two
HARVEY
“ H arvey,” said my best friend Chloe when we met in the line at Jolly Java, “have you been spending big at Season’s Readings again?”
I shifted my bags to my other hand, as though that would hide them from her, and then shrugged. “Yes. I mean, always.”
Chloe snorted and loosened her scarf. The day was freezing out on the street, but it was toasty warm inside Jolly Java. Her cheeks were pink from being freshly outside, and her eyes shone. Her auburn hair stuck out from either side of her knit beanie in two uneven braids, like Pippi Longstocking. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”
From anyone else it might have been an admonishment, but Chloe knew exactly why I was dodging the Christmas Falls Festival Museum.
“I’ve left Martha in charge,” I said. “If anyone desperately wants to see the 1993 mechanical Santa on its original float, they’ll still be able to.”
The 1993 mechanical Santa was a nightmarish horror in my opinion, but it was one of the museum’s most popular attractions—probably because of that. And “most popular” was relative. Even in the middle of the festival season, the museum didn’t get many visitors. Most people who came through the museum doors were tourists doing the circuit of Christmas-themed stores downtown and only stayed in the museum twenty minutes at most, especially those with kids. There was really nothing in the museum that was interesting for kids, not when everything else downtown was so sparkling and enticing.
“You’re still avoiding Steven, aren’t you?” Chloe asked, lowering her voice.
“Ugh.” It wasn’t a very articulate answer, but it more than summed up my feelings on the subject of Steven Fanning, my ex. Although, did he even count as my ex, considering he’d spent the six months we were together explaining he’d only just come out of a relationship, so he wasn’t ready to go public with me yet? And yes, it had taken me six months to realize that I was probably Steven’s side piece, something I was still carrying the burn of humiliation about. Especially since Chloe had straight up told me so, and, like an idiot, I’d actually defended Steven.
Chloe and I had been in the same year at school, even though we hadn’t been close back then. She had definitely been one of the popular kids, and I’d somehow missed that boat. Like, I’d probably been in the library or something when everyone else had gotten the class on how to be cool. I hadn’t been unpopular or anything, just kind of a background character to everyone else’s high school experience. Chloe had always been nice to me though. She’d gone off to Chicago after graduation, but came back when her dad’s health had declined. We’d run into each other one night at Frosty’s and split a plate of nachos because Chloe had claimed she couldn’t eat the whole thing herself—a total lie—and now we were best friends. She’d had a lot to say about the Steven situation, and honestly, I’d been in such denial that I was sometimes surprised our friendship had survived. I was incredibly glad it had, though.
The woman at the counter got her order, so I stepped forward and took her place.
“Hi, Harvey,” Rocco said from behind the counter. “Your usual?”
“Yes, please.” It was pretty cool that he already knew my usual since he hadn’t owned Jolly Java for long and we’d only met a short time ago. He’d bought Jolly Java recently from the former owners, Holly and Joelle, and ruffled a few feathers in the process. He was still ruffling them, last I heard—people really, really hated that he’d taken pumpkin spice lattes off the menu—but I didn’t drink coffee and Rocco made an excellent frothed milk hot chocolate, so I was happy he was here. Plus, the first time we’d met, I’d helped him find an old recipe book from the museum for him to use, and I thought it was very cool that he wanted to bring back some old-style cookies and treats. Like, cool because living history was cool, but also cool just because you could never have too many options when it came to sugary snacks, right?
“How’s your grandma?” he asked as he poured milk into a stainless steel jug for the steamer.
“She’s doing good,” I said, inspecting the cookies in the display case by the register. “I don’t think she knows what ‘retired’ means.”
Grandma was way too active to be happy about “sitting on her ass doing nothing.” That was a direct quote. She’d finally retired from teaching last year, and she filled her days with a lot of volunteer work and charity stuff. She was busier now than she’d ever been before, and loving it.
“That’s good.” Rocco stuck the jug under the steamer wand, and after a moment the milk began to burble and hiss.
When my hot chocolate was ready, I paid and stepped aside while Chloe got her order. I held the door for her, and we walked outside into the cold. Christmas Falls in December was beautiful, but cold as hell, and the quaint streets of downtown, a.k.a. Santa’s Village, were already bustling with tourists. The annual Christmas Falls Festival, which had been running for almost forty years now, kept the town alive. Events began in mid-November and culminated the day before Christmas Eve. The festival was a Christmas Falls institution.
“Did you hear about Santa’s Helpers?” Chloe asked as she readjusted her scarf.
“No. What happened?”
“Some sort of leak. I don’t know the details, but they’re looking for foster carers.”
“They’re always looking for foster carers. It’s an animal shelter. That’s what they do.”
