By late afternoon, we start staging trays for the run to the hall—stars, gingerbread, two pans of brownies for the sound crew, because sound crews everywhere expect brownies. Marco checks his rope belt. He’s a man in uniform now and announces he won’t let his staff hit anyone unless they need it. I tell him that’s a good policy.
Dusk leans in early. The lights across the square look brighter for it. People bundle and smile, the way towns do when everyone’s headed to the same room. We load the first run into the van. Petro’s already behind the wheel, engine idling, breath ghosting in the cold. He takes the trays I hand him, stacks them, and pulls out toward the church kitchen, sure and steady, a part of the evening’s rhythm.
I pull on my coat and the bright scarf my mother insists on because “photos.” I double-knot Marco’s boots and wipe a smear of honey from his cheek. My mother fusses with his head scarf until he declares himself fit for inspection. I kiss his hat, then the knit under it.
The bells at St. Bart’s start up, soft at first, then bigger, rolling through Main like a call. People turn their heads. Doors open. The town moves.
I step to the bakery window to find Matteo in the square. He’s looking for me. One quick nod lands in my chest like a weight and a hand, both at once.
We step out into the early dark, trays in our arms, breath rising. The church hall sits beyond the lot, with warm light streaming through its windows. The alley to the kitchen entry runs off to the left. I glance that way on instinct, expecting nothing.
She’s there.
She’s at the back of the hall, just inside the glass of the service doors, framed by two paper snowmen someone taped up crooked this morning. Kids drift past her. The choir works through a tune that wobbles in and out of harmony. Pine and sugar hang in the air. She stands there without her sunglasses, her coat drinking the light, her hair twisted up, one hand buried in her pocket. She doesn’t move. She belongs to the night, not the pageant’s glow.
26
MATTEO
Petro stands at the base of the tallest tree this town has ever dragged indoors—a fir dressed with red bows, brass bells, and popcorn strings the second graders made yesterday. Mr. Finch, decoration foreman by temperament if not title, hovers a step back from the ladder and calls signals.
“A little higher on that left strand. No, your other left. There. The one that’s drooping like a tired halo.”
Petro looks harassed and listens anyway. He nudges the light once, then again. Maria brings him a paper cup of coffee. He salutes her with it and goes back to pretending he likes ladders.
The hall is full. Programs crinkle. Boots thump. The piano gets its last stubborn adjustment. The sheriff parks himself near the coffee urn, hands holding a paper cup, legs crossed, the stance of a man who becomes useful without being noticed.
Mrs. Brewster enters, carrying a bright red coat on her arm. She runs the lobby like air traffic control, sends ushers where they need to go, and compliments children on halos that sit crooked by design. Coach Ramirez pilots a herd of shepherds throughthe east door into a line that refuses to stay straight. The jingle garland I hung from the coat tree to the piano rings loud when a shoulder brushes past—a test note. It feels sharp, clean, and alive.
I walk the room and count what matters. Stage right is clean. Curtains tied back to the last ring. No shadows behind the nativity flats. The funnel of tables blocks the side corridor by the boiler, just as planned. The flour dust Petro laid across the kitchen threshold picks up prints, leaving a clear trail of where boots pass. Lila said she will add more if needed.
I turn to the piano. It sits at a forty-five-degree angle, breaking the run from the wings to the door. The upright we rolled in front of the fire door would make noise if anyone tried them. The coat racks curve in a shallow S from the kitchen entrance to the stage. No clear sprint line in the room.
Mr. Farrell leans over the raffle sheet while Gus sorts tickets into tidy piles, the money headed for the roof-repair fund. They work slow, talking low, eyes flicking up now and then to the crowd. Behind them, a short post with a red EXIT banner leans a little off-center, looking harmless enough.
Nico waits in the lobby with the programs and a polite, borrowed smile. Petro stays in the kitchen corridor, one hand on a broom, one foot over the loose floorboard that squeaks when stepped on. When someone asks, he feigns a repair.
Hal walks in carrying four cones. Dot Kline gasps and mutters about how ridiculous it is to bring more cones into an already crowded auditorium. Hal meets my eyes. I blink once in response. He nods, brushes past Dot, who looks unsettled, and sets the cones exactly where I told him to.
Mrs. Evelyn Rourke, the school nurse since the nineties, appears beside me with a paper cup. She presses it into my hand and says, “Something warm for a man running the North Pole.” She smiles as if we are at a school concert, not bracing for something we will not name. She laughs, and the small silver trees in her earrings sway.
At the edge of my sight, Eli Sutton lingers near the amp, holding a coil of cable. He looks distracted, like a tired father, which suits a man who is supposed to be watching the doors.
Lila passes me in the aisle with Marco between her and Maria. The boy is a small shepherd with a rope belt, a felt sheep stitched to his hem, and a wooden staff he grips with all the seriousness of a shepherd from the Maremma grasslands. He glances toward me without breaking the line. I nod. He nods back and tries to hide his grin.
Lila catches my eye, and I see the question that will stay with her until this is over. I give her the only answer I have.
“I’ll see him from where I stand,” I say.
She exhales. “Then we do this.”
The lights dim to a safe level, not a dramatic one. The pageant begins the way these things always do. A nervous recitation stumbles, then finds its footing. A paper star wobbles on its stick before righting itself. The chorus of small voices wavers, then lands on a key and clings to it.
Mrs. Doyle whispers stage directions to anyone who will listen from the parent row. “Smile, angels,smile!” she hisses, as if sheer willpower can carry the performance. The angels respond by shedding glitter like they were rolled in it.
Shepherds begin losing their sandals at a record pace, one limping, one kicking his off entirely and marching barefoot across Bethlehem. Miss Carpenter appears from the wings holding four halos and wearing the expression of a woman who was only ever assigned three.
I take my position at stage right, one step inside the wing, back to the wall. From here I can see the aisle, the front third of the hall, the lobby mouth, and most of the kitchen corridor in the reflection off the door window. The sheriff leans against the back wall, paper cup in hand, eyes moving slowly and missing nothing. He drinks like a man who plans to stay until the cup is empty. Mr. Finch has the ladder down and sits on its lowest rung to keep it from walking. Coach collects lost mittens in a neat pile at his feet, calling them trophies. The hall hums with small talk, coffee, and winter coats. For a moment, the whole room breathes as one thing.
