Page 92 of The Holiday Fakers
“A year? Shit, I’m sorry, Cara. I’ve had my head so far up my own butt, I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay. It’s the job.”
“It shouldn’t be.”
We both fall silent, and my eyes seek out Piper, chatting and laughing with her mom and Mia.
“She’s super nice,” Cara says. “They all are.”
I sigh. “Yeah, I know.”
Outside,the sky has clouded over, but the snow hasn’t arrived yet.
The Locke Reserve sits on the edge of town, spanning a few hundred acres of land. It includes a community building, the famous Hideaway Spring, and the house George Locke and Alma Keye built for their family, now a museum.
It’s less than a half-hour stroll, and with Erica, Marv, Mia, and Cara walking ahead, I have time to talk to Piper. I just don’t know how to start without her shutting me down. We’re almost there before I get an idea.
“Can I tell you a story?”
Her head snaps toward me. “A story?”
“Yeah. It’s one from when I was a kid.”
“Oh. Yeah, sure.”
She gazes back at the sidewalk, watching where she puts her feet, and I take a deep breath.
“Once upon a time, in a fairytale land by the sea, lived a little boy who knew that fairytale places weren’t always magical, and no matter what something looked like on the outside, sometimes the inside wasn’t so pretty.”
My gaze is fixed ahead, but in my peripheral vision, I see Piper’s head turn to me.
“Okay …”
“But what the little boydidhave was a best friend, and that best friend also came with a family who loved him almost as much as if he were one of them.”
“Youareone of us. And we,my parentslove you just as much as me, Ethan, Hudson, and Harper.”
I give her a confused look. “This isn’t about your family.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, right.”
“Do you want to hear the rest of the story?”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
I get another eye roll, and she gazes ahead again.
“So this little boy grew up into a very handsome young man?—”
“And modest.”
“But as thisextremelyhandsome young man got older, he realized that he had a few problems that seemed asinsurmountable as scaling Mount Everest in his pajamas or fighting dragons armed only with a wooden sword.”
“Go on.”
“Well, the first problem was that he was poor, and he knew how difficult it was to live without money. He wasn’t clever enough to do a lot of jobs?—”
