeah,” she said. “I know.”

“Oh.” North stilled. A tiny skunk swayed on his index finger.

But she understood why he’d felt the need to tell her. She nudged his arm. “I’m glad you work for the good guys, North.”

“I am the good guys,” he said, trying to regain some swagger.

As the final ornaments bedecked the tree, Marigold glanced out the sliding-glass door. Tiny snowflakes were swirling and pirouetting down from the sky.

Marigold paled. “Did you know it was snowing?”

“It must have just started.”

“You have to go. My mom will be shutting down the restaurant now. She’ll be home soon.”

She scrambled, shoving the tissue paper back into the boxes. She felt him staring at her, wanting to know something—something she wanted to know, too—but they were out of time. He tucked away the boxes as she rushed into the kitchen. She pulled out a foil-covered serving dish from on top of the refrigerator and ran back to the tree. She shoved the dish at North’s chest. “Take these home, please. As a thank-you.”

His face was illuminated in blue and white light. “What are they?”

“Cookies. Vegan gingerbread ladies. It’s all we have, but they’re really good, I promise. You’d never know they didn’t have butter in them.”

“Gingerbread ladies?”

Marigold shrugged. “My mom isn’t really into men right now.”

“That’s understandable,” North said. “The last one was pretty bad.”

“The worst.”

“And … how do you feel about them?” he asked carefully. “Are you okay?”

She was surprised at how much the truth—the simple, obvious truth—hurt to speak out loud. “I’ve been better,” she finally said.

North stared at her. The lights of the tree glimmered in his warm brown eyes. “I’m so sorry, Marigold.”

Her heart thumped harder.

North took the serving dish. “Would it … would it be okay if I called you sometime? I mean, if you’re still interested in the voice work, I’d be happy to help. I could stop by after a shift. I’ll need to bring this back, anyway.” He lifted the dish in an uncharacteristically awkward gesture.

North could have kissed her. He could have done it, he could have swooped in, but he was being respectful. It made her want to devour him whole. Or be devoured whole. She grabbed the serving dish, shoved it aside, and placed one hand on each side of his face. She pulled him down into her.

She kissed him.

He kissed her back.

Their mouths opened, and he tasted clean and healthy and new. He pulled her closer. Her fingers slid down the nape of his neck. Down to his chest. He lifted her up, and her legs locked around his waist, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. As if they had rediscovered something essential that they didn’t realize they’d lost. They kissed deeper. They kissed like this, her body wrapped around his, for minutes.

When she finally slid back down to the ground, both of their knees were shaking.

“I’ve been wanting to do that all night,” North said.

His voice, so close to her ears, resonated inside of her. It filled her. “I’ve been wanting to do that all month.”

“I want to do that for the rest of the month.” North kissed above her lips, below her lips. “And after.”

“And after,” she agreed, as their mouths slipped over each other again.

“Okay, okay.” She laughed, a minute later. “You have to go. Now.”

They kissed some more.

“Ahhhhhhh,” he shouted as he pulled away. “Okay! Now!”

North’s hair was scruffled and wild. Marigold’s braid was halfway unpinned. They were laughing again. Dizzy with discovery—the wonder and thrill of connection. She tossed him his flannel shirt. “Don’t forget this.”

He threw it on over his T-shirt. “So what do you think your mom will say when she comes home and sees all of this?”

“Honestly?” Marigold shook her head as she repinned her hair. “She’ll be pissed. But then … I think she’ll be glad. Maybe even happy.”

“I hope so.”

“Here, give me your phone.” Marigold tugged hers out of a pocket and tossed it to him. He did the same. They added each other’s numbers. “Text me when you get home, okay? Let me know you got home safely.”

North smiled. “I will.”

They kissed again beside the front door.

“I’m working tomorrow night,” he said, between kisses.

“Thank God.”

“I know. I’ve never been so happy to work for my parents.”

They laughed.

“Until tomorrow, Marigold Moon.” And he kissed her one last time.

Marigold peeked through the sugary frost that was growing, shimmering, on her balcony door. She watched North cross into the lot next door. His entire figure looked perfect from here, like something she ached to scoop up and cradle in her hands. As he climbed into the seat of his truck, he glanced up at her window.

He smiled when he saw her figure. He waved.

Her heart leapt as she waved back. She watched his truck until it disappeared. The tree lot’s lights were off and its fires were out. Through the dull glow of the grocery store, she could see that the evergreens were coated in a fine white dusting. Everything outside was cold and empty and dark.

There was a rattling of keys at her door.

Marigold turned around. Everything inside was warm and cozy and bright. She had needed North’s help to create her mother’s present, but this was the gift—a beautiful apartment. And a beautiful tree.

The doorknob turned.

“Mom,” Marigold said. “Welcome home.”