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“Christmas Eve,” she murmured, forehead against my jaw. “We made it to Christmas Eve.”
“Was that ever in doubt?”
“Every single day for three weeks.” She tipped her head back to look at me. Her mouth was soft and her eyes weren’t. “Thank you. For all of it.”
Someone hammered on the storeroom door hard enough to rattle the hinges. “The choir is back on in an hour!” Pearl called through the wood. “Hands where I can see them, Cole!”
Nora dropped her face against my chest and laughed until I felt it in my own ribs.
Rosie intercepted me on the way out, tablet in one hand and candy cane in the other. Both appeared to be part of the job.
“Final-day numbers,” she said. “You’ll want to sit down, except there’s nowhere to sit, because every bench in the square is occupied. Total festival attendance is double last year. The fortieth-anniversary sleigh rides and snow-sculpture contest pulled people from four counties. Two regional papers ran the resurrection story above the fold, and the Cascade Heritage Foundation reposted the festival photos with a caption I would describe as gloating.”
“Patricia Vance gloats?”
“Foundations gloat in their own dialect. It says, ‘a model partnership.’” She lowered the tablet and looked at the crowd instead, which for Rosie meant she had stopped working for a whole second. “I’ve staffed your projects for six years, Griffin. I’ve watched a lot of ribbon cuttings. I’ve never watched a town show up for one like it was a family reunion.”
“Neither have I.”
“Well.” She tucked the candy cane into her coat pocket. “I moved your January status meetings online. You live here now, and I refuse to spend three hours on Interstate Five because you finally unpacked a box.” She walked off before I could thank her, which was the most Rosie possible way to be thanked.
The closing ceremony began at dusk, when the festival lights came on. The town gathered before the stage we’d rebuilt to Frank’s father’s specifications. The portable platform was bolted to the concrete footings he had poured in 1983. Twice, old paper had saved us: the 1902 Main Street plans in the town archive and the 1947 covenant at the county. The stage held the choir, the council, and Frank’s iron bell without a creak. I knew because I’d checked. For once, an old habit had a better use.
The high school choir filed onto the risers in red scarves. They’d closed the festival every year since 1987, and the front row included a Henderson, a Pemberton, and Betty Alvarez’s granddaughter, who waved with both hands until the director caught her eye and pointed at the music. Here were the teenagers Nora had read into the council record, ready to close a festival that had been suspended nineteen days earlier.
Owen took the microphone and kept it mercifully brief. “Forty-three years,” he said. “Some of you remember the first one. Most of us grew up inside the others. And nineteen days ago, the festival committee I chaired voted to let it end.” He let that sit, and nobody rescued him from it. “We were wrong, and this town corrected us, and that correction is the proudest thing I’ll put my name to this year. The forty-third Holly Creek Christmas Festival was brought back by its co-chairs, its merchants, and every one of you who showed up with a hammer, a casserole, or a checkbook. As of tonight, it is officially the best attended in our history.”
The cheer went up the street and came back off the buildings. Nora’s hand found mine, where the whole town could see, and held on. Colette beamed from the second row, Pearl whistled loud enough to spook Chester half a block away, and the Henderson family closed the cocoa cart long enough to stand together in the crowd.
“Tradition says we close it the way we’ve always closed it,” Owen said. “Frank?”
Frank climbed the stage steps carrying the iron bell his father had forged, the same hands-on-hips walk he used for arguing zoning. He held the bell up where the whole street could see it. “My father made this the year the festival started,” he said. “He told me a town isn’t buildings. It’s the people who keep showing up to the same place on purpose.” His gaze swept the crowd and snagged, briefly, on me. “Keep showing up.”
He rang the bell, and Main Street began to go dark.
The lights went out storefront by storefront, north to south, as they had for forty-two Decembers. Donnelly Hardware went dark, then Callahan’s Books with Ivy at the switch. One of Pearl’s bakery clerks darkened Sweet Provisions so Pearl could watch from the street. Winters Wonderland went last, Marcy at the switch because Nora stood beside me, gripping my hand while her own windows disappeared.
Then the only light left on Main Street was the tree.
The Douglas fir blazed over the dark street, lighting four hundred faces in gold, red, and green. The choir began the carol everyone knew. The town sang. Frank sang badly. Betty Alvarez’s granddaughter sang like next year’s soloist. Mrs. Morrison stood with one hand on Maple’s neck, singing words her husband had sung in the same spot. Snow started during the second verse because Holly Creek had developed excellent timing.
I’d come to town with a spreadsheet that priced buildings by square foot. No column covered a street turning off every light so one tree could shine, or Nora singing beside me with snow in her hair. The numbers had never been the whole story.
The carol ended. The tree burned on. Christmas arrived in Holly Creek with no further engineering required.
“So.” Nora leaned into my shoulder as the crowd loosened into hugs and handshakes around us. “Festival’s closed. Last booth is packed. You’ve officially run out of crises, Mr. Cole. What does a man like you do with an ordinary winter?”
“Pearl informed me that I’m making pancakes at the community center tomorrow morning.”
“Have you ever made pancakes?”
“I’ve seen it done.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I’m told my attendance is mandatory. Competence appears to be optional.”
Pearl materialized out of the crowd with snow on her lashes and a pastry box already half empty. “There you are. Logistics update. New Year’s Eve, your apartment, eight o’clock.”
