Candy Cane Murder (Hannah Swensen #9.5)(113)

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tree, which was now frozen solid in the bucket. She considered loosening it with boiling water, but without a stove she didn’t have a way to boil water. The hair dryer might work, she decided, but she’d have to find an extension cord.

The really good thing about two-year-olds, Lucy decided as she stood outside in the snow attempting to defrost the tree with the hair dryer, was that they really didn’t know how things were supposed to be so they didn’t mind when things didn’t go according to plan. So long as Toby got his three meals and two snacks, his Sesame Street and bedtime story, things were fine with him. She watched as he knocked the snow off the bushes, making snow showers, and gave the tree a budge. It moved, and she noticed that a small puddle was beginning to form in the bucket. She wiggled it a bit more and the puddle grew larger. Toby was now climbing onto the bottom porch step and jumping off into the snow, repeating the process again and again. Then he decided to go up two steps.

“Don’t do that,” she warned, as he launched himself, landing hard on the bottom step instead of the soft snow. He started to wail and she turned off the hair dryer.

Bill was still working on the figures when she took Toby inside. She stripped off his wet clothes, set him in the high chair next to Bill and gave him a cup of instant hot cocoa, made with lukewarm water from the kitchen tap. Then she was back outside and this time the tree came out of the bucket. She hugged it in a prickly embrace and dragged it across the lawn to the front door, then pulled it trunk first up the stoop and into the front hall. Then, because her heart was thumping, she sat on the stairs to rest and catch her breath.

Now all she had to do was set it in the stand, string the lights, get the ornaments out of the attic, and trim it. Not bad, since she had all day. But first, she realized, hearing Bill yelling in the kitchen, Toby must have finished his cocoa and wanted down from the high chair.

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Leslie Meier

“You smell like a pine tree,” said Bill.

“It put up a heck of a fight, but I won. I’ve just got to get it in the stand, put the lights on and it will be ready for the ornaments.”

“Don’t forget that box your mom gave you at Thanksgiving,” reminded Bill, as she lifted the tray so Toby could scramble down. “I think it’s in the pantry.”

Lucy had forgotten all about it, but when they visited at Thanksgiving her mother had insisted she take the ornaments, old family pieces she said she no longer used since she’d bought a small artificial tree. Lucy hadn’t even looked inside the box, she’d been tired from the long drive and Bill had unloaded the car. Now, as she set the box on the table and peeked inside she saw shining and glittery reminders of her childhood. There was a red and silver plastic trumpet that made a horrible noise if you blew on it, a “Baby’s First Christmas” card picturing a baby lamb that hung from a twisted red cord, several heavy glass kugels in the shape of grapes.

“I wasn’t allowed to touch these,” said Lucy, lifting out the red and green and silver ornaments. “They’re very old.”

“They’re really beautiful,” said Bill.

Lucy remembered her mother hanging them carefully, one by one, on sturdy bottom branches of the tree. Lucy always held her breath until the delicate operation was complete, and waited impatiently for the magic moment when her father would plug in the string of lights and the kugels would glow as if lit from within.

Suddenly nostalgic, Lucy decided to call home.

“Merry Christmas,” she said, by way of greeting, when her mother answered the phone.

“It’s not Christmas yet and it’s not merry, either,” said her mother.

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“That’s why I called,” said Lucy. “To cheer you up. And to thank you for the ornaments. I’d forgotten how beautiful the kugels are.”

“Don’t let Toby play with them.”

As if she would. Lucy sighed. “How’s Dad?”

“They’re giving him oxygen.”

“Does it help?”

“He keeps pulling off the mask.”

Lucy knew her father hated having anything on his face or head, not even hats or Halloween masks. “He hates …”

“I know, I know,” replied her mother, sounding tired. “He could try to cooperate. It’s only for his own good.”

“I guess you’ll be spending Christmas at the hospital.”

“Of course.”

Suddenly, Lucy felt quite bereft. She wanted—she needed— her parents’ attention right now, but she couldn’t have it. Her father was hovering near death and her mother was so consumed with caring for him that she hadn’t even asked Lucy how she and Bill and Toby were doing. “Well, I’ll be thinking of you,” she said.

“I’ll call if there’s any change,” said her mother, then hung up.

“And ho, ho, ho to you,” said Bill, who had been listening.

“I could call my parents and then we’d be so depressed we could commit suicide and end it all.”

“You should call them,” said Lucy. “They sent that nice box of presents… .”

“That was my mom,” said Bill.

“And you’d feel better if you worked things out with your dad. I feel better, I do, just hearing my mother’s voice.”