The Night Before Christmas Read Free Page B

know.”
    â€œIt’s not like that,” Jack said, turning off the highway and onto a county road. “I think she was afraid if you knew you weren’t planned, you might think, wrongly, that we weren’t as thrilled about your arrival as we might have been otherwise. But we were, trust me. That wedding might not have been perfect, but you, Daisy, you were perfect. Even though you were still just a tiny bump under your mom’s wedding dress, you were already the best thing that either of us would ever do.”
    â€œDad, stop,” Daisy said, brushing at the corner of one of her eyes. “You’re going to make me cry.”
    Jack smiled at her. “No crying, all right?” he said as he drove past the B U T T E R N U T , P O P U L A T I O N 1 , 2 0 0 sign. “Your mom will not be happy with me if I bring you into Pearl’s and you’re already in tears.”
    â€œNo crying,” she agreed, looking out the window at the sight of a town so familiar to her that Jack thought she could probably reconstruct every detail of it with her eyes closed. But at this time of year, of course, Butternut was all dressed up in its Christmas finery, and as they turned down Main Street, Daisy let out a little cry of pleasure.
    â€œI forgot how pretty Butternut is at Christmastime,” she said, and even Jack, who’d once chafed at a town he’d considered gossipy and small-­minded, had to admit that it did Christmas right. The sidewalks on Main Street were lined, at twenty-­foot intervals, with Christmas trees hung with colored lights, and an enormous lighted wreath was strung on wires over the street’s main intersection. Then there were all the storefronts—­Butternut Drugs, Johnson’s hardware, and the Pine Cone Gallery among them—­which were also strung with lights and hung with wreaths.
    But it was Pearl’s, Jack thought, easing the pickup truck into a parking space right in front, that was the crown jewel of Butternut. Part coffee shop, part town hall, and part gossip clearinghouse, it was the one indispensable business in this town. And it was decorated like it knew it. The brightly polished windows were adorned with strands of tiny white twinkling lights, and its front door sported a lush green wreath with a big red bow on it. Through the windows, Jack could see the miniature red and white poinsettias on each table, and, from the ceiling, the big shiny gold stars that hung down, rotating gently in the draft from the opening and closing front door.
    â€œOh, look, Mom put out that sleigh,” Daisy said, pointing at the entryway table where a miniature Santa’s sleigh and eight miniature reindeer were set up. “I used to spend hours playing with that when I was little. And it shows, too. Last Christmas I noticed it was definitely a little worse for wear.”
    â€œI’m sure that’s just part of its charm now,” Jack said, as he cut the ignition and put the truck in park. “But Pearl’s looks nice, doesn’t it? We spent the Friday night after Thanksgiving decorating it. It helped, of course, that Frankie is so tall he didn’t have to stand on a ladder to hang those stars.” Frankie was the fry cook, manager, and now, part owner of Pearl’s. Jack unfastened his seat belt and reached for the door handle. “You ready?” he asked when Daisy made no move to join him.
    â€œDo we have to go in yet?” she asked. “Could we stay here a little longer?”
    â€œSure,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Your mom’s not expecting us for another five minutes. Why? What’s up?” he asked, as he turned the ignition and the heat back on.
    Daisy sighed. “Nothing’s up; I just want to mentally prepare myself.”
    â€œFor Pearl’s?” Jack said, bemused. “I wasn’t aware that eating there required any mental preparation. I mean, the menu’s