the time I was actually ready to go, Holden looked like he was on the verge of passing out.
Excellent.
“Alright.” I grinned at him. “Let’s go make Christmas our bitch.”
Holden might have been right about Birch Bay being just down the coast from his house, but as we drove, I realized just how dumb an idea it had been for me to try to walk there, snowstorm or no. The road twisted and turned through the snowy coastal forest, towering pines and massive hemlocks looming in the twilight, and I lost count of the number of blind turns and switchbacks I could have died on while walking.
The car—an old Toyota Camry, nowhere near as exciting as I’d hoped—handled the turns well enough, though, and as night fell, we glided down a hill and the woods opened up to show a tiny fishing village, lit up with flickering white lights under the midnight blue sky. It was beautiful, and something warm and huge filled my heart like a balloon as we descended.
We crossed over a rushing mountain stream on an old stone bridge and pulled into the edge of town. The streetlamps, decorated with green wreaths and red bows, cast a golden glow as we drove underneath them. After three blocks, Holden turned right and pulled into a parking lot next to an old river-rock building with a bell tower that purported to be the Birch Bay public library.
“What, not enough books at home?” I asked as he put the car in park.
He rolled his eyes. “Fewer people if we park here. Easier to walk to the festival unnoticed.”
“Hmph. Sensible, but boring. That’s probably why you drive this absolute nothing-burger of a car too, right?”
“Got it in one.”
Holden was right, though. It was shockingly easy to walk to the festival without attracting any attention. The side streets we took to the center of town were lined with houses that all looked to be about two hundred years old, minimum. Many were decorated with colorful lights, or bright white ones, but we only passed one other person on the walk, and they were on the other side of the street.
I gasped when we turned the corner into Birch Bay’s main square. It was lovely. Four streets of shops fronted a central green full of trees, their bare branches covered in twinkling white lights. The storefronts were all cheerfully lit, amber light and Christmas music spilling out the doors as people mingled. There was an energetic bustle in the air as people hugged and chatted in clumps on the streets.
There was a gazebo in the center of the green, with a brass band playing what sounded like Good King Wenceslas, the tuba blasting out rich bass notes. The gazebo was ringed by twelve fir trees—some had been lit in the past few nights, the rest awaited their turn. On the far side of the gazebo, a tiny skating rink had been erected, and there seemed to be an ice sculpture garden in the other corner.
The snow had been cleared from all the streets and paths, and kids climbed up the hills left by the plows, sliding down them and pelting each other with snowballs.
I looked up to see Holden staring at the scene before us, entranced. He’d pulled a scarf up to hide his nose and mouth, but it had slipped down as we walked, and there was a smile on his face that I hadn’t seen before. If I had to put a name to it, I would have called it wistful. He was happy, no doubt, but there was a glimmer of something that might have been tears in his eyes.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, but Holden didn’t respond.
It was like he was there, but also not, and I wondered if he were seeing the same view I was, or if his mind were back in the past somewhere. What would that be like, I wondered. To have a past you could go back to?
I pushed the thought away. I wanted this night to be special for Holden. I wasn’t going to weigh myself down thinking about things I couldn’t change. So I threaded my arm through his, linking our be-jacketed elbows, and that was what finally made him look down.
“Sorry.” He blinked. “Did you say something?”
“Just that it’s beautiful.”
“Yeah.” The wistfulness in his tone was impossible to miss now. “Yeah, it is.”
“Come on. Let’s go explore.”
I did my best to stick to the edges of the crowd. That was what Holden wanted,