Christmas Home (The Coming Home #6)

42. Clyde

forty-two

Clyde

“ H oney, you have to hurry up!” I said to Ruther, who’d volunteered to help put up holiday decorations around the town square.

“I just have to finish this last part,” he said, and I knew I shouldn’t push him. He and Corey were nervous about their upcoming presentation to the town council. We still had thirty minutes before meeting Doc and Amos about the decorating, but I liked to be early to these things.

They were also calling for our first snowfall tonight, and I wanted to walk around the square on my sweet boyfriend’s arm. Not that we were boyfriends. No one had made any declarations or anything like that, but that’s how I secretly thought about the man.

“Is Corey gonna get here in time?” I asked, staring out the condo’s window.

“If he said he will, you can count on him. Besides—” Ruther came up behind me and pulled me against his body. “—you said noon, not eleven thirty.”

“I should’ve said earlier so he’d get here on time.”

Ruther chuckled into my ear, and I shivered. “You’re a worry wart,” he said.

“You’re adopting our sayings fast enough. Come on,” I said and pulled him out of the condo.

We had Thanksgiving this weekend, and I’d opened my big mouth and gotten a big to-do set up. It wasn’t my intention. I had mentioned to Mrs. Cole while the mayor and Amos were in the café that I’d once been in Kansas City over Thanksgiving and didn’t know a soul there, so I walked down to Country Club Plaza, a beautiful outdoor mall-like place.

They were having some big show of turning their Christmas lights on. I’d gone to that and had fallen in love with the whole shebang. “Well,” Doc had said after I finished my story, “if you’re going to organize that, we best get those decorations up.”

I honestly hadn’t meant my story to result in anything, but this town did seem to love making new traditions. Poor Lance had once scheduled a party in the park for his family, and now it was a huge community thing that drew people from all over the state. This being my first holiday season in Crawford City, well, I was open to adopting any traditions, new or old, that the town had to offer.

Chris made fliers at the library, and I helped him distribute them all over town. Chris and Roth were having Thanksgiving at their house. Luckily, no one had mentioned it to Ruther. He was still struggling with thoughts of the place, but since he and Corey were going to be in town, Mrs. Cole said she’d open up the café after the meal for hot cocoa and cinnamon rolls.

Of course, that meant I’d be cooking them while everyone else was stuffing their faces with turkey. Not that I wouldn’t have turkey myself. Corey, Ruther, and I would meet in my apartment, since I could run down and manage the rolls. I’d already bought the turkey, and Corey said he’d do the sides. If it worked out, this would be the best Thanksgiving I’d ever had.

“He’s here,” Ruther said as we walked outside. Corey was dressed in a nice-looking, expensive coat and leather gloves.

“Um, dude, what are you gonna do in all that?” I asked. “You know we’re climbin’ light poles to hang decorations that’re older than any of us.”

Corey laughed. “I’m sorry, Clyde. I…well, I have a date, and before you get upset, I think it’s a date you might approve of.”

I cocked my eyebrow and crossed my arms. “Lucy, you bet’r splain,” I said in my best Ricky Ricardo accent. My mother used to watch I Love Lucy on a rerun loop when I was growing up, and I could quote lines from that TV show at the drop of a hat.

“I was in Mayville finishing up some of our preliminaries regarding building permits and such and ran into the talented and absolutely gorgeous Solace Brown.”

I had no idea who Solace Brown was, but Ruther’s expression suggested he was someone famous. “So, what? You’re going to go hang out with him instead of helping set up the lights for our shindig?” I asked, mostly teasing Corey since I known he’d probably beg out of the manual labor anyway.

“No, I’m going to meet with him and Roth and see if they will perform some of the music from the new album they’re doing together.” He looked at me and shrugged. “Jeez, you don’t read any of the gossip, do you? Roth and Solace are doing a collaborative Christmas project. It’s the first thing Solace has done professionally since he left the business.”

“Cool, and you think they’d perform for our silly lighting ceremony?”

“Apparently, Jennifer Cole and Solace are besties. She’s gonna be in town and invited him for Thanksgiving. So, yes, he’s here, Roth’s here, and I think with a little encouragement and a push from Chris, I can get them to do a little music for your big event.”

I felt excited about the prospect, mostly because it’d probably go over really well with the townsfolk. “Okay, but you know you still owe me some physical labor. I’m not gonna let you wiggle out of this entirely,” I said, causing him to laugh.

I expected to see him walk toward the library, but instead, he walked into the park and toward Ruther’s old home.

I felt Ruther stiffen beside me. “Come on, we have work to do,” I said, pulling him toward where Doc said to meet him and the other volunteers.

We hadn’t really talked about the house since Ruther had come back. I knew it still bothered him, and damn Corey for not making it less obvious where the meeting was taking place.

But decorating offered a temporary distraction, and we were immediately put to work when Doc saw us.

I got volunteered to stand on the cherry picker since I wasn’t afraid of heights. Attaching the ancient street decorations to light poles wasn’t hard. It was mostly just hanging them on old hooks, which apparently stayed on the light poles all year long, and then plugging them in.

The hard part was replacing all the old bulbs that’d burned out while in storage. That was what Doc had Ruther doing. Poor guy. I had chased down a lot of faulty bulbs in my day since my granny had ancient decorations we used when I was little.

My family never decorated much. Mom was always too busy, and Dad too drunk. Granny probably just felt sorry for us, so she made a big to-do about it every year while she was still alive.

I shook off the sadness around all that—no use thinking about the past. I glanced over and saw Ruther’s old home for the first time from my high perch on the cherry picker. It looked like one of those big fancy antebellum houses down South—bright white against the early winter sunlight.

I looked over at where Ruther was laughing with Doc about something and sighed. Both his past and my own seemed to haunt us even to this day. “You done up there?” Todd, who was in charge of driving the cherry picker, called up.

“Yeah, you can move to the next pole,” I said and held on as we moved down the line.

Even as grown men, childhood trauma affected our lives. We couldn’t control what’d happened to us, but it didn’t have to define us either. New traditions help replace the old, ugly ones , I thought as I hung the next decoration.

Ruther and I were making new traditions here and now, replacing the old with something new. I looked around downtown from my bird’s-eye view and saw other decorating happening at all corners, and the sight warmed my heart. This was what holidays should be like, and it was definitely going to be a new tradition for me.