The Christmas Sisters by Annie Jones

words and her own curiosity seemed to draw Nic closer. “You can spot the males by their bold Bermuda shorts and black socks with sandals. The females sport lavish headgear and have been known to carry purses that require their own luggage rack on the back of a luxury RV.”
    “Oh, you.” Nic snatched up a handful of tinsel and tossed it at his head.
    It made a graceful arc in the air, then plummeted only inches away from her, drifting down to decorate the toe of his shoe.
    “We're talking about the real snowbirds.” She tapped the sole of his boot with the toe of her shoe. “Surely you remember those. Little birds with heads and backs the color of slate and a snow-white underside?”
    “Like this.” Willa tugged an intricately carved wooden bird from a nest of wrinkled tissue paper in the box. It dangled from her slender fingers by a gleaming golden cord.
    “Very pretty, Willa.” Sam stroked one finger along the plump underbelly as carefully as he would had it been a live creature suspended there before his eyes. Truth to tell, he half expected to feel the downiness of feathers, the warmth of a living body, and the rapid beat of a bird’s heart beneath his touch. The work was that real. “Did you paint this?” he asked Nic as he nudged the snowbird to twirl it a quarter turn so he could examine the dark black eyes, reddish beak, and the painstaking layering in shades of gray and charcoal that defined the wings and tail.
    “Yes, it took me a while to get it right.”
    “You did. It looks real enough to eat seed out of my hand. I remember you always had an artistic flare. Good to see you didn't let that go to waste.”
    Her back went straight. Her gaze dipped. She wet her lips and twisted her hair around one finger. When she raised her eyes, she focused first on Willa then on him. “So, you remember these birds now?
    “I think so. You'd see them in flocks around old ladies' houses?”
    “Old ladies' houses?” Nic smiled.
    “Probably had the best bird feeders, and they know how to rig up tinfoil pie pans to keep the squirrels away.”
    “Snowbirds are ground feeders,” Nic said, a wistfulness in her tone that seemed ill matched to the subject.
    “Big Hyde says they blow in on the first storm of autumn.” Willa lifted the ornament away from Sam's touch and began picking her way through the disarray on the floor.
    Nic watched her child navigate the chaos with the unusual treasure swaying above one open palm. “He said when he'd look out the window and see the snowbirds huddled under a bush in the yard, it was the Lord's way of telling him to take in the porch swing and get out the lost-and-found box for all the stray hats and gloves that kids would leave on the bus.”
    “I've been around town a while now, and I don't think I've seen a single one of them, though.” It was small talk and he knew it. He did not care. Small talk, big talk, no talk at all, he was in favor of anything that kept Nic close to him, that gave him a chance to make a connection that he could someday build on.
    “Big Hyde has a theory on that as well.” Nic tucked her hair behind her ear. “He says even the snowbirds have given up on Persuasion.”
    “My first day in town he called you and your sisters snowbirds.”
    “Did he?”
    Sam nodded. “So that begs the question, doesn't it? Have the Dorsey sisters given up on Persuasion as well?”
    “Willa, careful with your birdie now.” She never gave him so much as a sidelong glance in reply to his question. “Carry it on in to show The Duets and your aunts, then bring it back to the box, you hear?”
    “Nic? You didn't answer me.”
    “Maybe I should go with her.”
    “Will you not run away if I promise to mind my own business?
    “I'm not running away from you, Sam. I never have and I never will.”
    He deserved that and had the decency to wince at the reference to the selfish cruelty of his past. But he did not let it make him turn loose of the conversation or of Nic's