Snowflakes and Coffee Cakes (19 page)

“I really appreciate that.”

“Any time,” she says. “Well, thanks for clearing the driveway. I’m going to brush off my car and be on my way.”

“Good to see you, Brooke. And say hi to Brett for me, would you?”

She waves to him and turns to leave, but then turns back. “Hey Derek?”

“What’s up?”

“Listen. It’s just that … I don’t know what happened between you and Vera. But she speaks so highly of you.”

When she glances over her shoulder toward the house, to the kitchen window specifically, he does too. He knows Vera’s inside, unsure of what to do after last night. Maybe uncertain if she pushed things with Abby a little too far by opening up the barn to everyone.

“Okay,” Brooke says when she turns back to him. “I’m just going to say this, even though she’d kill me if she knew. But she misses you.” She gives him a small smile. “I hope you’re not mad at me for putting my nose where it doesn’t belong, but heck, she’s my sister. And she never meant any harm with the article she was writing, and well.” She takes a quick breath, eyeing Derek closely. “She
really
misses you, Derek.”

He looks to the house again, toward the step he repaired—buried now beneath snow, to the damaged wall and stuck door and loose bannister he’d fixed, to the mismatched white kitchen chairs he can picture on the other side of those walls, and toward Vera too, no doubt sitting in one with a snowflake mug of coffee cupped in her hands.

“So anyway,” Brooke is saying all the while. “Well, I thought you should know.”

“Thanks, Brooke.” He finishes the coffee he’d poured and screws the cup back on the thermos before setting it on the passenger seat beside him. “I’ll talk to her. Soon.”

“You promise?” Brooke asks, tipping her head as though she maybe doesn’t quite believe him.

He nods with a quick laugh, turning up his hands in consent. “Hey, if it keeps me on Santa’s nice list.”

Brooke leans in and gives him a hug through the driver’s window, then dashes off to clear her car.

Derek looks back toward Vera’s house, seeing Jingles watching it all from the window. Okay, and thinking he’s one darn lucky cat to have a warm place reserved in that kitchen just for him. He takes a deep breath, sits still for a minute, then puts the pickup truck in gear and finishes plowing out Vera’s driveway before heading over to the store to take care of that lot next.

Chapter Twenty-Four

VERA DIDN’T KNOW IF SHE could get her ad in on time, but given her connections at the paper now, a few strings were pulled. The
Addison Weekly
is delivered early every Tuesday morning. She and Jingles wait in her living room, looking out the paned window for the car that pulls up to each house, leaving the rolled-up paper in the newspaper box alongside her mailbox.

“Okay, Jingles. Here it comes.”

As soon as this week’s edition is delivered, she tugs on her snow boots, throws on her red-checked pea coat and thick scarf and hurries down her front walk to get the paper, tearing it open like a kid on Christmas morning. Her eyes scan each page while hurrying back inside where it’s nice and warm.

Before taking off her coat, she lays the paper on her kitchen table. Her hands press the pages smooth because, heck,
feeling
is believing. She reads her announcement twice, then lets out a whoop. Okay, then she reads it again to
really
believe it. To be absolutely certain, she goes to her side door, opens it wide and looks out at the big brown barn, its roof still covered in fresh-fallen snow, the lights still twinkling on the outside tree. And yes she does, she gives herself a little pinch. On the arm. To be sure it’s not all a dream.

Because that’s what it all feels like, a wonderful dream that she’s about to wake up from. She knows the old saying. If it’s too good to be true, well, it probably is. And at that very moment, don’t the stellar dendrites, winter’s prettiest snowflakes of all, start dropping in a flurry, white stars fluttering down from the sky.

And so it can’t be a dream. Because didn’t she make a wish on one of these winter stars ten months ago, driving home from Brooke’s wedding? Something about if ever she’d wish for a beautiful home of her own, wouldn’t this be it?

She looks up toward the sky at those crystal flakes and knows that to every rule there is an exception. Including the
If something’s too good to be true
rule. That exception is floating past her right now. Because any wish made on the prettiest of winter stars can
never
be too good to be true; snowflake wishes are just good enough to be perfect.

