Marrying Miss Kringle: Frost Page 17

  Joseph ran his hand down his beard. “We flew over a scrap pile of trees on the way here. I’ll bet I can find what I need there.” He waved for his niece. “Come on, we need to take a sleigh ride.” Layla hopped after him, happy to be included.

  “Hey, Frost. I could use nutcrackers for the street signs, about this big.” Ginger held her hands four feet apart. “Put them in uniform.”

  Frost smiled, thinking of the soldiers as she pulled one out of her bag for every lamp post on both sides of the street. Next, she retrieved a ladder and began fastening them in place.

  “Can you help me with this?” Ginger had disappeared behind a stunning pine tree spilling out of her Kringle bag.

  Frost climbed down from the ladder. “How big did you picture this thing?”

  “Who-sized.” Ginger shrugged like it should have been an easy answer. They barely managed to get the fully decorated tree set up in the middle of the roundabout in the center of Main Street with only losing three decorations.

  Frost found an outlet poking out of the ground. She glanced at Ginger. “Any chance we can get Lux down here to check out the grid, make sure we don’t knock out the power?”

  Ginger frowned—a look that was comical on her generally jolly face. “She and Quik are stuck monitoring just about everything back home. As soon as they get the production equipment level, the ice shifts again.”

  “Nutcrackers!”

  “Even a half of a percent messes with things.”

  Frost pressed her palm against her forehead, said a quick prayer, and plugged in the lights. Mercifully, the town didn’t go dark. “Okay, any more trees?”

  Ginger grinned gleefully. “Only eleven more to go.”

  “Eleven?”

  Ginger hurried towards the post office at the end of the street. “An even dozen. I’m thinking of the Twelve Days of Christmas.”

  “That explains the partridges on the last tree.”

  “Exactly!” Ginger threw her hand in the air in triumph.

  Frost hurried ahead of her. “I got this one.” She pictured a ten-foot-tall tree covered with pairs of white turtledoves, teal ribbons, white lights, gold baubles, and silver bells. It came out of her purse with a whoosh.

  Ginger oohed and ahhed over the details just long enough to put her hand in her purse and pull out a sparse tree. What the tree lacked in branches was made up for in bursts of burlap fabric. Red lights mingled with white lights amid the branches, and tin stars and candy cane shapes were the perfect backdrop for the red and white hens.

  “I’m feeling like this song is a little heavy on the poultry.” Frost let Ginger do the calling birds’ tree, which she did with blue canaries and frosty accents. Frost was ready with an idea for the golden rings. Instead of having small rings hanging from the tree, the tree itself was made up of five golden rings in graduating sizes. The branches were welded in place. She grunted; this tree heavier than the last.

  “Stunning.” Ginger grinned as she waltzed to the next place for a tree. “As much fun as this is, it’s not going to be enough.”

  Frost nodded. “I know.”

  “You need something to bring everyone together.”

  Frost’s geese a-laying tree was decorated with pastel eggs and ribbons. “I’m working on that.” Working as in thinking furiously over the problem but not getting anywhere.

  They were still working and Frost still thinking the next morning when shop owners turned on the lights. The sun was down, but Black Friday wasn’t a day to sleep in. Most of them kept their faces burrowed into their scarves as they hurried along, carrying mugs that smelled of coffee and cocoa. Frost wiped her sleeve across her forehead. Around two-thirty she’d changed from her snowsuit to a heavy Christmas sweater to allow her better movement. This one had a red-and-white Aztec print and a fur collar secured with a big black button. Ginger wasn’t slowing down. She was hanging mistletoe above all the shop doors. Hopefully no one got in trouble for that. Joseph and Layla filled the manger with hay. The crèche was rustic and yet beautiful, a tribute to the Master Carpenter and the centerpiece of all they’d done.

  They’d moved the sleigh and reindeer to the top of the hardware store, where they were out of sight, and Frost had finally gotten back to hanging the nutcrackers on the lampposts when she felt a tug on her sweater. She glanced down the side of the aluminum ladder that clattered with every step. She wasn’t sure if her purse was mad at her for being banished and had given her a health hazard or if all aluminum ladders behaved as such.

