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Then I go back to wrapping.

At nine o'clock, when the shop closes, I'm walking out that door. Under Ingrid's sprig. Down the hill.

And I'm not looking up.

8

ARCH

"Last bow of the night," Noelle says from the wrap counter at ten minutes to nine.

She slides a box across to a man in a ski jacket. She doesn't look at me.

I'm standing at the end of her counter with an empty ribbon spool in my hand. It's the first time I've come back here since the window walk started. Four hours of crowds, cider, and carolers in red scarves singing on my front step, and I kept myself at the front of the shop the whole time, because if I came back here, I'd look at her. And if I looked at her, I'd have to look at what I did this morning.

The man in the ski jacket thanks her and goes. She starts to clear her counter. Scissors on the nail. Tape guns in a row.

That's when I see the candy cane.

It's lying beside the spool of red cord, exactly where I set it on Saturday. The same one. The crook of it is a little bent from two days in her coat pocket.

I said I'd find the thing in here she wanted. She told me I had until Tuesday.

She gave it back.

I look up at the top shelf. The carousel sits where I put it at eight this morning, after I stood alone in the dark shop at this counter for two hours with the key under my fingers and couldn't make myself turn it. Because she's leaving. Because anything I want this much, I lose. Because I'd rather have it on a shelf than watch it stop.

Noelle hangs the scissors on their nail. She takes off the little pin Dottie gave her that reads HELPER and sets it on the counter, beside the candy cane.

I offered her a counter and a room. I offered her my grandmother's job and my grandmother's spare bed and every bow in the place. I never offered her the one thing in this shop I won't put in the window.

Gran's voice is in my head, plain as the waltz. Someday it goes in the window, so the whole town can see what it looks like when somebody makes a thing just for you.

Noelle pulls her duffel out from under the counter and walks past me to the register to get her coat.

I drag the stool over to the shelf.

Dottie sees me first. She's unplugging the cider urn by the door, and she stops with the cord in her hand. There are still a dozen people in the shop, stragglers from the window walk, a couple at the snow globes, a dad with two kids by the trains, and three of the carolers holding paper cups. One by one, they notice Dottie staring and turn around to see what she's staring at.

I step up onto the stool. I lift the carousel down off the shelf in front of all of them.

It's heavy and cold under my fingers, and my hands are not quite steady.

"Arch," Dottie says, very softly.

I don't answer. I carry it down the center aisle, past the snow globes and the dolls in their cellophane windows, past Noelle standing at the register with her coat half on, one arm in a sleeve. She goes still.

The front window is crowded. It always is. The train circles the snowy village, the houses glow, and the tower of wrapped boxes stands in the corner. Outside, Prospect is still full of people, families with strollers and couples with cups of cider, the last of the window walk.

I reach into the display and lift out the three houses at the center of the village. The church, the bakery, the little red schoolhouse. Gran's favorites. I set them on the floor. Then I lean into the window and set the carousel down in the middle of the cotton snow, right where the train goes around it.

On the other side of the glass, a little girl in a pink hat stops walking. Her mother stops with her.

I turn the key.

It goes easily now. Three windings last night, and the spring remembers. I wind it all the way, and I let go, and "The Skaters' Waltz" comes out bright and clear. The horses start to rise and fall, the train circles them, and every lit house in the village throws gold light on the red-and-gold paint.

The girl in the pink hat presses both hands to the glass.