With that in mind, she pours herself a mug of coffee, sits herself down at her kitchen table and reads the ad in front of her:

Snowflakes and Coffee Cakes – A Christmas Shoppe

Grand Opening!

Wednesday, 10:00 AM

‘Tis the season. The old Christmas Barn at Addison Cove is reopened for the holidays. Stop in to see the original Christmas keepsakes and ornaments kept safely for all these years. Your favorite one-stop shop for Christmas nostalgia is back with beautiful, unique gifts.

Smile! Complimentary Pictures with Jingles the Christmas Cat available for the children.

Fresh coffee and pastry served daily at Addison’s newest holiday destination …

Snowflakes and Coffee Cakes

Visit us across from Addison Cove

*  *  *

The next morning, Vera snuggles beneath her soft comforter at the first hint of that sound again. Oh she so doesn’t need this, not on the day of her grand opening. With this cold snap going on too, it is just not the time for her furnace to act up. Maybe if she snuggles deeper beneath the blankets, the banging will stop.

But there it is again,
four bangs, pause
.
Four bangs, pause
.

“Wait a doggone minute,” she says while sitting up in bed. “I know that sound.” She slips her feet into her snowflake slippers and shuffles over to the window, just to take a peek. After all, her furnace had been inspected, tuned up and is in tip-top shape. So only one thing can be making that sound. Or one person.

She lifts the blind and looks outside. Yup, her suspicion is confirmed. With a glance at her alarm clock, she decides on a quick shower and blow-dries her hair while the coffee is percolating. Hopefully he won’t leave in the meantime. Finally, after putting on jeans, a fitted flannel over a turtleneck and topping it all with her down vest, she pulls on her fur-lined snow boots and pours the coffee. Shouldering open the side door, she carries out two steaming mugs cupped in her snowflake mittens.

*  *  *

He parks his pickup truck at just the right vantage point: the exact place a customer might park when arriving at Vera’s barn. Then while finishing off the steak and egg sandwich he brought along from the diner, he calculates precisely where a sign would be most visible to any passersby.

Only then, in all that snow, does Derek finagle a stepladder up against the barn and lift the handmade sign into place to be sure:
Snowflakes and Coffee Cakes
is deeply engraved on a distressed-silver painted slab of barnwood, the words a midnight blue, with
A Christmas Shoppe and Bakery
added in red cursive below.

And of course, the requisite winter stars dot the sign: Three snowflakes are painted in shining gold.

Satisfied, he hammers nails into the barn wall and hangs the sign beside the main entrance door into the shop; hanging on the other side of the door is the barn star he’d given Vera for her birthday. And every worry he’s felt since the night of the snowstorm has fueled his preciseness, trying to get
this
right, at least, for Vera, after everything he put her through the past week.

“It’s just beautiful,” Vera calls out while setting their coffee cups on the hood of his pickup truck.

Derek looks over his shoulder. “I was thinking the same about you.”

“Derek!” she says, waving him off and looking at the sign again.

He leans back and eyes the sign, too. It’s got to be perfect. A little nudge to the right adjusts its angle and does the trick. He climbs down the stepladder into the snow and watches her closely. “Do you like it?”

She tips her head and taps her mittened fingers to her chin first, then eyes him as carefully. Can she tell that he’s cold even with a hat and gloves on, because he’s been here contemplating the right place to hang her sign for a long time now? That he measured and re-measured three times to be absolutely sure?

“I love it,” Vera says. “Where did you ever get it?”

“You’ve got great friends. I had a copy of the profile you wrote on Lauren Bradford and her barnwood paintings. Once I saw your business announcement, one phone call and she was right on it. I picked it up last night.”

“Lauren did this?” Vera steps closer and studies the wooden sign. “She’s my old beach friend from Stony Point. Huh.”

“What? Is something wrong?”

“Just the opposite. It’s actually amazing. Because it’s like people from all walks of my life are coming together, kind of like the points of a snowflake, making everything about my decision to do this right.” She looks at the sign again. “Makes it all real now, doesn’t it?”

Derek shakes his head, no.

