“There’s nothing girlfriend about you,” I said. As I looked at him I suddenly wanted him to kiss me. I hoped he was thinking the same. He smiled at me, handed me a plate, and said, “Last one. How about I finish drying and you put things away?”
I breathed out slowly. “It’s a plan.”
We finished up in the kitchen and went out to decorate the Christmas tree.
I said, “We put the lights on first?”
“Yes, but first we make sure the lights work.”
“Good idea. The guy who sold them to me was kind of sketchy.”
He grinned. “Yeah. I’ve never trusted drifters who work at Christmas tree lots.”
He laid out the boxes, opened them, then carefully laid out the strands in neat rows. “Do you have an extension cord?”
“Yes. I’ll get it.”
“Maybe we should have some Christmas music. Set the mood.”
“I can get that too.” I walked down the hall to the closet and grabbed the extension cord. Then I found some instrumental Christmas music on my iPod and plugged it into my stereo in the kitchen. The comforting sound of music filled the house. I went back into the front room. The strands were all connected and laid out in order. I handed him the cord.
“Thank you.” He plugged in the lights, and they flashed on. I had forgotten that they changed colors. “They work.”
“They’re pretty.”
“That’s what you asked for.” He starting disconnecting the lights from each other.
“Why are you doing that?”
“Because they’re easier to install if you break the tree up into quadrants.”
“Do you start from the top or the bottom?”
“Always the top. Because if you get to the top and you have an extra yard of lights, what do you do?”
“You just wrap them around again.”
He shook his head. “You are such a novice.”
After we had wrapped the lights around the tree, he walked to the center of the room and looked at the tree, squinting.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m looking for dark holes.”
“Why are you squinting?”
“That’s the best way to find dark holes.”
“You are hard-core,” I said.
“No, I’m a professional.”
It was after midnight when we finished decorating the tree. Then we sat down on the couch to admire our creation.
“There’s something peaceful about a Christmas tree,” I said. “When I was little, I would just lay there and look at the tree until I fell asleep in front of it.”
He nodded slowly. “What was your childhood like?”
I groaned a little.
“It was bad?”
“Yeah. My father was interesting.”
“Interesting unique, or interesting a living hell?”
“The latter, mostly. But he was definitely unique.”
“Were you raised in Utah?”
“No. I’m from southern Oregon. A town called Ashland. You probably haven’t heard of it.”
“I’ve been there,” he said.
“You’ve been to Ashland?”
“About six years ago I went with my brother to the Shakespeare Festival.”
“Ashland’s famous for that.”
“What did your father do?”
“Pretty much everything. He was a jack-of-all-trades. He came to Oregon when he was nineteen to work in a lumber yard. He ended up owning a lot of land. More than six hundred acres. That was back when it was cheap and before the Californians started moving in,” I said, imitating his drawl.
“Is your father still alive?”
“Yes.”
“Do you see much of him?”
“I haven’t seen him since my wedding. I was surprised that he even came to that.”
“What about your mother?”
“She was wonderful. At least what I remember of her. She died when I was fourteen.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Did your father ever remarry?”
“About six years ago. He married a woman a few years younger than me. He made it a point to tell me that he redid his will so everything goes to her when he dies. He owns several millions of dollars’ worth of land.”
“So he’s wealthy?”
“You wouldn’t know it. He still lives in the log cabin he built forty years ago.”
“He lives in a log cabin?”
“Well, it’s not, like, Abraham Lincoln’s place. It has plumbing, a Jacuzzi tub and sauna. It’s almost three thousand square feet.”
“Will he ever sell his land?”
“Not while he’s living. It’s his refuge. He’s a . . . what’s the word? Prepper? He has his own well, a shed full of dynamite, and an arsenal. He even makes his own shotgun shells.” I groaned again. “He hates the world. And he hates that they’re encroaching on him. Especially the environmentalists.
“Once he was clearing some trees on his property and his environmentalist neighbors called the police on him. As soon as the officer left, my father grabbed me and stomped over to their house. My dad’s a big man, about six-foot-three, with an even bigger temper.
“In the old days he would have just called out the man—or dragged him out of his house—and beaten him up. But times have changed, and my father’s smart enough to know it. He knew his neighbors would sue him, so he used a different strategy.
“He pounded so hard on the door that it shook. When the people came, they only opened the door enough to peer out. I remember how terrified they looked. They asked my dad what he wanted. He calmly said to them, ‘You know, you live downwind of me. That eastern ocean wind flows down the mountain slopes like a rushing river.’
“The man said, ‘How poetic. What’s your point?’
“My father said, ‘The next time you meddle in my affairs, I’m going to build a pig farm on the border of our property. Just right there, not twenty yards from your house. You snowflakes ever been to a pig farm?’ The woman started making some clueless comment about being vegan and the horrors of the pig-slaughtering industry, and my father said, ‘The smell carries for more than a mile, two on a windy day. In the summer it’s so dank, you can taste the stink. Just twenty yards away, you’re going to think you’re living in a pigsty. Your food will taste like pig dung. That’s not to mention the flies. The infestation will be biblical. Then I’ll slaughter the pigs myself and leave them hanging on meat hooks by your fence. You won’t be able to live here and you won’t be able to sell your house. Hell, you won’t be able to give it away.’
“The man said, ‘You can’t do that.’ My father replied, ‘Check the zoning, sweetie.’ Then his wife said, ‘You wouldn’t dare.’ My father laughed and said, ‘Just try me, you liberal morons. Just try me.’ Not surprisingly, they never called the police on him again.”
“He sounds like an interesting man,” Andrew said. “I’d like to meet him.”
“No you wouldn’t.”
“But he was pretty shrewd.”
“He could take care of himself. That’s what he was best at.” I frowned. “Sometimes I’m glad my mother died young so she didn’t have to spend her life with him.”
“How old were you when you left home?”
“Eighteen. I was waitressing and a driver told me about Utah. It sounded nice, so I moved here.”
“Are you an only child?”
“No. I have a little brother. He’s in Alaska working on an offshore oil rig.”
“Do you see much of him?”
“No. Maybe every few years. He left five years after my mom died. I don’t blame him. My father had registered him for the army so he could steal his girlfriend.”
“Your father stole his own son’s girlfriend?”
“He tried. That’s how he was. After my mother died, he started dating girls from my high school. I’d be walking home from cheerleading and I’d see him drive by in his Porsche with one of my classmates. If it wasn’t such a small town, he probably would have been in jail.”