“Well, now they need them urgently.” Chloe poked me in the ribs. “Didn’t you say you should get a museum cat?”
“Yeah, but I also said I should get a museum lizard. Obviously you shouldn’t listen to me.”
“Well, now might be the time.”
“To listen to me?”
“To get a cat.”
I took a long sip of my hot chocolate, trying to think how to change the subject. I went with, “So, what are your plans for the rest of the day?”
She raised her eyebrows. “You can’t avoid Steven forever.”
“Okay, so firstly, I thought we agreed not to say his name in case it summoned him like the devil,” I said. “And secondly, I can and I will.”
She got the same pitying look on her face she had when she’d watched me eat paste in first grade. “Harvey, ignoring him won’t make him go away. I know it sucks that he’s the guy doing the campaign, but this is like a Band-Aid situation. You just have to rip it off.”
I made a face. “Ugh.” Articulate again. “I just wish someone else had gotten the job. Anyone else.”
The town was putting money into revamping the festival’s website, and also into getting a bunch of new tourist brochures printed to distribute to hotels and airports and tourist information places all around the state. And who’d got the job to put it all together? Steven, of course. At some point he was going to have to come and take photographs at the museum and, according to the email from the mayor’s office, “interview our local business owners to get a fun feel for the unique Christmas spirit you provide to your customers!” I wasn’t a business owner—I was employed by the town—but all that meant was that I couldn’t tell Steven to fuck off when he turned up to interview me about the museum. Not that I would anyway. Even when we’d broken up, I hadn’t told him to fuck off. That was the sort of thing I’d only said angrily in the shower afterwards, reinventing how the whole breakup had gone down in a much more dramatic and satisfying manner.
“I know,” Chloe said, and patted me on the arm. “But the sooner you get it over with, the sooner you never have to speak to him again.”
“I’m already never speaking to him now. All this means is I have to break my streak and start over.”
“Yes, but you can’t just leave the museum unattended,” Chloe reminded me.
“I didn’t. Martha’s there.” I let out a long breath. “But, fine. I’ll go and do my job, like some kind of responsible adult, I guess. If I have to.”
“I mean, you kind of do,” she said, and nudged me with her shoulder.
I hated that she was right.
She grinned at me. “Tacos, tequila, and trashy movies this Saturday at my place?”
And just like that she was forgiven.
“You had me at tacos,” I said.
“I know.” She wiggled her gloved fingers in a wave. “See you then!”
And then she headed away, sidestepping a gaggle of tourists and leaving me with nothing to do but take a deep breath and head to work.
The Festival Museum was on the corner of Comet Street and Candy Cane Lane. It shared a building with Festival Hall, the entrances separated by a wide hallway with creaking wooden floorboards. The museum might not have attracted the crowds, but Festival Hall had a lot going on at this time of year. There was the Arts and Crafts Fair currently, and one of my favorite events of the season would begin as soon as that wound up—the Christmas Tree Festival, where all the businesses in town decorated a tree in Festival Hall, and people could buy tokens to use to vote for whichever tree they thought was best. All the money raised went to The Holiday Hope Foundation, a local charity.
I hummed a Christmas carol as I reached the entrance. It was impossible to live in Christmas Falls and not have all your earworms be about jingling bells, Santa Claus coming to town, or decking the halls. You could try to fight it and lose, or you could just go with it. It was much easier to just go with it. I pushed the door open, and the carol died in my throat.
There was a guy standing in the wide corridor, and he gave the impression he’d been standing there a long time. When the squeal of the door alerted him to my presence, he looked at me and said, “Do you work at the museum?”
“Um, yes,” I quickened my footsteps to close the space between us.
Holy sparkly Christmas balls. He was hot . He was tall, and broad across the shoulders but narrow across the hips, and he had dark blond hair, blue eyes, and cheekbones. Like, everyone with a face had cheekbones, but this guy’s were sharp enough to cut diamonds. He looked as though he’d been created to stride unsmilingly down a catwalk, probably in that same expensive wool coat he was currently wearing, looking haughty and superior. Except, as I drew closer, he smiled. Just the small, polite type of smile that strangers shared, but it transformed his entire expression.
The door to the hall was open, the light spilling from it bright and inviting. I could hear the low murmur of voices from inside, and the occasional peal of laughter from the Arts and Crafts Fair. The guy’s brows tugged together as though he thought the laughter might be mocking him.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Have you been waiting long? I was just out for lunch.” We both looked at my Season’s Readings bags. “Um, there should be someone here though.”
The guy raised his eyebrows as though he didn’t believe me. I guess I hadn’t sold him well enough on the lunch lie to make him believe that Martha should have been inside.
I reached the door and saw the note taped on it. The words were in Martha’s spindly handwriting: Back in 5 minutes.
