Page 126

Vera Hutchins in an enormous fur hat that was either very old or very expensive and possibly both. Rick Brennan telling anyone who would listen that the lights really ought to be blue this year. Claire and Henry from Thistle & Ink standing together by the gazebo steps.

On the rail of the gazebo, just above Claire’s head, sat an orange cat.

Allison looked at the cat. The cat looked at Allison. Allison looked at Claire.

Claire looked at the cat, and then looked away, perfectly serene, as though there were no cat at all.

Allison decided she was going to think about that later.

Across the square, near the cocoa table, Lauren was standing in her puffy coat with her hands empty, and a tall, quiet man with grease under his fingernails and a kind face walked up and handed her a cup of cocoa without saying anything. Ben Keller. Charlie’s dad. He ran Clearwater Auto. Lauren took the cocoa and said something to him, and Allison had known Lauren for four months and had never once heard her voice go that small and that soft.

Three feet away, Charlie was watching them. She looked from her father to Lauren and back to her father again.

It was the exact same look Charlie had given Allison at Halloween.

Oh, Allison thought. Oh, Lauren.

She filed it away for later. For a very long talk. With wine. Out of coffee mugs.

* * *

At six o’clock, Rory Pike climbed the steps of the gazebo.

The crowd quieted down without being asked. Rory had a folder under one arm, of course, and a camera around their neck, and cheeks bright red from the cold.

“Every year,” Rory said, in a voice that carried surprisingly well, “somebody asks me how long we’ve been doing this. So every year I tell you.” They opened the folder. “The first tree in Founders Square was lit in the winter of 1958. The same year Roy Colter opened the hardware store. Roy wired the lights himself. He built the switch box on that post right there,” they pointed, “and he flipped it himself, and the whole town stood right where you’re standing now.” Rory looked up. “A Colter has lit the tree every year since. Sixty-six years. For the last eleven, that’s been Shane.”

A murmur went through the crowd. Somebody near the front patted Shane on the shoulder.

“Every year,” Rory went on, and here they allowed themselves a small smile, “Shane walks up here, says exactly two words, and flips the switch. It is the only speech he gives all year. I have it in the records. It has never once changed.” Rory closed the folder. “Shane.”

The crowd laughed, warm and fond.

Shane squeezed her hand once and let go of it, and walked up the gazebo steps to the old iron switch box on the post. It was black and heavy and old-fashioned, with a big lever on the side. Roy’s hands had built it. Roy’s hands had been the first to pull it.

Shane put his hand on the lever and turned around to face the town.

The square went quiet. Most of the town, or near enough, standing in the cold and the dark, their breath rising, all of them waiting for the same two words they’d heard every December for eleven years.

“Merry Christmas,” Shane said.

A few people started to cheer.

But he didn’t pull the lever.

He was looking out at the crowd. Searching. And then he found her, the way he always found her, in any room, in any crowd, like there was a gravity to it.

“Allison,” he said.

He didn’t say it loudly. He didn’t have to. It carried across the whole silent square, her name in his voice, the way he’d said it once in the firelight at the edge of a bonfire in October, when nobody else was listening.

Everybody was listening now.

“Come here,” he said.

And the crowd parted.

She would remember that for the rest of her life. How it opened. Back in October, on Halloween, he had walked straight through the middle of this town to get to her. Now the town stepped aside, all of them at once, making a path through the snow from where she stood to the gazebo steps. Vera. Rick. Margaret, with her hand pressed to her mouth. Lauren, grinning. Doug, holding his cocoa.