“I’ll tell her we didn’t want to ruin the surprise,” he adds. “Chili and I have always stayed with her when we’re in town. She would’ve been suspicious if I’d told her I was staying anywhere else.”
I glance over my shoulder at his dog in the back seat.
Chili doesn’t even crack an eyelid.
He is easily the laziest dog I’ve ever met. Or possibly the most tired. “Have you had his bloodwork checked recently?”
Dane grins, which is adorable.
Have I ever seen him smile before?
I don’t think I have. Or if I have, it didn’t register the way it does now.
“Yeah, his bloodwork is fine,” he says. “He’s decided his purpose on this earth is to see how little energy he can expend and still survive. His favorite treats are hot dogs, and he’ll pick them over chicken or steak, but that’s pretty much the only thing he jumps at these days. Not that he gets treats often. I lean vegetarian.”
Another smile creeps onto my face despite all the reasons I’ve felt like I’d never smile again today. “Youleanvegetarian?”
“Some days you can’t beat a hamburger.”
He turns onto Kringle Lane, the main street through downtown Tinsel, where our families each have their own shops right across from each other.
Even during a ninety-degree heat wave, you can count on Tinsel to be a winter wonderland. Fake snow covers the easement between the sidewalks and street. The flower boxes are full of decorative candy canes mixed with poinsettias that won’t bloom for a few more months. The hot chocolate stand at the end of the street is open and running a solid business with the tourists despite the heat.
Likely it’s iced hot chocolate.
When the sun goes down, holiday lights will twinkle on around all the old-fashioned streetlamps.
I crack my window, andyes.
There it is.
I smelled it earlier, when I stopped in to see Grandma and Mom at the gingerbread bakery, but I still love the ever-present cinnamon, pine, and woodsmoke scents lingering together.
Tinsel wasn’t always a holiday town. But sometime in the 1960s, with my family’s gingerbread bakery well established and the Silvers’ fruitcake shop doing good business, the dairy just outside of town started offering eggnog year-round. The corner market added a section of ornaments that you could get anytime. The businesses in downtown started leaving their holiday lights up well into the New Year, and then the fashion boutique on Main Street changed its name to Mrs. Claus’s Attic.
The rest of the town followed suit, and soon, we werethedestination for people who wanted to celebrate Christmas in July ... and August, and February, and why not May, and so on. Streets were renamed with holiday themes. The parks in town too. Within a few short years, everything was Christmas all year round.
Grandma says our family started it.
I’m sure Dane’s family says the same.
I know the mayor stops by and asks Grandma and Mom topleasenot chase customers away from the Fruitcake Emporium on a regular basis. I can only imagine what she has to ask the Silvers to do.
My grandma does enough volunteer work on the various holiday committees around town that people won’t outright tell her to get over herself, but I’ve sat in on enough meetings to feel the tension that creeps in when someone says something nice about Dane’s relatives.
Shame.
That’s what I’m feeling.
Shame.
Shame that our families make the entire community walk on eggshells.
This isn’t how the behind-the-scenes of a Christmas town should feel.
We pass the Gingerbread House on the left and the Fruitcake Emporium on the right. Zero doubt the Gingerbread House is playing a Dolly Parton Christmas album. I can almost taste the frosting that we use for gluing houses together, and out of habit, I wave to the two four-foot nutcracker statuettes guarding the door.
The one on the left is holding a surfboard. The one on the right is wearing a swimsuit.
