Christmas at Holiday House - RaeAnne Thayne Page 0,42
far as I can remember. I might have helped Winnie once or twice when I was a kid and Lucy and I were staying here, but if I did, I don’t remember.”
“What about with your parents when you were growing up?”
“My parents always had housekeeping staff to take care of the holiday decorations. After I left for school and my career, I’ve never bothered with a tree.”
“All you do for a garland is start at the star and wind it around. Yes. Just like that. Maybe not so tightly. Perfect. Just keep going like that until it gets low enough that I can reach.”
He moved lower on the ladder as the garland twisted lower. The lower he went, the wider the tree and the more difficult it became for him to reach the spool as he unrolled it on the far side of the tree, but he managed with some creative tosses and even more skillful catches.
“Why didn’t you ever want your own tree?” Abby asked from below as she waited for him to work his way down the tree.
“Since I’ve been back in Silver Bells, I’m usually working during the holidays. Also, I never really felt the need. The Lancaster corporate offices are connected to our main hotel in town, the Lancaster Silver Bells, and it’s always lavishly decorated for the holidays. My own condo is just next door to the corporate offices in another building we own, which the staff decorates well. And when I’m not at work or at my condo, I am often here with Winnie and can simply enjoy her decorations. It doesn’t make sense to put up my own.”
“I get it. Plenty of people don’t have Christmas trees. If I didn’t have Christopher, I probably wouldn’t have bothered to put up a tree last year.”
She gave a little laugh. “It’s ironic, isn’t it? I didn’t want to go to all the bother of putting up a Christmas tree in my apartment since we are moving right after the holidays. Yet here I am. Since I’ve been here, I think I have decorated at least a dozen Christmas trees now. I consider myself something of an expert.”
He zeroed in on her earlier words as he took another step down on the ladder with the garland. “So why didn’t you want to put up a tree in Phoenix?”
She busied herself with fluffing ribbons he assumed would go on the tree when he was done. “It may seem hard to believe right now, considering I’ve been doing nothing but decorating for a week, but I’m not a big fan of Christmas. It’s so much stress and angst, you know? Especially when you don’t have the perfect family situation.”
“Few people do, right?” He had so many ex-stepparents and stepsiblings, he wasn’t sure he could remember all their names.
“I was just talking about that with Christopher tonight. What does traditional family even mean anymore?”
“A valid question.”
“I had a very loving family, just a little nontraditional, I guess.” She hesitated, met his gaze and then looked away. “My mom was a former drug addict who had lingering health issues throughout my life. HIV, hepatitis. A whole messy chart. She died when I was twelve, but I was fortunate enough to have a great-aunt who raised me after that.”
“That’s good.” He found it an interesting coincidence that they both had been so impacted by older female relatives.
“Yes. Except she was diagnosed with cancer when I was fifteen, unfortunately. Colon. By the time they found it, it had spread everywhere. She died when I was seventeen.”
Oh, no. So then she had no one. Poor Abby. He slowly wound the garland down until he was almost to floor level. “Did you go into foster care?”
She shook her head. “I became an emancipated adult at that point for my final year of high school. My mom and Aunt Elizabeth had left me a little money. Not a huge amount but enough to cover my rent and tuition to nursing school.”
“That took grit,” he said, unable to keep the admiration out of his voice.
He could see color rise on her cheeks. “You do what you have to do. I met my husband halfway through nursing school in Alabama and moved out to Phoenix to be closer to him while he was in medical school. That’s where I met Lucy.”
“So you always knew you wanted to be a nurse?”
She laughed. “Oh, no. I never wanted to be a nurse. I wanted to be a ballerina. Unfortunately,