Chapter 6 Jack
I T IS A UNIVERSAL TRUTH that being a man in a close-knit community means that if you sass the town matriarch, and later forget to return the plate and cutlery you took during your dramatic exit, she will immediately begin making phone calls and tattle on you to the entire town.
By the time I’m walking into the Hungry Fox after closing the store, I’ve had two texts from Maggie, one from Winnie, and a voice note from my high school basketball coach telling me he’s worried about the choices I’m making.
Tommy, naturally, is busying himself behind the bar and pretending he didn’t send me a text that read “DID YOU STEAL FROM FLO” in capital letters and with twelve alternating question and exclamation marks.
“You’re really robbing local businesses now? In this climate?” he says as I settle myself on a bar stool. “What’s next, knocking over the post office? Stealing from the collection plate at church?”
Pastor Akinola, who usually does an excellent job of pretending not to be listening in on our conversations, chokes on his club soda and turns to me.
“I did hear you’ve taken up petty theft, Jack.
I do hope you plan to return Ms. Girard’s tableware.
I’d hate to have to prepare a new sermon on coveting thy neighbor’s crockery. ”
I groan. “It was a misunderstanding, Pastor. I meant to return it this afternoon. I just got busy.”
His eyes narrow skeptically. “With what? Planning how you’ll go back for the rest of the dinner set?”
Tommy snorts.
I stumble over my words. For someone who gave zero fucks about authority as a teenager, as an adult I’m a bumbling mess. “With orders I—”
“I’m joking, son,” Pastor Akinola says kindly, patting me on the shoulder. “But I do want you to know that Ms. Girard is spreading the word around town at an impressively rapid speed. If only she’d be as enthusiastic spreading the word of our Lord.”
She’s unbelievable.
“I texted her about it,” I groan. “She’ll have it back first thing in the morning.”
The pastor nods solemnly. Then without breaking eye contact he swivels to Tommy. “And I trust you’re behaving yourself this week?”
Tommy, who has been smugly smiling through this entire interaction, suddenly looks sheepish. “I—of course, Pastor Akinola, sir.”
“Good. Now, I need the name of that witch you hired on Etsy.”
Tommy blinks. “Uh…”
“Don’t try and tell me Etsy witch is the name of a band again, Thomas.
I’ve visited the internet and I’ve spoken to my daughter.
I know what you have been up to.” Tommy looks more panicked than he did when we were fifteen and he set a field of sheep free by accident.
“Now, I need the name of the woman you instructed so that I may send her the outline of my sermon on the occult hiding in plain sight.”
Tommy tries to recover. “I’m sorry, Pastor, I was kidding. I—” He fumbles in the tip jar and pulls out a crumpled twenty-dollar bill. “I’d like to give you this as an apology, for the church roof fund. And”—he gestures to the pastor’s drink—“your club soda is on the house.”
Pastor Akinola eyes him warily before nodding. “Common sense is not a flower that grows in every garden, Thomas Brookdale, but your community thanks you for the two roof shingles your donation will cover.” And with that, he glides out of the bar, his wool coat trailing behind him.
“He terrifies me,” Tommy whispers, his eyes wide.
“Do you want to tell me what that was about?” I ask, putting my head in my hands, knowing already that I probably won’t like the answer.
He sighs as he slides a can of ginger ale across the bar to me. “I paid a witch online to find you a date. Expedited results. Seven-to-ten-day guarantee. And the pastor may or may not have heard me talking about it to Luke and called my mother to tell her his concerns.”
“You what?”
“And then Clara showed up and you sent her packing.” He throws up his hands like this is somehow my fault. “So now you have no date, I’m down fifty bucks, and my mom’s mad at me.”
I can’t stop staring at him in disbelief. “You’re telling me Clara Davenport was delivered to me… by a spell?”
“Yes! I didn’t expect it to work! But then she showed up here in her nice coat with her shiny hair and big smile and—”
I groan for what feels like the millionth time today. I rest my forehead against the bar. “She works for Davenport, Tommy. She is a Davenport. You summoned the devil. Maybe Akinola does need to come back in here.”
