The Christmas Box (The Box Books #2)

15. December 16

December 16

Lexi

L ate last night I discovered a wish from Carol Ann Vaughn for a wheelchair ramp for her mother, Kathryn, and when Travis comes over for coffee this morning, I explain that Kathryn has become almost housebound. “They have a really hard time getting her in and out now. She has one of those electric chairs with the sturdy wheels on it, and if she could bring it outside, she’d have so much more independence—she could ride it up here to town, or even just be out in her own yard with more ease.” I tell him her house is right around the corner, “on Williams Drive, right off of Grant, and I happen to know from chatting with Carol Ann that they have Kathryn out of the house all day for some doctor’s appointments in Lexington.”

“So what you’re suggesting,” he says from his usual stool at the end of the bar, green speckled mug in hand, “is that you think I can design, construct, and install a wheelchair ramp today , before they get back.”

I merely nod, hopefully. “Can you?”

He shrugs. “Probably. Need you to take me there ASAP, though, so I can get some measurements and draw up a plan. No time to lose.”

I pull out my phone and call Dara, with fingers crossed. “Any way you could mind the store again today? Travis and I have more wishes to fulfill.”

When I explained why I needed her on such short notice yesterday she thought it was awesome, and now she says, “Sure. Give me twenty minutes.”

It’s not snowing, so I’m hoping for a profitable day at the Christmas Box while I’m gone, but I’m mainly just focused on bringing some good in to the world however I can.

Travis

Part of me can’t believe I’m installing a wheelchair ramp I just hammered together in a couple of hours in Dad’s workshop out at the farm. That same part of me can’t believe how often the word “wheelchair” has come into my conversations these last few weeks. Up to now, I’d never even been around anyone in a wheelchair; they were just a distant thing in other people’s lives. But now I’ve come to understand how much they matter for people who need them to be mobile, so I’m happy to do it.

Lexi stands beside me, passing me tools, and when I’m done, I climb on top of the ramp and bounce a few times to make sure it’s sturdy.

Then I stand back in the snow to take a look. “All done,” I say. “And if the time comes that it’s no longer needed, it can be removed and the steps underneath will still be intact.”

My companion flashes a pretty smile, her eyes looking especially blue in the bright sunlight. “This is so awesome, Travis. I love that they’re going to come home and just find it here. They’ll be so excited. Christmas magic at its finest.”

Taking that in, I can’t help but give my head a skeptical tilt as I drop a hammer back in my toolbox. “This isn’t magic, Lex. I built it.”

She looks unconvinced. “Isn’t it, though?” she suggests. “Magic can come in many forms.”

But I’m not getting it. “What do you mean?”

She’s still smiling that smile I feel in my gut. “Magic can be…unexpected kindness,” she said. “Generosity. Good will. Talent. Skills. Magic can be a Grade-A Grinch building a ramp for someone who needs it.”

I simply slant her a look and keep arguing. “I still say none of those things are magic.”

“Maybe magic is like beauty then,” she argues back. “In the eye of the beholder.”

When we hear kids laughing from somewhere behind the modest house, we walk around back to see a frozen pond nestled in a little valley. It’s surrounded by long, deep, tree-dappled backyards on three sides, but the winter-bare branches of a wooded area line the far shore. People are ice-skating, and a handful of others stand around a crackling blaze in a firepit nearby.

“That fire looks nice and cozy after being outside so long,” Lexi says, then turns to meet my gaze. “Let’s go down and warm up.”

We could warm up easier and faster by just getting in the truck and heading back to our heated buildings on Main Street, but I don’t point that out. I’m not sure why. Instead, I lower my toolbox to the snow where I can pick it back up later and follow her down a snow-covered hillside to the gathering below.

As we approach the small crowd by the fire, she seems acquainted with everyone there, and introduces me. A couple of men say they know my father and were sorry to hear about his diagnosis. I give a small ‘thanks’, and am glad when the subject changes—someone asks what brings us to the neighborhood.

Lexi looks a little sheepish—except for the lady who requested visitors, we’ve been keeping our wish-granting pretty low-profile, so she seems caught off guard. Finally she answers, “We were just doing a little project at Kathryn and Hank’s house. But don’t tell them it was us—it’s a Christmas surprise.”

A gray-haired woman across the firepit grins. “Don’t tell me you put in a ramp for her.” She claps gloved hands together. “Oh my goodness, that’s just the best Christmas gift. You’re a couple of angels.”

Two things I take in:

I make a good living in Chicago and so do most of the people I know—so if anyone in my circle needed a wheelchair ramp, it wouldn’t be a big imposition to get one. I guess I’ve forgotten that many people here struggle in that way, and that a little generosity can mean a lot. Hell, maybe it is a sort of magic. I just never thought about it that way before.

And people truly like my dad. Everyone who knows him seems to feel genuine affection for him. So whatever happened after I left, he became…better. A better man. And maybe I’m suddenly a little sorry I missed out on that.

“Wanna go skatin’?” asks a middle-aged guy in an old-fashioned plaid hunting cap, the kind with flaps over the ears. He points to a tiny shed near the pond, where a bench sits near the open door, the ground around it strewn with people’s boots and shoes. “Got plenty o’ skates in there in perty much ever’ size.”

Lexi tilts her head, clearly as surprised by this as I am. “Will, where on earth did you get a bunch of ice skates?”

“My grandson used to play hockey at a rink up in Crescent Springs, and when I heard they was replacin’ their rental skates, I asked what they’d take fer the old ones – just thought it’d be fun fer folks to come skate here on the pond. And they gave ’em to me fer free!”

