The Christmas Box (The Box Books #2)

4. December 3

December 3

Travis

N o matter how much time I spend at the manor, leaving always feels like an escape. Partly because I still don’t know this man who’s never acknowledged his poor parenting or the fact that I got out from under his roof the second I turned eighteen and never came back. So after having a quick lunch with Dad, as I move past the nurse’s station, waving to Helen and a younger redheaded nurse named Gabbi, I suffer a familiar eagerness to reach the door and burst back out into the sunlight.

That’s when a hand closes over my wrist, halting me in place. I look down to see a woman in her forties with dark, shoulder-length hair and glasses, in a wheelchair. She’s wearing fleece pants sporting images of Olaf from Frozen. She says something, but I can’t understand her slurred speech. It makes me feel bad, and on edge, to have to ask, “Can you repeat that?”

She does, but I have no idea what she’s saying. I feel even worse now. I must be looking at her like a lost puppy. And she’s looking at me with exasperation in her eyes.

Undaunted, however, she tugs at my arm as she maneuvers the wheelchair through a doorway into what I’m guessing is her room. As much as I’d rather not go in, I’m not mean enough to pull away. The room is tidier than many, and blatantly girlish with a pink flowered comforter on the bed topped by a lavender-and-white-yarn afghan. Small plush animals, only three or four inches tall, line the back of a small, wooden writing desk. Above the bed on the wall hang pink-and-purple wooden letters from a craft store that spell out Shannon .

She’s still talking to me in words I don’t understand, and now I’m forced to tell her, “I’m sorry—I just don’t know what you’re saying.”

She rolls her eyes, like I’m an imbecile. Maybe I am. Then she wheels herself over to a chest of drawers in front of the room’s one window, points to it, mimics pushing it, and then gestures to a spot about five feet away.

“Ohhhh,” I say, at last understanding. “You want me to move the chest for you.”

Her eyes grow wide as she nods profusely. I can almost hear her thoughts: Finally, you get it, dummy.

I have no idea what’s so urgent about this, but maybe if you’re stuck in here and you see a guy who looks like he can move the piece of furniture you need moved, you don’t let him get away. There were times I felt helpless as a kid, but this has me thinking about helplessness in a whole different way. It’s not the first time a resident here has boldly insisted I help them in some way. I guess they don’t have the luxury of being subtle or polite.

So I shove the chest until she seems happy with where it is. And although it’s muffled-sounding to me, I am able to make out the words when she says, “Thank you.”

Then, as if I’m not still standing there, she rolls her chair over to the window, angling it just so, and peers out. I glance out, too. Cardinals flit around in the snow, looking like a living Christmas card. Now I get it. She wanted to sit by the window, but the chest was in the way. I’ve never wanted to sit by a window that badly. But then again, I’ve never not been able to.

Pretty sure she’s done with me, I lift an awkward wave and say, “Enjoy the birds,” and exit back into the hallway with its usual cluttered array of wheelchairs and walkers.

“I see you met Shannon.”

I spin to find Helen approaching behind me, wearing the same inviting smile as usual.

“Yeah, I moved a chest of drawers for her. I felt bad, though,” I admit. “I couldn’t understand her when she spoke.”

Helen just pleasantly head-shakes it away. “She’s used to it. She had a stroke.”

After seeing how it left someone who probably thought she was in her prime, I wince at the word. “She seems young for that.”

Helen shrugs, walking alongside me now. “It happens. She’s a sweet soul. Lonely. Her family doesn’t visit much.”

“That sucks.”

Helen just nods. “It’s that way for a lot of the residents. They get forgotten. Left behind.” She reaches down to give my hand a quick squeeze. “That’s why it’s so good that you’re here for your dad. I know it’s disrupting your life right now. But you’re a good son.”

Such a gross inaccuracy makes me draw back slightly—accepting wrongful praise doesn’t feel right. “I only came because Wally asked me to. In fact, he pretty much insisted. So I’m not that great of a son—trust me.”

But she still seems set on letting my inadequacies slide. “You’re here. Pretty much every day. If you’re not a good son, you’re faking it well.”

We’re nearing the front door now, so rather than argue the point, I just say, “See you tomorrow, Helen.”

“You probably don’t realize this,” she goes on, “but for many people here, I’m the last face they see, the one holding their hand as they die. It’s heartbreaking.”

Everything here is heartbreaking. But I don’t tell her that. She and the rest of the staff do everything they can for the people in their care.

“That’s why it matters,” she continues as I stop to look back at her. “That you’re here. One less person has to pass from this world feeling alone.”

As I cross the snowy parking lot to my truck, I know I’m still faking it, just like she said. And I can’t help thinking my dad is doing a good job of faking the good-father routine, too. No one knows the details of our history other than Mom walking out on us, so even people here at the manor who see him smiling and being nice—they don’t understand what my teen years were like. Helen might think I’m a good son, but I’m just going through the motions—until I’m done and can leave for a second time, never to darken this town’s doorstep again.

