Chapter 1 - THE WEIGHT OF A PAPER FLOWER
It was 5:15 on Saturday, the fifth of December, in Ferris Falls, Minnesota, and the sun had already been gone for almost an hour.
The town square smelled like hot cider and cloves. The snow squeaked under people's boots the way it only does when it's truly cold, and that night it was seven degrees above zero and falling. Strings of yellow lights hung between the lampposts, and their reflections shivered on the dirty ice of the sidewalk.
In the middle of the square stood the tree. Forty feet of spruce wrapped in white lights, with a banner at its base that read: SORENSON HEATING AND PLUMBING — KEEPING FERRIS FALLS WARM SINCE 1988.
Twenty steps from that banner, between a hot cider stand and a table of homemade fudge, sat a cardboard box on top of a plastic milk crate.
On the box were paper daisies. Maybe thirty of them, standing up in an old coffee can full of rice. White petals folded so carefully that each one curled at the tip like a real flower. And in the center of every daisy, a yellow button — not a painted circle, a real coat button, shiny and round, sewn onto the paper with yellow thread.
Behind the box stood a girl.
Her name was Josie Lond. She was seven years old. She wore one blue mitten and one gray wool glove that had been made for a grown-up, so the fingers hung past her own like empty tubes. Her winter coat had no zipper. It was held shut with two safety pins — the big kind with the pink plastic heads that people use for diapers.
Next to the coffee can was a paper plate. On it, in purple crayon, someone had drawn eight tally marks. Underneath, in careful wobbly letters: 12 — gas.
Every few minutes, Josie did the same thing. She brought her hands up to her mouth and breathed on them. Then she leaned over the daisies and blew softly across the petals, the way you'd blow on soup. She was keeping them warm.
People walked past. They were decent people, most of them. They looked at her, and then they looked at their phones, or at the tree, or at their own children — the way decent people do when they aren't sure it's their place. Nobody stopped.
At 5:40, a family came through the crowd.
A tall man in a dark wool coat that didn't try to look expensive. Gray at the temples, with the heavy shoulders of somebody who used to carry things for a living. Beside him, a woman in a long camel coat, walking quickly, her heels clicking on the cleared path. Behind them, a teenage girl holding up her phone.
The man was Raymond Sorenson. Everyone in Ferris Falls called him Ray. He was fifty-six years old, and his name was on the banner under the tree.
Josie saw them coming. She saw the camel coat and the shiny shoes, and she did something she had not done all night. She stepped out from behind the box.
"Grandma made these with her hurting hands," she said. "Please just buy one."
The teenage girl laughed. It wasn't a cruel laugh, exactly. It was the laugh of a sixteen-year-old who had never been cold in her life. She tilted her phone down toward the box.
"Paper weeds," she said, mostly to herself, typing. "lol."
The woman in the camel coat stopped. Her name was Celeste Sorenson, and she looked at Josie the way you look at a problem somebody else forgot to fix.
"Isn't there an agency for this?" she said, loud enough for the fudge lady to hear. "Somebody should call someone. It's freezing." Then she opened her purse, took out a twenty-dollar bill, and held it out. "Here, sweetheart. Go home. It's too cold."
Josie looked at the twenty. She looked at it for a long time. Twenty dollars was more than twelve daisies. Twenty dollars was the whole week. Then she pushed it back, gently, with her blue mitten.
"I can't take money for nothing," she said. "Grandma says that's the same as saying she's useless." She turned the coffee can a little, so the lights caught the buttons. "She's not useless. Look how pretty they are."
Nobody said anything. The teenager lowered her phone. Celeste's hand stayed in the air for a second, holding the twenty, and then she put it back in her purse and said, "Well," in a tight voice, and walked on toward the tree.
Ray didn't move right away. He was looking at the buttons. They were yellow mother-of-pearl. The old kind, with four holes and a little ridge around the edge. Ray had not seen buttons like that in thirty years. But when he was a boy, there had been a cookie tin full of them on top of his grandmother's refrigerator, and he used to sort them by color on the kitchen floor while she knitted.
"Ray," Celeste called. "The photographer's waiting."
He went. He stood under the banner and smiled for the newspaper, and the mayor shook his hand, and the tree lights flashed on all at once and the crowd went, "Ooh."
Then at 6:20, while Celeste was talking to the mayor's wife, Ray walked back across the square alone.
Josie was still there. The tally marks on the plate had become nine. He stopped an arm's length from the box, keeping his hands where she could see them, out of his pockets.
"How much are they?"
"Two dollars," she said. "Or one, if you're old."
He took out two dollars and picked a daisy. Josie made a tenth mark on the plate with her purple crayon.
"How many more until twelve?" he asked.
She looked up at him, surprised that he'd read the plate. "Two," she said. Then, "I mean — four. I mean —" She counted the marks with her finger. "Two?"
Ray nodded slowly. He could have bought the whole can. He had more money in his coat pocket than that girl's grandmother probably saw in a month. He didn't.
"Then I'd better tell some people," he said.
He walked over to the cider stand, to the fudge table, and to a man selling wreaths, saying something quietly to each of them. Within ten minutes, Josie had sold two more daisies to people who suddenly seemed to notice her.
Twelve marks.
May you like
She put on her backpack, tucked the coffee can into her arms, and walked off into the dark toward the railroad tracks.
Ray watched her go. Ray Sorenson had heated ten thousand homes in Ferris Falls. He was about to learn about the one he never had.
