Free A Winter Discovery by Michael Baron Page A

super special to have a mom at Christmas. Too bad he was never gonna get the chance. In the movies, people got big-time Christmas wishes all the time. Maybe he’d wish for that. Just a tiny little something with his mother. If he wished hard enough it could come true.
    Touching Mom’s face once, Reese put the picture back on his dresser and then turned toward the window in his room.
    It was snowing!
    Excitedly, he got up to look outside. It was snowing very hard. Ginormous flakes. Could be great packing snow, which meant that Dad and Millie were going to be in for a serious snowball fight tomorrow.
    Now he was never gonna get to sleep. Christmas coming and snow? There was just way too much to get freaked about.
    Reese looked over at the streetlight to watch the snow as it was coming down like crazy. As he did, a single flake floated in this direction and landed on his window. It was weird, because all the rest of the snow seemed to be blowing the other way. He looked at the flake closely, trying to see the different lines coming from it. Millie told him that the lines were called “crystals” and that every single one was different from every other one. He figured she was exaggerating about that.
    After he’d looked over the snowflake for a while, Reese put his finger up to the window , knowing that the heat in his finger would warm up the window and melt the snowflake like it had when he’d done that kind of thing before. He kept his finger there for a while, but when he pulled it back, the flake was still there, not looking melty at all.
    What was that about? Maybe this was mutant snow, a kind that never melted. How cool would that be? They could have snow all year ’round. When they went to the beach in the summer, they could come out of the water and then jump around in the snowdrifts. That would be the best thing ever.
    He touched his finger to the window again. When he pulled it away, the snowflake was still there. This was very interesting.
    He continued to check out the flake for a while. As he did, another picture of his mother popped into his head. She looked a lot like she did in the picture that was next to the hall closet. That one of her on the ski slope where she had a gigantic smile on her face. Thinking about that picture while still staring at the snowflake, Reese got that goopy feeling all over again.
    He put his finger to the flake one more time – it still didn’t melt – and then crawled back into bed. Once he lay down, he looked at the picture of his mom and then over to the snowflake again. Suddenly, he was getting very sleepy.
    He scrunched down into his covers, still thinking about Christmas and snow, but really thinking about his mother more than anything else.
    He yawned and snuggled his pillow, feeling very tucked in.

Chapter Two
    A Frosty
    Realtors should mention this when they show you a house with a long driveway , Gerry thought as he looked up to check his progress. They’re nice to have, except when you need to shovel a foot of snow off of them . He’d been out for forty-five minutes already, and he’d cleared less than a quarter of the driveway. Last year, he’d invested in a snow blower, but the thing didn’t work when the snow was this deep. Another thing not mentioned by the salesperson. “Yes, sir, this is an excellent piece of equipment. It’ll work whenever you need it – except when you need it the most.”
    Gerry realized that he would have bought the snow blower anyway. There weren’t that many snowstorms like this on Long Island, and he couldn’t remember the last time it had snowed this much in December. He also realized that he would have bought the house even if the realtor had thought to tell him about the amount of work it took to clear the driveway after a blizzard. Maureen had fallen in love with the house within thirty seconds, marveling at the flow, the sun room, and the wainscoting in the living room. The size of the kitchen and the built-in bookcases