Page 13

"So where's your mom a transplant from? I should probably know this since she's Hildie's best friend."

"Holly Ridge in the North Carolina mountains. She moved down after my dad died, almost three years ago now, in February. She'd never lived anywhere else her entire life, and then she was gone inside of six months."

I wait for the soft voice, the “I'm so sorry” that makes me the one who has to reach across and say it's okay, don't worry about it, it was a while ago.

It doesn't come. He just nods. I could kiss him for it.

"My aunt used to bring me out here," he says. "Saturdays, when she wasn't working. We'd get down before anybody else, and she'd sit about where you are with a paperback, and I'd walk the tide line hunting shark teeth."

"Did you find any?"

"More than I could count." He smiles for the first time all night, and there's that figgin dimple in it that has no business on a man who talks this little.

"Mom said you're in Wyoming, right?"

"Yep. Moved West the first chance I got."

"When do you fly back?"

"The day after Christmas."

I push my heels deeper into the sand. I have six days here. At home I can't buy cold medicine without two people asking after my mother, and down here I am nobody's business at all.

"You worked that whole room today," he says.

"What can I say? I'm very good at cutting sheet cake."

"You got a plate into everybody's hands." He says it out at the water instead of at me. "Anyone get you one?"

I don't say anything at first. I keep digging at the sand with my heel.

"Don't worry. I had plenty of cake and icing."

He picks up a piece of a sand dollar, turns it over, and then holds it out to me to look at.

"Came out here to see the boat lights, but there aren't as many as I thought there would be. My mom stopped doing a tree," I tell him. "After my dad. She hangs a wreath on the door, and that is the extent of her Christmas decorations at the condo. I didn't know that bothered me until about six o'clock tonight."

He doesn't answer right away.

"I've got one."

I turn my head.

"I had someone put it up for Hildie. Fresh pine, lights, every ornament Hildie's owned since about 1979." He rubs his palms together to get the sand off them. "She was supposed to come home with me for the night, but they ended up keeping her at Sabal Point. So now I’ve got this six-foot tree lit up in an empty house."

"That's the saddest sentence anybody has said to me all year."

"It could be happier."

"Carson North. Are you asking me to come look at your Christmas tree?"

There’s the dimple again. He gets to his feet and holds a hand down to me.

“I’m saying you want a Christmas tree, and I’ve got one lit up five minutes away.”

FOUR

Carson