Chapter 1 #2
“I hope you didn’t forget your baby at the Gingerbread Pantry again. Did you?” I inspect her baby-less state.
Josie giggles. “That was just once! It’s been an adjustment to motherhood.” She grimaces. “But he’s fine. He is with Mace. But all I do is talk about babies. I want to talk about men. Who was that?”
“The creep in the fedora?”
“And a trench coat! Yum!”
“Some of us have outgrown our middle school crushes on guys with trench coats as their whole personality.”
“He liked you! I saw him at the reindeer jerky stall. They really upped their game from last year. I don’t feel sick at all after eating there.”
Josie eyes the peppermint bark. Her gaze keeps flicking to it then to me.
“Go on, have some candy.” I push the glass jar over to her.
“Candyyyy!” She stuffs it in her face. “So,” she says around the mouthful of chocolate, “let’s strategize how you’re going to ask him out.”
“I’m not asking him out. I don’t want him in my life.”
“He likes you! I saw him making googly eyes at the stall.”
“Ugh, no he wasn’t.”
“Do you have ice cream?”
I hand Josie some Yule log swirl and gummy polar bears because I know how my friend likes her ice cream.
“I don’t have time for a man anyway.”
“No, you need a boyfriend. You said you’re decentering Taylor Grace, right?”
“Trying. I keep getting sucked back in.”
“A man will help.”
“Yeah, well, not Fedora. Taylor Grace is absolutely after him. And it’s so obvious he’s into her. Men love a psychotic, manic pixie dream girl.”
“It’s so unfair that someone so awful gets to look like a trophy wife,” Josie muses.
“Do you want to go get a turkey sandwich or a salad? Something not candy-coated.”
“Yeah, probably should. I had doughnuts for breakfast and a fruitcake parfait for lunch. Protein’s good if you’re nursing, right?
It’s nice that you have this stall, though.
We can see the Christmas tree from here.
I’d say I’m excited for Christmas except Mace wants to take all the kids to Seattle for the holidays. ”
“That sounds…”
“Like a lot, right?” she says as we wait in line for a Santa’s pizza cone.
“One per person!” Lydia announces loudly. “Hey, girls!” She hands us our steaming pizza cones. “Oh, Josie, I think Davy might have Aiden over for a sleepover tonight. Just wanted to let you know. You can drop him off with Travis if you don’t want him.”
Josie shrugs. “We won’t even notice.”
Lydia gives me a sympathetic look. “I heard my sister go off on you.”
“Yep, right on time.”
“She’s just gotten worse and worse. She and Damien got in a fight. He claims she’s cheating on him. She claims his mother is out to get her.” Lydia makes a face. “I had to listen to it for three hours last night. I literally can’t take it anymore. Travis wants me to call her therapist.”
“Good luck,” Josie says, dunking her stuffed-crust cheese stick into the gooey cheese-and-pepperoni dip. “Willow says she and the therapist are…” She mimes rolling her hips.
“Oh, great. She’s going to be insufferable when he dumps her.”
“Maybe his wife will take her out”—Josie snorts—“and we’ll have a wonderful Christmas after all.”
They both laugh.
“We shouldn’t joke about that, I guess.”
“Hey, we’ve created life, and we can take it away.”
“Amen.” Lydia pats her pregnant belly.
“Are you going to have gingerbread churros again this year?” Josie asks as we make our way through the excited crowd toward the huge Christmas tree.
It rivals the one at Rockefeller Center, and unlike that tree, this one gets bigger every year because it’s planted smack-dab in the center of the town square.
“Yeah, I’ll do them Friday.” I poke at my Santa’s pizza dip. “I’m so sick from the altercation with Taylor Grace, I can’t even eat. I don’t know if I can survive this Christmas season.”
“Yesss! You should use the churros as the opener for Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome.” She nudges me. “Might brighten up your holiday season. Can’t spell ‘stress relief’ without sex!”
Fedora is across the crowd, a head taller than everyone else, especially with that stupid hat. He even has a little paper in the band, like he’s a 1940s private eye or something.
Mayor Loring climbs up onto the makeshift stage to address the crowd. “Merry Christmas, everyone!”
Josie cheers and whoops for her sister-in-law.
I sigh and clap.
“Welcome to another season of the Harrogate Christmas Market, the biggest in the Northeast! As your mayor, I’m going to officially kick us off. Let’s light that Christmas tree.”
Ida, resident senior, owner of the general store, and one of the Christmas committee members, hands her an oversized decapitated Santa head.
“Now, to figure out who will do the honors, we’re going to hold our first raffle of the season.” She reaches into the head. “We want to showcase one of our Christmas market stalls.” She opens up the paper. “The Christmas tree lighter will be Stall Two-Forty-Four,” she announces.
Crap.
“Ooh, that’s you! That’s the Jingle Bites Café!” Josie whoops loudly and jumps and waves.
Taylor Grace rushes up to the stage, screaming, “That’s my café too!”
“Fine, Taylor Grace. You can do it.” I sigh and turn to leave.
“Why don’t you both push the button together?” Megan offers.
“I don’t want to push it anyway,” Taylor Grace crosses her arms, nose in the air.
“Whatever.” I flip the oversized switch.
Nothing happens.
I flip it back and forth.
Gideon fiddles with the electrical wires leading to the tree.
“It was working this morning… Aha. Try it again.”
I flip the switch.
The lights on the tree blaze, and everyone cheers.
Then I smell roasting pork over the sugar-and-spice smell of the Christmas market. The lights get brighter, then several of them pop, sparking.
The fire department gets ready.
“First fire of the season, boys!”
They cheer.
“No one is burning this tree down,” Mayor Loring threatens.
Suddenly, all the lights go out. Smoke wafts out of the tree, and the fire department aims its hoses.
“What is that smell?”
“I thought the reindeer barbecue was next Monday,” people whisper.
I have a sinking feeling that my bad day is about to get much worse.
The branches of the tree move. There’s rustling like a big animal is in there.
People in the audience scream.
Hunter, Meg’s husband, jumps up on the stage protectively. Fedora does the same for Taylor Grace.
I have no man who cares about my safety, so I shove the branches out of the way.
More rustling, then branches creak, and a corpse falls out of the tree to swing silently, flames crackling, wrapped merrily in Christmas tree lights. There’s a creak and a snap, then the corpse falls out of the sky…
Right onto the roof of my stall.
“Water!” The fire department douses the Jingle Bites stall.
“Oh my god!” Taylor Grace’s screams pierce the night. “Jonah! Jonah! Someone help him!” She rushes to him.
Fedora holds her back, away from the smoldering corpse.
“Jonah! Oh, poor Jonah!” Then she turns to me, face a mask of fury. “You killed him, Willow Price! You killed Dr. Merriweather!”