Snowflakes and Coffee Cakes (2 page)

“Lord knows there’s always something at work needing fixing,” Greg is saying.

Vera looks back at him right as the bouquet-toss announcement is made. She quickly thanks Greg for the dance as a cousin tugs her toward the bouquet-crowd. Can it be that time already? Where did the night go? So much of life’s been like that, passing by unnoticed until it is suddenly gone. Her job, a visit home, Brooke’s wedding. A dance, a few words, a look. Passing as quick as that one moment on the dance floor, the moment a man took her elbow for two seconds that never amounted to more than that, yet linger still.

*  *  *

The snowman stands with his top hat tipped at the same saucy angle, but today, the sauciness seems gone. If she’s not mistaken, Vera thinks he looks a little forlorn, wanting the happy time of the weekend back. And the snow hasn’t stopped, either, more arriving the day after Brooke’s wedding, the day Vera heads back north. Her parents’ gray colonial is dusted in fresh white powder, the windows glowing with lamplight, her mother holding aside the lace curtain and watching her pull out of the driveway. And she knows. Home can be a big, boisterous family or a shadow of what once was. Because her memory of the weekend, which is only a shadow of it now, will always
feel
like home. Her heart tells her so. As she puts the car in gear on the street, Vera gives a small wave to the snowman, then presses a finger to her eye to stem the tears.

So her younger sister is married now. She’ll settle into life right here in town where her husband is an accountant, keeping the numbers of their lives straight and orderly. And her parents’ nest is empty now, too, so there’s that. As happy as weekends like this are, there’s always a sadness about them, because with the significant marking of chapters opening there always comes a chapter closing.

While driving through Addison, crossing the train tracks toward the historical part of town to pick up the highway there, the snow continues falling. She leans forward to see the view clearly on the return trip to Boston. Returning to what, though, she’s not sure. Well. She is sure—sure that it’s nothing. It’s a life for which there is little more than this imagined headline: Unemployed and Single. The rest is yet to be written. It’s ironic that as a journalist she writes everyone else’s story, but doesn’t even know her own.

The wind outside blows whispers of snow around old neighborhood landmarks: Whole Latte Life Coffee Café looking cozy with its frosted, illuminated window panes; the vintage bridal shop Wedding Wishes with twinkly lights around the doorway; the local nursery with snowy garden statues holding still until spring; The Green and its grand wishing fountain; all on a Main Street lined with historical cape cods and saltbox colonials. Why she ever decided to leave this picturesque snow-globe town is sometimes beyond her.

The snow falls even heavier. For all her father taught her about winter and snowflakes, still, in a magical and sad moment like this, as she sees her old hometown through a windshield covered with glistening crystals, she has to wonder. What are snowflakes, really? Today she’d say they’re nothing more than perfect stars dropped down to earth, each one a treasure, casting a sense of hope on the view through her window.

Winter
stars. But do snowy winter stars possess the same power as celestial stars up above? If she could wish on a winter star right now, pick the biggest star-shaped white glittering snowflake that she could find and make a wish, what would it be? To not leave behind her family? To find a new journalism job, soon? To have someone in her life? Or to just embrace
whatever
comes her way, like the way she’s embracing the swirling snow tumbling down on this little town.

A few blocks before picking up the highway, as she nears the cove, Vera squints through that darn snowy windshield and turns the wipers on faster to make out the approaching view. The street is lined with tall old maple trees, the white snow like gloves on the branches reaching skyward. Those gloved branches frame historic homes with gingerbread trim and gabled roofs and wraparound post-and-rail front porches, some of the homes behind white picket fences.

The snow is falling so thickly, crystals and dendrites and ice particles at once, that one Dutch Colonial, the last home on the street, seems to rise from it all like a dream.

Or a wish, she thinks, as she looks at it wistfully. Set off to the side behind the old house is a large barn looking merely like a shadow hulking behind the white snowfall. Its snow-covered roof and brown weathered wood planks bring back wintry childhood memories from when it was the Christmas Barn, full of wonder year-round. And there’s one more thing she notices as her car crawls along, as her arms pull her even closer to the windshield to squint through the swishing wipers growing more coated with wet snow with each passing second. A faded For Sale sign stands in the front yard, a little crooked and nearly buried in the winter’s snow, as though it’s been there for a long time.

