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“I think operational decisions can’t be based on personal attachment when the program isn’t sustainable.”

“And I think you can’t measure what those rides mean with a spreadsheet.” I shoved my chair back, needing distance. “Children take their first winter ride in that sleigh. Grandparents bring them back years later. People drive here because somebody told them about Mrs. Morrison’s horses.”

“Then help me keep the rides.” His voice dropped. “They cost more than they bring in. Show me what I can change without taking them away.”

I stopped with my hand on the back of the chair. He was waiting for an answer instead of dismissing it in advance. “You’re serious.”

“I am. I know what the rides cost. You know why Mrs. Morrison keeps offering them.” He closed his laptop halfway. “Apparently Owen paired us because I know what things cost and you know what they mean.”

Making sense was a dirty trick. I preferred him when he was wrong and easier to dislike.

“The sleigh rides could cut costs by partnering with the equestrian center,” I said. “Her horses are expensive to transport and stable. The Whitmores have a facility ten minutes out and they’ve offered before.”

“Why hasn’t that happened?”

“Because her husband built the portable stables we use. She doesn’t want to give them up.”

Griffin made a note. “So the obstacle is emotional, not logistical.”

“Everything is emotional,” I said. “You keep saying obstacle like there’s another kind.”

“That’s not⁠—”

“She washes the harness in her kitchen sink. In February. It’s a horse harness, it doesn’t need washing in February, but she washes it because it’s one of the last chores that still feels like his.” My voice shook. “Put that in the column, Griffin. Tell me which column that goes in.”

I stopped and pressed my lips together. I had already said more about Mrs. Morrison’s grief than she would have wanted.

He didn’t answer. He wrote something down, four or five words, and then set the pen across the top of the page and looked at it instead of at me. “Can I ask you something that isn’t festival business?”

“That depends entirely on the something.”

“Why Christmas?” He gestured vaguely north, toward Main Street and my shop and the whole ridiculous premise of my life. “You could have opened anything. You picked the business that’s dead eight months of the year.”

“Seven.” I sat back down because it was easier to say sitting. “I came to Holly Creek on the third of January, after the life I’d planned fell apart. Christmas was already over. Frank was taking down the lights on his storefront, and Ivy carried the last wreath toward the dumpster so slowly that throwing it away looked painful. I stood on the sidewalk with two suitcases and thought I’d missed the best thing this town had.”

“And the next year you didn’t.”

“The next October, Frank handed me a staple gun and pointed me at the festival garland. Christmas gave me a way into town before I knew how to ask for one. Nobody asked where I came from or what had happened. They asked me to hold a ladder, show up at the fairgrounds at six, or run a fryer.” I straightened a binder that didn’t need it. “By Christmas, I’d been in every kitchen on this street. Five years later, when Adele retired, I bought the business from her, renamed it Winters Wonderland, and took over the storefront lease. Christmas had been the first time Holly Creek made room for me. I wanted to keep that door open for somebody else.”

Griffin stayed quiet long enough to make me look up. “So the shop isn’t only about Christmas.”

“It’s about belonging,” I said. “Christmas just has better lighting.”

“You’re not what I expected,” he said.

“Neither are you,” I said, before I could stop myself.

The door banged open. Pearl came in smelling like vanilla and set a cardboard tray of coffee cups on the one square foot of table nobody was using. “The lunch rush finally released me,” Pearl said. “I heard you arguing about the sleigh rides from the landing. I also need a favor, and I’m asking in front of a witness so you can’t weasel out of it. My walk-in is clearing its throat, Frank’s back is out, and if that machine dies before the twenty-third, I lose four hundred dollars’ worth of butter.”

Griffin set down his pen. “What noise, exactly?”

“I just told you. A man clearing his throat.”

“How often?”

Pearl looked at me. “Is he always like this?”

“He has been since yesterday,” I said. His need for exact answers should have annoyed me. It didn’t. He was already writing SWEET PROVISIONS WALK-IN across the top of a page in precise block letters.