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Mrs. Morrison took a long time. She had been at every festival since Richard started the sleigh rides in 1986. “I can’t put my horses on that road without insurance,” she said. “I’m sorry, honey. Richard would say the same, and he’d say it faster.”

Frank came next. “I’ve got nine thousand dollars of inventory bought for that weekend. I need the festival. But I can’t vote to hold an event the town isn’t allowed to run.” He raised his hand. “I’m sorry, Nora.”

Ivy and Pearl abstained. Then Owen raised his hand. “The motion passes. Six in favor, two abstaining. The forty-third annual Holly Creek Christmas Festival is suspended.”

Frank caught me at the coat rack. “Nora⁠—”

“I know why you voted,” I said. “I’m just not ready to hear the apology.”

He nodded, put on his hat, and went back to his store. It was twelve oh nine, and Main Street had lost enough business for one day.

Rosie and I stayed until every vendor had heard the news from a person instead of an email. Owen started the booth-fee refunds before the last call ended. At one fifteen, I reached Winters Wonderland. Jenna was behind the register with three customers, the OPEN sign faced the right direction, and the shop was operating without me. That was excellent for the business and insulting on a personal level.

My phone rang, and Owen’s name filled the screen.

“Nora. There’s something else.”

“What else could there possibly be?”

He paused. “Nora. The public-programming line on your downtown merchant grant.”

I sat on the front step, leaving enough room for customers to pass. “I’ve filed the festival for eight years,” I said.

“I know what you’ve filed,” Owen said.

“There isn’t time to build another qualifying public program,” I said. “It has to be documented by the January review, and it’s the fifth of December.”

“I know that too.” Owen sounded seventy years old. “I read that line out loud in a council meeting in November and watched you decide it was a technicality. I’ve thought about that every day since.”

I said something. I don’t know what. He said he was sorry, which he was, and it didn’t matter, which it didn’t.

I stayed on the step in the cold with the phone in my lap.

Hal Sackett came up the sidewalk at one twenty with his hat already in his hand. He stopped when he saw me sitting beside an open store. “You all right, Nora?”

“The store is open,” I said. “I’m taking a brief personal recess.”

“Pearl sent this.” He offered me a paper bag from the bakery. “She said if I brought it back, I shouldn’t bother coming in for coffee tomorrow.”

He went inside without asking what had happened. Hal was eighty-one, and he knew when a sandwich was more useful than a question. That nearly finished me.

The festival and the shop were bad enough. Losing the place I’d spent eight years earning was what broke me.

The one time it counted, I had stayed away.

I looked hard for someone else to blame.

Inside, the shop smelled as it always did, of pine, cinnamon, and tissue paper. It felt like someone else’s store.

I covered my face with both hands, but no tears came. I had gone numb.

Pearl came over an hour later and found me behind the counter with her sandwich still unopened.

She did not turn the sign to CLOSED. Pearl knew a shop one grant away from failure did not need a symbolic gesture. She sent Jenna to lunch, took the stool beside the register, and put the sandwich between us.

“The grant is gone,” I said. “The shop doesn’t carry January without it.”

“I know.”