Page 9 of Bright Lights, Big Christmas
“The doctors say he’ll be fine. If my mother doesn’t kill him while she’s nursing him back to health. Speaking of which. Are you okay?”
He sniffled. “It’s not a cold, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m allergic to pollen. Especially conifer pollen.”
“Wow, guess you’re in the wrong place.”
He smiled and rubbed at his eyes. “Antihistamines usually help.” He looked around. “But this is a lot of trees.”
“A whole tractor-trailer load,” Kerry said. “Dad lost over a hundred good-sized trees when we had that hard freeze back in May.”
“You’d think Christmas trees could stand cold weather,” Patrick said, looking around at the mini forest surrounding them.
“Normally they can, but when it starts to warm up in the spring, the trees start sending out new growth, and then this hard, prolonged freeze hit, and the cold settled at the fields down at the lowest elevation of the farm. It looked like they’d all burnt up.”
“Fascinating,” he said.
“Really?” Kerry shrugged. “I’ve always thought it was sort ofboring. We’re the largest Christmas-tree-growing county in the state of North Carolina, which is the second-largest grower in the country, behind Oregon.”
“I take it you’re not into farming?”
“No,” she said quickly.
“May I ask what you are into?” He had an old-world politeness that Kerry found touching, coming from a secret-agent rock-star type.
“I’m an art director for an ad agency,” she said. “Was an art director. Currently I’m what my dad calls self-unemployed.”
“So that’s why you’ve branched out into selling Christmas trees?” He chuckled at his own pun and Kerry couldn’t help but smile.
“I’m here because my mother guilt-tripped me into coming along to help Murphy. Mom and I used to come too, until she and Jock split up when I was seven. It takes a minimum of two people to run the stand, and someone had to drive Spammy up. And since my dad is recovering from heart surgery, that left me.”
“Your mom is taking care of your dad?” He raised one eyebrow. “How very civilized.”
“You’d have to know Birdie,” Kerry said.
“Can’t imagine my ex doing that for me,” Patrick said.
“How long have you been divorced? If you don’t mind my asking,” she added hastily.
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Separated for a year, divorced for a year.”
“Sorry.”
“We’ve finally worked things out, I think. At least, as far as Austin is concerned.”
“Good for you,” Kerry said.
“Pat?” A woman appeared on the sidewalk a few yards away. She had a rolling suitcase in hand. “I’m taking off. I put Austin’s clothes in the dryer, but I can’t find his library book.”
“It’s already in his bookbag for tomorrow,” Patrick called back.
The woman was petite, with long, dark hair. “You’ll feed him dinner, right?”
“Have I ever not fed my son?” he said, sounding offended. “See you Thursday.”
“I told you, I’m not back till Friday. It’s on your calendar. Don’t you ever look at that?”
“Only every day. See you Friday, then.”
The woman nodded and walked off down the block, her high-heeled boots clicking on the pavement.
