“I was thinking the same thing.”
It didn’t snow often here, but when it did, most of it happened after New Year’s. They’d only had one brief snowfall, back in November. The flakes didn’t even stick.
“I love snow.”
They said it at the same time. They glanced at each other and smiled.
“I hope it snows,” Marigold said.
“I’ve always felt lucky to live someplace where snow is rare, you know? It’s the rareness that makes it so special.”
“That could be said about a lot of things.”
“True.” North stared at her. His smile widened.
Marigold felt it, too. The rareness, the specialness, of North. Of this night. She wished it could last forever.
“Oh, no.” The wonderful thought had triggered a nerve-wracking one. She pushed North inside. “My mom! If it snows, she’ll close the restaurant early.”
They glanced at the lingering items in the hallway—and the tree—and hurried back to work. As fast as they could, faster than Marigold would have thought possible, everything was stacked flat against the living room’s longest wall.
Only the tree remained.
North hefted it inside—a groom carrying his bride across the threshold—and placed it proudly before the sliding-glass door. As he adjusted it in its stand, Marigold vacuumed away the fallen needles. She did another quick sweep of the bedrooms while he rearranged the last of the furniture—the couch, a coffee table, the Moroccan end table, a glass lamp—into an agreeable living space.
She was almost done when she spotted them in a newly cleared corner of her own bedroom. The Fisher-Price boxes.
Marigold carried them into the living room as if they were sacred.
“Look,” she said.
North turned on the lamp, and Marigold’s heart jolted. The area he’d created—everything on top of her favorite floral tufted rug—looked warm and snug and inviting. He’d even found the rainbow afghan that they used to wrap around themselves while watching television. He’d draped it over the back of the couch.
It looked perfect there. Everything looked perfect.
“It’s not much…” he said.
“No. It is.” This was, perhaps, the greatest gift she’d ever received. Her eyes welled with tears. “Thank you.”
North smiled. “Come on. Let’s decorate your tree.”
Marigold laughed, dabbing at her eyes with her sweater sleeve. “Oh, so it’s my tree now? I’ve earned it?”
He pretended to look shocked, as if it had been a slip of the tongue. Marigold laughed again. She felt happy—the kind of happy that reached every part of her body—as she opened the first box. It was filled with neatly bound strings of white and blue lights.
North peered over her shoulder. “Ha! Go figure.”
“What?”
It was as if she’d caught him doing something wrong. He looked uneasy, but he answered with the truth. “I was surprised by how carefully these strands were put away. Christmas lights are usually this big, tangled mess. But this—this—is the tidiest thing in your entire apartment.”
“When we put those away two years ago,” Marigold said, “our lives were a lot different.”
North removed a string of pale blue lights and began to unwind them. “You can tell a lot about a person by looking at the state of their surroundings.”
“If that’s true,” she mused, “then my life is looking significantly better.”
“But does it feel any better?”
Marigold met his gaze. She smiled. “Without a doubt.”
* * *
They strung the tree with lights. Tons of lights. Marigold wanted to use all the lights, and when they were done, it shone like a beacon—marvelous and sparkling and bright.
North opened the second box and removed a pinecone on a white ribbon. He raised an eyebrow.
“You won’t find any Santas or angels in there,” Marigold said. “This is a scientific household, remember?”
He laughed.
Each ornament was bundled in tissue paper. They gently unwrapped them one by one—red cardinals and spotted deer and black bears. Suns and moons and stars. Apples and pears and roses. And snowflakes. Lots and lots of silver snowflakes.
“Did you know,” North said, as he hung a feathery blue jay, “that real trees are better for the environment than fake ones? A lot of people think the fake ones are better, because you have to throw out the real ones every year, but real trees produce oxygen and provide wildlife habitats while they grow, and then, when they’re done, they can be ground into mulch to fertilize the earth. While the plastic ones just … rot in landfills. They can take hundreds of years to decompose.”
Marigold waited until he was done with his rant. “Yeah,” she said. “I know.”
“Oh.” North stilled. A tiny skunk swayed on his index finger.
But she understood why he’d felt the need to tell her. She nudged his arm. “I’m glad you work for the good guys, North.”
“I am the good guys,” he said, trying to regain some swagger.
As the final ornaments bedecked the tree, Marigold glanced out the sliding-glass door. Tiny snowflakes were swirling and pirouetting down from the sky.
Marigold paled. “Did you know it was snowing?”
“It must have just started.”
“You have to go. My mom will be shutting down the restaurant now. She’ll be home soon.”
She scrambled, shoving the tissue paper back into the boxes. She felt him staring at her, wanting to know something—something she wanted to know, too—but they were out of time. He tucked away the boxes as she rushed into the kitchen. She pulled out a foil-covered serving dish from on top of the refrigerator and ran back to the tree. She shoved the dish at North’s chest. “Take these home, please. As a thank-you.”
His face was illuminated in blue and white light. “What are they?”
“Cookies. Vegan gingerbread ladies. It’s all we have, but they’re really good, I promise. You’d never know they didn’t have butter in them.”
“Gingerbread ladies?”
Marigold shrugged. “My mom isn’t really into men right now.”
“That’s understandable,” North said. “The last one was pretty bad.”
“The worst.”
“And … how do you feel about them?” he asked carefully. “Are you okay?”