  “Excuse me?” said the grizzly older gentleman in a plaid coat and an olive-green duck-hunting hat, the flaps hiding his ears. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  She smiled. “I’m spreading Christmas cheer.”

  Three women, holding their coats tight against them, smiled as they passed. “It looks beautiful,” called the one on the end.

  “Thank you. Merry Christmas!” Frost called back and waved.

  They giggled like schoolgirls. “Merry Christmas,” they chorused.

  “Who do you think you are?” griped the old man.

  “I’m the Christmas coordinator.”

  “There’s no such thing.” He chewed on a toothpick poking out of the side of his mouth.

  Frost glanced nervously at Ginger. She could use some Santa charm right about now. Ginger was busy draping the Wise Men in velvet cloaks. She’d placed a brilliant white blanket beneath the holy child and given Mary a shawl. She applied a smile. “This is a volunteer position.”

  He jerked his hand towards the nutcracker lying on the ground, patiently waiting his turn to stand guard. “And all this came out of my budget, I suppose.”

  “Donated—happily.” Frost climbed down the ladder and brushed off her hands. Here was a perfect opportunity to spread some Christmas cheer. She picked up the nutcracker. “Do you want to do the honors?”

  He scowled. “My hands would freeze right off.” He looked at her bare fingers tightly wrapped around the stiff wire that made up the nutcracker’s arm.

  She fought against the urge to hide them, and Mr. Nutcracker, behind her back. “You know how it is where you’re working hard.”

  He muttered something.

  “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  “I said, the next thing you know, they’ll want to have the Christmas parade again.”

  Her heart leapt like twelve lords. “Parade?”

  “Did it for years and then just stopped.” He turned to leave. “Big bother, if you ask me. I was glad when they called it quits. Spent days cleaning up afterward.”

  Frost brought the nutcracker up and held it to her chest. “Sounds like a real celebration.”

  He tossed his hand to the side as if tossing the idea.

  Frost grabbed on to it and held tight. “A parade,” she whispered, trying the word out loud to see if it had substance. “A light parade.”

  Her skin tingled. She reached into her bag and pulled out a banner that read “Join Us for a Holiday Parade on Christmas Eve.” Beneath that it said “The parade starts at dusk,” and there was a picture of Santa on a parade float. This was it. This was what would bring Christmas back to Elderberry. She added her cell number to the bottom of the next poster along with instructions to call her for more information.

  Feeling like she was on the right track—finally!—she attached a banner to the feet of every nutcracker. The number of shoppers swelled, and all around her people talked about the parade and exclaimed over the decorations. Christmas was back on track.

  Chapter 21

  “Christmas is totally out of whack this year.”

  Tannon glanced up at his mom from where he read the finance section of the New York Times. Brody was sitting on the floor, playing a video game. The atmosphere at home was strained at best since Mom had kicked Frost out. Tannon expressed his feelings on the matter and got an icy “it’s my house” in reply. To which he’d said, “Then I guess it’s a good thing we won’t be living here much longer. You can
have the whole big, empty house to yourself.”

  Mom had burst into tears and not spoken to him or Dad for the rest of the day. She’d gone out early to start Christmas shopping and just now dropped her bags onto the couch. Apparently, they’d moved on from the silent treatment. Perhaps it was the pastor’s sermon that had softened her heart.

  “You should see Main Street; they’ve turned it into a Hallmark Keepsake Christmas Village. It’s completely overdone and untasteful.” She lifted her nose in the air. “You should let the mayor know how bad it is.”

  Dad’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe I will. There’s no sense spending taxpayers’ money on frivolous things.” He pushed himself out of the chair and went into the other room to make the call.

  Mom rifled through her bags. She pulled out a new game for the video console and handed it to Brody, whose eyes lit up.

  “Thanks, Grandma.” He got to his feet and hugged her.

  “I knew you wanted that one, and I couldn’t wait until Christmas.” Mom looked over Brody’s head, challenging Tannon to take away the game and make a stink.

