Page 34 of The Christmas Arrangement
I crouch in the snow beside the blue spruce and prop the saw against the trunk. Its teeth bite into bark. Pine sap sticks to my gloves. Each pull of the blade releases more of that sharp, clean scent.
The Jollys cheer me on.
“You've got it!”
“Almost there!”
For a moment I'm not a grown man sawing through eight inches of wood with a flimsy saw. Instead it’s my first bike ride, my first day of middle school, my first baseball game. Every childhood milestone I never had collapsed into this moment.
The tree shudders. Ivy lunges forward to steady it as it drops into my arms.
The spell breaks, but I’m still grinning like an idiot, breathless and ridiculously proud of myself for cutting down a tree. Ivy's grinning back, sticky needles in her hair, her eyes bright and her cheeks pink from cold. And for one moment, I let myself pretend that I can have this life. Then I look away.
On the walk back to the barn, the sisters insist on carrying the tree, per tradition. Jack and I trail behind and listen to their laughter, singing, and a squabble about whether Taylor Swift really grew up on a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania.
“She did, you know,” I tell Jack.
“It doesn’t matter. They had the same debate last year, and I pulled out my phone to settle it with an internet search but they stopped me.”
“Why?”
He chuckles. “They don’t want to know the answer because then they won’t be able to fight about it anymore. They aren’t even consistent. Holly said they argue different sides some .”
I’m mystified in silence. After a moment, I say, “I guess I don’t get it because I’m an only child.”
Jack gives me a friendly shoulder bump. “I have a brother, and I don’t get it. The Jollys are different. Or at least they’re different from my family. My parents split up when my brother and I were really little, then our dad died. So for a long time, it was just us and our mom. She raised us alone, worked full-time, and had a side hustle.”
I eye him. “That sounds an awful lot like my childhood.”
“Without the teen heartthrob status, you mean.” He says it lightly, jokily.
But I answer seriously. “That was my job. My childhood was … nothing like this, that’s for sure.”
“Want some advice?”
“Sure.”
“Let it wash over you. Don’t worry about doing the right thing or doing anything. Just be. That’s what they do.”
“Just be.”
“Exactly.” He nods sagely.
When we reach the clearing, Nick takes the tree from his daughters and heads into the barn to pay for it and get it tied up for the trip home. The rest of us gather around the crackling bonfire. Noelle passes around cups of hot cider, and Merry recounts the story of the year they dropped the tree on Holly's foot, fracturing it, and she insisted on running the annual holiday 5K in a walking boot.
Jack nuzzles her neck and calls her a warrior princess.
“I am,” Holly agrees. “But I regretted my choices when my toenails turned black. I couldn’t wear sandals that whole next summer.”
“It was so disgusting,” Merry cackles.
Ivy laughs at the memory and leans into me, her head on my shoulder, and the weight of it feels right. Like she belongs there.
Then she snaps out of it and straightens, putting careful distance between us on the log where we sit. Is it weird that I feel her absence even though she’s a foot to my right?
I look down at the steam coming off my mug.
Right. Friends.