December 3: Twenty-Two

22.

It's there at 6:02 again, glowing on your nightstand while the wind throws snow at the window like it's personally offended. You lie there looking at it for a while.

You think about last night. About what you typed and what he typed back, and how long you kept the phone lit after the last message, like it was a candle. You were supposed to be cruel. You're not totally sure you managed it.

You don't answer the 22. You get up and put on the red cardigan.

The storm closes the county roads by ten. Main Street is a white tunnel, the plows growling past every half hour, and still the bell rings all morning, because in Eastbrook a snowstorm on December 3 isn't a reason to stay home. It's a reason to go out and buy something with glitter on it.

December 3 is the gift-wrapping station. It's been a tradition since your grandmother was a bride: a long table by the bay window, rolls of red and green and gold paper on dowels, a spool of real velvet ribbon, and anyone who buys anything gets it wrapped by hand, free, with a sprig of balsam tucked under the bow.

Chase looks at the table like it's a merger.

"There's a system," he says.

"There's no system. You wrap it."

"There's always a system." He picks up a box, a set of glass bells, and studies it. Then he measures the paper against it with his hands, folds once, creases with his thumbnail, folds again. The corners come out so sharp they could cut you. He ties the ribbon in a bow so symmetrical it looks fake.

The woman waiting for it actually says, "Oh my."

"Paper engineering," he tells her. "Two years of it in college. I was going to build bridges."

"What happened?" the woman asks.

"I found out who pays for bridges." He hands her the box with the dimple. "Merry Christmas."

You don't ask what that means. You want to.

He wraps all morning. A line forms at his end of the table and not at yours, and it's mostly women, and they mostly don't need anything wrapped. One of them buys a single candy cane so she can have it boxed. Josie comes over from next door with a tray of hot cider for the line and stands at your elbow watching him tie a bow.

"I'm going to need you to stop hating him for one second, Ava, so I can enjoy this," she whispers.

"No."

"Just one second."

"He's a vulture in an elf apron, Josie."

"The hottest vulture in New England," she agrees, and goes back out into the snow.

At one o'clock a woman comes in without buying anything.

She's in her fifties, in a down coat, and she's holding a shoebox against her chest the way people hold things that are already broken. She sets it on the counter and opens it, and inside, in a nest of paper towels, is a glass bird. A blue jay. One of Tilda's from the eighties, you can tell from the tail. The head has snapped clean off.

"It was my mom's," the woman says. "She passed in October. I was putting up her tree, and I just..." She makes a small, awful gesture. "I know you can't fix glass. I just didn't know where else to take it."

You open your mouth to say something gentle about Tilda, about how glass is hard, about how sometimes the break is part of the story.

Chase gets there first. Again.

He comes around the counter and looks into the box, and his voice when he speaks is nothing like the voice he's been using all morning.

"Actually, we can," he says. "The woman who made this still works out back. We'll fix it. No charge."

You stare at him. He doesn't look at you.

"Really?" the woman says.

"Really. Leave it with us. We'll call you when it's ready." He writes her number on a Weatherby's card in his precise handwriting. "What was your mom's name?"

"Ardith."

"We'll take care of Ardith's bird."

When she's gone, you round on him. "You don't get to promise free repairs."

"Your grandmother can fix it?"

"Probably. That's not the point. You don't know what anything costs here."

"I know exactly what everything costs here," he says quietly. "That's sort of my problem."

And he goes back to the wrapping table before you can ask what he means.

At four the light goes blue and the storm leans harder. The shop empties out. Dewey goes home before the roads get worse. You're sweeping tinsel off the floor by the stockroom door when Chase's phone rings back there, where he's hunting for more tape.

He doesn't close the door all the way.

"No," he says. The low voice. The hard one. "Tell Garrison I heard him. Tell him I heard him the first three times. Nobody touches that building before I say so."

You go still with the broom in your hands.

Nobody touches that building.

A pause.

"I don't care what the schedule says. I'll deal with it after the twenty-fourth. Yes. Goodbye." The phone clatters on the shelf. You hear him breathe out, long and ragged, like a man who's been holding something up with both arms.

You don't understand it. You turn it over and over and it doesn't fit. You haven't signed. Your father hasn't signed. There's no schedule. There's nothing for anyone to touch.

Unless.

He comes out with two rolls of tape and the smile already in place, and he stops when he sees your face.

"Everything okay, Ava?"

"Who's Garrison?"

The tiniest hitch. You'd miss it if you weren't looking. "My boss. He likes updates."

"He sounded impatient."

"He was born impatient." Chase sets the tape on the counter. "I'm going to grab dinner at the inn before they close the kitchen. You want anything?"

"No."

"Okay." He hesitates, like he wants to say something else. Then he pulls on his coat and goes out into the storm, and the bell rings behind him, softer than it did on the first day.

You stand in the empty shop for a full minute.

Then you go into the stockroom.

His leather portfolio is on the shelf where he left it, beside the phone charger he forgot too. It's open. Not much. Just enough. You tell yourself you're only going to close it, that you're not the kind of person who reads other people's papers.

You reach out to close it, and you see the top page.

You'd know that signature anywhere. You've seen it on every birthday card of your life.

Calvin A. Weatherby.