Phoebe gave it some thought. “Eccentric, maybe. But not necessarily crazy. What is crazy is that now you’re apparently stuck with two Christmas trees. What should we do with my poor lil’ guy?”

“Let’s set it up on the front porch,” Ivy said. “But first, I need to get out of this dress and bring that stand down from the attic. I found a ton more old-timey lights up there too—the ones with the big colored bulbs. Hopefully, they’re not a fire hazard.”

“Bring ’em down and let’s get decorating,” Phoebe said. “I’ll give you a hand.”

“Wait a minute,” Ivy said. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work right now?”

“I’m off work until January. This happens every year. I have days and days of paid comp time built up that I never take, because I essentially have no life.” She smiled at Ivy. “Until this year.”

“And Cody,” Ivy said.

“Let’s talk about him later. We’ve got trees to trim, right?”

Phoebe followed Ivy up the ladder and into the attic. Looking around, she gave a low whistle. “Look at all this stuff!”

“It’s sort of sad, isn’t it? When I asked James, the Roses’ son-in-law, he said he and his kids just aren’t sentimental. They took a few things, some photo albums, but he told me to just get rid of anything else I didn’t want. At the time I was pretty annoyed, because everything here was pretty old-fashioned, and definitely not my taste, but now that it turns out all my stuff was wrecked, ‘old-fashioned’ seems to be growing on me. So I’m feeling pretty grateful.”

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” Phoebe murmured. “There’s another whole houseful of furniture up here.”

“If you see anything you’d like, speak up. It’s not doing anyone any good gathering dust up here,” Ivy said. She pointed at the far wall. “That’s the Christmas corner. Everything’s labeled. Let’s grab a crate of lights, and I guess we’ll need an extension cord too.”

When they’d returned downstairs, Ivy changed back into her jeans and sweater and carefully laid the Mrs. Santa dress across her bed. When Ezra dropped by later, she thought, maybe she’d model it for him. She pictured herself standing in front of the lit-up Christmas tree, a fire blazing, Ezra sitting in an armchair. She’d been thinking about their kiss since he’d left. Maybe one thing would lead to another?

Chapter 17

“We did it!” Phoebe stepped back from the Christmas tree in the living room and she and Ivy exchanged high fives.

Setting up the tiny tree on the front porch was a breeze, but Ezra’s tree was a different story. They’d had to saw a foot off the tree trunk, then drag a ladder in from the toolshed to wrap what seemed like miles of the big, multicolored C9 lights around the fir. The silver-tinseled garland from the attic came next, followed by more of the fragile glass Shiny Brite ornaments from the Christmas corner.