Next up on my agenda today: a trip out to the farm. I’ve promised Lexi Hargrove a “magical” wooden box, and my dad’s old workshop will likely have everything I need. I could’ve constructed it in the storefront where I’m working—but I didn’t bring my hand-carving tools, so I can use Dad’s.

The narrow road leading to where I grew up hasn’t been cleared of snow yet, but the truck takes every curve with ease. When I pull up outside the modest white farmhouse, I study it from the gravel drive. It could use a coat of paint, but otherwise looks about the same as I remember. On the far side of the front yard stands a large apple tree that never produced fruit—but a tire swing the old man put up when I was little still hangs from a thick rope I can’t believe hasn’t rotted away. Vague memories of him pushing that tire, me holding on tight and laughing as it swung in the summer breeze, flash briefly in my head.

I should check on the house again. My grandfather once told me a house that isn’t lived in falls into disrepair quicker. “Almost like it knows it’s being neglected,” he said. I haven’t been here for a week, so I pull a keychain from my pocket—one that’s gotten heavier lately with Dad’s keys—and unlock the front door.

It smells musty, so despite the furnace bill, I open a couple of windows, figuring it’s just for a few minutes. I walk around checking things out. Familiar curtains, now faded, hang in the windows of my youth. I turn on faucets and flush toilets, just to keep them all doing what they’re supposed to do. Eyeing the old washer and dryer, tucked into a tiny room off the kitchen, it occurs to me I could bring my laundry here rather than search out a laundromat. I have a moment of missing the modern laundry room in my Chicago townhouse—luxurious in comparison to everything here—but maybe it’s good to be reminded where I come from and how far I’ve gotten.

That’s when I head toward a room I didn’t enter in my quick in-and-out last week—my boyhood bedroom. I wonder what the old man’s done with the place.

And when I walk through the doorway, I couldn’t be more stunned to see…it’s exactly as I left it. Same blue patchwork quilt on the bed, made by my grandmother. Same red beanbag chair. Same posters on the wall of Katy Perry and Jennifer Lawrence.

It’s a little too blast-from-the-past for me, though. Too much like I just stepped back in time. My chest tightens slightly.

Who was I then? An angry kid with every reason to be angry. A scared kid, who knew I needed to get out of here, but had no idea where I was going. A hurt kid, whose mother abandoned him and whose father neglected him. I leave the room, giving my head a brisk shake to clear out those old cobwebs.

Making my way back to the living room to close the windows and shut out the wintry air now pouring in, I’m still caught off guard that he never changed it. Was he just too lazy?Or…did he think I was coming back someday?

I’m about to lock the place back up and head out to the workshop when my eyes fall on a framed picture next to the spot where his recliner used to sit facing the TV. It’s of…me. I was about ten. I’m smiling wide—not cool enough to scowl at cameras yet—and holding up a big largemouth bass I caught fishing with Dad at Winterberry Lake. I’d forgotten about that day. Maybe I’ve forgotten about actual good days when I was a kid, too traumatized by the bad. But what throws me the most is that he went to the trouble to putting this picture in a frame and sitting it where he spent the most time.

Unlocking the old workshop a few minutes later takes me on another unwitting trip down memory lane. It’s an old garage on which Dad bricked up the wide door when he decided he needed a workshop more than Mom needed a place to park her car. Bad decision—maybe the beginning of the end for them, or at least an early indicator that her needs didn’t come first. For me, though, it was—I’m forced to realize now—the place where I learned my trade.

It smells like old wood and sawdust, and I can see the remnants of Dad working here as recently as a few months ago. I load up the old black potbelly stove in the corner with some dry wood and kindling from a pile near the door, and am pleased to find out I still know how to build a fire even though the fireplace at my townhouse flips on with a switch.

Dad’s collection of wood-carving tools still lines two drawers of the red Craftsman tool cabinet his father gave him on his twenty-first birthday, and their worn oak handles take me back. My tools are newer, maybe a little fancier—but these are dependable and familiar, the ones I learned with, my dad watching over me.

I also find enough spare scraps of cedar to make the box. Since I don’t have the time to dovetail the joints, I mitre them instead. At the shop in town, so far I’m mostly just cutting and preparing the wood and haven’t gotten to the actual building part yet, so this feels good. The level of concentration it takes relaxes me until I get a little lost in it, something I’ve always liked about carpentry. For me, it’s a way to turn off the rest of the world—nothing matters but the project in front of you. And, as always, even with just a simple box, the act of seeing something evolve where it wasn’t before is satisfying.

