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Dottie sets her cup down. "That boy has given this town every bow, every letter, every Christmas window for four years. He's never once asked for anything back. Not from me. Not from anybody." She taps the counter with one finger. "He doesn't know how. Ingrid did all his asking for him."

"He could learn."

"He could." She looks up at the top shelf. "So could you."

"I'm not the one who put it back."

"No," Dottie says. "You're the one who's leaving."

I open my mouth to tell her that's different. That I told him from the first minute, that I never lied to him, that I'm not staying and I never was.

"He's scared, honey," she says, before I can get any of it out. "Same as you."

"I'm not scared. I have a bus."

"Same thing, in my experience." She picks up her coffee. "Drink that before it's cold."

She goes back to the register.

I drink the coffee. It burns my tongue. I don't taste it.

He's scared. Fine. Maybe he is. Maybe he came down before dawn and stood at that counter and looked at the carousel and thought about me on a bus to Denver, and it hurt, so he put it back where it couldn't hurt anymore.

I understand that. I understand it so well that I want to throw up.

Because I lay awake until four last night thinking about the same thing from the other side. A good room upstairs. A counter with my name on it. Christmas in a toy shop with a man who reads every word of every child's letter. I let myself want it. For about an hour, in the dark, I let myself want it so badly that I had to put my face in Shay's throw pillow.

Then I thought about January. Boxes. Someone saying it'll work out.

Wanting something is how you lose it. I learned that at twelve, when I asked Santa for one thing and watched it go.

The afternoon goes gray, then blue. By 4:30, the sun is behind the ridge, and Prospect starts to fill up. People come out of the shops and stand on the sidewalks with their hands in their pockets. Somebody's strung white lights in the bare trees along the curb. Across the street, the bakery's window glows gold, and through the glass I can see a gingerbread house the size of a dog.

At a quarter to five, Dottie plugs in the cider urn by the door, and the whole shop starts to smell of cinnamon and cloves.

Arch comes back to my counter for the first time since this morning.

He stops on the other side of it. He has a box of candy canes for the register jar under one arm, and his eyes are dark and tired.

"After close," he says. "The windows. You said you'd see them."

"I said I'd seen windows."

"Noelle."

"I have to get back to Shay's." I keep my eyes on the tag I'm writing. "My bus is at eight."

He's quiet. I can feel him standing there, close enough to touch across the counter, and I know if I look up, I'll say something I can't take back.

"I know when your bus is," he says, very low.

The bell over the door jangles. A crowd of teenagers in matching red scarves comes in laughing, the carolers from the high school, and Dottie calls out to Arch to help her move the urn before somebody knocks it over.

He hesitates. Then he goes.

I set down my pen.

The candy cane he gave me on Saturday is still in my coat pocket. I walk to the register, take it out, and carry it back to the wrap counter. I set it down beside the spool of red cord, exactly where he left it on my first day.