The Christmas Box (The Box Books #2)

1.1

“And then?”

“Well, you remember the tradition with the laurels.”

She nods, looking a little resentful. “I wanted one of those things so bad.” Despite the time between my graduation and hers, apparently the envy surrounding the laurels endured.

School tradition was that the guy went to the Holly Leaf Florist, just north of Winterberry in Holly Ridge, and ordered a custom head wreath, in Christmas colors, which he presented to the girl he was accompanying before the ceremony. The girls wore their wreaths as they were escorted across the gym floor, the bleachers filled with onlookers, and the one elected queen would place her wreath on the head of a favorite teacher before she was crowned. Cheesy, maybe, but every girl secretly wanted one of those pretty holiday laurels. And my time had finally come.

Except that it actually hadn’t. “Well,” I tell Dara, “I still never got one because Travis Hutchins stood me up. He just plain didn’t come. I was the only girl walking by herself, and without a wreath.”

“Ugh,” Dara says. “That sucks.”

“It was pretty humiliating,” I go on. “Kids made fun of me, yelling across the gym,‘ Guess he didn’t want to be seen with you.’ ‘Must’ve gotten a better offer.’” I use my best fake nasty bully voice.

Looking back as an adult, it hardly mattered. But as an insecure high-schooler who thought I was having a special night, it was devastating. “And get ready for the cherry on top. When Wendy Acara was elected queen, instead of giving her wreath to a teacher, she gave it to me instead.” A lovely gesture from a popular girl who didn’t have to be nice to me—but somehow it only seemed to shine a light on my embarrassment.

“Oh no,” Dara says, her face etched with revulsion. “A pity laurel.”

“Exactly. In front of the whole school.”

And what made it worse was—maybe I developed a crush on him somewhere between the homeroom vote and the ball two months later. We barely spoke before, and we never spoke after—he never acknowledged not showing, and I never confronted him. But for a brief period of time, I suffered a niggling attraction that was, in the end, rewarded only with getting dissed.

I relocked the front door after he left earlier, and now, as opening time draws near, I head back up front. About to flip the lock again, I spot him working in the storefront across the street, surrounded by sawhorses, a big electric saw, and lots of wood. Done filling the cocoa machine, Dara steps up beside me. “A shame you have a bad history with him I love a man who’s good with his hands.”

“Then maybe I can fix you up with him the next time he comes in for coffee,” I offer.

Her head darts around. “He came in for coffee?”

“Helen’s fault. He asked where he could get some, and she sent him here . “

“The horror,” Dara teases. “How dare she bring you business!”

“Well, he’s not exactly who I wanted my first customer to be.”

“Was he nice? Did he remember the Christmas dance that never was?”

I shrug. “He was a little surly. Mildly contrite at best. Didn’t even seem to care that his father is dying. All in all, not my kinda guy.”

Her shoulders slump slightly as we both turn to peer back across the street at the man operating the big saw. “Then not mine, either. But on a brighter note…” She casts me a sideways glance. “It’s time to get this party started.”

Indeed, cars are beginning to line the curb as Main Street comes to life. This morning wasn’t what I expected, bringing doubts and unpleasant memories—but it’s officially time to look forward. I flip the sign in the window that lets the world know the Christmas Box is open for business.

Travis

After a few hours of work in the soon-to-be soap shop, Main Street has gotten a little busy for my taste—people squinting to stare in as they walk past are making me feel like an animal in the zoo. I forgot how nosy small towns can be. So I take off my tool belt, wash some sawdust off at the bathroom sink, and head up the street to the new burger joint. Of course, I don’t know how new it is, only that it’s new to me. The old man asked me to bring him a big, greasy burger the next time I came—I guess when you’re dying, they let you eat whatever you want.

The burger place is packed—in fact, all of Main Street is hopping in a way I never thought I’d see when I lit out of here at eighteen. The tables are filled, and servers are moving fast and carrying trays high as I step up to the counter. “Help ya?” asks an older lady with blonde hair piled on top of her head.

After I place my takeout order, I gravitate back to the wide front windows, mainly to get out of people’s way while I wait.

Glancing out at the park across the street and a few doors down, I remember that the only business still open on Main when I left was The Winterberry Diner. It was bigger than most, taking up the space normally filled by two or three skinnier, pre-war buildings, as I remember my grandpa calling them. Seems ironic that the one staple of the place where I spent my whole life is gone now, but the rest of the town has been revitalized. In addition to the burger restaurant, there’s a pizza place, an antique mall, a clothing boutique, and more. Not bad, Winterberry.

