While Stacy hurried over to extract the puppet from Aspen’s determined grip, I quickly scanned the area for Alder and found him lurking behind a nearby craft booth, sporting the kind of mischievous grin that immediately told me everything I needed to know.
“Alder Northwood,” I called out, using the stern voice I learned from watching Stacy parent. “Get over here this instant.”
He sauntered over with the casual confidence of someone who knew exactly what kind of chaos he’d just orchestrated and was thoroughly pleased with himself.
“Did you tell your sister to grab that puppet?” I asked, crossing my arms and giving him my best disappointed-adult look.
His grin widened. “No.”
“Alder.”
“She wanted to see how it worked! I just told her the puppet guy wouldn’t mind if she looked at it real quick.”
I could hear Stacy’s voice carrying over the crowd as she apologized profusely to the puppeteer, who was being remarkably patient considering a six-year-old had just disrupted his entire performance. Aspen was clutching the puppet to her chest like it was a beloved stuffed animal, clearly reluctant to give it back.
“You know better than that,” I said to Alder. “You know your sister can’t resist puppets, and you deliberately got her in trouble.”
“But it was funny,” he protested, though he had the grace to look at least slightly ashamed of himself.
“It’s only funny if everyone’s laughing, including the person whose puppet show just got hijacked by your little sister.”
Alder glanced over at the commotion his sister was causing and seemed to finally grasp that maybe his prank hadn’t been as harmless as he’d thought. Aspen was now in full meltdown mode, tears streaming down her face as Stacy gently but firmly tried to convince her to return the puppet.
“Should I go help?” he asked, his earlier smugness replaced by genuine concern.
“Yes, you should. And you should apologize to the puppet man and to your sister for getting her in trouble.”
He nodded and jogged over to where Stacy was still negotiating with Aspen. I watched as he whispered something in his sister’s ear, then took her hand and led her over to the performer. Whatever he said seemed to work. Aspen reluctantly handed over the puppet and mumbled what I assumed was an apology.
The whole incident was over in less than five minutes. Even at eight years old, Alder understood exactly which buttons to push to get his sister to do what he wanted, but he also clearly loved her enough to help fix the mess he’d created. It reminded me a lot of my relationship with my big brother.
I glanced over and saw Kent slide his phone back into his pocket, his expression troubled in a way that made me curious about who had called and what they’d discussed. I didn’t think to ask if he had a girlfriend. Maybe a fiancée. He wasn’t wearing a ring, so I assumed he wasn’t married. I immediately felt guilty for ogling another woman’s man. And a man like that probably did have a girlfriend. He was way too attractive to be single.
“Everything okay?” I asked as he approached.
“Just family business,” he said, but his smile seemed forced. “Nothing that can’t wait.”
Instead of just enjoying the market for its own sake, I found myself seeing it through Kent’s eyes, trying to gauge his reactions to everything we encountered.
Stacy eventually wandered off to chat with some of her mom-friends, leaving me alone with Kent to explore the remaining vendors. I was struck by how different he seemed here compared to his first day at the farm. Gone was the skeptical, slightly condescending attitude he had when he’d first arrived. Instead, he looked almost childlike in his curiosity, wanting to try every food sample, asking questions about the crafts and local traditions.
“Have you ever done anything like this before?” I asked as we watched a group of children decorating gingerbread cookies at one of the activity stations.
“No,” he admitted. “Christmas in New York City is different. Christmas as a Bancroft is different.”
“What do you mean?”
He was quiet for a moment, seeming to choose his words carefully. “It was just different.”
“Because you’re rich.”
He quirked his lips. “Yes. We bought each other gifts, but it wasn’t stuff like this.” He waved his hand around to encompass the booths. “Homemade. Sentimental. We lost our mom pretty early on. I have a lot of brothers. I’m one of the younger ones. My older brothers were out of the house doing their own thing. My dad? He wasn’t really ready to be a single dad to a football team. So, things were very different. We had a cook that usually made us dinner.”
There was something wistful in his voice that made my chest tight with sympathy. “That sounds lonely.”
“I lost interest in it all when I was pretty young,” he continued. “When you can have whatever you want, whenever you want it, nothing feels special anymore. Nothing feels earned. I know that makes me sound like a dick. I wanted for nothing. We had everything. Expensive cars, designer clothes, vacations, all of it. It just felt hollow.”
I found that profoundly sad. Christmas in Northwood had always been about community deeply steeped in tradition. We made it all about the magic of creating something beautiful together. The idea of reducing it to expensive objects and status symbols felt like missing the entire point.