Tommy shrugs. “You liked her until you found out her last name. Now you’re acting like she arrived with a can of gasoline and a box of matches.”
“I’m not acting like anything. The thing she arrived with was an agenda. We can’t know that it wasn’t all an act.”
Tommy eyes me and pours himself a soda. “I know that you liked her from the moment you met her.”
“I don’t even know her,” I say indignantly.
“You liked her,” he repeats, ignoring me.
I focus on opening my soda and pouring it into my glass and not my best friend’s judgmental glare. I don’t know what else he expects me to say. “It doesn’t matter.”
Tommy leans on the bar, suddenly serious. “Flo said Clara wanted to make things right. Big investment budget or something.”
“She said she did—wait, when did you speak to Flo?”
“When she called me to tell me you burgled her, but never mind that. Heard you had your big dramatic moment. Told Clara to leave and never return, and then you left and so far haven’t returned Flo’s possessions. Why?”
I scrub a hand through my hair. “I panicked.”
“Because she’s from Davenport?”
“Yes. No. Sort of. Mainly because she made it sound so easy. Like she could wave her magic marketing wand and fix everything, give us everything. I don’t want her to strut in and fix it. We can do it ourselves.”
Tommy stands quietly for a moment. “Do you know how many wreaths I’ve zip-tied this week?”
“Too many?”
“Far too many. Winnie has early-onset Christmas vision. She thinks this year will be the year they really hit the big time. Like now that you’ve gone viral with the doll, and Flo went viral with her rampage, it’s her and Mel’s turn next.
I’ve been going to the flower shop before I open up here to help them. ”
I huff a laugh. “That’s because you want to spend time with Melissa.”
“It’s because I believe that they deserve to hit the big time.
To not panic every month. Flo made us put up triple the lights, and we did it.
Why? Because I believe in her vision.” Tommy pinches the bridge of his nose.
“And she’s talking about ordering fake-snow machines.
Something about global warming. Snow machines. Here.”
I shake my head. “I heard.”
“And when they arrive, we’ll be the ones who get made to drag them around. But we’ll do it anyway because she wants our town to be known for something.”
“Yeah, we’ll be known as the laughingstock that has their snow machines running in the middle of a snowstorm.”
“You’re the guy who made the doll that made everyone’s dreams feel possible,” Tommy says, quieter now.
I stare down at my glass.
“So yeah,” he finishes, “I get it. You don’t need anyone else, especially not the people who stole from us, to swoop in and get the credit for what we have.”
“It’s not about credit,” I say, shaking my head.
“It’s about control.”
I don’t say anything.
Tommy points a finger at me. “You’re trying to do everything yourself.
You can’t let anyone else help because you need everything to be perfect, otherwise you feel like you’ve let everyone down.
Which isn’t true, by the way. So you’re working yourself into the ground trying to be in a million places at once to get the town ready for the holidays, and meanwhile, that blogger isn’t even coming. ”
“Bad vibes and need for professional distance from an ongoing crisis is such a shitty excuse.” It was the last thing we needed. “ Crisis is an exaggeration.”
“Yeah, I know, but Flo’s still crushed.”
His words sting. For all Flo’s eccentricities, she means so much to me, and the thought of her being sad or let down cuts me deep.
“Clara wasn’t the problem, Jack,” Tommy says gently.
“She’s a Davenport. She’s a representative of the biggest problem this town has right now.”
“She’s also someone who spent less than twenty-four hours in this town and during that time charmed you, was treated with nothing but suspicion by everyone, and still faced Flo head-on with a promise of redemption.”
“Like I said, she also came with an agenda.” I press my fingers to my temples, trying to massage the stress of the day away.
Tommy shrugs. “Maybe. But she also came with a promise to help.”
I lean my elbows on the bar and rest my head in my hands. “What if I made a mistake? Walking out on the conversation before finding out exactly what she had in mind?”
