“I know them all. I keep the record books about who gives us what.” She collected a few herself. “Why don’t you start putting them up and I’ll talk you through them?”

Clark nodded, then reached up on his toes to place a toy X-wing fighter up towards the top of the tree.

“What’s the deal with this one?”

“It’s heavy!” Kate held out a hand to stop him, her fingers barely brushing his. Panic gleamed in her eyes. Clark reminded himself how important these little trinkets were to her. Breaking even one would break a piece of her. “Put it on a low branch. The high branches aren’t strong enough to hold it.”

“Right.”

Great move, Clark. Now she thinks you’re a triple moron. You don’t get Christmas and you made her confess her life story to you and you don’t get basic physics. He placed the miniature space plane on the appropriate branch, ignoring the heat rising to the tops of his ears. If she noticed the red splotches undoubtedly forming there, she was decent enough not to mention anything.

“Teddy Cooper gave us that two years ago. He got it in a happy meal, said it was the “happiest meal of his life,” and so he turned it into an ornament so he could always remember.”

“Wow. Okay…” Clark scraped his memory for the last time he’d laughed as much as he laughed today, only to come up empty. Brushing that thought away, he picked up a tiny gold band turned into an ornament by an interlocked strand of clear fishing line. He dangled it so close to his eyes his lashes brushed the circlet of metal, trying to discern what it could possibly be. “What about this one?”

“Condola Walker. She broke off her engagement and that’s the ring.”

“What?” The urge to throw the ring across the room fought his urge to run into town and return the jewelry to this Condola person. Who would give up something so expensive when they could have just pawned it? Kate, unmoved by his indignation, rolled her eyes.

“It was, like, twelve dollars or something. Believe me, she was glad to be rid of it. Keep ’em coming. We’ll never get this tree decorated at this rate.”