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“The festival’s gone.”

“I know that too, honey.”

“He called twice, and I chose not to answer. I was hurt, and I was afraid hearing his voice would make me change my mind before I was ready. I said that in the meeting because pretending otherwise would have been worse.”

“It would have been,” Pearl said. “It still wasn’t good.”

We sat there. Behind me, the battery-powered music box finished “Silent Night” and moved straight into “Joy to the World,” which felt aggressive under the circumstances. Neither of us got up to switch it off. Above the register, the strand of tinsel I put up in 2018 hung from its nail with about a third of its shine left. I studied it through two more songs because it was easier than looking at the ornaments I had spent eleven months buying.

“Have you listened to his message?” Pearl asked.

I looked at the phone beside my hand.

“You do not have to forgive him to listen,” she said.

“He made the choice without me.”

“Then listen before you decide what his choice means.”

I picked up my phone. There were two missed calls and one voicemail. He had left it yesterday morning, before Meridian’s statement and before the committee suspended the festival, while I was in the festival office refusing to look at the screen.

I pressed play and held it to my ear.

I heard the ultimatum and the warning that Meridian’s statement was coming. When he mentioned the box in his car, the roar started in my ears again. I lowered the phone, took one breath, and made myself keep listening.

Then came the part I had not expected.

“Nora, I want to come back to you. I know the timing is terrible. I know wanting it doesn’t repair what I did. I’m saying it anyway because I’m tired of leaving the important things in the car.”

The recording ended there. It had arrived the day before, while I was in a basement office telling Colette I had it handled.

Pearl didn’t ask what he’d said. She got up and went into my back room and came out with the tin of shortbread I kept for the December Saturdays, and set it in front of me, and sat back down.

I pulled out the spiral notebook where I had recorded every business call since the year I got audited. The last line was from Tuesday: Salem BBQ—Ray—confirming Sat only.

I wrote the date, eleven forty-seven, and G. Cole. Then I called him. His voicemail answered. “Griffin. I heard your message. I should have listened yesterday. The festival is suspended. The grant goes with it, and the shop may not survive February. That’s the bad news, and I’m telling you the day I got it, like we agreed.” I closed my eyes. “I heard the rest too. I don’t know what to do with it yet, but I heard you.”

CHAPTER 16

GRIFFIN

By Friday afternoon, I had covered one payroll cycle for thirty-two employees from my personal account, using four transfers and one long phone call.

Nora left a message Friday afternoon. I listened to it in a hallway outside my second lender meeting. She had kept her end of our agreement and given me the bad news the day it arrived. Then she said she’d heard the rest. She didn’t forgive me or ask me to come home. She reached back anyway. I sat on the hallway floor and listened to it twice.

I put the phone away and went back into the meeting. Outside, cold rain turned briefly to wet snow. The charity Santa kept ringing his bell.

The rest of the weekend belonged to lenders and attorneys. Meridian’s statement had reached every project I had open.

In one conference room after another, lenders wrote my name beside the word risk. I used my last unpledged reserve to cover the payroll the bank’s held draws had been meant to reimburse. That kept thirty-two people paid for one week. It did not fix the loans.

On Sunday, before checking in for my Monday return flight, I called the broker who had brought me a cash offer on my Portland apartment in October. I had refused because the apartment was my last debt-free asset and my last way out. The buyer would still close by December twenty-third if I accepted before noon Monday. I asked for the paperwork.

At seven Monday night, I took the last bend into Holly Creek. I had come back to face the town and do whatever work it would still let me do.

Main Street appeared below me with every light on. Garland stretched across the intersection except for one dark section in the middle. The storefronts glowed, and woodsmoke drifted through the cold. Five weeks of my labor hung over a street whose festival committee had voted three days earlier to suspend Christmas.

Nobody had taken any of it down. The bakery wreath still wore its red bow. The committee had suspended Christmas. Main Street had not received the memo.