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"Window walk starts at five," he says. "Shops stay open until nine. Everybody comes through, so it'll be the busiest night of the year at this counter. Dottie runs the cider. I'll be on the floor."

"Okay."

"There are extra spools in the stockroom. Bottom shelf."

"Okay."

He looks at me. I look at the carousel.

"You put it back," I say.

His jaw tightens. "It belongs up there."

"Last night you said⁠—"

"It's an old box, Noelle." He picks up the extension cords again. "That's all it is. It doesn't matter."

Then he walks to the front of the shop.

I stand at my counter and make myself breathe.

It doesn't matter. Of course it doesn't. I knew that. It's a motor and a spring and six tin horses that go around until they stop. Somebody winds it, it plays, it runs down. Then you put it back on the shelf, and you go on with your day.

My mother packed our ornaments in a box marked KITCHEN and never opened it again. I saw it in my aunt's basement for six years, under the stairs, the tape going yellow. Nobody ever unpacked it, because unpacking it would mean admitting what we'd lost.

He wound it for me. Three times. And this morning, before I got here, he climbed up and put it away.

I shove the duffel under the counter. I tie on my scarf, then realize I already took off my coat, and untie it again. My hands won't settle.

The day starts. Monday is busy in a different way from the weekend. Fewer families, more people stopping in on lunch breaks, and every single one of them talking about tonight. The window walk. The carolers from the high school. Whether the bakery's doing the gingerbread house again this year. The hardware store has a train set in its window too, somebody says, but everybody knows it doesn't hold a candle to Lindgren's.

I wrap and tie and smile. I don't look at the front window. I don't look at the top shelf.

I don't look at Arch.

That's harder. He's everywhere. On a ladder at the front, stringing an extra line of lights along the ceiling. Crouched by the window, checking the timer. Carrying boxes in from a truck at the curb. Every time the bell rings, I glance at the door, at the sprig hanging from Ingrid's hook, and every time, he's somewhere in the shop, and he isn't looking at me.

Not once. I watch for it.

That's how I know something's broken. All weekend, every time I looked up, he was already looking.

At one, the shop empties out. Dottie brings two cups of coffee back to my counter and sets one beside my tape gun.

"Drink that. You look terrible."

"Thanks."

"I mean it kindly." She leans her hip against the counter and sips her own coffee, watching me over the rim. "Did he ask you to stay?"

My hands go still on a roll of plaid. "He offered me a job."

"Ah."

"And a room upstairs."

"And?"

"And nothing." I cut the paper too short and have to start over. "That's the offer. A counter and a room."