An awful shame about the diner—damn, it threw me when Lexi Hargrove so calmly told me her mom and grandma died there—but the park looks nice. I see some small trees and shrubbery, a manicured lawn with paved paths curving through, a few park benches, and to one side sits a white gazebo a lot like the one I built in my boss’s backyard a few years ago. A big Christmas tree—currently unlit and probably twenty feet tall—stands in the center of the park.

That’s when I take my first real look at the Christmas Box and begin to understand the shop’s name. While most of the old brick facades are still in their original state, the two-story building just beyond the small park has been painted white, other than a strip of red that runs horizontally across the front and side. On the side, a vertical swath of red crosses it, with a big red bow painted where they intersect. Near the bow is a gift tag that reads The Christmas Box . She’s turned the whole building into a Christmas gift. And granted, I’m not a Christmas guy, and I’m not sure how anybody’s gonna feel about this place come June or July, but I can’t deny it creates a pretty cool effect in this little old town.

Lexi Hargrove is the last person I expected to run into. I just would have thought she’d be somewhere else by now. Kind of sucks if she stayed just because of what her mom once dreamed of. I give my head a short shake thinking about people and their sentimentality when it comes to Christmas. It’s just another day, after all—another day when people spend a lot of money on things they don’t need.

She’s prettier than I remembered—her wavy brown hair longer than when I knew her, and I never noticed how blue her eyes are.

Or maybe she was pretty then, too, but I just couldn’t comprehend it. I was in a dark place, just getting through the days however I could. And now that I’m thinking back to high school, which I was happy to leave behind—I remember more about that dance.

I forgot to order the special head thing. And I didn’t really have the money for it anyway. Every time it came to mind as the event got closer, I’d just shove it aside—it was something I just didn’t want to do. It wasn’t about her—I wasn’t a kid comfortable parading around in front of the school in a suit I was gonna have to drum up someplace. I wasn’t a jock, I wasn’t a brain; I wasn’t much of anything but angry. I should have turned the nomination down from the start, but it caught me off guard. The basketball player in our homeroom who usually got tapped for such events was absent that particular day and somehow my number came up.

And then I just didn’t go. It would have been easy to tell somebody, make a phone call, at least claim I was sick or something. But I didn’t even bother—instead I hung out with my small crowd of rebels at the Waffle House in Holly Ridge. I really was a punk back then.

“Order for Hutchins!”

I stride back to the counter, ready to scoop up my bag and go, but the lady holding it out—the same who took my order—asks, “You Tom’s boy?”

I just nod. “Yep.”

Her brow knits. “We’re all real sorry about your daddy, son. Good you’ve come home to be with him. Tell him Gail Conrad and her family are all keepin’ him in our prayers, and you, too—okay?”

Again, I only nod. “Thank you.” Then I grab my bag and leave, my thoughts spinning in ten directions at once. Small town people are nosy, but they’re also kind. Kind enough that she thinks I’m here out of kindness, or even love. And Helen, the nurse at Bluegrass Manor—and hell, all the people there, seem to think my dad’s a great guy. I guess they have a short memory.

But I don’t.

Walking into the nursing home feels like quietly immersing myself in a dark chaos. Every. Single. Time. I’ve been home less than a week, only come here on a handful of days, but it’s a hard place to be. The people at Bluegrass Manor didn’t have the money for a choice facility when the time came that they couldn’t care for themselves anymore. So they ended up here, where the staff does their best, but it’s not a setting where anyone would wish to spend their last days.

The first time I came, I felt tense, not having seen my old man in a dozen years. I wasn’t sure if he’d treat it like a grand homecoming or spit on me. Turns out neither happened—instead, he just acted…completely casual. “Like he saw me yesterday,” I told Helen later, confused.

Helen explained that, “In Tom’s mind, maybe he did. Tom comes and goes in the past and present sometimes lately. Just roll with it and it’ll all be okay.” She patted my hand, and I tried to believe her, but as I walk through the sliding doors that lock behind me to keep the patients inside, I still feel like a stranger in a strange land.

The hallway is dotted by frail-looking people in wheelchairs. I see a thin-haired old woman I noticed yesterday—her short white hair points in all directions and she’s cradling a bald, naked, plastic babydoll in her arms. The sight crushes my soul.

