Page 17 of Mad About Yule

Maybe it’s part of myabrasivepersonality, or maybe I leaned too hard into being a black sheep, but I never wanted to work here with my family, not even as a kid. I’d wanted something of my own and found it in custom woodwork. I’d built up a solid career—and then the world had dropped away beneath my feet.

Losing my dad changed everything. I stopped chasing my carpentry dreams and took my place at McBride’s, right where Dad had always wanted me. I can never fill his shoes, but I can try to walk in his footsteps. I still feel like a square peg trying to squeeze down into a round hole, but I figure that pinching, poking feeling will improve with time. Has to.

Still. Being offered up to Hope for her festival plans confirms my “not needed” theory.

“I think we’re good for today,” Mom says. “See you boys tomorrow.”

I stand to go, but she stops me before I get to the conference room door.

“I want you to try your best with Hope.” She takes hold of my upper arm, a gentle but undeniable pressure. “I know you can be the man she needs.”

Those words weave through me like a Magic Grow dinosaur, suddenly way too big for my chest. Doesn’t make any sense, since I don’t want to be the man Hope needs, and last I heard, that job is already taken.

“You mean all the handyman stuff.” Feels like we both need the clarification.

She just smiles and squeezes my arm before letting go. “Mm hmm.”

“Don’t forget this.” Caleb slaps the jingly hat into my hands. “Dress to impress.”

I take it, but it will find its way into my trash can eventually. “I promise you, I amneverwearing that elf hat.”

SIX

HOPE

I collapseonto my sofa at nine-thirty on the nose—an early night for a change.

After I closed up The Painted Daisy, I met with the Christmas market volunteers for almost two hours, sorting out the arrangements for booths, tents, and awnings. Then I went to Fred Deckard’s to take a look at his much-rumored model train collection. I want to put a few on display as a little something extra in the weeks leading up to Christmas, a throwback to the days of toy shop windows filled with elaborate mechanical wonder. I’d gently asked him about his trains for weeks, and he finally invited me to see them.

“I’ve got to be sure nothing will happen to them,” he’d said as he led me down to his basement. “They’re pretty special to me.”

I’d been about to rattle off some reassurances, but the sight in the basement blew a fuse in my brain. I’d stumbled into a shrine for a cult that worshipped all things electric and scale-model. Shelves proudly displayed dozens of engines and freight cars carefully preserved beneath plastic cases, with possibly a hundred more stacked around the room in their original packaging.

One wall housed an intricate storage system of neatly labeled drawers filled with miniature figures, trees, and signs. Capping it off, an elaborate toy train set the size of my bedroom dominated the display. Track tunneled through a mountain as tall as me, crossed a tiny river on delicate bridges, and wove in and out through several detailed towns.

I think I know what Mr. Deckard has been doing since he retired.

“They’ll just be on display in Henderson’s department store window,” I said when I could form words again.

“Hoodlums might break in and steal them.”

I’d spent forty-five minutes trying to reassure Mr. Deckard that with all the increased foot traffic on Maple, the trains might be even safer in Henderson’s window than in his basement. But after all that, he’d left me with a solidmaybe. I think he’d just wanted to show off his mind-boggling collection.

I sprawl out on my couch and pull an afghan over my legs, trying not to think about how perfect that vintage Christmas toy display would be. I’ll still do it without the trains if I can’t convince him, but the trains would make the whole scene. Snuggling deeper into the couch, I try to shut off my festival worries, but my brain doesn’t work that way.

I need self-care. A massage. Meditation. ASMR videos with all the tingles.

I crane my neck toward the kitchen in futile hope, as though maybe I fixed dinner for myself last night and forgot about it. But the only food-adjacent things on the counter are an empty cereal bowl and a soggy box from a microwave curry I ate last night.

Peanut butter and jelly it is.

My phone buzzes, and I roll over, hoping against hope Mr. Deckard has had a miraculous change of heart, but no. Starting and ending the day with calls from my mother is the opposite of self-care. I remind myself she could be worse. I just can’t really think how.

“Hi, Mom.”

“I heard who Kat McBride found to help you with the festival.”

I know my mother has an actual job, but sometimes I wonder just how much time she spends snooping around for local news. Has to rival her open house showings.

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