Outside, the sleigh bells chimed once more—faint and receding into the night—as if something ancient and kind had been listening all along, and finally approved.
Tomorrow, I would play Santa Claus for a theater full of people who believed in Christmas magic. Tomorrow, I would visit a sick boy in a hospital and try to give him one perfect moment of wonder.
But tonight, in this workshop that smelled of cedar and possibility, I let Ben pull me close and simply breathed.
I was home.
Chapter sixteen
Ben
Sleep hadn't come. I'd given up around four, padding down to my workshop in wool socks and my grandfather's old cardigan, the one that still smelled faintly of pipe tobacco and wood shavings.
In a few hours, Alex would walk onto that stage as Santa Claus. Tonight, we'd visit Marcus in the hospital with Ryan's painstakingly written letter and the dragon nightlight. I'd finished it at 3 AM, my hands steady even as my heart raced at what I was making, a gift for a boy fighting harder than anyone should have to—made for a man I was falling in love with—crafted in the quiet hours when hope feels most fragile.
And somewhere between now and midnight, Alex would give me his answer about staying.
I'd been sanding the rocking horse's mane when my elbow caught the ladder propped against the back wall. It shifted, clattering against the rafters and dislodging a cloud of dust—and something else—a glint of brass in the weak morning light.
A crate. Half-hidden behind a beam, so covered in cobwebs it had become part of the architecture. I'd worked here since I was twelve years old, and I'd never noticed it.
The nameplate made my breath catch—T. Blitzen.
Not Johan. Thomas.
I knew that name the way you know a word that's never spoken aloud—present in its absence. It was the name of my great-great-uncle, the one who'd vanished from family records sometime before my father was born. I'd asked about him once, maybe eight years old, pointing at a faded photograph I'd found in my grandmother's things. My grandfather had taken the photo from my hands, his face closing like a door.
We don't talk about Thomas.
I never asked again.
The ladder rungs protested as I climbed, each one creaking a different note. The crate was lighter than I expected, and I nearly lost my balance bringing it down.
Inside, wrapped in oil-stained cloth that fell apart at my touch, lay a leather journal. When I opened it, cedar and dust bloomed—the smell of a century's worth of secrets.
Thomas's handwriting was nothing like Johan's methodical scratch. It moved across the pages like music—elegant, assured, the hand of someone who crafted beauty as naturally as breathing.
I settled against my workbench, pushing aside the half-finished toys, and began to read.
December 3, 1889
The marks Father taught us were only the beginning. There are deeper patterns—ones he never spoke of, perhaps never knew. I have foundthem in the oldest wood, in pieces that predate even Father's arrival in this valley. They appear for those whose hearts need guidance to find their way home.
I turned the pages carefully, scanning entries spanning years. Thomas wrote about what he called "homecoming marks"—patterns that revealed themselves when someone truly belonged in Yuletide Valley but hadn't yet recognized it. He'd found them in the town's oldest structures, traced them in wood that seemed to carve itself.
The marks do not compel, he'd written in 1891.They illuminate. They show the heart what the mind refuses to see.
A knock at the workshop door startled me so badly that the journal nearly slipped from my hands.
"Coffee delivery." Alex's voice, muffled through the wood. "Fair warning—Holly added something that smells like a candy cane committed a crime."
I tucked the journal under a cloth. Not hiding it, exactly. Just... not ready. Not until I understood what I'd found.
"Come in. Watch the—"
"The rocking horse. I know." He ducked under the hanging tools with two steaming cups, navigating my obstacle course with more grace than he'd managed two weeks ago. Snow dusted his dark hair, and his cheeks were flushed from the cold. "I couldn't sleep either. Kept running blocking in my head until the walls started closing in."
"Nervous about tonight?"