“Hey, can you help me? Please help me.”

I swing my head around to look through the doorway the male voice came from.

“Can you help me?” he asks again, sounding desperate.

My impulse is to keep walking, but I’ve already made eye contact. So I step a little closer to the open door. “What do you need?”

He’s old, feeble-looking, lying in a hospital bed in a stark, messy room. All the rooms are stark. He points. “Can you hand me the remote?”

It rests near a TV, and I’m instantly relieved this is all he’s asking of me. I grab it up and hand it to him.

“And I need to go to the bathroom.”

He’s looking at me like I’m the guy for this job, too, but I say, “I’ll let the nurses know.”

Then I make a beeline down the hall, weaving between the wheelchairs and one spry lady using a walker, who says, “Hi, handsome,” as I pass by.

“Hi,” I say at a bit of a loss. That’s my general feeling so far when under this roof—at a loss. I keep moving, pleased to see the nurse’s station dead ahead.

“A guy up the hall needs help to the bathroom,” I announce at large to Helen and two other nurses in the general vicinity.

Helen just laughs in her big, comfortable-with-the-world way. “Well, hello to you, too, Travis.” Then, to a large, balding guy in scrubs with a goatee, she says, “Brent, wanna take this one?”

Brent turns toward me with gentler eyes than his stature led me to expect. “Which room?”

Great question. I didn’t notice in my rush to get away. “About halfway down on the left. Guy in a robe.” Then I roll my eyes at my own reply. Most of the guys here are wearing robes. I add, lamely, “I think it was plaid.”

As Brent goes in search of Plaid Robe Guy, I ask Helen, “How is he today?”

She smiles. “Good. Looking forward to that burger—it’s all I heard about this morning.”

I nod and head to Dad’s room, just a couple of doors away. But I stop and take a deep breath before going inside. That’s just how it is—I have to brace myself, then push forward. Unlike that Christmas dance in high school, this time I can’t just choose not to go.

“Got your burger and fries,” I announce, holding the white paper bag high as I stride into the room.

Dad glances over, looking frail, but then he smiles. “I can smell it from here. Bring it on over.”

I take a seat in the same old reclining chair he used at home when I was a kid—Wally brought it in, but I know from Helen that he’s mostly in the bed and wheelchair now. As I unpack the bag on the rolling table like they have in hospital rooms, he asks, “Hope you got yourself one, too.”

“I did,” I inform him.

“Good—we can eat together.” He points toward the mini-fridge at the foot of the bed, also courtesy of Wally. “Grab us a couple soft drinks, will ya?”

I brought in a twelve-pack yesterday, so I get two out. As he happily scarfs down a burger and fries while watching a rerun of a sitcom from before my time, all I can think is: This is not the father I remember. This must be the guy Gail at the burger place is praying for, and the man who brings a smile to Helen’s face whenever I ask about him—but I don’t know this guy.

The father I remember was always fighting with my mother, usually about money. The father I remember was often drunk—worst case scenario, he was screaming at me or Mom over nothing; best case, he sat passed out in the very chair in which I now reside, an empty beer can still clutched loosely in his fist. It The father I remember actually drank less but became more sullen and listless after my mother left us, making me feel mostly alone in the world. And the father I remember told me she’d left because of me.

I knew it wasn’t true. It made no sense. I wasn’t the one bitching at her all the time.

But it still stung, just the same. Especially when I was forced to acknowledge that she did leave me, too, not just him. She left her kid without even a goodbye. All of it still stings, if I’m honest with myself.

“Sure you don’t want to stay for dinner?” Dad asks as I stand up to leave. “Your mom’s making meatloaf tonight.”

I flinch. Despite Helen’s warnings, it’s the first time I’ve heard him say something out of time.

“No, I gotta go,” I answer. “Lot to do.”

“Be back tomorrow? It’s bingo day in the cafeteria.”

And that fast, he’s back in the present. I’ve seen the bingo game advertised on white boards around the manor. “Yep, I’ll be back tomorrow,” I tell him. But probably not for bingo. I’m challenged enough by my interactions inside this room, so I prefer to keep the ones outside it to a minimum.

