even have decorations?”
“Decorations and old-fashioned light bulbs, those gigantic colorful lights.”
“Jeez, those were popular even before our time,” he said, laughing.
“My mother claims before hers, too. If you want to cut down a tree today, I’m ready.”
“We need a saw, and I don’t carry one around in my truck, so let me check the shed.”
Justin disappeared around the back of the cottage. Waiting with Brulee, Maggie looked out over the water. A boat in the distance sped from right to left, probably going to town. In the cooler fall weather, more boats were out on the water, more fishermen taking advantage of the lower humidity.
The longer she lived there, the rhythm of the cove would become more her rhythm. She’d fit her routine to the ebb and flow of the tides, the heat, and the rain. They were in the driest months, and she’d use the time to begin painting the outside of the cottage before hurricane season started in the spring.
She wanted to do it alone, without help from Justin. It was a need within her to stay independent. When she’d mentioned the work that she wanted to do on the cottage, Justin always offered his help, assuming they do the work today. But he was sensitive, and she wanted to avoid hurting him; he might look at her refusal of help as rejection.
It would mean ordering paint from Casson’s and swearing them to secrecy because they would blab all over that she was going to paint the cottage. Sharing information about their neighbors was one of the ways village life rocked. They didn’t mean to gossip; gossiping just came naturally. Justin came around the corner with a huge saw.
“It looks a little rusty, but I think it will work.”
“Justy has a rusty saw,” Maggie singsonged, laughing.
They held hands, letting Brulee lead them through the yard to the trail. They came to a thicket of pine trees, small, almost saplings, less than four feet tall. But they were packed in together, probably a pinecone that had sprouted each seed, and needed to be thinned out. They spread the saplings apart, and a rabbit scurried out, scaring them, and Brulee strained at her leash to go after it.
“Yikes!” they shouted laughing.
“What do you think?” Justin asked, singling out one of the trees.
“It’ll be like a Charlie Brown tree,” Maggie said. “But I don’t want them to go to waste, either.”
“You’re okay with this little one, then?”
“Perfect,” she said, thinking less is more. “It will be less tree to decorate, less to clean up.”
“I could cut this down with a fingernail clipper,” he said, but threaded the big saw between the closely packed trunks of the little trees, and with four or five saws, it fell over.
“Our first tree,” he said, picking it up with one hand.
“Aw, Brulee, too. Her first Christmas tree.”
They walked back to the cottage, aware of eyes watching them when a whinny echoed out from the trees, and Brulee stopped short, her ears on alert until she saw it was just the familiar horses.
Back at the cottage, Maggie got a bucket filled with water, and Justin put the little tree into it on the porch.
“You ready to venture up to the attic?” she asked.
“I’m ready.”
He followed her up the narrow ladder to the attic. Ducking down so his head didn’t hit the rafters, Justin was just as intrigued with all the junk up in there as Maggie had been the first time she saw it.
“This looks like Christmas stuff,” he said, moving stacks of boxes around. There was the original cardboard packaging for electric lights printed with green holly and ivy.
“Where do I start?” she asked, shaking her head.
“Can we take it all down? We’ll go through it, and maybe it’s time to make your aunt and your mother choose what they want to keep or toss. This space is going to waste.”
“What would you do with it?” she asked, looking around in dismay.
“Someday we’re going to have teenagers who need their own space and privacy, and this will be the perfect place for them.”
He was thinking of their future, already planning to stay there at Bayou Cottage, and it floored her, love for him sweeping her off her feet.
“Well, that about knocked me over,” she said, laughing. “I can’t picture us raising teenagers.”
“We’ll get into it gradually,” he said, laughing.
Full of emotion, she sniffed, trying to hide her tears from him, and he grabbed her, trying not to hit his head on the rafters.
“Aw, sweetheart, I