Christmas in Bed by Bridget Snow

Author:Bridget Snow [Snow, Bridget]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-12-21T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Melody

“Wait here,” Mel said, instructing the driver on her way out of the cab. The sign on a high wooden gate welcomed her to “Two Archers Farm,” and she passed beneath it, following a path of dirt and pine debris on her way toward a small shed. Pine trees stood in rows along that path, each with a single color-coded ribbon to indicate its size.

There were a few taller trees with majestic boughs and beautiful conical shapes, but most were shorter and less picturesque. They were strapped tight to their bases to keep their slanted forms from tipping over, and many had patches that were either brown or completely bald.

Oh, Mason, she thought. Pity for those poor trees had softened her sense of indignation at his long absence. His whole year was spent growing trees for this season, and they were the sickliest-looking trees she had ever seen.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” a man asked, swinging the storm door open from the wooden shack at the tree lot’s edge.

“I hope so,” she said. “My name is Mel.”

“Mel.” The man paused for a second’s thought, then laughed. “You have a real Big Apple look about you. You must be Mason’s girl. I’m his brother Kyle.”

“I’m no one’s girl.”

“Fine, his woman. His lady. His foxy momma.”

“If I’m really his foxy momma, maybe you won’t mind telling me where he’s been the last three days.”

“Billings,” he said, his expression morphing from curiosity to realization. “Oh, he never told you.”

“That you sent him all the way to Billings just to sell trees?”

“It’s where the people are,” Kyle said. “And I didn’t send him. Nobody sends Mason anywhere, he’s a stubborn one. No, he volunteered. All of a sudden, really. His voice all growly and serious. You two lovebirds have a fight?”

“No,” she said. “He was going to come over for dinner, and then he just vanished.”

“He better not pull that with me,” Kyle said. “He’s got all my trees. Well, not all of them.”

Kyle gestured toward the area behind the small shed, which looked like a very well-ordered forest. “We plant hundreds of trees each year, and harvest them seven to ten years out for sale. If we can make it to next year we should recover. I just don’t know what our prospects of that are.

“It’s a shame, really. Used to be the center of the Christmas tree trade, Montana. Now we’re one of the only farms left, and we might go under too.”

Mel brushed aside one of the tree’s branches and revealed a cluster of pine cones nestled close to the trunk. They were perfectly shaped, even though the back half of the tree was brown.

“Does insurance cover a bad harvest when the crop in question is pine trees?”

“We had an adjuster come out,” he said. “No fire, no disease, nothing off about the water or the dirt. No, these trees are just as ugly as God intended them to be, and there’s no insuring against God’s will.”

“Do you have suppliers you can lean on for a line of credit going into next year?” Mel asked.

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