Vera lifts her foot off the gas and slams on the brakes, not that she really has to; she was driving so slowly already while mesmerized by the enchanted view. Beyond the imposing dark barn, Addison Cove stretches out, its crystal blue waters frozen solid and covered with a blanket of white as it winds its way to the Connecticut River.

She parks in front of the house, gets out of her car and walks through the freshly fallen snow, slipping a little on the walkway, just to take a peek inside. Just to see if it all still looks like it did years ago when her parents brought her to the Christmas Barn. Ending the weekend with a drive down memory lane feels right, somehow. Oh, if ever she’d wish for a beautiful home of her own, wouldn’t this be it? Vera stamps her snow-caked boots on the Dutch Colonial’s front stoop and leans over to the side, trying to glimpse into the vacant house through the dusty paned windows, tightening her scarf against the blowing snow swirls, glancing up at those winter stars falling around her and closing her eyes tightly, for a long second, feeling the crystal snowflakes land on her face.

Chapter Two

Seven Months Later – September

WHAT WAS SHE THINKING? WELL. She knows
what
she was thinking. Something along the lines that visions of grandeur are easily attained. All it takes is talking yourself into buying a moss-green, wood-sided, rundown New England colonial with a widow’s walk, no less, and a rambling barn too, and life will be as magnificent as the house. That the home was historic, once owned by a seafaring ship captain, even better.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. After watching the status of the unsold property online for a couple months, and the status of her uneventful employment search, Vera finally decided. Before frittering away a sizable severance pay package that came with her pink slip, that money needed to be invested. In real estate. In one particular piece of Addison, Connecticut real estate, right beside the cove. Invested in drafty windows, in creaky floorboards, in a loose shutter, and in peeling paint.

And right up until Vera stained the Dutch Colonial’s heavy front door a dark barnwood brown to match the brown timber barn that is
also
now hers, the idea still seemed good. She even sanded and stained the antique scrolled pediment above the door. A little painting, a little cleaning, a little patching, and the house was … home.

And still is, right as she hooks a hammer claw around a large nail in the living room wall and yanks. Oh sure, yanks half a wall of sheetrock with the effort, veins and threaded cracks instantly spreading across the surface.

“Swell,” she says, stepping back and surmising the damage. “Now what?” Okay, so there has to be some way to fix this, because everything can be fixed, right? She just needs someone to tell her how. At least on the way to the hardware store, Vera gets to walk outside through her newly-stained front door, looking back over her shoulder with, well, with hope at least.

*  *  *

“Read me back the order,” Derek says into the phone. He leans an elbow on the countertop, checking off items on the list as his vendor repeats the order he just placed: snow shovels, windshield scrapers, roof rakes, snow-melt, sidewalk scrapers and electric snow throwers. “Throw in an extra carton of the windshield scrapers, would you? I have a feeling we’re in for a good winter.”

“What are you looking for in a delivery date? First week of October?” the vendor asks.

“If not sooner. I always get those early-bird shoppers preparing for the worst. You know how that goes.”

“I’ll do my best. We’re getting busy. Can’t believe the holidays are right around the corner, Derek. Where’d the year go?”

Twelve months. Where they went, he can’t say for certain. Doesn’t really matter, though. Because no matter how much you’d like to, there’s no getting any of it back once it’s gone, not one damn minute. Not one lousy day. Not one split-second decision. He pulls off his baseball cap, runs a hand through his hair and resettles the cap backward on his head, then cuffs his sleeve and checks his watch before giving his wrist a quick shake. Day after day, still, his eye is drawn to his watch every midafternoon with the habitual time check, except when he gets busy enough to be distracted from thinking about it.

