Page 9

"He needed a wrapper."

"He's needed one since last Christmas. Sign went in the window the day the paper came down." She rings up a box of crayons. "Nobody else got hired."

"Nobody else applied?"

"Four girls applied."

I tape a corner crooked. I have to redo it.

The sprig hangs over the door all morning. Every time the bell rings, I look up. Every time I look up, Arch is somewhere in the shop, and he's already looking at me.

Around one, the lunch lull hits. The line thins out to nothing. Arch comes back to the wrap counter carrying a red tin mailbox, the old-fashioned rural kind, with LETTERS TO SANTA painted on the side in white. He sets it on the end of my counter, opens the little door, and pulls out a stack of envelopes. Some are folded notebook paper. One is a paper towel.

"Gran's," he says, before I can ask. "It sits by the door all season. Every kid who drops a letter in gets an answer."

"From who?"

"From Santa." He pulls the stool around and sits on it, at the end of my counter, with the stack in front of him. "Postmarked from the North Pole."

"You have a North Pole postmark?"

"I have a rubber stamp."

"Who writes the answers?"

He slits open the first envelope with his thumb. "I do."

I stare at him. "How many letters?"

"Last year, three hundred and eight."

"By hand?"

"By hand."

"When?"

"After close. Some nights, it runs past midnight."

Dottie doesn't look up from the register. "Every single one," she calls. "Ingrid did it for sixty years. He's done it for four. He won't let me help. He says my handwriting gives it away."

"You write in cursive with little hearts," Arch says.

"Children love the hearts."

"Santa doesn't do hearts."

I watch him unfold the first letter. His hands are big, and the paper is small, blue-lined, and smudged with crayon. He reads it the whole way through, slowly, with his head bent and a crease between his brows. Then he sets it on a pile to his left and opens the next one.

He reads every word. I can tell. He doesn't skim.

A man who runs Christmas without liking it doesn't read three hundred letters this carefully.

"What do they ask for?" I ask.

"Mostly what you'd guess. Bikes. Puppies. A sled." He opens another. "This one wants a sled, a puppy, and for her brother to stop licking the windows."

"That last one's ambitious."