Page 10 of The Christmas Stroll

On the first schedule, it began at the top of Main, then onto Willow Street, and moved toward the harbor. On the second it began at the harbor and moved up. Same evening. Same hour. Two directions. Two crowds set to march straight into each other at the corner of Federal, and half the business owners promised the procession would pass their door at seven, the other half promised it would not pass until half past.

Nobody had mentioned this discrepancy. Nobody else it seemed, had lined the two pages up.

Maggie looked at the collision on the paper and wondered, with something that pulled at her under the ribs, what on earth had actually happened here?

Because this was not two women merely disagreeing about lightbulbs or ribbon colors. This was two powerhouse friends who had once been able to spearhead this entire committee between them without breaking a sweat, but who now could not agree on the direction of the parade?

Maggie had grown up on the story of how the two old friends met. Both of them thrown together the same year on a committee neither of them had wanted to join, and by the end of that first Stroll they were finishing each other’s sentences over the hot chocolate urn.

Fifty years of Christmases came after that.

The tuba player Marianne fished out of the harbor with a boat hook while Helen kept the carolers singing. The nor’easter they had simply refused to acknowledge, standing in the sleet in matching parkas. Two ribbons on the tree, red on the north end and gold on the south, and everyone told it was a theme. They had basically built the whole thing, out of exactly this friction and it had always, always held.

But it was not holding now. Maggie looked up the table at the two stubborn women, one on each end, determinedly not looking at each other, and felt the humor go out of it.

The meeting did not so much conclude as give up.

The volunteer with the pen tried twice to summon a resolution and got both times, two contradictory ones, so at last she simply thanked everyone for coming in a voice gone thin at the edges.

The room emptied in confusion. Volunteers gathered coats with their brows furrowed, murmuring to one another; a knot of business owners near the door traded shrugs, one of them holding up a printed sheet and turning it over as if the answer might be on the back.

Helen gathered her papers into a crisp stack, tapped them square against the table, and stood.

“Well,” she announced to no one and everyone, tucking the stack under her arm. “I don’t see what all the fuss was about. That was perfectly manageable.”

At the far end, Marianne slid her reading glasses back up her nose. “Will,” she said, without a glance to the left, “do tell Madam Sullivan that the fire department will want to know which end of Main the lanterns are meant to catch fire at.”

Then she closed her folder, laid one hand flat on top of it, and rose to leave.

Chapter 7

Maggie caught Will outside by the marble bust with the indefensible length of silver tinsel draped over its whaling shoulders, and they faced each other in the narrow paneled hall.

She held up the schedules, one in each hand, like a woman presenting evidence.

“The lantern procession runs in two directions.”

Will looked at the left one, the right one then at her. He exhaled through his nose, long and slow, a sound that got most of the way to a laugh, thought better of it and landed somewhere in the middle.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

“On the same night. At the same hour. They’re going to meet at Federal Street, Will, and neither of them will yield.”

“Sullivan,” he said, and there was that baritone again, warm and unhurried in the hush of the hall. “I’ve known about the lantern procession since Thursday. I’ve known about the vendor windows since Tuesday. I’ve been on the phone with a girl from the fudge shop, a man with a horse, and Margaret Morgan from The Flour Jar for the better part of a week, telling all of them not to do anything until they hear more.” He pushed a hand back through his dark hair, and a hint of blond came and went at his temple in the candlelight. “I have been very quietly building a third schedule out of the parts that don’t plan to kill anyone. Neither of our mothers knows I’m doing it. And if either of them finds out, I’m a dead man.”

Maggie felt something in her chest come unclenched. She lowered the papers.

“You’ve been patching it?” she said softly.

“Badly. With duct tape and careful verbal diversion.” Will tipped his head toward the closed meeting-room door. “That in there, is the calm version. That’s those two being polite in front of witnesses.”

“That was polite?”

“That was practically a hug.”

Maggie almost laughed then but stopped herself, and saw him see her stop, which was its own kind of embarrassment.

“They can’t keep going like this,” she said, and this time let the professional in her come out to steady her voice. “It’s four days, Will. Four days to a weekend that thousands of people show up on this island for, and the two people running the committee are conducting the entire thing through a third party? No offense.”