“Class, Brody is going to lead us on a nature walk to Library.” All sixteen kids perked up. “Stay in line and do not touch anything, okay?”
This was met with a round of excited yeses. I had a whole toolbelt of teacher strategies and tricks to use with wily littles. I had ways to make sure they stayed quiet, followed single file, and listened and responded immediately to me.
But I’d managed to forget all of them just because the owner of Holiday Brights was suddenly everywhere, all over this town I’d tried to leave, holding his adorably naughty nephew by the ankle, telling children he wanted to kiss me, making me forget why I’d written him off all those years ago.
This wasn’t how I was supposed to come home. But here I was, sneaking a whole first-grade class out an emergency exit, praying Brody was planning to lead us back into the building and not on some wild goose chase fueled by his maniacal imagination.
Thankfully, Monika didn’t seem phased when I told her we were going outside. And thankfully, even though we walked straight into Sam Autry as he was reworking some light displayon the side of the school building—as if Brody had chipped his uncle and knew exactly where he was going to be at all times—he didn’t bother us as we traipsed past him. Nor did he react with anything other than a smirk when Brody told the red-headed boy behind him “that’s the uncle Ms. Haden wants to kiss.”
Most of all, thankfully, we did find the library. Eventually. Seven minutes later than the librarian was expecting us.
But hey, I didn’t get fired on my first day, and I survived murder rumors. So all in all, not a bad start.
CHAPTER 6
Grocery Store Grinch
There were two new lake communities on the outskirts of Mistletoe, and a brand-new Target only twenty-five minutes away. Plus, someone had bought the old Pump N’ Pantry and remodeled it into a Casey’s that delivered pizza. But the old Pick N’ Save had not changed. They hadn’t even updated the signage out front that was broken when I was a kid and read “Ick N’ Ave.”
Which had then turned into Teagan and me calling it “Dick and Dave.” And then eventually “Icky Daves.”
Who knew why inside jokes started or why they lasted the entirety of our lives?
But that was where we were headed after school on Wednesday—Icky Daves, because Teagan, despite looking and acting like a grown adult, was in fact still a child.
“I’ve never seen anyone with less food in their house,” I told her as she parked her car in the same parking spot we always parked in.
“Psht,” she countered.
“Seriously, Teags, what do you eat?”
She pulled a cart from the cart return and shrugged. “Erm, school breakfast, then school lunch, then, um, whatever my parents have made for supper?”
“Wait, Linda’s was an option for dinner?”
“No, it’s Wednesday. Linda’s at Bunko.”
I sighed. “Teagan, there’s more to life than school lunch. I mean, what happens when it’s fish sticks?”
“Have you heard of cold lunch? Tally makes a gorgeous cobb salad. And that blue cheese dressing? From scratch.”
“Yeah, maybe. Or maybe the blue cheese is actually just the regular cheese that’s molded, and they don’t want to waste it.”
She psht-ed again.
We moved through the produce, Teagan pushing the cart, me selecting staples I thought might keep Teagan from contracting scurvy.
“You know what? I didn’t have a Hudson to teach me how to cook, okay? This might surprise you, but Pool Hall Donny preferred gas station taquitos.”
I tried valiantly to stifle my laugh. “I still can’t believe you dated Donny Wasserman. Of all the people in Mistletoe—”
“Well, there’s not that many. Okay? People, I mean. And when we get to the single guy demographic, things really start to narrow down.”
“I can agree to that. It’s a real problem.” I sighed as we moved toward the meat department, following the carefully budgeted list I’d made over the last two days. “The lack of single men, I mean.”
She nudged my hip with the cart. “But you like it, don’t you? Being back, I mean?”
I thought about the first graders wiggling their way under my skin and making my Grinch-sized heart grow at least a full size. Brody Perkins might have inherited the devil from his uncle, but he was the loveable kind of naughty that made meconstantly have to hide my smiles. And the rest of the kids were the absolute sweetest. They weren’t my class and this was temporary, but yeah, I loved being back in the classroom. I loved having a purpose again.
