“Wow, this is quite a whopper you’ve chosen,” he joked with Chantelle as she attempted to help lift the enormous tree into the wagon.
“It was the tallest one I could find!” Chantelle said, grinning.
The family climbed into the back of the wagon and snuggled up together. The wheels of the wagon turned and they began the slow journey back to the farm entrance.
“I lost you for a moment back there,” Daniel said to Emily as they rode. “You had another flashback?”
Emily nodded. The memory had left her shaken. Seeing Charlotte’s crestfallen expression, hearing the sharpness of her father’s tone. Even then he was a man with a lot on his mind. She wondered if it had been something to do with Antonia, the woman he’d been having an affair with, or their mother, who was back at home in New York, or something else altogether. Though Emily was convinced now that her father was still alive out there, Roy was as much a mystery to her as ever.
“I keep remembering more and more things about my dad,” Emily confessed. “Ever since I found those letters. I wish I knew what made him run away. I always thought that something sudden must have happened when I was a teenager, but I think he was troubled by something way before then. For as far back as my memories go, to be honest. Every time I flash back and see him I can see the trouble in his eyes.”
Daniel held her close. It felt good to be comforted by him, to be close again. He’d seemed so distant back at Joe’s Diner.
“Sorry if I was a bit quiet back there,” Daniel said, as if reading her mind. “The holidays bring back memories for me too.”
“They do?” Emily asked gently. “What kind of memories?”
It was so rare for Daniel to open up to her that she took every opportunity to encourage him.
“This might come as a bit of a surprise to you, but I’m actually Jewish,” Daniel said. “My dad wasn’t, though. He was Christian. We celebrated Christmas and Hanukkah while he was still at home, but when he left he took Christmas with him. Mom would only celebrate Hanukkah. Once me and my dad were back in touch, he would only celebrate Christmas at his house. It was odd. A pretty weird way of growing up, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
“That sounds tough,” Emily soothed, trying to hide her surprise that Daniel was in fact Jewish. She wondered what else she didn’t know about him and was gripped with a sudden anguish over how they would raise the children, if there were to be any children. She would of course love to celebrate both but Daniel seemed to be holding traumatic memories about the holidays that might make it a little harder to approach.
They rode back to the entrance of the farm, where they paid the plucky and cheerful Grace while waiting for their tree to be put through the baling machine.
Emily was glad to be creating new, happy memories with her family. But at the back of her mind, she couldn’t stop wondering about her father, about what was going on with him, what secrets he’d been keeping. But most of all, she wondered where he was now and if there was any way she would ever be able to trace him.
Back in the B&B, Emily and Daniel maneuvered the tree into position in the foyer. There were a few guests relaxing in the living room and they came out to watch with excitement as the enormous tree was raised.
Emily recalled the heap of boxes containing her dad’s old ornaments stored in the attic and rushed off to fetch them. Then she and Chantelle sat together at the kitchen table, sorting through all the ornaments.
“This is so pretty,” Chantelle said, holding up a glass reindeer.
Emily smiled to herself at the sight of it, recalling how she and Charlotte had pooled together their pocket money to buy it, and how they had then saved up every year to buy more, adding to their collection until they had enough to represent each of one of Santa’s reindeers. Then Charlotte had marked each one so they’d be able to tell them apart.
Emily took the glass reindeer from Chantelle’s hands and checked its hoof. There was a little scratch mark that looked like it might have been a D for Donner, though it could just as easily have been a B for Blitzen. She smiled to herself.
“There’s a whole set in here,” Emily said, looking at the tangle of fairy lights. “Somewhere.”
They rummaged around until they’d found every single one of Santa’s reindeer, including Rudolph with his red nose painted on by Charlotte with nail polish. Emily felt a tug of emotion as she recalled that they’d never gotten around to buying the Santa and sleigh ornaments – the last on their list and the most expensive – because Charlotte had died before they’d saved up enough money.
“Look at this!” Chantelle cried, breaking into Emily’s thoughts by waving a grubby, felt polar bear in front of her face.
“Percy!” Emily cried, taking it from Chantelle’s hands. “Percy the polar bear!” She laughed to herself, delighted she could pluck such an obscure memory from her mind. She had lost so many of them, and yet she could retrieve them still. It gave her hope for unraveling the mysteries of her past.
She and Chantelle sorted through all the decorations, selecting all the ones they wanted to use and carefully putting away the others. By the time they were finished and ready to add them to the tree, it had grown dark outside.
Daniel lit a fire in the fireplace and its soft orange glow spilled out into the foyer as the family began decorating the tree. One by one, Chantelle carefully placed each of her selected decorations onto the tree, with the kind of precision and care Emily had grown to recognize in the child. It was like she was savoring every moment, carefully storing a new set of memories to replace the terrible ones from her younger years.
Finally it was time to put the angel on the top. Chantelle had spent a long time choosing which decoration would be given the prime position and had eventually chosen a fabric, hand-knitted angel over a robin, a star, and a fat, cuddly snowman.
“Are you ready?” Daniel asked Chantelle as he stood at the bottom of the stepladder. “I’m going to have to carry you up so you can reach the top.”
“I get to put the angel on the top?” Chantelle said, wide-eyed.
Emily laughed. “Of course! The youngest always gets to do it.”
She watched Chantelle clamber onto Daniel’s back, the angel clutched tightly in her hands so she wouldn’t drop it. Then slowly, one step at a time, Daniel carried her to the top. Together they stretched out and Chantelle popped the decoration onto the tall tip of the tree.
The second the angel sat atop the tree, Emily had a sudden flashback. It came on so quickly she began to breathe rapidly, panicked by the abrupt shift from her bright, warm inn to the colder, darker one of thirty years prior.
Emily was looking up at Charlotte as she placed the angel they’d spent all day making onto the tree. Her dad was holding Charlotte aloft, who at this point in time was a chubby toddler, and he wobbled slightly from the numerous sherries he’d drunk that day. Emily remembered a sudden, overwhelming emotion of fear. Fear that her tipsy father would drop Charlotte onto the hard hearth. Emily was five years old and it was the first time she’d really understood the concept of death.
Emily returned to the present day with a gasp to find her hand pressed against the wall as she steadied herself. She was hyperventilating and Daniel was there beside her, his hand on her back.
“Emily?” he asked with concern. “What happened? Another memory?”
She nodded, finding herself unable to speak. The memory had been so vivid and so terrifying, despite her knowledge that no harm had befallen Charlotte that winter evening. She cherished most of her recovered memories but that one had felt sinister, ominous, like a sign of the dark things to come.
Daniel continued rubbing Emily’s back as she made a concerted effort to slow her breathing back to normal. Chantelle looked up at her, worried, and it was the child’s face that finally brought Emily out of the grips of her memories.
“I’m