Lexi looks up at me. “What do you think? Wanna skate?”

“Haven’t done it in a long time,” I inform her.

“I haven’t done it ever ,” she confesses. “But I’m willing to try if you are.”

We find skates in the shed and as we sit changing into them on the bench, she asks, “So did you skate out at your farm as a kid? Or somewhere else?”

“Yep, at the farm,” I say. “On a pond behind the house—real shallow, so it froze easy. I got skates for Christmas when I was around nine.”

“How did you learn?”

I laugh at the memory. “Dad would pull me around on the skates, holding both my hands. But he wasn’t on skates – just had his workboots on. So it was the blind leading the blind, but I caught on eventually. Only did it for a couple of winters until I outgrew the skates.” We never replaced them because by then things were bad, both financially and otherwise. “But it was fun while it lasted.”

“You’re gonna have to help me,” she says as we both stand up on the thin blades, wobbly. She reaches out to grab my gloved hand in her mittened one to keep from falling and I squeeze her fingers in mine.

Then I toss her a grin. “Help with wishes. Help with skating. You’re lucky I came back to town when I did.”

It feels good when she smiles back at me to say, “Guess I am.”

Still holding hands, we ease our way onto the ice like a couple of newborn calves learning to walk for the first time. Her ankles bend and I put an arm around her waist to hold her up as I tug her along with me.

“You’re terrible at this,” I say, laughing.

“You’re right about that, too,” she tells me, letting out a pretty giggle of her own.

As I guide her around on the ice, it’s impossible not to feel her nearness and that I like it. I like her . And if things were different, if I were staying here, maybe I would ask her out. I’ve been reluctant to let myself even consider that, yet as we’ve spent more time together, she’s made this strange visit home a lot more interesting, and a lot more fun, than I could have imagined.

But this isn’t my real life. It’s just…an odd vacation. It’s my past colliding with my present. It’s filling my time while I’m stuck in my old hometown in better ways than I expected—even when she’s making me wear a Santa hat.

Only…is she starting to actually care about me?

And is she the same soft-hearted girl I once stood up at a dance?

I guess there’s a reason for my reluctance—I wouldn’t want anyone getting hurt when the time comes for me to leave.

So this can’t really be any more than it is right now: a nice friendship, sometimes sprinkled with a little flirtation.

Besides, my father is dying. My father is dying right when I’m starting to realize that I no longer hate him. And maybe I never really did because hate is just the flip side of love, right? I’m juggling a lot, more than I even expected when Wally summoned me home.

And so right now, I’m going to just enjoy this moment, enjoy the fact that I’m ice-skating on a sunny day with a cute girl whose attitude about life I admire, enjoy the way it feels to hold her against me. A little time away from the drama is good—and it’s okay if I don’t think too hard about anything but the skating and the warmth and the laughter.

“We’re gonna have to get up a little speed,” I inform her then, “if this is gonna turn into actual skating. That’s the only way to get your balance. Kind of the same way you learn to ride a bike.”

“Okay.” She sounds nervous but brave, still wobbling along next to me.

“I’m gonna let go of you and just pull you along by your hands, all right?”

She nods. “I’ll try.”

I release my grip—even though the closeness was nice—and situate myself in front of her, holding both her hands in mine. I skate backward, slowly, having found it is, indeed, like riding a bike—and I take her with me. She’s stiff-legged, but still on her feet.

“There ya go,” I say. “You’re doing it.”

“I am?” she asks, wide-eyed and pretty, brown locks falling around her face from beneath her thick, knitted hat.

I nod. “Whenever you’re ready, try lifting one skate, just a little, to see if you can start shifting your weight back and forth.”

“Don’t let go of me,” she pleads.

“No worries. I’ve got you.”

She raises one skate slightly, then puts it back on the ice before lifting the other.

“Hey, hey,” I say in celebration. “There ya go.”

I’m still the one propelling us even though I’m skating backward, and I increase our speed just slightly as she finds a rhythm.

“You’re doing great,” I assure her.

She’s smiling at me, clearly enjoying her success, and I’m smiling back, noticing little flecks of gold in her blue eyes that I’ve never spotted before and how her cheeks are pinker than usual from the cold. She looks gorgeous.

That’s when my skate hits a divot in the ice I couldn’t see coming and I lose my balance to go tumbling backward, unwittingly pulling her down on top of me. We land in a tangled embrace, her body pressed to mine from chest to thigh. It’s like our Christmas tree debacle last night, but better—no pointy branches—and even through our winter coats, I feel the shape of her, the warmth of her, as my arms close loosely around her. Our faces, our mouths, are only a few inches apart.

I want to kiss her. It would be the easiest thing in the world to do.

But instead I say, “Not sure we’re quite ready for the Olympic team yet.”

The sound of her sweet laugh runs all through me as I ask, “Getting cold?”

“Mmm hmm.”

“Ready to give this up yet or do you want to keep trying?”

As she considers the question, I realize maybe it’s more weighted than I intended, that a person could take a double-meaning from it if they chose.

“Both?” she answers. “It’s fun doing this with you, but…I’m not very good at it.”

“You’re fine at it,” I tell her, not quite sure what we’re talking about anymore. Ice-skating or walking that fine line between casual attraction and something stronger. “But maybe we should get our boots back on and go warm up, huh?”

After a moment of suspecting I see the same questions dancing in those blue eyes, she nibbles her lower lip and answers, “That would probably be wise.”