Leaves (25 page)

For some reason, the snowflake made him start thinking about his mom again. What was that about? He thought about her a lot, anyway, but snowflakes just made her jump into his head these days. It would have been cool to talk to her about snowflakes or Frosties or trains that took you to the North Pole. Dad had told him once that Mom was really into Christmas, so she probably would have been really excited about this stuff. Maybe even as excited as he was about it.

He got that goopy feeling again while he was thinking about his mom. It made him feel really warm, like he was sitting by a fireplace or something. Even if he was feeling warm inside, though, it wasn't melting the snowflake. That just stayed the way it was on his mitten, which was really good, because he liked having the company.

Just then, he felt an arm around his shoulder, and, when he looked up, Millie was standing next to him. He hadn't even heard her walking through the snow to get to him.

“What'cha got?” she said, nodding toward the mitten that he was still holding out in front of him.

Reese looked to where she was looking. “Very cool snowflake. The kind that doesn't melt.”

Millie leaned closer to his mitten. “It doesn't melt?”

“Nope? I've been holding it for a really long time.”

Millie tilted her head and nodded. “That's quite a snowflake.”

Reese nodded along with her.

“You know,” she said, “it's not the best idea in the world for a six-year-old to be standing out in the snow by himself in the middle of the night.”

Reese looked down the street. “I was waiting for the Polar Express.”

“Doesn't that only come on Christmas Eve?”

“That's what a lot of people think, but I don't think so.”

“Hmm.”

Millie didn't say anything after that, so Reese went back to looking at the snowflake.

“It's still not really a good idea for you to be standing out here at one-thirty in the morning.”

Reese looked up at Millie again, and she gave him one of her understanding smiles. He shrugged.

“However,” she said, “we still have a couple of those apple cider donuts left. While it wouldn't be very responsible of me to let you stand outside at one-thirty in the morning, I think it's completely responsible of me to let you eat a donut before you go back to bed. What do you think?”

Reese looked down the street in both directions this time. For some reason, he'd been thinking that the train would come from the right, but it could definitely come from the left, too.

It probably wasn't coming at all now, though. He was just guessing that part about the train coming on days other than Christmas Eve. And, anyway, it wasn't going to show with an adult out here.

He offered Millie an understanding smile of his own. “Donut sounds good.”

She squeezed his shoulder and said, “Come on, let's go inside.”

As they turned to go, Reese took one more look at the snowflake. Since it was a non-melting flake, he could take it into the house with him, but then it would be lonely. Instead, he blew it off his mitten and watched it flutter to join its friends on the ground.