Evergreen

Arthur sprinkled tinsel over the eight-foot evergreen, rooted deep in the Maine snow. He had adorned the branches with pictures of Hannah, their first picnic together, overeating cotton candy at a theme park, snickering through a friend's wedding, beaming at the apex of a half dozen mountains during the last year. He selected each ornament to represent their life together - plastic hiking boots, a palm-sized violin, a miniature camera - and durability against the elements. As he rolled his cramping shoulders, he wished he had also given consideration for weight and distance, but that was this gesture without discomfort? His anticipation for the surprise to come overwhelmed his aches.

As a final addition, he staked the small solar panels for the Christmas lights into bright spots in the clearing. Through the day, the sun would charge them to capacity. After dinner, he would return with her to a glowing tree decorated with artifacts of their love.

He could hardly focus through dinner. She ate his portion without notice of his nervousness, priming herself for a long winter's hike, talking fluidly to fill the chasms he left in their conversation.

Arthur didn't feel the cold, though he knew he should for the shiver in her gloved hand as she held his. She had told him more than once that she liked little more than the distance from human noise, the sounds of the woods finally pushing through their modern mindsets and connecting them to their primal roots, so he didn't bother with small talk. He could think of only one thing to say to her, and it wasn't time for that yet.

Arthur knew where the tree should be. Failing his memory, he had the GPS coordinates programmed into his phone.

The problem was not that the solar generator had failed him because, through frost and decoration, the tree had sparkled even without the lights. Where the tree should have been was a vacancy and a single strand of weakly glowing lights slithering to a shattered panel.

Arthur rushed ahead of his girlfriend, falling to his knees before an anonymous stump. He saw strands of silver and gold, the shedding of an angel with alopecia.

His gloved hands pawed at the stump, at the heavy footprints trudging away from the clearing. All other trees - fuller, richer, taller ones - were left untouched by the saw. Some strangers had taken this tree because Arthur had elevated it above the rest with his care. Had he not contrived this plan, this tree would have remained alive and unassuming. He wondered if that was not a portent.

He had choice words for the people who had stolen this moment from him, but he had sense enough to preserve what remained.

Arthur turned to Hannah, who studied him with a wry, expectant smile. Her eyes left his face, tracing the footsteps back to the tinsel, back to the stump, then returned.

"What was this supposed to be?" she asked softly, smirking as though holding in a laugh.

"Nothing," he said automatically, with the guilt of someone caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "Not nothing," he admitted. "But I can do it better. Next time. Forget about this."

She knelt, careful that no part of her thighs brushed the snow, and pushed clear a twig at the crook between two roots.

"This sapling?" she said. "It's kind of a miracle. Something so small shouldn't have been able to take root, not under a strong parent. It would have withered if the other tree remained. It would have stood no chance. Now? Now, it is going to get light when the spring comes. The rotting from the stump will make the ground fertile." She shoveled snow away down to the hard, winter earth. He couldn't fathom how it had made it this far, starving for light and nourishment, but it had. "Whatever was supposed to happen, whatever you expected, this tree is now going to live. That's not nothing."

He bent down beside her to admire the sapling. He pulled some tinsel from the snow and gently draped it over the young tree. She kissed him quickly, which was pressure enough to force him to fall into the snow.

She stood to help him up and, as she grasped his hand, he took the initiative to ask her to marry him, never surer.