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"It's not for sale," I say, and it comes out rough.

"I didn't ask to buy it." She looks down at the horses. "I asked if you'd wind it."

"You didn't ask that."

"I'm asking now."

My hand is already on the key. I don't remember reaching for it.

It's stiff. Years stiff. I turn it once, and it catches. I turn it again, and something inside gives with a soft click, and then it turns smoothly under my fingers, the spring tightening, the way⁠—

No. I make myself stop thinking about Gran's hands on this key. I wind it until it won't go any further.

I let go.

For a second, nothing happens. Then the first note comes out of the base, thin and bright, and the horses start to move.

It's "The Skaters' Waltz." It's always been "The Skaters' Waltz." The horses rise and fall on their brass poles, the canopy turns, the little gold flag catches the lamplight, and the tune fills the dark shop all the way to the window.

I've heard it every Christmas Eve since I was six, except the last four.

My eyes burn. I don't look at the carousel. I look at Noelle.

She's watching the horses go around with her lips parted, and for the first time since she walked through my door, she isn't guarding anything. Her hands are flat on the counter. Her face is open. She looks twelve and twenty-three at the same time.

"There was a notice on our front door," she says, still watching the horses. "The December I was twelve. Taped right under the wreath. Our tree was in the front window, and you could see the notice from the street, right below the lights."

I don't move. I barely breathe.

"My parents kept saying it would work out. Every night at dinner. ‘It'll work out, Noelle. Don't worry about grown-up things.’" Her voice is even, careful. "So I wrote Santa. I didn't ask for anything else. Only the house."

The waltz turns. The horses rise and fall.

"In January, we moved into my aunt's basement. My mom packed the ornaments in a box that read KITCHEN, because it was the only box left." She finally looks up at me. "Nobody ever answered my letter."

"So you stopped believing."

"I stopped believing anybody who promised me anything. Especially in December." Her mouth twists. "None of it's real. The window. The tree. 'It'll work out.' It's a motor and a loop of track."

"You feel all of it," I say slowly, "and you won't believe any of it."

She swallows. "And you do all of it and won't feel any of it."

Neither of us says anything else. The waltz says it for us, going around and around between us on the counter, Gran's song in my grandfather's tin, playing in the dark for the first time in four years because a woman I met yesterday asked me to wind it.

The music slows. The horses slow. The last few notes come out farther and farther apart, until the carousel turns one final half-circle and stops.

The shop goes quiet.

"See?" Noelle says softly. "It stops."

"It always stops."

"Then what's the point?"

"You wind it again." I come around the end of the counter. "That's the point. It was always the point. It doesn't stop being real because it stops."

She turns to face me. Her back is to the counter, the lamp glowing behind her, and her eyes are tear-filled and stubborn at the same time.