Page 5 of The Forever Christmas Tree

“Raw-ool?” Wendy choked out, repeating the name the way her aunt had pronounced it.

“Yes, Raul. R. A. U. L. Our dance instructor. You’ll love him, honey.”

“And he sleeps with you?”

“Where else would he sleep?”

There were a million questions she wanted to ask about this Raul but the one that popped out was, “How old is Raul?”

“Oh, he’s a younger man. Once a woman reaches a certain age, she wants a man who can still tango, if you get my meaning.”

Aunt Millie was seventy-two. Wendy didn’t want to picture her aunt doing the “tango” at all, and definitely not with some young stud looking to steal an old lady’s savings.

“How young?”

“Sixty last month.”

“What’s that noise I hear in the background?” Wendy asked, noticing the music suddenly blaring and people laughing. “Are you having a party?”

“No, it’s just the usual. Foxtrot Friday.”

Before she hung up, Aunt Millie asked in a sly voice, “Should I get a Christmas tree, or do you want to pick it out yourself when you get here?”

Over the years, Wendy had demanded that no one ever mention the name of Ethan Rutledge to her. Not her father before he died, or Aunt Millie, or her longtime friend Laura Atler, who was editor of the small weekly newspaper, The Bell. She didn’t want to know where he was or what he was doing. But there were three things she did know. He was married. He had a child, who must be going on twelve years old, in fact probably more than one child by now. And his family owned tree farms . . . Christmas trees, to be precise, at this time of the year.

That had to be what Aunt Mildred was alluding to, although Ethan probably didn’t even live on the Outer Banks anymore. His dream had been to become a veterinarian and move off the barrier island.

But then, my dream was to become a doctor, a general practitioner like my dad. And look where I ended up.

Their compromise plan was that they would live off-island after marrying the summer following their sophomore year at UNC–Chapel Hill, where they’d been accepted for admission in the pre-med and pre-vet programs. It would probably take Wendy ten years to get through undergraduate and medical school. For Ethan, it would be a few years less. After that, they would move back to Bell Cove where she would join her father’s GP practice and Ethan would set up a veterinary clinic.

What did they say about the best-laid plans of mice and men going awry? Boy, did they go awry for them!

“Do they still sell those Rutledge Trees?” she asked, immediately regretting her first question related to Ethan in all those years.

Aunt Mildred laughed. “Oh, sweetheart, you are so out of the loop. The Rutledge Tree has become famous, at least here in North Carolina. People travel hundreds of miles to get one. They place orders a year in advance.”

“Huh?” Ethan’s father, and his father before him, had been trying to grow Christmas trees on the Outer Banks for decades, to no avail. The soil and climate weren’t ideal for evergreens. What resulted were stunted, sparse specimens . . . glorified Charlie Brown trees. And people bought them, first as a joke, then a conversation piece, even in upscale island homes. Ethan had been embarrassed by them, even when they had only a small, local following.

But that was the past, and Wendy had dwelled on it enough. If just the mention of a Christmas tree prompted these kinds of memories, she could only imagine what she was in for going home. Could she cancel at this late date? No. There were things there that needed to be settled.

With a shake of her head to clear it, she asked her aunt, “Do we have to have a Christmas tree?”

“Bite your tongue, girl.”

“Maybe it’s time to get an artificial tree.”

“Wendy Ann Patterson! You’ve been living in California too long if you think a Bell Cove home would stoop to a fake tree, although I did see one in the window of the hardware store last week.”

“Okay, but you buy the tree, Aunt Mil, and have it delivered, for heaven’s sake. Don’t think about hauling it home yourself. Wait a sec. The guys can pick up a tree when they get there. They’d probably get a kick out of doing that. Then we can all trim it. Do we still have Mom’s old decorations in the attic?”

“Of course. Do you think I would get rid of those?”

“I guess not.” Wendy felt a tightness in her chest just thinking about the raggedy angel tree topper that they’d pulled out every year, even after her mother died.

“I’m so excited,” her aunt said. “This is going to be the best Christmas ever.”

Wendy doubted that. Very much.