When his father had been alive, that room had been packed almost end-to-end with chests and boxes. Toys, china, even furniture. And, of course, there would have been Christmas decorations, taken out each year, inspected and dusted to hang from the branches of a tree and the edge of the mantelpiece. Those were long gone, discreetly sold. When he allowed himself to think about them, he remembered the way those ornaments had shone in the firelight. But at the time, he’d told himself no one ever starved for a lack of polished tin spirals that gleamed like icicles. Now, he looked at the few boxes that remained, all neatly labeled under a coating of dust. He knew what was in those—clothes that wouldn’t fetch more than pennies, yet which had plenty of wear in them. Probably because they were all out of fashion. And there were a few mementoes of his mother: her journals, monogrammed handkerchiefs, a tortoiseshell comb. Nothing he could take downstairs to use, despite his inviting Miss Snow—Laura—to stay for Christmas.
What do You think about Christmas Yet To Come (2015)?
