“Oldest to newest,” she said.

Raylen moved past her and dropped a dusty tarp from a group of flat wooden cutouts. The first one was Santa Claus in a cowboy hat and boots, and Mrs. Claus in an apron holding up her dress hem to reveal bright red cowboy boots.

Liz moved closer and held the other end as she peered behind it. “Look, there’s a date on the back that says 1975, and what’s this?”

She peeled off a thick envelope that had been stapled to the backside of the cutout. “It’s got my name on the front,” she said.

“Then it must be for you.” Raylen would have rather been holding her than propping up Mr. and Mrs. Claus on the only wall of the loft that wasn’t filled with tarp-covered ornaments.

She plopped down on the floor and opened the letter. “Uncle Haskell says that he doesn’t have time to tell me all about each piece over the phone, but if he writes it all down I can go over them all later. This is like the best Christmas ever. This piece is the first Christmas he and Sara were together on the ranch, and he was working at Nocona for a boot company and he made her a pair of red boots and this cutout as a funny joke to put out in the yard. She loved it so much that she said he had to build one every year of something that happened in their lives.”

“Okay, ready for 1976?” Raylen set Mr. and Mrs.Santa to one side to reveal the next one.

It was a four-by-eight-foot nativity scene so realistic that she reached up to touch the woolly lamb beside the shepherd. She got tears in her eyes when she ran her hand over baby Jesus in the manger.

“I didn’t realize that my Uncle Haskell is more than just a good trailer painter. He is an artist,” she said. “He has captured the love in Mary’s and Joseph’s eyes for their new baby.”

“I’ve told him dozens of times that he should be selling things like this,” Raylen said.

“He doesn’t say what kind of reaction she had to his gifts. I would love to know if she got excited and clapped her hands or if she hugged him and danced around the living room because she was so happy,” Liz said.

Raylen moved the nativity over and revealed the next piece. “I suppose that was private and he doesn’t want to share those memories.”

Liz laid the letter down and pointed. “That’s a derrick. But I didn’t see oil wells on the property. Look closely, Raylen. There are elves peeking out from the bottom.”

“There aren’t any oil wells on his land, but maybe he and Sara had an inside joke about them,” Raylen said.

Liz read some more before she looked up to find Raylen staring at her.

“Aunt Sara inherited land that year from a great-aunt down near Beaumont. It had oil wells on it, and she had a share of the royalties. That was the year Uncle Haskell quit the factory and started ranchin’ full time. Look, there’s holes for lights in the derrick. No wonder there are boxes and boxes of lights in the tack room.”