A Christmas to Remember(81)

“I set the bags over there,” he said, pointing to a leather armchair in the corner. The chair’s surface was nearly hidden from the colossal pile of bags. She’d been with Adam as he’d purchased everything in them down to the red wrapping paper and silver ribbons.

“Do we have tape and scissors?” she asked, using all her inner strength to keep her focus on the presents. She wanted to look back at Adam to see what else he had to say in their new silent language. She wanted to feel his eyes on her, to see that smile, but she kept her eyes on the bags, rummaging around inside them and pretending to be interested in them.

“I’ll go and get some,” Adam said.

After he left, she allowed herself to look around the room once more. She thought how the house was so huge, so perfectly decorated that it almost seemed to be in juxtaposition to Adam. He was refined and slightly formal, but underneath that, when she thought about where he’d come from—that small town in North Carolina—the fact that he was a beer maker, how he’d played sports as a kid—it all seemed too laid-back for a place like this.

Carrie pondered the type of house she’d like to have. There’d be a long front porch—the kind she’d had as a kid, a place where she could count the imperfections in the wooden steps from all the years of little feet, bikes, and toys hitting them. Her house would have an oak tree with a swing and a patch underneath where the grass wouldn’t grow because the children had scraped away the last of the seed, swinging on the warm days until sunset. She’d have a giant wood-burning fireplace inside for roasting marshmallows and warming sock feet, and she’d have an old sofa with her basket of quilts that her grandmother had made nearby for wrapping up on cold days. She wondered if Adam had ever thought about that kind of house before.

“Will these do?” he said, upon return, standing in the doorway. He held out a roll of tape and a pair of small scissors. “They were in my office. I have more in the kitchen if you need it.”

“That’s fine,” she said.

He walked in and sat on the floor next to her as she unrolled a long, wide piece of red wrapping paper. “What were you thinking about just now? You looked very serious.”

She sat silently for a moment, unsure of what to say. She didn’t want to tell him because, for one, she’d have to admit that she was thinking about him, and two, she didn’t want to be rude about his home. She tried to find a polite way to put her thoughts into words. “I was just wondering what your favorite part of this house is.” It wasn’t entirely on the mark, but she had been thinking about her own favorite parts of the home she’d like to have one day.

Carrie slid the scissors along the inside of the paper, cutting a perfect line, the paper falling loose from the roll in her hands.

The skin between his eyes wrinkled in thought. “I don’t know, honestly. I’ve never thought about it.”

“Surely there was something that made you buy it,” she pressed.

“Gwen and I picked it out together.”

Carrie reached into one of the bags and pulled out Olivia’s crown. She set it in the center of the large rectangle of wrapping paper. “So, if you could build your own house, what would it look like?”

“I don’t know, really.”

Carrie gestured for him to put his finger on the present to keep the paper from slipping as she taped it down.

He put his finger on the top, holding it in place. “As long as it has a desk…”

“…that turns into a card table,” she said, finishing his sentence.

He huffed out a laugh, his eyes on her. When his laughter had gone, his smile remained. He watched her as she wrapped all the presents. It made her happy, content. When she was finally done, she looked at the pile of red, shiny presents, and she wished that she had something to give him, but she had no idea what she could possibly give him that he didn’t already have.





Chapter Twenty-Three





Life events can’t always be planned. Take each event as it comes and keep focus on your inner happiness.

Adam, who wasn’t supposed to be working, had spent the whole of yesterday in the home office while Carrie and the family stayed with the kids. It was a very odd change of events after their present wrapping moment. She enjoyed spending an entire day with Adam’s family, and she didn’t feel out of place at all. She just wished he could be with them, and she would have been annoyed that he wasn’t, but there was something different about him as he worked yesterday. When he passed them in the hallways, he smiled, his face pleasant which was different from other days he’d worked like that. At lunch, he’d taken a long time to sit with them, but then he was off again after. Was he planning something? She had no idea.