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You might wonder if I regretted it. I didn’t. Not only did I like running my café, something I could currently only have afforded in a tiny town like this, but I’d gotten used to the parade of locals. We might not all be friends—look at Lorna, for example—but we knew all of our businesses and our livelihoods depended on one another, which meant that I knew I could depend on them no matter what. And because I’d moved to town on the arm of a local, I’d been welcomed into the fold, where I’d stayed even after he dumped me.

If I lost my café and had to go somewhere else, I wouldn’t just lose my own business, I’d lose all of that. Small communities like this were usually suspicious of outsiders. And I couldn’t afford the delightful anonymity of a big city.

I shook off the thought. “What are you doing here?”

I didn’t mean for it to sound accusing, but he still took a step back like I’d threatened him with the knife on the table beside us, which had a maple leaf–shaped handle (not just impractical but uncomfortable, too). “Uncle Joe and Aunt May are on vacation, and you know Donny’s good for nothing, so they asked me to take over management while they were away.”

I nodded. Made sense. Connor freelanced in web development, which made it possible for him to take shifts at his aunt and uncle’s restaurant when he was needed. They’d often drafted me back when we were dating, too. I didn’t miss it. If I never had to smell a maple-glazed pork roast or maple-bacon sweet potatoes again, it would be too soon.

Connor nodded back, hands stuffed in the pockets of his flannel. I had nothing else to say to him, so thank god Lorna chose this moment to announce, “Okay, looks like everybody’s here. Let’s get started.”

I beelined toward her like I was desperate to hear every word she said, feeling a weight lift off my temples the more steps I took from Connor. Lorna raised her eyebrows at me in the barest nod of approval, which was a bonus. Not that I needed or wanted her approval. It was better for the business to have her not annoyed with me.

She clapped her hands together. “All right, everyone,” she said, and the murmurs of the twelve or so business owners faded into the faint jingle of the Christmas music still playing overhead. “I’ll cut right to the chase. We’ve all seen our business dip over the past few years, so we all know we need more people coming by or we’re in trouble. I want to hold a holiday festival here in town.”

The murmurs rose again, covering up the cheery tune of the currently appropriate “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.” The thought of a Christmas festival—because, let’s be real, when people said “holiday” they meant “Christmas”—made sense, I supposed. Some of the nearby towns hosted big Christmas festivals full of gingerbread houses and hot chocolate and lines to sit on Santa’s lap, and they attracted crowds looking for Christmas cheer amid snow and small-town charm. I’d suggested holding one of them to the small business board years ago, when I was fresh and new here. Back then Lorna had told me there were too many in the area to make ours stand out, but she must have changed her mind.

“Awesome,” Connor said. “I know Uncle Joe’s always wanted to play Santa Claus. It’s probably too late for him to grow his beard out, but he’s got a fake one in storage just in case. Smells a little like mothballs, but the kids won’t care.”

Lorna gave him a toothy grin like she was ready for dinner and he was an animal who’d just walked into her trap. “Ah. When you heard me say ‘holiday,’ you thought ‘Christmas.’ But that wasn’t what I meant.” She paused for dramatic tension. “There are too many Christmas markets around here for a new one to stand out. What we’re going to hold is a Hanukkah market. And Abby is going to run it.”

My first thought: huh, I didn’t realize there was another Abby in town.

My second thought, as all eyes in the room swiveled to me: oh, shit.

“You don’t mean me?” I blurted.

Lorna’s grin widened. I’d always thought she had too many teeth for her face. Now there they all were, wide and sharp, ready to chomp down on me. “Congratulations, Abby!” She began to clap. After a moment, the rest of the room started clapping, too.

This was all going way too fast. “Wait a second,” I said, then raised my voice and repeated it so that everybody could hear me over the applause and the music (now “Silent Night,” decidedly not appropriate). “Wait a second!” The clapping petered to a stop, but the eyes stayed on me. My skin itched. “I don’t understand. Nobody talked to me about this.”

“Well, I mean, it’s obvious.” Lorna sounded as if she were talking to a very small child. “You’re the only Jewish person on the council.” She left the “or in town” unspoken. “Who else could run it?”

Sweat broke out, chilly on my forehead. It was already dripping down the back of my neck and soaking into the collar of my sweater, which now itched even more against my skin.

I didn’t think I’d ever talked about being Jewish with the people in town (to be fair, I didn’t talk about most things with the people in town). How did they even know? I imagine asking Lorna and receiving her scornful response. Your name is Abigail Cohen. And besides. Her hand waving vaguely at my face, at my thick dark hair and prominent nose. There was no one way to look or sound Jewish—I’d grown up with blond Jews who had tiny noses, Black and brown Jews, Jews with last names like O’Brien and Chiang—but there would be no use telling her that.

It wasn’t like I was trying to hide being Jewish. It was a part of me like my freckles or my tendency toward dark humor. It was more like, why bring it up? I wasn’t observant. I didn’t keep kosher or need days off for the holidays. And I certainly wasn’t part of the Jewish community anymore. I’d left that behind when my parents left me behind.

I was certainly not going to bring that up with her, though. Instead, I said, “Can we talk about this more? I’m not sure I have the time to—”

“Oh, it won’t be that much work,” Lorna replied. “I’ve already gathered all the vendor info from my friends who run the other holiday festivals. You just have to tell them what they need to do. And you’ve got time. It’s not even December yet, and the festival won’t be until the end of the month.”

I blinked. “At the end of the month? But Hanukkah is early this year.”

Lorna wrinkled her brow. The song overhead switched to jingling bells. “What?”

It had been years since I’d lit a menorah, but all holidays were automatically filled in on the calendar app I used. “Hanukkah starts soon,” I said. At her look of puzzlement, I continued, “Its date is based on the Hebrew calendar, which is a lunar calendar. So in some years it’s as early as the end of November or as late as January.”

Lorna shrugged. “Okay, but that doesn’t change the date of our festival.”

“If we’re going to do a Hanukkah festival, shouldn’t it take place on actual Hanukkah?”

She shrugged again. None of the other business owners seemed especially bothered, either, except for Connor, who looked kind of like he wanted to run away. But that had nothing to do with my questions about the festival. “Most of the Christmas festival revelers don’t come on actual Christmas. I don’t see why the date matters. Besides, that week between Christmas and New Year’s is when the most people have off, whether they celebrate Hanukkah or not.”

I opened my mouth to keep arguing—it just didn’t seem right!—but something stopped me. Why did I care so much? It wasn’t like I was observant. It wasn’t like I was planning to celebrate anyway. “Okay, fine,” I said, trying to ignore the unease simmering in my stomach.

Lorna clapped her hands together. “So you’ll do it, then!”