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I looked at her. “My apartment?”

“Yours has the balcony and the fewest breakables. I told everyone. It’s done.” She patted my arm with sympathy. “Welcome to Holly Creek. You’re hosting.”

She vanished toward the choir before I could negotiate terms, and Nora laughed at whatever my face was doing, and the snow kept coming down through the tree light, and I stood on the dark, bright, singing street doing the only math that still interested me.

One more week, and the year that had given me all of this would end.

I couldn’t wait to see what we built next.

CHAPTER 24

NORA

The Christmas morning pancakes were worse than advertised. Griffin had cooked them on the community center griddle, and structural engineering had not prepared him for batter. Mine had a raw middle and an edge that could have opened a package.

Griffin ate his without complaint.

Pearl leaned across the folding table and watched him cut off another square. “You don’t have to prove anything. We already let you stay.”

“I’m committed.”

“To the town?” I asked.

“To breakfast.”

The room was full of folding tables, paper snowflakes, and people wearing yesterday’s exhaustion with clean sweaters. Frank had brought his own syrup. Mrs. Morrison had brought Chester a carrot and given half of it to a child who asked. Colette was explaining to anyone within reach that the festival numbers had confirmed every prediction she had made, including several predictions nobody remembered hearing.

While Colette defended her record, Griffin reached across me and traded our plates.

My plate now held the least damaged pancake in the room. His held the one with the raw center.

I looked at him. “Did you switch our pancakes?”

“I reallocated breakfast.”

“You stole my pancake.”

“I improved your risk profile.”

“That is a lot of language for theft.”

“Eat before it gets cold.”

The pancake was already cold. I ate it anyway. Griffin finished mine because apparently love makes a person brave, foolish, or resistant to undercooked flour.

At ten, the breakfast broke apart into dishes, leftover coffee, and people carrying folding chairs to the closet. Griffin took my hand before I could help with the cleanup. “Come upstairs.”

“That is a bold invitation after what you just did to your stomach.”

“I want to show you something.”

We walked the four doors to Donnelly Hardware and climbed the side stairs to his studio. He unlocked the door and stepped back to let me enter first.

The winter box he had carried through nine towns stood open beside the drafting table. His better coat hung on a hook. His mother’s hat rested on the shelf below it.

In the front window, my Main Street ornament hung from its red ribbon. The painted storefronts faced the real ones across the street.

“You kept it,” I said.