She was embarrassed to show me the cuts again, but she obeyed. The cuts—there were six in all—were dark and scabbed, each about three to four inches in length. I poured the entire bottle of antiseptic on her arm. There was alcohol in it and I thought she might cry out in pain but she just grimaced. Grace was pretty tough. The iodine stained her forearm a yellowish brown. I wrapped the gauze around her arm and taped it on. We didn’t talk about why she had cut herself. I think that would have been more painful than the iodine.

When I finished she asked, “What day is it?”

“Tuesday.”

“I mean the date.”

“December eighteenth.”

“It’s just a week before Christmas.” She frowned. “It doesn’t feel like Christmas. Except for the snow.”

“That’s because you don’t have any decorations.” I thought about it. “I know, we can decorate the clubhouse. There are some Christmas lights in the garage. And I know where there’s a perfect tree. It’s way in back. No one will miss it.”

“I’ve always wanted to cut down a real Christmas tree,” Grace said.

“It’s far enough back that no one will see you. We can do it tomorrow.”

She pressed down the gauze, then looked up into my eyes. “I can’t wait.”

CHAPTER Thirty

I feel so much happier now that we’ve
decorated the clubhouse for Christmas.
There is something healing about the season.

GRACE’S DIARY

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 19

As soon as I got home from school, Joel and I foraged through the garage for Christmas decorations. We found two boxes containing three long strings of tinsel garland, some red frosted glass balls, painted pine cones, a star for the tree, a wreath, and three strands of Christmas lights, which we thought we’d probably need to get just one to work. Back then if one bulb was bad the whole strand wouldn’t light.

We also brought out a sled and about ten feet of rope to carry back our tree. We couldn’t find the handsaw until Joel remembered that we’d left it in the chicken coop.

We took everything to the clubhouse. Grace squealed with delight when she saw what we’d found. We put everything inside, then the three of us started our trek to the back of our property. No one had been out back since the first snowfall so the snow was undisturbed and high, coming up to our thighs in places. We were all winded by the time we reached the tree. It looked shorter than I remembered since half of it was now buried beneath the snow.

“It’s perfect,” Grace said. “I know just where to put it.”