When the box is square and smooth, with the requested slot on top, it’s time to create the magic she asked for, and that’s where the carving tools come in. Opening one of the red drawers, I select a three-millimeter U-gouge and begin to free hand a curvy, curly design on one side. I like how it looks and keep going – it takes a while, but I carve out the swirls on all four sides and the top until it feels done. I picked up some primer and paint this morning before heading to the manor, and after a couple coats of snowy white, the box looks like it could have come straight from the North Pole.

I check the fire to see it’s dying down, then clean up a little. Dad left things pretty sloppy, so I start stacking wood remnants—and that’s when I spot one more thing that throws me. Resting on a shelf above the workbench is a little wooden sailboat so rudimentary it looks almost primitive in style. The wood remains bare but for a number eleven painted in blue on the wooden sail. It’s the first little project I ever created out here. He wasn’t even teaching me yet—it was more me hanging around when I was seven or eight, and him giving me a little pile of scraps, instructing me to see what I could make with it while he worked. I don’t know why a sailboat came to mind, but through mimicking his sawing and cutting, whittling and carving, hammering and nailing, my crude little sailboat came into being.

And he kept it. All this time. He kept it.

I quit coming out here when he got mean, and the space holds both good memories and bad. But I can’t deny that this is where the magic happened.

Sure, I roll my eyes at talk of “Christmas magic”— magic isn’t a word usually in my vocabulary. But having learned how to take simple pieces of wood and turn them into something else—sometimes useful, sometimes beautiful, sometimes both…well maybe that does feel like a certain kind of magic.

I hadn’t thought for a long time about the fact that it was Dad who taught me. When Lexi brought it up that first morning, for some reason I balked. Now I can see it, though. My dad didn’t give me much, but he gave me a skill that has largely defined my life up to now. And it came with that means of escape, that way of shutting everything else out.

Not that I get to use the skill as much as I like these days—ever since my job has evolved into more of a management position. The act of making this box has reminded me that I miss what it used to be. I think I’ll enjoy the cabinetry work in town in the coming weeks, too.

And Dad also gave me my truck, which I love. I coveted it growing up, and the day I got my license, he handed me the keys and said, “I know you’ll take good care of it.” By then, we were barely speaking and it shocked me.

“Don’t look so surprised, boy,” he said with a forced sort of laugh. “I know you’ve wanted it all your life—now it’s yours.”

I mumbled a stunned thanks and have been putting both heart and money into it ever since. While other guys I know take on huge car payments to own a Corvette or a Porsche, I wouldn’t want to be behind the wheel of anything but my ’48 Ford F-1. Another means of escape, this one more literal.

That’s never hit me before—that he gave me, wittingly or not, everything I needed to get away from him.

When I pull the pickup to the snowy curb in front of the Lucas Building that night after dark, snow is falling again on an otherwise still, quiet street. The first thing my eyes land on? A familiar white mutt huddled under the overhang again. Damn it, dog.

When I came home last night, he’d done okay in the shop and it seemed too heartless to put him back out in the cold, so I let him stay overnight. This morning, I found a big pile of thank you.

Not that I’m sure what I expected the dog to do. When ya gotta go and some idiot has trapped you inside a building, ya go. But I put him out this morning and had to drive away to the sounds of canine whimpering behind me.

Now I lean my face over into one hand. Do I not have enough on my mind without adding a stupid stray dog who can’t seem to find any better shelter than this completely open-to-the-elements storefront?

Letting out a sigh, I get out and slam the old truck’s door. I unlock the shop and carry Lexi’s “wishing box” inside, while, of course, the dog scrambles in around my feet, nearly tripping me.

“You’re lucky you didn’t make me drop this box, dog,” I mutter as I lower it to the counter in back.

Now what?

I could put his mangy carcass back outside, but it’s really coming down out there again. What’s with all this snow? While it’s not rare to get an early December snowfall here every now and again, this is starting to feel more like Chicago than Kentucky.

I look down at the mutt, both disgusted and sympathetic. I haven’t forgotten what it’s like to feel abandoned and on your own. “But I knew where to go to the bathroom,” I tell him accusingly. Damn, I must be tired, talking to a dog like I think he understands me. But the poor thing has sad eyes that get me in the gut.

And what’s worse—I keep right on doing it. Though maybe I’m talking to myself now. If that’s any better. “Maybe if I take you upstairs, give you some dinner, and put out some paper, you’ll show your appreciation by pooping there .” I saw an old pile of Winterberry Gazettes in the storage room in back.

A little while later, I’ve created a bathroom space for the mutt, and since I mostly stocked the small freezer with frozen microwave dinners, before I know it I’m heating him up his own chicken pot pie. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I say—to both of us, I guess.

But when I lower it to the floor and he scarfs it down like a maniac, I’m glad I did.

After eating my own pot pie, I find an old blanket and lay it out on the floor near a heat register. “There ya go,” I say. “But don’t get too comfortable—it’s just for tonight.”