Snowflakes and Coffee Cakes (16 page)

“Billions of snowflakes can fall during a single storm, and from the looks of these clouds,” the camera pans out to the ominous sky behind him, “we might not be able to keep up with the snowflake numbers. If I was a ship captain of yore, I’d cancel my voyage for this one.”

Her father has taken the station’s cameraman up to the widow’s walk to give his Saturday morning forecast from that vantage point, and oh boy, the dramatic cove view will not disappoint his viewers. As chief meteorologist, he’s definitely one-upping the competition with his exclusive on-site report.

Gray clouds hang low over the cove’s dark water. Piles of them, pressing on top of each other, getting more threatening each time Vera looks out. All she thinks is that they are so huge, and so heavy-looking, they must be weighed down with an incredible amount of snow that is about to bust out and blanket Addison.

“Three miles per hour. That’s the average speed that a snowflake falls to the ground. And I’m sorry to report, that’s the average speed we’ll be driving once this storm hits. It’s a doozy, folks.”

Vera stands still, holding her steaming coffee cup close, sipping it and listening to her father talk about the largest snowflake ever documented, a flake nearly fifteen inches in diameter. If she could only make a wish on that documented winter star, just one wish bestowed on the grandest snowflake of them all, it would be this and only this: Please. Please hold off on dropping
any
snowflakes on Addison—one fifteen-inch flake or millions of tiny ones—just for one day, just for one man who needs this wish the most.

“Many of you are emailing the station asking if the Deck the Boats Festival is still on. As of now, yes it is, but stay tuned for updates because the latest models call for significant accumulations, with the potential for a foot or more. It’s the timeline of this storm that is still uncertain. Light snow will overspread the state late morning. But some models show the storm stalling, so conditions
may
not deteriorate until late tonight and into early tomorrow.”

Yes
, Vera thinks,
her wish has been heard!
She crosses her fingers on both hands and glances out the window hoping Derek can get his boat in the water, then looks back to the television set and her father, who is actually standing two floors above her on her widow’s walk, trying to decipher the skies.

“Other models show heavy snow by dinnertime. Regardless, it’s coming, and once the storm hits full-force, all that snow combined with gusting winds will produce white-out conditions. Which will have you waking tomorrow to a magnificent winter wonderland.”

The camera pans out to those bulging clouds over the sky, bulging with those billions of flakes.

*  *  *

It’s the sound that worries Vera. By early afternoon, she notices it. It’s almost a hiss, the soft yet insistent noise that comes seemingly from her windows. Her single-paned, inefficient windows that do little to keep out the cold, and apparently little to keep out sound, too. Because she’s hearing a soft, fluctuating hiss that is foreboding.

Diamond dust, she thinks. They’re the smallest snowflakes of all, so small the human eye can’t usually see them. And she knows what can produce them. Storms. Epic snowstorms. But mostly at high altitudes. If diamond dust ever makes it to the ground, well, this must be what it sounds like.

What is most frightening is that when she goes to the window, any window, whether the kitchen window where Jingles takes up the entire sill—and then some—looking out at the barn, or the living room window opposite her brick fireplace, or the dining room windows on her newly-painted gold walls, it’s always the same. The noise is there, but when she looks out, she doesn’t see anything. That’s how tiny the snowflakes hitting the windows are; it doesn’t matter if they’re branched crystals or sectored plates or split-stars or needles or diamond dust, they’re invisible to her eye. And she remembers her father’s rule of thumb: The smaller the flakes, the bigger the storm.

But never was there a time when the flakes were so darn tiny she couldn’t even see them. It scares her enough to hurry to the hall closet for her coat, and wouldn’t you know it? The doorknob comes right off in her hand as she tugs the sticking door open. She quickly tosses the knob on the closet floor and puts on her jacket, scarf, hat, mittens and shearling-lined boots to hike herself right down to the cove and check on her sister.

Every minute now brings a new urgency. She locks the front door of her old Dutch Colonial, runs down the steps and across her yard out to the street. A motion catches her eye before she even reaches the cove: The food and craft tent walls blow and billow in the wind as though they are taking great gasping breaths.