“Oh,” I said. “She must have popped out for five.”
The guy hummed. “I’ve been standing here for twenty.”
“Huh.” I drew a breath and dug my keys out of my pocket. “Sorry, again. Come in, please.”
I opened the door and let us both in.
The Festival Museum was a series of five interconnected rooms full of photographs, old floats, and antique decorations that frankly looked more suited to Halloween than Christmas— in addition to the terrifying mechanical Santa of 1993, there was an evil-eyed elf in one room that I was afraid to turn my back on.
I set my shopping bags on the floor and my hot chocolate on the desk, then tugged my gloves off. “Um, so this is the museum, and I’m Harvey. Take a look around, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask.”
“Sterling,” the guy said. We shook hands, and then Sterling glanced around the room, looking fairly disinterested in the display cases and photographs.
“There’s not really that much to see,” I said. I was terrible at hyping up the museum. In my defense, most people found it pretty dull. I didn’t. I loved digging around the place, looking at all the tiny details of other people’s lives from a couple decades ago, but I wasn’t most people. Steven had told me more than once that I was boring. That stung more than it should have. I forced a smile. “Unless you’re really into old parade floats, and you don’t seem like the type.”
This time, Sterling’s smile was a little more genuine. “How do you know I’m not the type?”
“Well, without generalizing,” I said, even though I totally was, “you’re under sixty, and you’re not wearing a fanny pack.”
Sterling’s chuckle was even nicer than his smile. “So, uh, I’m not actually here to look at old parade floats.”
“Called it.”
He shoved his hands in the pockets of his expensive-looking coat. “I’m looking for someone who I think might come from here.”
He ended on a slight upward inflection, as though he wasn’t entirely sure, and my interest was piqued.
“What do you mean?”
Sterling reached into his pocket and pulled out a bent and scuffed Christmas card. He opened it and took out a photo, which he set on the desk.
The photograph looked pretty old, in that soft, grainy way that told me it had either been taken with a cool vintage filter turned on, or on actual film. I leaned toward actual film. It wasn’t so old that everything was tinted yellow, or faded, but something about the oversaturation of the colors definitely screamed disposable camera and prints developed at the kiosk in the mall.
The photo was of two guys, one in a cap who was ducking his face, and the other smiling at whoever was taking their picture.
“They’re cute,” I said, and looked up at the hot guy.
His expression was doing something complicated. “You think they’re a couple?”
“Oh.” I took another look. “I mean, that was my first impression, but maybe not.”
“I think they are too.” He nodded sharply as though I’d confirmed it for him.
“And they’re from here?” I asked. “Oh, yeah. Look at that tractor. ‘Christmas Falls Festival, 1989.’” I looked up at him again. “What’s this about?”
“That’s my uncle. I was told he left in 1987 and nobody ever heard anything from him again. But he sent this photograph home in 1989.”
“Oh,” I said, my chest suddenly aching. “And it looks like they were together.”
Sterling nodded, his jaw tight.
“Wow.” I traced a finger along the edge of the photograph. “I guess things were different back then.”
He hummed. “Or not.”
Well, that was depressingly true. “So, uh, you’re trying to track him down? Your uncle?”
His blue gaze locked with mine and he nodded. “My grandfather passed away recently and?—”
“Oh my God!” I blurted. “I’m so sorry!”
“Thank you,” he said, and then tilted his head. “That’s what people say, isn’t it? Thank you, after you say you’re sorry for my loss. Even though after his funeral I found this photograph that proves Freddy wrote home, and my grandfather let everyone believe that he’d never heard from him after he vanished.”
“Wow,” I said again. The sudden sharpness to his tone made me want to give him a hug, even though we were strangers. “So you’ve come all the way to Christmas Falls to find Freddy?”
“Well, it’s a long shot,” Sterling said. “But I had to give it a try.”
“Of course.” I picked the photo up and stared at it more closely, as though I might see something that he hadn’t. I didn’t, obviously. “I think it’s really amazing.”
He tilted his head. “Amazing?”
“Yeah. That you’re trying to find him and let him know that all of his family aren’t total assholes.” My brain caught up with my mouth. “Sorry, I don’t mean your grandfather was an asshole. I’m sure this is a very complicated situation and you have conflicting feelings, and, um, stuff.”
“I mean, you’re right about the conflicting feelings, but probably also about the family of assholes.” He made a snorting sound that was almost like a laugh. “Anyway, I was hoping the museum would be the place to start.”
I nodded. “Sure. I mean, I wish we could see the boyfriend’s face, but the cap he’s wearing? It looks kind of familiar. Come with me.”