“No?”

“Well maybe it makes your store real,” Derek begins. “But with us? It’s been real for a while now. Listen, Vera.” He pulls off his gloves and shoves them in his coat pocket. “About the other day, at the cove. During the storm.” He walks through the packed snow over to his truck and takes a sip of the hot coffee she’d brought out.

“That’s okay,” she says, following him. “You don’t have to explain.”

“Oh, yes I do. You said something to me there and I haven’t gotten it out of my head since then.” He sets the coffee down and leans against the truck. “Come here.”

She smiles and walks toward him, slowly, her boots crunching on the snow.

“A little closer,” he insists, reaching out and taking hold of her mittened hands. “First of all, I meant what I said just now about you being beautiful.”

“Derek,” she whispers, looking past him, then meeting his eyes again.

He tips his head down, talking softly to her. “And I know
you
meant what you said to me, in the middle of that blizzard.”

“I did.”

When he sees that her eyes tear with her words, he pulls her even closer. “And I cannot let one more minute go by without you knowing that I feel the same way.”

She looks at him, silently, the tears still there.

“And you also have to know that I
am
sorry, Vera. Sorry that I didn’t tell you sooner.” He hooks a finger beneath her chin and tips her face up to kiss her gently. “I love you, too, sweetheart.” His hands cradle her face then and he kisses her again, longer, feeling her arms wrap around his waist.

“Derek,” she says into the kiss, pulling back.

He leaves a hand alongside her face, leaning his forehead to hers. “What’s the matter?”

She looks away, smiling while a few tears escape, running along her cheek. He brushes one aside and she points to his sleeve, to the few perfect snowflakes covering it. “It’s snowing
again
. I feel like ever since it started snowing last week, my life’s just, well, my life’s snowballed. But in a good way.” She brushes aside another tear on her own, smiling wider now. “They’re happy tears, Derek. Very happy tears.”

He reaches into her down vest pocket, watching her the whole time, and pulls out a pocket magnifier he knew would be there, and hands it to her.

Vera holds the magnifier over the snowflakes on his sleeve. “Look,” she whispers, nodding down toward his arm.

And he does. Silver glittering stars of crystal are sprinkled across the fabric. And he knows what the point of those mini-magnifiers in her every coat pocket are really for—that reminder to stop and look. Because you just never know when a bit of wonder will drop into your life.

But sometimes the tricky part is holding on to that wonder. He turns then and picks up both coffee cups, handing her one and sipping from his, cupping the warm mug close. “Walk with me?” he asks. She nods and they start walking slowly through the snow toward the far side of the barn, facing Addison Cove. “You know, Vera, there’s something else, too, that I wanted to tell you.”

“Okay,” she says cautiously.

“No, seriously. It’s about my daughter. I do understand why you wanted to write her story. She has that effect on people.”

They stop alongside the barn and Vera leans against its brown timber. The cove spreads out before them, the trees lining it all laced with white snow, their branches looking delicate stretching to the sky. There was a time when he didn’t think he could ever look at the cove again, because of what his daughter went through there. But now, with Vera here, he can. He sees how life spins and turns you through storms that you think you’ll never survive; and yet, you do. You just come out of the storm different than you once were. Vera gave him that—her personal snowflake perspective.

“It wasn’t really that you were profiling Abby that day that upset me,” Derek explains. “Something else was on my mind. About you.”

“Me?”

He nods. “Writing for a Rhode Island paper?” He looks out at the silver water, seeing small ripples moving across it. “I figured you’d be leaving here. And seriously? It got me mad.” He sips his coffee, turning finally away from the water to face Vera. “Because I thought we maybe had something between us, and then to think that you were just passing through, well, I took it all wrong.”

Vera shakes her head, no. “I’m sorry I didn’t explain it then. I’m not passing through. I never intended to. Addison’s my
home
, and writing Abby’s story was really my way to honor her, to celebrate her life and the good that comes from it.”

“I know that now. And it’s okay. You know. If you do write it. I don’t have a problem with it. I actually love sharing Abby’s memory with as many people as I can. It’s how I keep her alive.”