Page 76

“Mark my words,” she announced to the room at large. “By next Christmas there will be a ring involved. I’ve been matchmaking in this town for thirty years and I am never wrong about December.”

“Colette,” Pearl said, “you are frequently wrong about December.”

“Never about this.”

The room laughed and rolled on toward one in the morning. I tucked myself under Griffin’s arm and let Colette make predictions.

He kissed my hair and handed me the better glass of champagne.

EPILOGUE

NORA

Pearl had opinions about my coat, which meant something was up.

“Not the work parka,” she said, blocking the door of Winters Wonderland with a pastry box and the immovable authority of a best friend on a mission. “The red one. The good one. It’s opening night of the forty-fourth festival, and you are the co-chair, not part of the work crew.”

“I have two hundred ornaments to restock before the tree lighting.”

“Marcy can restock. That’s why you hired Marcy.” She was already pulling the red coat off its hook by the register, which proved she’d scouted the location in advance.

The bell chimed. Hal Sackett came in with his hat already in his hand, as he had done every December since before this shop was mine, and Pearl, who has never in her life yielded a room, stepped back and shut up.

There were thirteen now. The cardinal was red as a stoplight, and its tail still threw the same bright stripe across the ceiling.

“That’s the one,” Hal said.

“That’s always the one.” I turned it over and wrote the year on the underside in gold pen, small, and set it in tissue. “Thirteen.”

“Thirteen.” He put his hat back on at the door. “She’d have liked all this, you know. The street. The lights.” He nodded through the glass toward the gray-coated man waiting at the end of the block, whom he had noticed before he’d gotten his own coat off, because Hal Sackett has been paying attention in this town for eighty-one years. “She’d have liked him.”

“Go on, Hal.”

“Going.”

Pearl held the door for Hal, then kept it open for me, making the purpose of her ambush obvious. “Coat,” she said. “Now. You’re wanted on Main Street.”

Nine years in Holly Creek had taught me when the town was managing me, and the town was managing me. I put on the coat.

Main Street was ready for the forty-fourth festival. A year of work had taken the block from surviving to shining, and I still had to stop and take it in. The old pharmacy glowed on the corner, now home to the town archive and an expanded Callahan’s Books. The doorway through the party wall had required approval from all three owners. Ivy got it in one morning and never let anyone forget. The vacant lot had become the festival grounds, with permanent lights on poles Griffin had set himself. Rows of vendor tents filled the space, and children carried cocoa between them without spilling much of it.

And in the corner unit next to Donnelly Hardware, gold leaf on the glass read COLE DEVELOPMENT LLC, over a window where renovation drawings for two other small towns hung beside a crayon picture of Chester that a second-grader had delivered as payment for a tour. He keeps the crayon Chester at eye level. I asked him why once, and he said it was the only commission he’d ever framed.

My shop stood in the middle of it all on a foundation that held steady through hard frost. The wiring met code, and Griffin had rewritten my lease after learning what Portland Property Management charged me. He lowered the rent, put structural repairs where they belonged with the landlord, and argued against every term that favored him. Every storefront on the block was occupied, and the festival had sold out its vendor map in October.

The sleigh was waiting at the end of the block.

Chester and Maple stamped in the cold. Ribbons decorated their manes, and bells lined the harness. Behind them, the portable stalls stood on new base rails Griffin had installed the previous January, using Richard’s old anchor posts. Mrs. Morrison stood at their heads in her quilted jacket. Beside the sleigh, in the good gray coat I can now admit I noticed the first day he walked into my life, stood Griffin. He had checked every variable twice. His hands still wouldn’t settle.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Collecting on a promise,” Mrs. Morrison said. “Last Christmas Eve I told this man the first ride of the forty-fourth festival was spoken for. I’ve been planning it longer than he has, and that’s saying something.” She flipped the blanket back from the seat. “In you get. The tree lighting’s in twenty minutes and these horses don’t like to rush.”

I got in. Griffin climbed up beside me and tucked the blanket over our knees, and his hands fussed with the hem twice, which his hands never do. Mrs. Morrison clucked the team forward. The bells rang, and the sleigh rolled slowly down Main Street.

We rode down the middle of our street. Pearl waved from the door of Sweet Provisions like she had no idea what was happening, which fooled no one. Frank stood outside the hardware store with his arms crossed and his eyes suspiciously bright. Betty Alvarez, on the corner with her granddaughter, was openly filming.

“Everyone knows something I don’t,” I said.