  Tannon chewed on his displeasure. He didn’t like Brody on video games at all. The only way he allowed it was if Brody did equal amounts of time with a book. Mom was pushing him, but he wasn’t going to give in to her underhanded tactics. Instead he said, “You’ve got fifteen minutes left on the timer if you want to switch over to your new game.”

  Brody nodded, his hair bouncing off his forehead. “I need scissors to get it out.”

  Mom followed him out of the room. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t cut himself.”

  Tannon pulled the paper in front of his face so he wouldn’t have to answer. Brody was eight—he could handle scissors on his own and didn’t need a mother hen hanging over his shoulder. The child had the patience of Job while Tannon’s was thinner than an old T-shirt.

  Dad sat down with an old-man grunt. “Jeff claims he had nothing to do with the decorating.”

  “That’s unlikely.” Tannon continued to hide behind his paper, but it wasn’t the words on the page that caught his attention—it was a memory. “Do you remember how you used to drive me down Main Street to look at the lights?”

  Dad’s face turned white. “We only did it that year you …”

  Tannon waited for him to finish, to actually say the words lost your leg, but they didn’t come. He barely held on to his anger. Flicking the paper so it stood straight again, he said, “I used to love the light parade. It was my favorite part of Christmas. Why’d they stop doing the parade, anyway?”

  Dad shifted in his seat as if he’d sat on an ornament hook. “The mill sponsored the parade, but when you got sick, we didn’t feel like celebrating. The city didn’t have the money to do it on their own, and so it stopped.”

  Tannon scowled. How did he not know this? “But I got better.”

  Dad looked at his pant leg. “Not all the way better.”

  Tannon crumpled the newspaper into a ball. “When are you going to accept that my leg is gone?”

  “Son—”

  “Don’t son me. I lost a leg, Dad, but you act like you lost a child. I’m still here.” He pointed to his chest. “I’ve been here this whole time, but you act like I’m some—some problem to be dealt with.”

  Dad stared at him, openmouthed.

  When he didn’t say all the things Tannon longed to hear—like how much he loved Tannon, leg or no leg; like how grateful he was Tannon had survived; like the loss of a leg wasn’t as bad as losing Tannon would have been—Tannon burst from his chair and left the room. Remaining under the oppression of unmet parental expectations was not an option. He headed for his room, running his hands over his head in frustration.

  He shut the door and made his way to the desk. The wood was smooth under his fingertips. He slid open the top drawer, bringing out Miss Kringle’s letters. This stack, three fingers thick, was just this year. He’d saved them all, safely tucking them away in boxes under his bed. He could sit down right now and relive every one of her funny stories about the reindeer and her sisters, but he didn’t. He hadn’t received a letter in ages—days, really, but that was a long time for them to go without corresponding.

  He stared at the closed door. He’d said things. Things he probably should have said a long time ago or never said at all. He wasn’t quite sure which. He’d been in a mood ever since Frost said he wasn’t being fair to Miss Kringle.

  He chuckled at the memory. For a moment there he’d thought Frost might be jealous of Miss Kringle, so it had taken him off guard when she’d defended his friend.

  And she was right. He should have told Miss Kringle everything. He’d said he was trying to hide the worst parts of himself from Miss Kringle, but how could he consider Brody the worst of him? Brody was the best of all Tannon ever wanted to be. He was bright, happy, loving, open, and good-hearted. If he and Miss Kringle ever met up, Tannon wanted it to be a happy meeting; no one would ever look at his son like he didn’t make sense. Tannon knew how that felt.

  He pulled back the seat and settled in to write a long-overdue letter.

  Dear Miss Kringle,

  I hope all is well with you and your family. I haven’t heard from you in a while, and yet I understand it is your busy season. Which is why I’m sorry I’m sending this revelatory letter to you now. I wish I’d thought this through a long time ago, but I guess I needed to learn something about myself.

