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"You have until Tuesday."

"I won't need that long."

He goes back to the front of the shop. I pick up the candy cane, and my hands aren't quite steady when I walk it up front and tuck it into the pocket of my coat on the hook by the register.

2

ARCH

"That's the last roll of snowflake paper," Noelle says from the wrap counter, holding up an empty cardboard tube.

I'm at the front door, flipping the sign to CLOSED. It's six o'clock, full dark outside, and I've known for nine hours that Noelle is going to be mine.

"There's more in the stockroom," I say. "Top shelf, left side."

"How many rolls did you go through today?"

"You'd know better than me. You used them."

She looks up at the empty dowels, moving her lips while she counts. "Fourteen. Plus most of the plaid."

"Gran's record was sixteen."

"It was my first day." She sets the tube on the counter. "Give me tomorrow."

I'd give her tomorrow. I'd give her every tomorrow I have. She walked in at two minutes after nine in a navy wool coat missing its top button, with pale blond hair cut blunt at her jaw and snow melting in it. Her dark blue eyes went from the sign in my window to me, and she didn't look impressed by either one. I had a crate of trains in my hands, and I forgot I was holding it.

I knew before she finished her first sentence.

I've been with women who wanted the toy-shop man at Christmas. By January, they found out he's a man who does inventory and sweeps up tinsel, and they were relieved to go. I was relieved to watch them go.

I never once stood in my own shop and lost track of what my hands were doing. Not until she walked in.

Noelle goes into the stockroom. I hear her drag the step stool across the floor, and I follow her, because she's five-four at most and I doubt she can reach the shelf even with the stool.

"I've got it," she says, already up on the second step.

"I know."

I reach over her shoulder anyway and lift down three rolls of snowflake paper. She goes still on the stool. My arm is around her without touching her, her back an inch from me, and she smells of tape and the cinnamon gum she was chewing after lunch.

She turns her head. Her mouth is level with mine.

"You could've asked me to move," she says.

"You'd have said you had it."

"I did have it."

"You had one roll. I've got three."

"That's not the same as needing help."

"No," I say. "It's faster."

She takes the rolls out of my arms and steps down on the far side of the stool, away from me, and carries them out to the counter. Her ears are pink. I give her a minute before I follow.

Dottie went home at five, stopping at the door to give me a long look over her glasses. Dottie has run the register for thirty-one years. She knew my grandmother before I was born, and she notices everything. She noticed today. I'll hear about it in the morning.