“You mean, don’t forget to stop and sniff the subway platform?”
“Don’t be like that,” Birdie chastised.
“Fun. Right.” Kerry rolled her eyes.
She took a deep breath, looked both ways, and slowly pulled out onto the county road.
“As if.”
chapter 3
Google Maps told her she should reach New York in nearly ten hours, which would have put her in the city by around five o’clock Saturday.
But those maps didn’t account for an aging truck with a top speed of fifty miles per hour, towing a fifteen-foot trailer. It didn’t account for the construction delays on the interstate, snarled traffic around multiple wrecks, and it definitely didn’t take into consideration the frequent stops necessitated by a white-knuckle driver amped up by too much caffeine.
It was already past three when Kerry pulled into the rest stop outside Winchester. She found a parking spot at the back of the lot, locked the door, and, despite all the coffee, instantly dozed off.
It was nearing dark when her phone buzzed her back to consciousness. She yawned and reached for the phone, gasping when she saw the time—5:30—and the caller—Murphy Tolliver.
“Are you getting close?” Her brother never wasted time on niceties.
“Not exactly. This damn truck won’t go over fifty, and with all the construction on the interstate…”
“Okay, where are you? Jersey?”
“More like Virginia.”
“Jesus, Kerry! You’re still hours away. At the rate you’re going it’ll be close to midnight. I haven’t slept in two days and I’m freezing my ass off in this truck waiting around on you.”
“Then get a hotel room,” she snapped. “I’m doing the best I can.”
“We can’t afford a hotel in the city. Just call me when you’re an hour out. And hurry up. We need to be ready to start selling trees first thing in the morning.”
He disconnected and Kerry scowled down at the phone. “Gonna be a fun few weeks, for sure.”
By the time she’d navigated the Lincoln Tunnel and emerged onto West Thirty-Eighth Street, Kerry’s hands were slippery with sweat and her pulse rate was sky high. If her GPS was correct, she was thirty minutes away from the corner in the West Village where Murphy had erected the tree stand.
She tapped his name on her call list and he picked up on the first ring. “Hey. You getting close?”
“According to my phone, I’m five miles away.” Her eyes burned with fatigue and her stomach roiled from the stress of the day.
“Well, I’ve got bad news. Some a-hole in a gray Mercedes parked in front of the stand. Pisses me off. Everybody in the neighborhood knows we park the trailer here this time of year. If it’s not moved, you’ll have to park down the block. I’ll put out some cones to try to block it off till you get here.”
“Okay. Whatever.” She wanted to ask Murphy why he hadn’t blocked off the spot in front of the tree standbeforethe rich a-holeparked there, but arguing with her brother was like howling into a hurricane. A waste of time.
As she got closer to Greenwich Village she held her breath and slowed her roll. She was terrified she’d sideswipe cars parked on both sides of the already narrow streets. As she passed street signs, old memories from those long-ago family trips to the city bubbled to the surface. Morton Street. She’d Rollerbladed down this block on a quiet Sunday, hanging on to a rope being towed behind Murphy on his bike. And yes, Christopher Street. There was a street vendor on this corner who sold roasted chestnuts, and wasn’t that the deli with the black-and-white cookies she’d never seen any place but New York?
The buzz of her phone yanked her back to reality.
“Look up ahead. I’m waving at you from the right side of the street.”
Sure enough, there was Murphy, who’d stepped off the curb at the next intersection and was waving both arms over his head.
At the same time she spotted the sign.TOLLIVER FAMILY CHRISTMAS TREES: FARM FRESH SINCE 1954, painted in Birdie’s neat hand-lettering. The tree stand was wrapped around the corner of Hudson and Twelfth, and the trees themselves were stacked upright against the rough-cut two-by-four fencing that Murphy had erected.
And just as he’d warned, a gleaming charcoal-gray Mercedes sedan was parked in front of the stand, squarely in the middle of two parking spaces and directly in front of Murphy’s pickup.
“A-hole,” Kerry muttered.
