Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Luke
He couldn’t stop thinking about Kylie’s face when she walked into the office at the camp yesterday.
And not just because she was so gorgeous.
The attached auditorium and greenhouse were unique features, the kind of structures you just didn’t find anywhere else, and Kylie had the vision to see how special it could be.
Those very same features made the camp a white elephant of sorts on the real estate market, leading buyers who lacked imagination to say no to the place.
Earlier in the year, the giant chocolate corporation Markstone’s had nearly bought the camp, but their goal was to raze it and put in a theme park and condominiums. Rachel, Kell’s now-girlfriend, had worked for Markstone’s, and she was sent here to convince Lucinda Armistead to sell her small company, Love You Chocolate, to the behemoth.
Rachel knew that the Luview family was also trying to buy it, and when she learned about the plans for the old camp, she lost her job by warning Deanna about the deal.
Luke had been grateful to Rachel for sacrificing so much for their town and family, but the real reason she’d done it hadn’t been simple kindness.
Love had made her do it. She loved Kell, but she also loved the town.
Kylie loved this camp even more than Rachel had loved Love You, Maine.
Leave it to Kylie to find the treasure in something others cast aside.
Tonight was date night. Six days before Christmas.
And Luke was running errands, mad at himself for being so late mailing their gift to Amber’s parents in Florida. The lines at the post office on Main Street would be long by their small-town standards.
Which meant five people deep.
By New York City standards, that was slow, he knew, but this wasn’t a bustling city.
Not by a longshot.
And the town liked it that way, thank you very much.
But the Love You postmark was the only one in the country that wasn’t a simple circle. It was, of course, a heart, and Love stamps postmarked Love You, Maine, were in high demand worldwide. Accordingly, every tourist wanted to send postcards from the town, and that meant a lot of extra customers.
Especially in mid-February. Visitors swelled the numbers everywhere in town then, of course.
You couldn’t move an inch without seeing red foil-wrapped chocolate somewhere in the town of Love You during the whole Valentine’s Day month.
Red and white holiday lights peppered every surface then, with the Love Games, the Valentine’s Day festival, and so much more every February.
Add in all the couples deciding to get married at Love You Forever, the town's 24/7 drive-thru wedding site, and the town exploded.
But now, on December 19, it was just New England small-town holiday cheer, and when he reached the post office, he did a double take.
Not because the line was longer than expected.
But because a dog riding a skateboard whizzed past him.
Smiling.
It was a little French bulldog, ugly as sin, using its right two legs to propel itself on the skateboard, deftly navigating small curves, pitching its weight left and right to keep up with physics.
Mel jogged slowly behind it, shouting. “Yes! Pierre! Good dog!”
Oh, brother.
While the little bugger didn’t have long fur, he somehow looked windblown as he sped through downtown, pedestrians dodging the surprise torpedo as he made his way through the shopping district, many whipping out phones to video the spectacle. Holiday customers rushed out of shops to gawk.
“Hey, Luke!” Mel waved as she ran past, people chuckling and whispering as the post office line moved him indoors.
“You coming to Tuba Christmas?” Moore Mottin asked, nudging him with one elbow, his arms full of a stack of pre-packaged boxes.
Moore and Luke had been friends since infancy, born three days apart in the same hospital, but Moore’s job took him on the road a lot.
Heir to Love You Jewelers, he was a busy man, the town’s only jewelry store kept hopping with steady sales of engagement rings, wedding bands, and heart-shaped pendants.
“Listen to forty big horns oompah-pah their way through Jingle Bells?” Luke snorted.
“You’re coming,” Moore, a tuba player, shot back. “Harriet won’t let you miss it.”
“Right. It’s tomorrow?”
“Yep.”
“I’m on duty. Mom or Colleen must be bringing her.”
“Even better. Get paid to hear a good bass line.”
Luke snorted. “Sounds more like a dying moose colliding with Santa’s sleigh.”
“Says the cocky quarterback from high school. You never had the satisfaction of playing ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ at halftime.”
“Nope. Too busy nursing my sore shoulder.”
Moore’s eyes narrowed. Dressed in a suit, he looked a little too mature for Luke’s tastes, their normal garb leaning toward flannels and jeans, though Moore always dressed up for work.
Both were on the other side of thirty, a transition no one handled well, but something about the difference between Luke’s police uniform and Moore’s tailored wool suit set his teeth on edge.