“You did,” Tommy says cheerfully. I glare at him. “But lucky for you, everyone will still love you. You make sleighs for kids and fix people’s front steps and get handwritten thank-you notes from third graders. You can still fix this.”
“How?”
He shrugs. “Start by returning the plate. And the knife. And the fork.”
I groan.
“And maybe, just maybe,” he continues, “if you see her again, don’t go all sheriff-in-a-western on her and tell her to get out of your town.”
I cringe as I replay the conversation with Clara in my head. “I hate you.”
“I can’t understand why.” He grins. “I’m the guy trying to get you a date.”
“I can’t date a Davenport, Tommy. You should’ve given your witch more guidelines.”
He scoffs. “You could. Flo said she didn’t even work on the copycat doll.
She’s just a fixer here to throw money at us to get the videos down.
You’ve dated worse. That one woman who cut holes in all your clothes?
She wasn’t great. And that one who hit Arthur with her car!
Definitely worse than someone just doing their job. ”
I’m beginning to see why my best friend thought he needed the intervention of magic to get me a date. I rest my chin on my fist and watch the Christmas lights blink around the edges of the top shelf. “Thanks for the walk down memory lane.”
“You weren’t your dad when you worked for him. What’s to say she’s even anything like hers?”
It’s his landing blow before Tommy walks off to serve someone else.
Fraser Falls is still my favorite place, but it feels like we’re holding it together with string lights, cinnamon sugar, and a whole lot of hope.
Flo’s banking on this being the year that turns everything around, for tourism, the florist, the café—hell, even the tavern.
I still feel like the guy who started it all, gave my neighbors hope and couldn’t see it through.
Tommy returns and I seize the opportunity to move the conversation off Clara and my disastrous dating history.
“I don’t know if I can cope hearing Flo talk about that town in Illinois again this year,” I say, glancing at the “Upcoming Holiday Events” flyer Flo made and distributed all over town.
“They’ve got a carousel this year. And the twenty-foot-tall advent calendar that they open every day is back.
All we’ve got are Flo’s temper and a church bell with a two-second delay. ”
Tommy snorts. “Don’t forget that we may soon also have fake snow. Besides, that town cheated last year. They had a drone show choreographed to Michael Bublé. They emotionally manipulated everyone by pulling on their festive heartstrings.”
“Well, we don’t have emotional manipulation money,” I say, shaking my head. I sent the emotional manipulation wallet holder to Maine.
“And you can’t afford to suffer any more emotional damage. So stop moping around, get out of my bar, and go home and kiss your dog. Tomorrow is a brand-new day,” Tommy says, opening a bag of potato chips.
I start laughing slowly, and it rolls into something uncontrollable until I’m wiping tears from my eyes with the backs of my hands. “Sorry, sorry. I got a vision of Donald trying to stop a drone show with his net and Mariah Carey playing in the background.”
Saying it out loud sets me off again and soon Tommy is laughing with me. “I needed that laugh. Okay, I’m going home. It’ll be fine.”
“It will be fine, buddy. It always is.”
“Thanks, man,” I say, pulling my wallet out of my pocket.
He smacks it out of my hand. “Absolutely not.”
“You’re only saying that so you can tell everyone I stole from you as well,” I argue.
“I just think it could be fun for you to rebrand as the Fraser Falls kleptomaniac.”
“Good luck getting anyone to believe you after I start a rumor you’re into witchcraft.”
I try not to think about today’s events on my walk home, but I can’t help it.
I don’t know if I made the right call sending Clara away.
She caught me off guard after we spent last night together.
As soon as she identified herself as a Davenport, I couldn’t see her as anything other than someone untrustworthy.
If I hadn’t laughed and flirted with her last night, would I have been more open to hearing her out today? Did I just screw over my town for my ego?
The worst part is I did like her. I liked talking to her. Liked looking at her.
But liking isn’t the same as trusting and right now, I don’t trust her.