Page 12 of The Forever Christmas Tree

“Are you still painting, Lize?” Mildred asked.

“Not so much. Too busy with the shop and taking care of Cassie.”

Eliza Rutledge had been painting since she was a teenager, as a hobby. After marrying, her works featured beautiful winter beach and bay scenes . . . always with a lone Christmas tree. What else? Mildred had one she’d put in the attic twelve years ago. Snow on the dunes, a lighthouse in the far background, and a small, incongruously placed Christmas tree. Although she was an amateur, Eliza’s artistic endeavors were lovely and graced the walls of many homes in Bell Cove.

“This Raul . . . is he . . . um, special?” Eliza asked tentatively.

“Yes, but not in the way you probably mean.” The buzzer went off on the stove and Mildred got up to remove a tray of shortbread from the oven. The buttery sweet smell filled the room. She put a few onto a plate and brought it back to the table to cool. Only then did she sit back down and continue, “I’ve been so lonely, Lize. Especially after Alan passed.”

Eliza knew how distraught and lonely Mildred had been after Barry’s death almost fifty years ago in that damn war and how Bell Cove, her hometown, had been a refuge for her, especially later as she’d moved in to help Alan raise his daughter Wendy. But Wendy left twelve years ago and Alan had been gone five years now.

“I probably shouldn’t have retired five years ago.” Mildred had been a Bell Cove Elementary School music teacher for more than forty years. “The school board would have let me continue, as long as I was able, but I had all these grand plans about traveling and gardening . . .” She let her words trail off.

“And . . . ?”

“I discovered that it’s no fun traveling alone, and I have a black thumb.”

They both laughed.

But then Eliza said, “I get lonely, too. Oh, I know that I have Ethan and Cassie to keep me company, and the shop occupies my time, but . . .”

Mildred squeezed her hand. “But, sweetie, you had more than twenty years with the love of your life. That’s priceless. Sam was priceless.”

“Yes, he was.” Eliza sighed and stared off into space for a moment.

Eliza and Samuel’s love story was legendary around Bell Cove. When the mountain boy, Samuel Rutledge, met Eliza Metz, an Outer Banks girl from a family of bell artisans, he fell head over heels in love. He was a Christmas tree farmer, of all things, at a time back in the sixties when there weren’t that many big commercial growers. Most people went out and cut their own trees.

Because Eliza didn’t want to leave the barrier island and because he loved her so much, Samuel moved here, bought five acres, and tried to grow Christmas trees on the punishing land between the ocean and the sound. It was lucky he still kept that tree farm on the mountain because it was their bread and butter while the island efforts proved a dismal failure. And God bless Samuel, he never faltered under the teasing and laughter of the islanders as he produced one stunted, sorry Christmas tree after another. Then, lo and behold, people started buying the ugly trees out of pity, then as a joke.

All for the love of a woman. Sometimes she wondered if she and Barry would have had the same kind of love if they’d had the chance to marry. Probably not. The Eliza/Samuel kind of love was rare. Although it did seem to run in their family. The men loved hard. Look at how George had taken his wife’s leaving, never looking at another woman for fifteen-odd years until his death at only forty, some said of a broken heart. And Ethan . . . oh, my God! His love of Wendy and his grief over what he’d considered her desertion, although he was to blame for that . . . well, enough about that!

“And where does Raul fit into your loneliness?” Eliza asked, jarring Mildred out of her wandering thoughts.

“Not just Raul, but my housemates. You have to be wondering about them.” At Eliza’s nod, Mildred said, “It started with Joy Lowry. Remember her?”

“She used to own the bookstore, didn’t she?”

“Yes. I met her in the general store one day, and she commented that she was thinking about selling her house, that it was too much for her to keep up since her husband, who had that insurance agency, ran off with his secretary, but she didn’t want to move away from Bell Cove. I offered to let her stay with me, temporarily.”

“Didn’t she remarry . . . the new minister over at Nags Head?”

“Uh-huh. Over the past two years, I’ve had a dozen different people stay here. Never more than three or four at a time. And none have been here for more than six months.”

By now, the shortbread had cooled, and Eliza took a bite of one triangle, closed her eyes, and pretended to swoon. “You might not have a green thumb, but you haven’t lost your touch with baking.”

“Thank you, thank you. I’ll give you a tin to take home with you. This is the third batch I’ve made today.”

“Again . . . Raul?”

“Right. I met Raul last year at the Swinging Seniors Club over at Ocracoke. No, not that kind of swinging. It was for jitterbug aficionados. He was visiting his daughter who’s a marine archaeologist or something, who lives there.” She shrugged. “We connected.”

“What does he do for a living? Is he retired?”

“He took early retirement as a professor at the University of Barcelona after his wife died. He’s writing some kind of history book.”

“Okaay. And is this the real deal, long term, committed kind of relationship?”

Mildred laughed. “This is the nice-for-now, let’s-see-where-it-goes kind of relationship. He has every intention of returning to Spain. I can’t see myself anywhere but Bell Cove.” She laughed again. “Your turn, Lize. What prompted your visit today?”