The Perfect Mrs. Claus by Barbara Matteson

Author:Barbara Matteson [Matteson, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781631122927
Publisher: 5 Prince Publishing

CHAPTER 16

“She’s either very dedicated or very… I don’t know.” Matthew paused talking to himself as he put the key into the ignition and waited for the car to heat. It was still pitch-black outside at almost five thirty am and it may as well have been the middle of the night. There was a time when he loved the shorter days and the colder air, and as much as he loved winter, he did miss the longer days of early sunlit mornings and late sunset evenings. New England winter days were short. Matthew recalled his grandfather telling him the shorter days meant more time for stargazing. Grandpa Max’s house was a few miles down the road from Matthew’s family home, and had a large deck surrounded by tall pines and oak trees. There were no streetlights at all, and Matthew remembered deep dark nights camping in his grandparents’ backyard. He and his brother spent a lot of time with their grandparents, as their own parents were busy getting their business up and running. Matthew couldn’t wait to get to Grandpa Max’s house for a weekend of backyard camping and searching for heavenly constellations.

Nights were not as dark living in the city. The bright beams of the streetlights blocked out the twinkling of the stars, not that Matthew had much time to stargaze lately. But on those lonely nights, especially when he lived in Chicago, he’d step out onto his balcony to see if constellations were visible, and he felt lucky if he saw even just a few stars sprinkled in the city sky. It was the same in Boston, with too many artificial lights blocking out the natural glow of a clear winter sky. Although barely visible, he thought he could make out the Big Dipper, and then out of nowhere, he felt his stomach take a nosedive into a longing he hadn’t felt in a while—a longing to return to the backyard of his boyhood, standing behind the telescope on the deck and looking up into the skies for his and grandfather’s stars.

“You’ll be there at Christmas,” he said, turning up the heat to as high as it would go. ”If you had accepted the job in Charleston you wouldn’t be freezing on a cold December morning,” he laughed, as the car started to warm up slightly. As much as Matthew enjoyed the warm weather, he knew that he couldn’t last in the South, as much as he’d like to think he could. He would miss the cold air tinged with woodsmoke, the bright red and orange leaves of a New England autumn, and, he was loath to admit, he would miss the snow, the very same snow that his family depended on during this time of the year. But city snow was definitely more difficult to navigate, with plows blockading the roads and the streets narrowed from the towering snowbanks. When he was at his grandfather’s place, they would always hop into the little Caterpillar plow and burrow their own path to wherever they needed to go and thought nothing of it.

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