  I have a son. I’m sorry to spring this on you and I’m sure you’re confused, especially after my declarations of affection. Brody is nine and was born when I was just eighteen. I wasn’t in love with his mother, but I craved love—or what a seventeen-year-old thinks is love. It was a hard time. I was still a kid and I had a child. I’d get up with him in the middle of the night and feed him, rocking in an overstuffed chair until the two of us fell asleep. His mother wanted nothing to do with Brody, and I’m a single dad.

  Miss Kringle, I beg your forgiveness for not sharing the best part of my life with you. I was embarrassed and young and stupid when I decided to withhold this information. It’s not an excuse, but I want you to have an answer when, or if, you ask yourself: Why? Why did he lie to me all these years? I wish I could explain this to you in person, but maybe this is better because I won’t have to see the disappointment on your face. I don’t know if I could bear the weight of that for the rest of my days.

  He closed his eyes, trying to picture Miss Kringle. Instead of the fuzzy image, Frost came to mind. Her amethyst eyes brimmed with unshed tears and her lips trembled. He drew a ragged breath and forced the image away.

  I would like, very much, for you and Brody to meet.

  The words flowed from his pen as if they’d flowed right out his heart.

  In fact, I’d like to change my Christmas wish this year. I’d like you and Brody to meet. You can land your sleigh on our roof—or come with Santa on Christmas Eve—tiptoe into his room and make his acquaintance. You don’t even need to tell me you’re here. If he says he met you in the middle of the night, and that you enchanted his life for an evening much the way you’ve enchanted mine with every letter, I’ll be content.

  He couldn’t quite leave it at that. A part of him had always loved Miss Kringle—first as a pen pal, then as someone to complain to, then as a friend, and then … well, when he felt the paper slide against his hand, all the adoration and love that had built up over the years came rushing back. But what about Frost? The kiss they’d shared in the quiet hush of a stunning winter landscape had taken hold of his heart. He was interested, and she was here. He could touch her hand, feel her breath on his cheek, and smell her wonderful sugar-and-spice scent. Even now, it floated around him like a blissful memory.

  He glanced down at the sheet, already three-quarters of the way full of confessions and petitions. Miss Kringle was a part of his life, a part he wasn’t ready to let go of.

  However, if you knock on one door over, I’ll answer. And perhaps, on the most magical of nights, I will fin
ally get to gaze into your eyes and tell you how much you have meant to me through the years.

  With love,

  Tannon

  Tannon set his pen aside and stared at the page until the words blurred. He didn’t want to reread it, didn’t want to second-guess his decision. He stuffed the letter into one of the golden-embossed envelopes and took it to the mail box right away.

  As he lifted the flag to let the letter carrier know there was an outgoing letter, he felt his chest expand with satisfaction. He stood taller. He wasn’t going to hide anymore. Not with Miss Kringle, and not with his decision to sell the mill. No more sneaking around and taking the coward’s way out. Come Monday morning, he’d tell the world, and whatever happened, he’d face it head-on and he’d do his best to protect the employees who worked for him. He had more in common with them than he’d let himself believe, and it was time he acted like he cared, because for the first time in a long time, he did.

  Chapter 22

  “Good morning, Ms. Cratchit.”

  Frost glanced up from the computer screen where she sorted Tannon’s email. “Someone’s in a jolly mood today.” She stood and followed him into his office.

  “It must be the snowflakes.” He waved a hand towards the decorations Frost had made that morning that hung from the ceiling. He took off his coat, admiring her handiwork.

  “I thought they were apropos. This is a paper company.”

  He chuckled. “Imagine what you could do with one of the big rolls downstairs.”

  “Stop, you’re making my fingers tingle.” She wiggled them in an effort to discourage her Kringle-ness. “There aren’t scissors big enough to take on that project,” she said as much to herself as Tannon. “But if there were …”

  Tannon watched her for a moment.

  Frost glanced down at her wool skirt and matching sweater set to see if she had spilled toothpaste down the front of her. Her sweater was clear. “What?”

  “I was just thinking that you look beautiful in the snow.” He sat down quickly. “I’m sorry. That slipped out.”