Snowflakes and Coffee Cakes by Joanne Demaio

inside. Then, brushing aside crumpled paper in disbelief, she finds a bright red and gold decorative sleigh with a soft layer of artificial snow. “How do you like that?” she asks while lifting it all out and setting it on one of her recently-cleaned barn shelves. There’s more in the box, off to the side: a lamppost, and pretty little gift boxes festively wrapped, meant to fill the sled.
    She pulls another box off the stack and brings it to the center of the barn where the lighting is better, setting it on a small table. This one holds hundreds of dangling gold snowflake ornaments, which she begins to gently hang from random hooks and nails on the walls, and climbing up to the loft, from ceiling beams too. “This can’t be.” Shining snowflakes glimmer in shafts of dusty sunlight coming in through the paned windows.
    But if she’s learned anything these past few months, it’s that anything can be. She can be a local town paper part-time reporter; she can be the owner of a drafty, historic house; she can watch the skies from her own widow’s walk; and she can be the proprietor now, apparently, of the complete Christmas Barn inventory left behind and long-forgotten.
    Another box is filled with an assortment of sleigh bells and she strings a miniature set along the red sleigh on the table, jumping when more bells ring behind her. The big tabby cat is crouched inside the box, pawing at the bells over and over again, sliding them out onto the floor, pouncing on them and filling the barn with a melody of happy jingles.
    She slowly turns around, taking in the sight of the few decorations she set out, then laughs when the gold sleigh bells ring again. “Oh those jingles!” she tells the barn cat as his two front paws bat a large bell across the freshly-swept floor. “Jingles, jingles, jingles,” she says again, smiling as the cat runs past. “I guess you’ve got a name now.”
    *  *  *
    “Holy cow,” Brooke says when she arrives with fresh-brewed coffee and a cinnamon coffee cake two hours later. “I am so time travelling.” She sets down the food delivery and walks through the barn, her cowboy boots clomping on the floor.
    “It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?” Vera asks. What started with a few gold snowflakes and one red sleigh has turned into nutcrackers with rosy cheeks and wreaths with red bows and Christmas lanterns and twinkling lights and red-feathered cardinals and Santas and snowmen. “And I haven’t even made a dent in the tons of decorations, which are stacked right up to the ceiling.”
    Brooke walks over to the storage room with Vera standing behind her, peering over her shoulder at the boxed inventory.
    “I took out everything you see already just from sheer disbelief,” Vera explains. “Don’t touch anything, because I’m telling you it’s like some sort of Christmas magic takes over and you have to open another, then another.”
    “Wow!” Brooke looks the room up and down, surmising the cartons lined against the walls. “The whole Christmas Barn must be in here.”
    “It seriously is. And check this out.” Vera hands her a folded piece of paper. “I found it in an envelope in the first box I opened.”
    Brooke carefully takes the yellowed paper and they read it together:
     
    Sometimes a place is so special, it becomes a part of who we are. That’s what the Christmas Barn did for me. My husband and I owned and operated this place for decades (You may have even stopped in during one Christmas or another), and as I pack up our home here, it’s hard to let go. I loved this little New England treasure, tucked into the banks of Addison Cove. But it’s time to move on. I’m feeling a little like a migratory goose, heading south now. And there’s no room for our Christmas Barn where we’re going.
     
    And so … in this back room you’ll find all the remaining inventory. Whatever you decide to do with it, I will leave to your discretion. For I feel only you can determine the