I’m sheepishly glad Helen isn’t at her station as I pass by, as if I think she’s keeping tabs on me, maybe feeling I should stay longer. I’ve been here most of the afternoon, and that’s enough. And I have shelves and cabinets to build. I’m grateful for the task, for other things to focus on. Actually, a lot of my job in Chicago has become more about management lately and less about actually constructing things, and just the few hours I got to work this morning made me realize I kinda miss it.

I turn the corner only to meet up with the thin-haired lady holding the babydoll. She peeks up at me with sad, childlike eyes. Our gazes connect and I wonder if she has the awareness to see the horror in mine.

“Have a nice day,” I say, skirting past her. What do I even mean by that? They’re just words spilling out of me, trying to fill a strange, painful void.

“Travis Hutchins, is that you?”

What now? I stop, look to my right. Through a doorway I see another man in another robe in another bed. But then I tilt my head as recognition comes. “Mr. West?”

“One and the same,” he says.

Mr. West was my shop teacher in high school, the only teacher who ever made me feel like I mattered. Maybe the fact that it was the only class in which I applied myself was a factor there, but I was in full punk mode by then, so I have to credit him with looking beyond what I was putting out in the world at that time. Other than graying hair and a few more creases in his face, he hasn’t changed much.

As I step into his room, he says, “Sorry about your father.”

“Sorry to see you in here,” I tell him with unguarded honesty.

“Oh, I’ll be sprung soon enough,” he informs me. “Just some rehab after knee surgery. Another week and I’ll be home in my own bed.”

“I’m sure that’s a relief,” I say before thinking it through. Then I shake my head and say, “I just mean…”

He nods, absolving me. “It’s a tough place,” he acknowledges. “Lot of people in bad situations.”

You can say that again.

“You still teaching?” I ask.

“No, retired last year and living the good life,” he tells me. “Well, once I get back mobile again, that is. The wife and I bought an RV and we’re gonna travel the country. What about you? Doing well? Think I heard you were in Chicago.”

I nod. “I’ve been working for a custom home builder the last ten years. I’ve made a good career out of woodworking and construction,” I tell him. “In no small thanks to you.”

Mr. West just shrugs and gives a low chuckle. “You already knew what you were doing by the time you landed in my class. Your dad had already taught you more than I ever could.”

I take that in, letting it remind me of something Lexi Hargrove said this morning. I guess I did spend a lot of time out in Dad’s workshop with him as a kid. Not so much later, when the drinking started, and certainly not after Mom left—but even if I don’t like to admit it, I suppose the guy did give me some skills.

“So, got a girlfriend?” Mr. West asks. “Married? Kids?”

I just laugh. “None of the above.”

“Well, maybe soon then,” he suggests.

But I feel the urge to be honest, something I was always able to do with him. “Not likely,” I say. “I mean, girlfriends, yeah. But not sure I’m cut out for anything permanent. Lack of role models, ya know?”

His nod tells me he remembers. Sometimes I stayed late after class, the last period of the day, and we’d talk. “Are things better between you and your dad now?”

But I barely know how to answer. “Truth is, until a few days ago, I hadn’t seen him since high school.”

My old confidante’s eyes bolt open wide.

“I left for Chicago right after graduation and never looked back. For the first few years he would call me up from time to time—on my birthday or Christmas. But it was awkward and he eventually stopped. I kept in slightly closer touch with my Uncle Wally, so Dad and I each knew the other wasn’t dead or anything—but that was it until Wally insisted I take a leave of absence from my job and come home.”

Compassion fills my old teacher’s gaze. “How has it been since you got here?”

I shrug. “Weird. I don’t even recognize him. Apparently brain cancer has made him a much friendlier guy than the one I grew up living with. But…fine, I guess. And I’ll stay until he goes. Just a matter of waiting, and then I can get back to my real life.”

At this, Mr. West tilts his head. “Don’t you want to talk things through with him while you still can?”

I take a moment, turning the idea over in my brain, and finally tell him, “Even if I did, I’m not sure he’d be able to. He just told me my mother was making meatloaf for dinner.”

Mr. West gives a solemn nod of understanding—yet then he adds, “It’s none of my business, Travis, but be that as it may…just think about clearing the air. If not for him, then for you. I wouldn’t want you to have any regrets about that after it’s too late.”

“I’ll think about it,” I answer. But I’m lying. Just to be respectful to someone who’s earned that from me. If anybody should have cleared the air, it’s my old man, and it should have happened long before now.