Roan and Claire had been high school sweethearts and they’d broken up when they’d gone off to separate colleges, but distance couldn’t keep them apart. Later, Claire had told Roan she’d thrown twenty dollars’ worth of coins into the fountain and made wish after wish that they would find their way back to each other. It was asilly myth, of course, he and Claire had been destined all along.
But then he’d lost her. There was no town legend that told you how to move on after a loss like that.
Jazzy tightened her grip on his arm and he looked down at her.
“Thinking of Claire?” she murmured.
He nodded.
“It must have been so hard to lose the love of your life.”
Again he nodded, struck by the kindness in Jazzy’s eyes. It took him a second to find his words. “She’d want me to move on. Claire was whimsical and she had a big imagination, but she was practical too. She liked to say it took all kinds of love to make the world go round. I think she was right.”
“Twilight just chooses to focus on teenage romance because it lures more tourists’ dollars,” Jazzy said. “But teenage love is quite often not much more than rampant hormones. It’s infatuation, not true love. That’s the message of Jon and Rebekka that gets lost. They had to spend fifteen years apart for infatuation to grow into mature love.”
Roan wondered if she was thinking about her high school romance with Danny Garza, but he didn’t really want to know. Claire wasn’t a threat to his budding feelings for Jazzy. His wife was gone and couldn’t come back. But Danny Garza had been staring at Jazzy with regret in his eyes.
C’mon, Sullivan. Is that true or is it just your insecurities talking?
Fair question.
He steered Jazzy around the fountain, happy to leave the kissing sweethearts behind. They passed by more Christmas decorations. Tiny Tim, Scrooge, and the three ghosts that visited the miserly man inA Christmas Carol. A gingerbread town populated with gingerbread people and an array of Peanuts characters outfitted in Christmas clothing.
Toward the end of the park exit loomed the Sweetheart Tree, which during the holidays doubled as Twilight’s Angel Tree. The names of needy children, written on white plastic snowflakes, hung from the lower branches of the two-hundred-year-old pecan tree.
Assembled around the base of the pecan was a white picket fence along with a weathered sign asking people not to deface the tree. Countless names scratched into the bark of the old tree defied the edict. Squarely in the center of the tree, outlined with a heart, were the names of Jon Grant and Rebekka Nash. The original tree-defacers.
A few years back, the chamber of commerce had the bright idea of encouraging tourists to buy engraved metal charms and attach them to a wire frame around the tree to stop the tree whittling. Not only did it cut down on the name carving, but the charms brought in extra revenue for the town’s coffers.
Roan had grown up in the tree-carving era, and Claire had scratched their names into the bark with a paring knife in big lettering. He’d protested, but Claire’s joy prevented him from stopping her. He’d secretly felt guilty about the inscription ever since. He knew without looking exactly wheretheir names were, underneath a knothole on the back side of the pecan.
“Oh look,” Jazzy said, bending down. “One of the angel snowflakes fell from the tree.”
Her fanny was in the air and Roan couldn’t help looking. What a view! But he didn’t want to ogle, she wasn’t an object. Quickly, he turned his head and saw Danny Garza standing alone at the Sweetheart Fountain some yards away.
Where was Andi? Had the couple finished cake tasting already? Curious, he studied the younger man.
Then Danny reached into his jeans’ pocket, pulled out a coin, and threw it into the wishing fountain.
Jazzy hung the fallen snowflake back on the tree and straightened to find Roan standing with his head down and his hands jammed into his pockets as if he was chilled, but he wore a jacket, and the weather was mild. His body language said he was shutting himself off.
Was he thinking of his late wife?
“Is your name on the tree?” she asked.
He nodded but said nothing and kept his hands in his pockets.
“Can I see?”
He let out a deep breath, it wasn’t quite a sigh, and he led her to the back of the tree out of view from the other park visitors. Overhead, plastic snowflakes dangled, creating a concealing canopy.
Roan pointed to the bark beneath a prominent knothole.
Jazzy tracked his finger to the carving, discerned it from all the other names hewed there.Claire loves Roan 4 Life.
Ahh, darn it. Jazzy’s heart stumbled over itself. “Claire carved this?”
“She was impulsive sometimes,” he said. “Where are your and Danny’s names?”