Gregory’s meaty fingers made the job of unknotting ten times harder but after a minute or so he managed to work out the biggest knots from his string. He hurried around his tree, wrapping the lights onto it as best he could. He had never been any good at decorating trees. He could never work out where the lights should start and finish.
Next came the gaudy metallic pink tinsel. He threw it onto the tree, hoping it would catch in all the right places but fairly certain it didn’t.
John, evidently in his element, had already done his lights and tinsel and was hanging his baubles. Another contestant—a man closer to Gregory’s age—dropped one bauble, then another. They popped when they hit the floor.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Chad said, “but I did say your tree needed a complete set of baubles. So you