“Brooke?” Vera yells out, shielding her eyes from those invisible flakes feeling like tiny needles on her skin. “Brooke!” she yells again as she slaps at the canvas wall of her sister’s portable tent, her voice lost in the wind.

Brooke unzips a side wall. “Vera!” She grabs her by the arm and tugs her inside. “Brrrr. Come in, quick, so I can zip this up.”

Vera sees a small table set up with Brooke’s coffee cakes, some sliced and wrapped, others whole cakes in boxes. “I can’t believe the festival isn’t cancelled.”

“I know, I hear those darn snow crystals hitting the tent now. At least nothing’s sticking on the ground yet.” Brooke straightens a plate of coffee cake slices on the table. “Maybe they can get the boats in early?”

“A few are lined up out there on trailers, waiting to launch. It’s crazy, though. The storm’s coming!” As Vera says it, a gust of wind tugs at the tent walls.

“Is Derek out there?” Brooke asks. “Maybe you can talk to him and convince him to postpone.”

“His boat’s first in line to go in the water. But I don’t see his truck, he must have dropped the trailer and left.”

Brooke pulls open the tent zipper a few inches and peeks out. “Do you believe there are already cars parked, reserving their spot so they have a good view of the procession?”

“No way.”

“I’m telling you, Vera. The whole town comes out for this.” She looks out again, then back at Vera. “Well. They come for Derek.”

Vera shakes her head. “Listen. I’m going back home to try to get in touch with him. But I don’t want you driving later in the storm. You’ll stay overnight at my house when you’re done here.”

“What about Mom?”

“Mom?”

“Dad’s dropping her off here on his way in for the afternoon shift.”

“You’re kidding.” Vera checks her watch. “I’ll try to reach her, too.”

“Okay. And hey, take my keys,” she says as she pulls her purse off a shelf. “My car’s behind the tent. Just drive it to your place, okay? So it’ll be safe in your driveway during the storm.”

Vera takes her keys and heads out, amazed at the cars that have since pulled into the cove parking lot. Once home, she first goes up to the widow’s walk to see the conditions from there. And still,
still
she feels the tiniest of crystals hitting her face, though she can’t really see them.

And what scares her even more is the idea of
all
the things she cannot see—grocery store parking lots crazy with last minute shoppers; Cooper Hardware selling out of shovels, maybe trying to cover up their remaining Christmas trees; the town sand trucks filling their beds; authorities issuing a snow-parking ban; the untold volumes of snow weighing down the gray clouds; and Derek, Derek somewhere, in his cargo coat, sweater and jeans, snow boots and gloves on, checking in with the weather service, or deliberating the festival options with Bob Hough, not answering her call on his cell, panicked on this one day when he reaches out to his Abby.

Suddenly, as she worries about all she cannot see, there’s a change. The flakes feel softer on her skin, so she pulls the mini-magnifier from her jacket pocket first. Then she extends her arm in the air, straight out over the widow’s walk railing, giving the snowflakes the perfect landing place. When she holds her magnifier to her arm, it finally happens. They’re visible, the first of tiny crystals, glimmering winter stars. What worries her even more, though, is the way her entire sleeve covers with flakes in a matter of moments until there are so many, they are indistinguishable from one another and form a blanket of white. Just like that. Frighteningly fast.

*  *  *

Derek drops the plow on his pickup truck and pushes through the snow in the cove parking lot, a white plume of powder flying off the plow. If he can just keep a path cleared to the water, they can get the boats in. It doesn’t really matter how many people arrive to see the decorated boats. It doesn’t even matter if
all
the trailered boats make it into the water. All that really matters is his. His boat with the Christmas tree mounted in the bow, this time with colored twinkling lights. For the first time. His boat with Vera’s swags of jeweled lights along the sides, looking like an elegant boat necklace. He’s sorry now for the words he said outside the hardware store. If it weren’t snowing this hard, he’d have had a few minutes to stop at her house when he’d driven past. Lamplight was shining in her windows, a large balsam wreath hung on her door and the two small fir trees outside her barn were illuminated with twinkling lights. Some part of him was glad for that, knowing that she was home, safe and sound, in this monster storm descending upon them.