Maybe that promotion to chief wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
“How’s Kylie?” Moore asked, voice low.
“Not you, too? Which date did you grab in the betting pool?”
“Date? I’ve been gone all week doing wholesale buys. What date?”
Moore wasn’t fooling anyone.
“Oh, come on. Don’t play dumb. I’m sure someone bought you in.”
His buddy gave up the charade. “Kell did. Just don’t do anything until December 29, okay?”
“Your store does just fine. You don’t need the winnings.”
“Since when did betting have anything to do with needing the money?”
The line moved closer, three people ahead of Luke now.
He knew two of them, Mitch Crawczyk from the auto body shop, and Sydney Ikoff, who worked as a CNA at the big nursing home on the edge of town, toward Fryeburg.
Both had boxes from online retailers they’d repurposed for sending Christmas gifts, a stark contrast from Moore’s neatly packed and branded merchandise from the jewelry store.
And a larger box on the bottom.
“Why are you here? You’re the boss. Shouldn’t you send Joey to do this?” Joey was Moore’s nephew, twenty-two, fresh out of college, and a true townie. He’d made it through four years down at University of Southern Maine, coming home every weekend, and moved back to Luview the day he graduated.
“Joey went to Boston to pick up charms from this artisanal co-op we found on Etsy that takes heirloom silverware sets and turns them into fine jewelry. Really great stuff. Dirt cheap in volume, too. It’s where we’re getting most of our Love You charms now.”
“That sounds so… Love You.”
The two snickered like schoolboys.
“Hey. Pays the mortgage, right? At least I don’t walk around looking like a red lollipop for my job.”
“Not always. Sometimes I shake it up and look like a bottle of calamine lotion, when we wear pink.”
“Ooo, you rebel, you.”
“Mailing Christmas gifts to Jordy?” Jordy was Moore’s fourteen-year-old son from his first marriage.
When they were high school seniors, Moore and his then-girlfriend, Cammie Forsythe, accidentally got themselves pregnant.
By the time they both graduated high school, they were married, and Cammie gave birth a week later.
Luke admired his friend, though he secretly ribbed him, too.
Because the marriage fell apart when Jordy was five, and Moore went on to remarry three years later, to a banking executive who cheated on him with the wedding reception DJ.
At the reception.
Right here in Love You.
Their divorce was quick, which left Moore twice married and twice divorced at twenty-seven.
AKA, cursed.
“Jordy wants cash. I got him something better,” Moore said, uncertainty filling his eyes.
Cammie had disappeared with Jordy nine years ago, running off to California to meet some dude she got to know on the Internet.
For nearly a year, she kept Moore away from his own kid, a year of nothing but suffering and pain.
Luke and Amber had just finished college and settled into their new jobs in Luview, while Moore lost his mind, using every legal maneuver, plenty of help from his parents, and lots of donations from townsfolk to get visitation rights and partial custody of Jordy.
He won.
Then, Cammie met some other dude, moved to Minnesota a few years ago, and spat out another kid with a new guy. Now, Moore got Jordy on alternating holidays and school breaks, and three weeks in the summer.
But Jordy had begun to blame Moore for “disappearing” for that year, and their relationship was strained. Unlike Moore, Cammie didn’t honor his “don’t bash the other parent” request, though Moore did. Too young to remember the truth, Jordy was living through puberty, Moore an easy target.
“Let me guess,” Luke said, noticing the Red Sox label in the box. “A signed jersey.”
“Yup.”
“You don’t have to compete with Mike.” Cammie’s current partner and father of Jordy’s half-sister was a minor league baseball player.
“I absolutely do,” Moore said tightly. “You know how much Jordy loves baseball.”
“And Colleen.”
“And Colleen,” Moore agreed, suddenly cheerful at the mention of her name. “She’s the best.” Colleen had helped Moore and Cammie with babysitting from the time Jordy was born until Cammie took off with him. These days, Jordy was blunt: he came to Luview to see Colleen and his grandparents.
His dad? Not so much.
“Most of the time,” Luke agreed. “She’s still my sister. I remember all her sins.”
“Colleen’s only sin is nearly killing off every guy she sees on the third date.”
“We all have our private curses, don’t we?” Luke muttered.
The line moved up, Mitch giving Moore and Luke a wave as he left, Sydney hefting what looked like five well-taped shoe boxes onto the counter. Tim Kurdan, the postmaster, was pitching in at the front desk.