Chapter three: Homecoming

Fueled by 24 ounces of convenience-store coffee, Jeff Henderson zoomed along the interstate, bound for Tennyson, the farm town where he grew up.

Halfway there, snowflakes began speckling the windshield and the November day edged into night. He switched on the wipers, headlights, and scanned the radio for the weather.

With luck, and his radar detector, he would scoop up Will and Katie, and get home in time to make his deadline.

Unless.

The kids put up a fuss.

His mother guilt-tripped him into staying. Or the forecaster — "Storm warning in effect ... Heavy snow expected over the next 24 hours" — was right. He could beat the storm and promise a longer Christmas visit. But if the kids started whining, all bets were off. He'd have to put his foot down, and once again, he'd be the heavy. Rachel would brush aside their protests, bundle them into the car and, only then, calmly inquire why they had done something as stupid and thoughtless as cutting school and taking a bus to Tennyson. No, she'd leave out the "stupid and thoughtless."

Even before the separation, Jeff knew his relationship with the kids wasn't as strong as Rachel's. But wasn't that because she spent more time with them while he was focused on work, providing for them? It wasn't his fault, it was the job — oh gosh, how was he going to get that report done if he couldn't make it back?

The snow thickened. Traffic slowed. Jeff notched up the wipers. He'd left behind the congestion of the city, the suburbs and now, on both sides, countryside spread toward a horizon bordered by the silhouette of skeletal trees.

"Wilford next three exits," a roadside sign announced. Tennyson was too tiny for its own marker, but Jeff knew it was just 20 miles farther.

Up ahead, three lanes of traffic merged into a single scarlet procession of taillights, funneled by a police cruiser's flashers. Jeff hammered the steering wheel with his fist.

He crawled along until he came within earshot of a trooper in yellow rain gear, waving a flashlight. He lowered his window. Wind-driven snow stung his cheeks.

"What's the problem, officer?" Jeff called.

"Truck jackknifed five miles up."

"I'm trying to get to Tennyson," he said. "Any idea how long it's going to be?"

"No idea, sir. If I were you, I'd get off at the next exit. Second light, pick up State Road 9 West. Takes you right into Tennyson. It's longer," he said, shaking his head. "But tonight, it might get you there quicker. Besides," the trooper grinned. "It's the scenic route."

Jeff rolled his eyes. "Just what I need."

He couldn't remember the last time he'd driven along this winding two-lane road, still fringed with farms, fields and woodlands. But when he was a kid — somewhere around Will's, or was it Katie's age? — Route 9's blacktop transported him and Pop, his grandfather, on their rounds at this very time of year. Rattling from farm to farm, they filled the pickup with Christmas wreaths, the season's last cash crop, that the farmers fashioned with holly boughs cut from the trees on their land. From his warehouse in town, Pop shipped them around the country for city folks to hang on their doors.

"Christmas from the forest," Pop called it. His name was Eben Henderson, but in these parts, everyone knew him as the Holly Wreath Man.

Those weren't easy days, especially — when was it, 1962? — when the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war, his grandfather's wreath business and his health were failing, and Jeff's widowed mother, Allie, was on the verge of marrying a man she didn't love.

Still, to Jeff, turning into the driveway of the family farm, his life back then seemed far less complicated than today. Smoke plumed from the chimney, drifting over the barn behind it. Gravel crunched under the tires as he pulled up to the front porch.

The front door swung open, spilling light and a little girl who ran down the steps. His mother and Will followed.

"Daddy," Katie cried. "It's snowing!" Jeff breathed in the tang of wood smoke. He scooped up his daughter in one arm and hugged his mother with the other. Over her shoulder, he watched his son beeline away.

"Hey, Will!" Jeff called. The boy disappeared into the barn's shadow.

Jeff wished Pop were still alive. If anyone could help him out of the mess he'd made of his life, it was the Holly Wreath Man.

Next chapter: Snowed in