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“The next time a town tells us this can’t be done, Holly Creek goes in the file,” she said.

She went off toward the cocoa cart, where the line was still forty deep.

Nora came out of the crowd as the light went blue over the rooflines, tinsel in her hair. The envelope containing a copy of my signed apartment lease stuck out of her coat pocket. Ten days after I gave it to her, she was still carrying it. I tried not to make too much of that and failed.

“Vance found you,” she said. “I watched her walk away. Well?”

“She confirmed it. January, and a compliance schedule she seemed to enjoy describing.”

“Confirmed.” Nora tested the word. “Not approved. Confirmed.”

“Her distinction, not mine. She said the money was already found.”

“It was.” She pressed her hand to my chest, over the coat, and left it there. “It was found in a bakery at seven in the morning by people who couldn’t afford it.”

Down the street the choir started, and somebody’s grandmother started before the choir did, and the crowd let her.

“Welcome home,” she said.

Behind her the third lamppost bracket let go entirely and dropped a wreath on the Salem barbecue man, and she was gone before I could answer, already running, already shouting for Frank.

CHAPTER 22

NORA

The festival lights blazed, but I was still carrying the lease Griffin had handed me ten days earlier.

The lease was dated December ninth. Griffin had signed it three days before he told me and before the independent engineer, the repair fund, or any reason to know the block would survive.

I had read it every night for ten days. Tonight I read it behind the community center, in the choir room, and under Callahan’s awning while four hundred people passed me. Apparently, ten readings had not been enough.

Ivy leaned out of her own doorway. “Whatever that is, it isn’t going to change.”

“I’m aware.”

“Mm,” said Ivy, and she went back in and left the door open, which is Ivy for stand in the warm air, you idiot.

I went into my own shop, which I had not been inside since eleven that morning.

At twenty to nine on the twenty-second of December, Winters Wonderland was full. I wasn’t in it, and it did not need me.

Marcy had a line four deep and nine years of pharmacy-counter authority. She was running three transactions and one conversation at once and enjoying at least two of them. A woman from out of county stood holding a nutcracker in each hand, asking which.

“The taller one,” Marcy said, without looking up. “The short one’s charming, but you’ll be tired of it by March.”

I stopped by the ribbon wall, which is still better than it was, and put my hand in my coat pocket and found the envelope in it.

If I am honest, I had spent the entire evening checking that it was still there.

He had given up the private project he came to build. He still owned the buildings, but he had withdrawn the redevelopment application, tied his six parcels to a three-year repair plan, and accepted an offer on his Portland apartment to clear Meridian’s debt. Then he had handed me the lease in a half-empty bakery while the repair fund was still short. I had carried it ever since.

I have been handed things before. All of them came with an invoice attached, and I got very good, very young, at finding the small print before I said thank you.

There was no invoice.

Marcy caught my eye over the register and jerked her chin at the door. Go on.

I went.