Page 12 of The Christmas Stroll

“Classic,” Will replied. He had a crate of Winterstreet Café - the Callahan family business - coffee cups balanced under one arm, waxed paper stamped with a little sprig of holly and he carried it the way other men carried a newspaper. “Move both to the bank steps maybe?”

“Perfect.” Maggie thumbed the screen. “And there’s a hole at the cocoa stand by the ferry dock from eight to ten pm, because whoever built the master list assumed the daytime volunteers would just stay, which they won’t, because I have learned never to argue with a volunteer with a promise in writing.”

Will nodded. “Wise.”

“And,” Maggie continued, and here she stopped walking because this one deserved the pause, “a full batch of sign-up confirmations went out to the wrong email list entirely. The history club. So there are eleven very confused women in their seventies who believe they’ve committed to running the load-in for the outdoor market.”

Will considered this. “Honestly they’d probably crush it.”

“They probably would.” She let herself smile, then put it away and kept walking. “But I’ve sent the correction and I’ve apologized, and one of them wrote back to say she’d do it anyway if we were stuck, so we now have a contingency I didn’t plan for, which also never happens, so I don’t trust it.”

“Also wise.”

They’d fallen into step without either of them deciding to, her quick and level, him unhurried and long, and somehow it worked out to exactly the same pace.

A garland supplier’s truck sat outside the chandlery with its hazards ticking, and the man in the cab had the harried look of someone who had received two delivery windows for the same load and had shown up in the gap between them out of spite.

Will handed Maggie the crate without a word, crossed to the truck and leaned an elbow on the open window.

She caught the shape of the conversation but couldn’t fully hear - Will nodding, Will laughing at something, Will tapping the man’s arm and saying a time, a single confirmed time, in a voice that made it sound as though it had always been that time and the confusion had been entirely the weather’s fault.

The driver’s shoulders came down. He wrote something down, then drove off looking, if not happy, then at least no longer at war.

“One window,” Will said, taking the crate back. “Two o’clock. I told him the earlier one came from a rival organization we don’t recognize.”

“You told him my mother was a rival organization?”

His eyes sparkled. “I implied it. There’s a difference Sullivan, and it’s how I sleep at night.”

Sea Glass Bridal had its window dressed in oyster silk and sprigs of white heather, and the woman behind the counter looked up when the bell rang.

Caroline, Maggie recalled - the niece, the one who’d taken the shop over her aunt passed, and the one people said had turned out to love the island harder than the people born on it. Josh Calder too, apparently. Now, she had a tape measure looped around her neck and no patience in her expression at all.

“The load-in,” Caroline said sternly, before either of them had finished coming in. “Nadine had it at seven and I’ve had it at nine and we’ve stopped believing either of them.”

“Eight,” Maggie told her. “Confirmed, written, and I’ll send it to you in the next ten minutes so you have it in your own hand.”

Caroline looked at her for a beat, then at Will who handed her a coffee cup, then back at Maggie. “You’re Helen’s daughter?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Good,” Caroline said, which was not what Maggie expected and then took a sip from the coffee-cup peace offering. “At least somebody in that family knows how to count.”

Out on the cobbles again, Will was grinning. “I think she likes you.”

“That was liking me?”

“For Caroline yes. She’s an accountant. Math is her love language.”

A way down, Declan O’Rourke was standing outside the Blue Harbor Inn’s entrance in a navy sweater with the sleeves shoved up, and when he saw them coming his way, his whole weathered face folded into welcome. The Irishman had always had a genuine gift for making a person feel they were the exact one he’d been hoping to see. And Maggie was sorry to hear a rumor that the couple would soon be handing over the running of the inn to someone else.

“Ah, the two peacemakers,” Declan greeted, lilting accent warm as cider. “Coming to tell me the parade’s going to cause shenanigans for my ferry drop-offs?”

“Coming to tell you the opposite,” Will said. “Route’s been pulled off this street now, Dec. It runs Centre same as always and clears the wharf a full half hour before your drop-offs. Tell Maeve your guests will be back on the boat in time for a photograph.”

Declan pressed a broad hand to his chest. “You’ve saved my bacon, lad. I’d nearly rerouted the whole shuttle already.”

Inside the bookshop, Noah Browne stood at his counter with his reading glasses pushed up into his slightly graying hair - a piece of paper in each hand and the expression of a man reading two obituaries for himself.