Merry Little Love Story in Reindeer Falls - Beth Labonte

Prologue

Ten years ago, at the Falls…

I tried to look cool, slipping our ornament onto a branch of the old evergreen tree. We’d bought the ornament—a tiny wooden cuckoo clock, with a yellow bird at the top and two golden pine cones dangling from chains at the bottom—for a whopping $1.99 at Nick’s General Store, since it was the week after Christmas and everything had been slashed to half-price. Legend had it, hanging an ornament from this particular tree by the Falls would guarantee you and your loved one a long and happy life together. Of course, we all knew it was just a silly tradition, started by the people of Reindeer Falls who’d grown up before cell phones and video games, back when hanging up an ornament was the most exciting thing they’d do all week.

Still, even those dull old-timey people couldn’t possibly have believed it would actually work. I mean, it was just a tree, and trees didn’t have magical powers. This tree didn’t even have a wise, old face carved into it like the cool one at Clemson’s Christmas Tree Farm (and Rudy Clemson never once claimed that his tree could perform miracles). No, the Reindeer Falls ornament tree was simply another one of our kooky small-town traditions, which just happened to be the sort of thing that Ryan Cross was crazy about.

I’d protested coming here at all—mostly out of fear that someone from school might see me—but Ryan had insisted. What did he care? He didn’t have any friends around here. Let’s do it, he’d said. Just in case. I couldn’t really argue with that. I also couldn’t argue with that sparkle in his eyes. Those deep brown eyes of his sparkled the entire time he was in Reindeer Falls, which was for just one week out of the year.

Ryan had been coming to Reindeer Falls ever since he was old enough to board an airplane alone. At age six, on the day after Christmas, his parents put him on a plane from Boston to Tennessee to visit his great-aunt Dottie, while they took off to the Bahamas for an adults-only getaway. When Ryan returned home in one piece, his parents had dubbed it an annual tradition. The Cross family was involved in real estate development—they owned apartment complexes all across the Northeast—and were rolling in money, which was why they got away with doing weirdo things like putting their six-year-old son on a plane all by himself. They didn’t pay a heck of a lot of attention to him the rest of the year, either.

Luckily for me, Dottie was my next-door neighbor, and Ryan was a pretty decent follow-up to Santa Claus. That first year, he’d arrived in a limousine from the airport with a pile of suitcases, filled with a zillion new toys and video games.

“This is so lame,” I said, brushing my dark bangs out of my eyes and stepping back from the tree. At least I wasn’t holding onto the ornament anymore. If anyone from school showed up now, I could just pretend that we’d come up to the Falls to drink. Not that we drank, unless you counted all the hot chocolates we ordered from Holly’s.

“It is not lame,” said Ryan softly, nudging me with his elbow. “You know I don’t have this sort of thing back home.”

I looked up at his eyes to catch that sparkle. I smiled and let him enjoy his moment. Ryan had nearly everything in the world back home; everything except kooky small-town traditions, and he couldn’t get enough of them.

As we stood there, I looked around at some of the other ornaments that had been left on the tree over the years—snowflakes, gingerbread houses, lots and lots of reindeer. There was an elf ornament halfway up that had that deranged, 1960s look to it. For all I knew, that elf had been left by a much younger Gran and Gramps; they were big believers in the power of the ornament tree. Gramps had actually hung an ornament with a different girl, back before he met Gran. When Gran found out, she dragged Gramps down to the Falls, made him identify the ornament, and then—instead of throwing it in the trash or burning it, like a normal jealous girlfriend—she’d donated it to the church thrift shop. Gotta love my Gran. After that, they hung up an ornament of their own and were married two months later.

“So,” I said, turning toward Ryan and stepping a bit closer. He put