Page 7

"The snow outside melts."

"Not until April," I say. "This is Copper Peak."

That gets the smallest twitch at the corner of her mouth. She fights it. She almost wins.

She takes her coat off the hook by the register and buttons it, all except the top one that isn't there. The crook of the candy cane sticks out of the pocket. She digs her mittens out of the other pocket and pulls them on, still a little damp. I grab my own coat and hold the door for her. The bell jangles. The cold hits hard and dry, the sky clear and full of stars over the ridge, and Prospect is mostly dark now except for the shop windows and the string of bulbs glowing at the far end of the street.

"I can find my way," she says.

"I know. I'm walking to the corner anyway."

"Why?"

"It's my corner."

She shakes her head, but she doesn't tell me to go back in. We walk. Our boots squeak on the packed snow. At the corner, she stops under the lamppost and looks up at the sprig of mistletoe tied to it. Its berries are white in the light, and the red cord is knotted twice.

"Somebody in this town really likes mistletoe," she says.

"Seems that way."

I keep my eyes on the sidewalk.

"Shay's is down there." She points down the hill, toward a row of apartments with their porch lights on. "Two blocks."

"I'll see you at nine."

"Nine." She starts down the hill. Three steps. Then she turns around, walking backward on the packed snow, her hands in her pockets.

"You never answered me earlier," she says. "Do you like Christmas?"

"I answered."

"You said somebody has to run it. That's not an answer. That's a job."

I don't have anything to say to that, because she's right.

She turns back around and goes down the hill. I watch her the whole two blocks, until a door opens and she's inside.

Then I walk back up to the shop alone.

I don't turn on the overhead lights. The window is enough. The train circles. The little houses glow. I stand behind the wrap counter in the dark and look up at the high shelf, at the red and gold paint and the horses frozen on their poles, and at the key nobody's turned in four years.

Tuesday morning. That's what she gave me.

For the first time in four Christmases, I want to turn the key.

I don't. Not tonight.

But I don't look away from it, either.

3

NOELLE

"Don't move," Arch says from the top of a stepladder just inside the toy shop's door.

I've got one boot on the mat and one still on the snowy step outside, and the bell is jangling over my head. I freeze, mostly because the ladder is directly in front of me and he's directly above me, one arm stretched up to the brass hook on the door frame.