climbing behind the wheel and starting the engine.
Sad as it was to say, neither could Laurel. Even after they’d moved in with Nana, their tight budget, due to paying back the bills for fertility treatments, hadn’t been flexible enough to include entertainment. Date night consisted of a television movie with a frozen pizza. And then her grandmother’s mental health began to decline, which limited their ability to get out in the evenings.
“I want a big tree this year,” Laurel said as they headed to the neighborhood tree lot.
“You got it.”
As Zach drove around Lake Union past Gas Works Park, he reached for Laurel’s hand. “Do you recall when we were first dating—how we used to lay out on the grass in the middle of summer and gaze into the heavens?”
It wasn’t like Laurel would forget. Those were nights when they’d shared their hopes and dreams for the future—special times that had made them grow closer. It was the following autumn that Zach had asked her to be his wife.
“We talked about everything,” Laurel recalled. “Our future seemed bright. Me as a teacher, and you doing amazingly great and geeky computer programming for Amazon. Nothing could stand in our way.”
“We were going to build our own home, design it ourselves, or remodel an existing one. I wanted to live on Capitol Hill, and you were set on Ballard. A four-bedroom house with a den for you. Two kids and at least one dog, right?”
“Two children,” she repeated slowly. “Was that to remind me how I have failed you as a wife?”
“No,” Zach nearly shouted. “No, never. How can you even suggest such a thing?”
“I can’t give you children,” Laurel bitterly replied. It hurt to whisper the words. She felt like a failure, a disappointment to the man she loved. Yet through it all, Zach had faithfully remained at her side. Not once had he complained or spoken of his own sense of loss. He’d been the one to hold her together after Jonathan was taken from them. During the IVF attempts he’d been there for her, encouraging and supporting her while her body underwent hormone treatments, painful shots, and repeated failures. And when she’d failed to conceive, he’d held her while she’d wept with disappointment.
“You’ve given me so much more than children, Laurel. I’m sorry, forgive me. I know how painful this is for you…It’s just that I was thinking about those nights. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Laurel didn’t want to do or say anything that would put a damper on their evening out, so she kept quiet. Maybe she was being oversensitive, but she couldn’t help feeling like she’d let her husband down.
“Let’s enjoy tonight. We don’t get many of these anymore,” he said.
“You’re right. No more talk about things that weren’t meant to be. This evening is about the here and now. About us.”
They stopped at the lot selling trees and Laurel must have looked at two dozen, making Zach stand each one up so she could get the full view. She marveled at her husband’s patience as he stamped each tree on the ground several times and held it for her inspection, until she found the perfect one. It was full, freshly cut, and it smelled of pine and of Christmas—the way the trees were from her early childhood, from the precious times she’d chosen them with her mom and dad.
Zach paid for the tree, and one of the teens from the scout troop helped him mount it on the roof of his car.
“I don’t know about you, but I could use something to chase away the chill,” Zach said.
Starbucks was directly across from the lot, and they headed in that direction. Within a few minutes, they each had a hot drink in their hands and had found a small table where they could sit and talk. Laurel’s thoughts went to Christmases past.
“The year before my mom died, she and I made our own ornaments. Dad mailed them to Nana the first Christmas after I went to live with them. They were ugly—especially the ones I made—but to me, they were perfect.”
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right?”
“We used molds and filled them with plaster of paris, then painted them. Nana and I placed them on the tree every year until they finally had all crumbled into chunks.” Laurel hadn’t thought about those ornaments in years. How she wished she could put her hands on one of them again. To see one,