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Kenzie is at the far end of the wrap counter, tying a bow on the last box of the night. She's thirteen now, all elbows and braces, and she's worked the wrap counter with me every Saturday in December since she was ten. Her family didn't keep the house. They moved to a rental on the other side of town the January after her letter. She still gets a letter from Santa every Christmas—cream paper, NORTH POLE stamped in red—and every one of them knows exactly where she lives.

She finishes the bow and holds it up. It's perfect. Better than mine, some days.

"Sixteen rolls," she announces. "Plus the plaid."

"Gran's record," Arch says.

"Tied it," I say. "Next year, we break it."

The carousel goes around on the counter. Every December, it sits in the front window, in the center of the snowy village, where the whole town can see it. The NOT FOR SALE card is long gone. Every Christmas Eve, Arch carries it back to this counter at close, and we wind it, and everybody stands around and watches until it runs down.

Then we go home.

Home is upstairs. We never moved. Arch offered to build me a house the first spring, on a lot up past the turnoff with a view of the ski runs, and I thought about it for a whole week before I said no. I didn't need a new house. I needed one nobody could take.

I never paid the deposit on the room in Denver. The bus ticket stayed in my coat pocket until spring, and Shay got her couch back. She still says I owe her a finder's fee.

Gran's apartment has a tree in the front window now, every December. My mother mailed me the KITCHEN box the first Christmas, after I called her and told her I was staying. I opened it on the living room floor, with Arch sitting beside me. Three of the ornaments were broken. The rest weren't.

They're on our tree upstairs right now. The glass bird I loved when I was six. The angel with the chipped wing. A felt reindeer I made in second grade, with one googly eye.

Nobody's ever going to tape anything to our door but a wreath.

The waltz slows. Ingrid leans her head on Arch's shoulder, watching the horses, her eyes getting heavy. He shifts her higher and kisses the top of her head.

"Daddy," she says sleepily. "Is the carousel mine?"

Arch looks at me over her head. His eyes are warm and steady, the same look he gave me in the doorway five years ago, with all of his attention at once.

"Someday," he says. "This one's yours."

The last notes come farther and farther apart. The horses turn one final half-circle and stop.

The shop goes quiet.

I used to stand at this counter and tell people none of it was real. The window, the train, the tiny glowing houses. A motor and a loop of track.

I was wrong. It's real. It stops, every single time.

And every single time, we wind it again.