Page 5 of Christmas By Lamplight
They’d done Secret Santa letters for three years now—anonymous wishes clipped to twine in the window, little gifts appearing like magic when someone in town could grant them. Those who didn’t take part still came to read the letters, their faces soft with remembered wonder.
This year had to be different. This year had to save her.
Carrie clipped the card to the twine and tried to ignore the way her hands shook just a little as she twisted the pine garland around the doorframe.
Inside, the morning routine continued. She sold the Dickens to Oliver’s grandmother, recommended a cookbook to someone who “didn’t really cook but wanted to start,” and wrapped books in paper that made the packages look special.
The shop was charming and discouragingly quiet.
By noon, she’d made forty-seven dollars.
That afternoon, Carrie tried not to listen to chapter twenty-nine again. She tried not to think about the way Tanner’s thumb had brushed her palm or how his voice reading Dickens had made her knees forget what they were there for. And she remembered how his voice sounded saying her name.
Tanner closed the apartment door and leaned against it, toolbox still in hand.
Safe.
The word felt foreign. He’d been running for three weeks, and this was the first place that felt like a place he could rest instead of hiding.
He set the toolbox down and pulled out his phone. Forty-seven unread messages, each one a small demand on the person he used to be. His agent wanted a statement. His publicist had crafted apologies he needed to approve. Journalists who’d been friendly last month were now asking if he had anger issues. And buried among them were messages from people he’d thought were friends, asking if the rumors were true or suggesting he might need some “help.”
He’d watched his career dismantle itself in real time over the past several days. Not the dramatic explosion he’d feared, but a slow erosion. Recording sessions were “postponed.” Meetings were “rescheduled” with the polite distance of an industry deciding whether he was worth the risk.
The Google Alert notification sat at the top of his screen, the number climbing even as he watched. “Tanner Blake”—247 new results.
He set his phone on the counter without opening any of it. He’d read enough versions to know what they would say. The headline was always some variation of “Bad Santa,” the comments always the same mix of outrage and schadenfreude, and the think pieces always questioning his character, his professionalism, and his future.
What none of them mentioned was the hospital. The children who’d been counting on that fundraiser. The hundred thousand dollars in lost funding because of fifteen seconds of video that didn’t show the hours of psychological warfare that preceded it.
That was the only part that mattered.
But he had escaped, for the moment. The apartment was small and furnished, but barely. Mrs. Snyder had apologized for its condition when she’d shown it to him yesterday. “The last tenant left in a hurry,” she’d said. “But it’s quiet, and no one will bother you here.”
Quiet. That was what he needed.
He walked to the window and looked down at Main Street. Snow was falling and catching the light from the old-fashioned streetlamps. Hollydale looked like a postcard of the kind of town that still believed in things like community, kindness, and second chances.
The kind of town he’d inadvertently hurt.
He’d come to Hollydale deliberately, not to hide from what he’d done, but to face it. The hospital was six blocks away. He could see it from his bedroom window. Every morning, he would wake up and see the building where children were missing out on their much-needed funding because of him.
Some people might call that masochistic. He called it accountability.
The floorboards creaked beneath him. Below, he could hear voices. The woman with the green glasses—Shannon—was talking, her voice carrying through the old building’s floorboards. He couldn’t make out the words, just her tone—excitement, disbelief.
Then Carrie’s voice, quieter, steadier.
Carrie Watson. The woman who’d recognized him instantly and then, of all things, let him be invisible.
He’d been braced for the usual reaction—the squealing, the demands for photos, and the invasive questions about the scandal. Or worse, the cold shoulder, the judgment, and the assumption that he was exactly what the internet said he was.
Instead, she’d looked at him and seen someone who needed safe harbor. And she gave it to him.
He pulled off his beanie and ran his hand through his hair. The apartment was cold. He turned up the heat and, on the way to finish unpacking, caught sight of the small pile of recording equipment. At some point, he would need to do something about the wreckage of his career. Not today.
Instead, he stood at the window and watched the snow fall on a town that had every reason to hate him.
His phone buzzed. The screen lit up with his agent’s name, then his publicist’s, then a number he didn’t recognize—probably another journalist. He watched the notifications pile up, each one a reminder of the career that had defined him for five years—the careful statements, the strategic appearances, the version of himself that existed only for cameras and microphones.