A small crowd of people gather toward the back of the cove parking lot, huddled in the blowing snow and clutching thermoses of hot chocolate and coffee. They don’t see his worry, his panic to get that boat in the water for Abby, to light up her Christmas tree. They never heard his words to her when he held her body in his arms, feeling the weight of her waterlogged clothes, touching her damp face. They didn’t know he’d promised to love her always and that she shouldn’t be afraid, that he’d always be with her somehow. They didn’t know that the only way he could figure to be with her was here, on the water. Because what child should be alone at Christmastime?

Now if he can just keep the pathway to the water cleared. His truck plow pushes through another swath of snow that is coming down faster than he can keep up with. If it weren’t for headlights on the far side of the lot, he could hardly make out Bob Hough’s truck over there, plowing too. Between the both of them, they might be able to get a couple of boats out on the cove. But as long as he gets at least
his
boat idling out there for a little while, with its tree lit up, that’ll be enough. Abby will be remembered.

After plowing the path from his trailered boat to the boat ramp, the windshield wipers brushing rapidly across the windshield, the defroster blowing fully, he puts his pickup into reverse and starts to back up so that he can give the path one more go-through. But he’s forced to stop when a red-plaid pea coat appears in the distance in the rearview mirror. A red-plaid coat with white snowflake mittens, over jeans tucked into lace-up snow boots with a fur cuff, headed cautiously, but directly, toward his truck. He rolls down the window when she nears.

“Derek!” she calls out, her voice cutting through the wind, her eyes squinting against the blowing snowflakes.

“Vera, what are you doing out here?”

“That’s what I came to ask you,” she answers, breathless in the cold. She stands close beside his truck. “Derek,” she says, a sad smile pausing her words. “I’m sorry about the other day, and I want to talk to you. But first, well, I think you should cancel the festival.”

“What?”

“It’s too dangerous. The way that wind’s blowing over the water, it’s so rough out there. And the currents are strong. Please, Derek, please don’t do this.”

“Vera, you don’t understand. I have to. And we’ve got things cleared, Bob and I. We’ll be all right.”

A strong gust of wind blows, making Vera turn away from it, from the stinging bite of its cold on her skin, from its force whipping her hair. When she turns back, she’s either crying or the wind brings tears to her eyes. “Derek, it’s not safe.” She holds her mittened hands to her face to block the blowing snow. “You could be hurt out there, or need help, and no one could get to you,” she says, huddled into her scarf and coat, her words nearly lost in the noise of the storm, of Bob’s truck plow, of the waves rising.

“I’ll be okay, Vera. I know what I’m doing.” He glances through the windshield at the snow piling up again in the parking lot. “I just can’t really talk now.”

Vera backs up a step. “But what about the others? You can’t risk losing another life on the water. Please, at least postpone.”

“Don’t you get it? Today’s the day. This is the day Abby died. Even if I go out there alone, I have to do this, for her.”

“But can’t you find another way? These people need to be home before the roads are impassable. If you give the word, they’ll leave, Derek. They’ll listen to you. It’ll be quiet, then. We can, I don’t know, you and I can light up the widow’s walk. We’ll do something else to commemorate Abby.”

He just looks at her, then looks in his rearview mirror only to see a line of cars pulling into the parking lot. “It’s too late,” he yells out to Vera over a gust of wind. “They want to see it, they want to be a part of it.”

Vera looks over her shoulder at the traffic. He wonders if she understands that nothing will stop all of Addison from showing up. There’s something about this night, this festival, that brings them all together. Maybe it’s because they couldn’t come together one day five years ago, and they pay their respects now by meeting up once a year, right here. No matter what.

She turns back to Derek. Tears streak her cheeks, her eyes squint against the icy snow. “Please don’t do this,” she whispers against the wind while stepping closer. Her mittened hands, mittens caked with snow, grip the edge of his open window. If he’s not mistaken, what he sees in her face, too, is a new insistence. And with her next words, words that can’t come easy, words he doubts she’d have said except for the danger he’s facing, well he knows exactly why there’s an urgency now. The thing is, they’re words he
never
saw coming, and they work, those words. They stop him. “I love you, Derek,” she says, her head tipped.