I led Sterling into the next room, which was mostly framed photographs on the wall, along with display cases with old flyers and programs and decorations. I leaned over the case with Felicity Burgess’s crocheted reindeer and sleigh in it—best handmade decoration from 1998—and squinted at one of the photographs on the wall. It was a pair of teenage girls working a cotton candy machine.
Sterling squinted at the photograph too and then gave me a quizzical look.
“Same caps as the guy in the photo.” I tapped the glass. “And the cotton candy stall was sponsored by Blitzen’s Boat Rides. I think your guy—well, Freddy’s guy—must have worked for Blitzen’s too.”
“Wow, that’s incredible.” Sterling blinked at me in astonishment.
“Well, don’t get too excited. I’m pretty sure Blitzen’s closed down about twenty years ago. Someone different runs the boat rides nowadays. But maybe if we can find someone who used to work there around the same time, we can find out if anyone recognizes Freddy or his boyfriend.”
I might have warned Sterling not to get too excited, but I couldn’t stop the warm bubbles of anticipation flooding into my bloodstream at the thought of discovering Freddy’s boyfriend’s identity, and maybe even finding the two men themselves. I loved my job and my life here in Christmas Falls, but, let’s be real, it wasn’t very exciting. And now a real-life mystery had landed in my lap, courtesy of a handsome stranger, and, even better, it came wrapped around a love story. My chest ached for Freddy and his boyfriend, and I was desperate to find out that they’d gotten their happy ending. I tried to temper my expectations—it was a long time ago, people changed and grew apart, and maybe we wouldn’t even be able to find either of them anyway—but my expectations weren’t buying it. They were hyped .
“Christmas Falls is pretty small,” I said. “We could probably just ask around at Frosty’s and someone will know someone who knows Freddy’s guy. It’s that kind of a town. Everyone knows everyone else’s business.”
The corners of Sterling’s mouth pulled down a little and his brow furrowed. “I’d rather keep it as lowkey as we can, if that’s possible. If Freddy is still in the area, I’d rather he heard about me being here from me first, and not half the town.”
“That makes a lot of sense.” And honestly, it would be more fun doing it ourselves anyway. All those Trixie Belden books I’d read as a kid—they’d belonged to my mom—had trained me for this moment. Except Trixie had one thing I didn’t—a car. Sleuthing all over Christmas Falls lost a lot of its charm when I remembered the only wheels I had were attached to an aluminum frame. “So, Mary Kilmartin is one of the girls making cotton candy in that photograph. Do you have a car?”
“No. I—it’s a long story.” He wrinkled his nose. “Will we need one?”
“Probably. Mary lives out of town a ways.”
Sterling looked uncomfortable. “Do you have one?”
“I have a bike.”
“A motorbike?”
“No. One with pedals.” I thought for a second. “But my grandma will let me borrow her car. She has her quilting club this evening, but I could drop her off there and then come and pick you up. Like, assuming you aren’t like a serial killer and this is all just a cunning ruse to get me to go with you into the woods.”
“I didn’t even know about Mary,” he said, “or that she lived in the woods until you just told me.”
“That’s true. And we’ve been alone in this building for a while. You could have easily killed me by now.”
His expression was half amused and half horrified. I liked to think amusement was winning the battle, but I couldn’t be certain.
“I have a lot of spare time,” I admitted, “and I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts.”
I blamed that on Trixie Belden too. She pulled me in with the soft stuff—mysterious strangers, missing fortunes, and criminals who weren’t quite evil enough to realize they could just shoot the plucky teen girl detective who got in their way—and before I knew it, I was hooked on real life mysteries. I was especially fascinated with the unsolved ones, and I’d always wanted to be the person who somehow cracked the case. Now, with Freddy Van Ruyven and his boyfriend, maybe I actually could be. And it wouldn’t just be solving a case; it’d be getting a family back together—how amazing would that be?
Sterling snorted, and then smiled and shook his head. “Sure. I mean, that would be great. As long as I’m not putting you out or anything.”
“Nope,” I said, warmth flooding through me. “Not at all. We’ll tackle this Trixie Belden-style.”
He gave me a skeptical look. “Trixie Belden?”
“Amateur sleuth? Girl detective? Co-president of the Bob-Whites of the Glen?”
The shake of his head told me he was not the Trixie type. “Whatever you say.”
“I say we tackle it Trixie Belden-style.”
This time he full-on laughed. And that felt way too absurdly good. “Okay.” For someone whose clothes and haircut suggested he was accustomed to getting what he wanted, he looked oddly bashful.
“I’ll see you this evening, then,” I reminded him, as though he’d forgotten the plan in the past five seconds.
Everyone deserved a Christmas miracle, right? And with my help, maybe Sterling could get one in Christmas Falls.