Page 76 of The Mistletoe Kisser

“Town newspaper,” she whispered back.

“I vote that we use our allowance to install heated sidewalks,” a skinny teenager with pink hair and wearing a Nirvana shirt called out.

“I second the motion!”

“That’s not how this works,” Beckett said in exasperation. “The state tells us how we’re allowed to spend our allowance.”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” shouted a woman from the far side of the theater. “I’m tired of shoveling. I vote for heated sidewalks.”

With an exaggerated sigh, Gia stood up and handed Sammy her wiggly toddler. “Hold this, please,” she said, then climbed onto her seat. She stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled shrilly.

The crowd quieted.

“Listen up, people!” Gia addressed the crowd. “Heated sidewalks mean no school district. No fire trucks. No public library or town parks. So if you want to put all the teachers and support staff out of jobs, drive around potholes that can swallow your Volkswagen, and put out your own fires, by all means, demand heated sidewalks.”

“This is like a soap opera,” Ryan said, leaning in to catch another whiff of Sammy’s hair.

“Yeah, but like a telenovela,” she said, jiggling the kid on her knee. The baby or toddler—Ryan wasn’t sure what the age cutoff was—giggled.

“Do you still want heated sidewalks?” Gia yelled.

“I guess we can go back to shoveling,” someone said.

“Good. Then let’s take a deep, cleansing breath together,” Gia insisted.

“Yoga teacher,” Sammy whispered.

Around them, the audience inhaled noisily and then exhaled, creating an indoor gale-force wind. Blue Moon had an impressive collective lung capacity.

“Good,” Gia said, giving them a curt nod. “Now let’s sit down, shut our faces, and listen to my very handsome husband as he tells us what this means and how he’s going to get us out of it.”

There was scattered applause as Gia regained her seat. Someone in the sound booth played a few bars of “Respect” by Aretha Franklin.

“Hang in there with me for just another minute, folks,” Beckett begged. “The state is sending an auditor to Blue Moon.” He drew a stick figure.

“How come the auditor has three legs?”

“Maybe that’s not a leg.”

Beckett erased the third leg and soldiered on. “If we can’t prove that we spent our allowance in the places the state said we could, we will lose all of that funding for next year and we may be responsible for paying this year’s funding back to the state.”

“That sounds bad,” someone called.

“Yes. It is very, very, very bad,” Beckett verified. He drew a big frowny face on the whiteboard.

“Mama, that’s just like the sticker I get at school for talking too much,” Aurora whisper-yelled to Gia.

The mayor returned to the lectern. “I promise you we are going to do everything we can to make sure that doesn’t happen. We’re asking for any volunteers with accounting or small business experience to help us go through six months of town transactions to reconstruct the reporting we’re missing. Be advised, this is a massive undertaking,” Beckett cautioned.

“When is the auditor coming?” asked a woman in a long caftan.

Beckett looked like he was going to be sick. “The auditor will be here at eight a.m. Christmas Eve.”

The murmurs in the crowd cranked up to full volume.

“That’s the day after tomorrow,” Sammy groaned. “Exactly how bad is very, very, very bad?”

“Even worse than you think,” Ryan said. “The town risks losing all future state funding. Property taxes will sky-rocket to cover the difference. People won’t be able to afford to own real estate. Which means foreclosures, a mass exodus. And that’s not even touching on potential jail time if Blue Moon can’t prove the town didn’t commit fraud or embezzle the money.”