He turns to the wall calendar behind the hardware store counter and lifts the September page to October to verify his order’s delivery date. As he raises this month’s page up, open to the October weeks not far off, his eye goes to the thick layer of tape plastered over and again along the top of the calendar where the hook passes through. Then he rips the whole damn thing right off the wall hook and throws it all in the trash can at his feet.

*  *  *

Late afternoon sunbeams reach through the paned windows. She loves the way that happens, the way the sun’s golden color heralds the approach of fall. That and the creaking wood floors of Cooper Hardware have to be two of her favorite things. Vera walks along the aisle looking up and down the racks of spackle and sheetrock tape and spackling knives. She can do this, she knows she can. But it would be a lot easier if there were some manual to guide her.

“Can I help you?”

She looks up at the older man approaching. “I hope so. I’ve got a wall that needs repairing and if you could maybe walk me through the process, I think I’ll do okay.”

“What kind of wall are we talking about?”

Vera looks from his eyes to the shelves. “Sheetrock? I bought an old house here in town and I’m doing a few repairs.”

“Is that right. Now which house is it? Because if it’s old enough, the walls might be plaster.”

“Plaster? Hm. It’s the green colonial at the cove. Where the Christmas Barn used to be?”

“No kidding. The big Dutch?”

“Yes, the last one on the street. With the barn too, it looks right out on the water there.”

“I know exactly the house you’re talking about. Have you moved in yet?”

“I did, about a month ago now. And I was fixing things up until a wall and I didn’t get along too well this morning, so what started as patching a nail hole is now a major repair.” She shrugs a little. “Help?”

“My son’s the carpenter. Derek. He does small renovations and repairs on the side. Why don’t you have a talk with him and see what he can do?”

“And where would I find him?”

The man points to the rear of the store near the office. “Right back there, doing some paperwork.”

Vera glances quickly over, then thanks him before heading down the aisle.

“Oh, Miss! Watch out for Zeus,” the man calls after her.

“Zeus?” she asks, turning back while still walking slowly, a little confused.

He motions with his arm raised, his finger pointing downward and to the left and so she stops suddenly and looks in front of her. A big yellow lab is spread sound-asleep across the wood-planked floor in a patch of afternoon sunlight. “Zeus?” she asks, and he nods at her before walking away.

“Seems like you’ve got the right idea,” she says to the dog while stepping over him and rounding the corner to the rear aisle, just in time to see this Derek ripping a calendar off the wall and throwing it, not too casually either, in the trash.

“Excuse me,” she calls out and he looks up at her. So she takes a few steps closer. “Your dad sent me your way?”

He lifts his cap off and resettles it over his dark, tousled hair, adding a quick glance at the now calendar-less wall. “What can I do for you?”

Vera hesitates, feeling as though she’s interrupted something, though he’s alone at the counter. She takes a quick breath and extends her hand. “I’m Vera. Vera Sterling.”

He shakes her hand briefly. “Derek Cooper.”

“Cooper, so your family owns the store?” She looks at him for a second longer, taking in his tall frame, a shadow of whiskers and brown eyes. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

He shakes his head and shrugs. “You from around here?”

“I am. Well, I was. I recently moved back. Do you have a sister by any chance?”

“Samantha.”

“Really! I went to school with Sam. Sam Cooper. How is she?”

“She’s good. Manages the store here, keeps me and my Dad in line. Married a couple years now.”

“Wow. I haven’t seen her in ages.”

“Where’d you move to?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You said you moved back here. In town?”

“Yes, yes I did. And I’m doing some home repairs trying to make a grand dream come true with a handyman’s special house, if you get my drift. Which now has wall damage I need fixed up. Your father said you do small repairs on the side?”

“I can take a look at it. What’s the address?”

“Oh you can’t miss it. It’s the last house down at the cove, the one with the barn.”

“The old Christmas Barn?”

“That’s the one. So you know it then?”

He looks past her for a second, quiet. “Yeah, I know it.”

And that’s all he says, glancing down at the trash can where he’d thrown that calendar, adjusting the cap on his head, then sliding a pencil and paper across the counter. “Write down your name and phone number. I’ll try to stop by the next day or two.”