“Right,” she says. “Okay. I’ll leave at four, just for you guys.”
“Thank you, Noel.”
“You’re welcome.”* * * *“There’s snow!” Piper exclaims as I help her out of the truck I borrowed from Elijah and set her on the ground. She’s bundled up in boots and a pink snowsuit, and her face is lit up like the Fourth of July. “I’ve never played in the snow.”
“You’ve never seen snow?” Noel asks, and Piper shakes her head no.
“Piper and her mother lived on the coast, so they never got any snow over there,” I say.
“I love snow,” Noel says. I picked her up from my house thirty minutes ago. She wouldn’t let us near the place. Instead, she met us at the end of the driveway by the road.
She’s been very secretive when it comes to her work.
This tree farm is up near Snoqualmie, higher in elevation, where they get much more snow than the city does.
“Maybe we should leave Mr. Bunny in the truck,” Noel suggests and squats next to Piper to talk to her. “You don’t want him to get dirty while we play and look for a tree, do you?”
“I don’t wanna leave him,” Piper says as she holds him tightly against her chest. “He’ll be sad.”
“He can sit on the dash and watch us,” Noel says. “Here, let me show you. And if you don’t like it, we’ll take him.”
Piper begrudgingly lets Noel take the bunny. Noel sits him in the window of the truck so he’s facing the tree farm.
“See? He can see everything, so he’s not sad. And he’s safe in there.”
“He’s probably warmer in there, too,” I add, and Piper nods her head.
“He doesn’t have a snowsuit,” she says. “Okay, he can stay there, as long as he can see us. He’s never been away from me. Ever.”
Piper told me not long after she came to live with me that Vanessa gave Piper the bunny when Piper was a baby. Piper said the stuffed animal still smells like her mother.
The thought of it pulls at my heart.
We walk through the snow to talk to someone about borrowing a saw and a wagon, I buy the girls some hot chocolate, and then we’re off, looking for the perfect Christmas tree.
“What about this one?” Noel asks about twenty yards down the path.
“It’s not tall enough,” I say, and she turns to me.
“You have a twelve-foot ceiling in that room.”
“Exactly.”
She laughs. “This tree has to be about eleven feet tall.”
I shake my head and lead them farther down the path. Piper looks as if she’s having a hard time trudging through the snow, so I lift her into the wagon and pull her behind me.
“This is fun!” Piper exclaims, drinking her little hot chocolate as Noel and I look for a tree.
“She gets to ride,” Noel mumbles.
I’ve got something you can ride.
Of course, I don’t say that out loud, but if I have my way, I’ll whisper it to her later when my daughter isn’t listening to every word we say.
Finally, after about thirty minutes of looking, I find the tree I want.
“This is a Christmas Vacation movie tree,” Noel says with a laugh.
“You’re nuts. It’s perfect.”
“It’s way too big,” she insists, but then holds her hands up and steps back. “But it’s your house, your tree. I just won’t be held responsible when it takes up the whole room, and a squirrel comes flying out of it.”
“It has a squirrel?” Piper asks, excitement in her brown eyes.
“No, honey,” I say with a laugh. “No critters in this tree. Now, you ladies stand back while I cut it down.”
I have to wade my way into limbs, but once I get my footing, it doesn’t take long to cut the trunk and have it fall on its side.
Rather than make Piper get out of the wagon, I grip the trunk in my arms and begin to drag it.
“Isn’t this what we have the wagon for?” Noel asks and grins.
“Let her ride,” I say, shrugging. “You pull her, I’ll drag the tree.”
“You’re a softie,” she says, but the words are gentle, and her golden eyes shine as she reaches for the handle of the wagon. “I kind of like it.”
She walks toward me, and I stop her, run my hand over her coat-covered hip, and kiss her cold forehead.
“I’m glad,” I say and then step back to follow the ladies to the truck.
Noel doesn’t say anything more, but she swallows hard before leading me down the path.
Once I’ve paid for the tree and have loaded it into the bed of the truck, we head back toward the city.
“We’ll drop the tree off at the house.”
“You can put it in the garage,” Noel says sternly. “It’ll warm up in there. No going inside. And don’t look too hard at the outside, either.”