Total pages in book: 42
Estimated words: 40951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 137(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 137(@300wpm)
“Ready?” Ivy asks, looking at me instead of her phone for this one, like I’m a person and not a walking set piece. It knocks me off balance for half a second, which I resent.
“Ready,” I say, climb onto the box, and cluck Comet into a gentle start. Donner takes the outside. Bells answer. The sleigh pulls like it’s meant to, runners whispering across packed snow. The seniors’ voices knit themselves into the sound—soft oohs, a chuckle, the murmur of a song someone half remembers.
Ivy jogs alongside for a few opening seconds, careful to stay clear of hooves, and then drops back, letting us slide into the lane of white trunks. She holds up her phone at chest height, framing bells, wool, hands, sky.
“You doing okay back there?” I call back to the old men in front and also not just to them.
“Nothing hurts when the bells go,” Mr. Levine says. He taps his knee. “Even this traitor.”
We take the corner slow. Birch branches lift like cathedral ribs. Snow sifts down in quiet applause. I listen for evenness; I hear it. Ivy drifts ahead to catch the sleigh coming toward her and almost collides with a birch because she’s watching the shot instead of the tree. I clear my throat. She hears me and flashes two fingers in apology. The absurd urge to smile shows up again.
Don’t.
The loop is shorter than usual, but no one complains. They pat the horses and tell them secrets they don’t tell their kids. Ivy takes audio of bells echoing under the bridge, of Mayor Turner thanking Mrs. Hadley for the quilt “with twenty years of story knitted in.” She never once lifts the phone to a face. It matters.
Back at the barn, we unload slowly. Jared materializes with hot cider like he’s appeared off a Hallmark craft services truck. Ivy takes cups from him and passes them to cold hands with a running commentary of which quilt corner is best for drips. People laugh. They’re warmer for her being here. I hate that it’s true and love that it’s true and hate that I love it.
“Thank you, Rhett,” Mrs. Hadley says, patting my arm again. “Tell your granddad’s bells we still hear them.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, and mean it.
Mayor Turner collects permission forms from Ivy like they’re raffle tickets. “How marvelous! Audio for days! And look at this one,” she adds, peering at Ivy’s screen. “I can feel the wool.”
“Texture sells,” Ivy says, and for the first time since she tumbled into my sleigh yesterday, I hear the edge under the sparkle—the part of her that’s keeping ten balls in the air and trying not to drop a single one. It sits me up a little straighter.
She looks over, cheeks pink from the cold, eyes ridiculous. “Can I grab a few shots of you unhitching? Just hands and bells. Promise.”
“Make it quick,” I say, and she does. She gets the loop of leather sliding through my palm, the little nod Comet gives when the weight comes off, the way Donner leans into the curry when Jared gets the brush out. She gets the steam rising out of their nostrils and the frost that gathers on whiskers.
“Perfect,” she whispers to herself. “We can build around this.”
“Build what?” I ask gruffly, because I can feel Jared smirking from across the barn.
“A minute that makes people breathe,” she says, then blinks like she didn’t mean to say it out loud. “And donate. And show up.”
She tucks the phone away, and for a second we’re just standing there with horses between us and something that feels larger than either of us is ready for.
“So,” I say, because standing there is not a sport I like. “You got what you needed?”
“For the seniors’ ride? Yes.” She hesitates. “Could I—this is probably pushing it—but could I get a few atmosphere shots up at your place? Exterior, woodpile, your stove, that kind of thing. Texture and context. I won’t show your face. I won’t move anything. Promise.”
My cabin is not for public consumption. It is four walls and a roof where December can’t get at me much. It is quiet I carved out of a rough few years and a road that knows my tires. Letting anyone point a camera at it makes my back teeth feel weird.
But I also hear the way her voice shadows on “pushing it,” and I see the little checklist running behind her eyes, and I remember Mrs. Hadley saying the bells still carry.
“Fine,” I say. “Rules: no faces, nothing personal, no staging. If you need a mug in frame, it’s the mug that lives by the stove. If you need a fire, we use the one that’s already there.”
Her smile is immediate and ridiculous. “Sure thing, Captain Grinch.”
“Don’t,” I say automatically.
“Sorry. Captain…Cabin.”
“Worse.”
She bounces a little, which the sensible boots do not deserve. “Do you want me to meet you there? I can follow.”