CHAPTER TEN
You were never too old to love movie night at the Colonial Theater. Hannah Leigh still adored the way sound filled every corner of the century-old theater and how no one minded a little whispered commentary. But tonight, even that warm hum of nostalgia couldn’t quiet the restless beat in her chest.
When the final credits rolled, she lingered, not quite ready to face the man sitting a few rows ahead.
Aunt Winnie had been right—Nate wasn’t the same boy she’d known as a teenager—but that didn’t mean she was ready to trust her heart again.
Especially with Birdie’s words still buzzing around in Hannah Leigh’s head.
She slipped out a side door into the crisp night air. The cold met her like a sigh, quiet and steady. Flakes drifted beneath the lamplight, slow and silver, twirling on a soft winter breeze.
“The first snowfall of the year,” she whispered, tilting her face toward the sky.
Downtown South Hill looked ready for a Christmas card photo.
Even the police station was in on the fun, decked out with antlers on the patrol car mirrors and a red nose on the grill.
A box marked Operation Christmas Cheer: Evidence Drop overflowed with toys and coats.
Somewhere down the block, a speaker played “Silent Night,” its melody threading through the stillness.
“Hey, are you okay?”
The voice startled her, but she recognized it instantly. Nate.
She turned, forcing a smile. “Hey. I’m great. Just appreciating the view.”
Under the lamppost across from Harper’s Jewelry, he looked every bit the hometown Christmas card come to life with that easy grin curving beneath a trace of scruff, flannel collar turned up, and snow dusting his dark hair and broad shoulders.
“You marched out of the theater like someone said Die Hard was the best Christmas movie,” he teased.
“No one dared,” she said. “But the praline-to-popcorn combo was my undoing.”
“Then you need hot cocoa. The smallest size. Doctor’s orders.”
“You’re a doctor now?”
“Only when the prescription’s chocolate. And that I have two cups in hand already didn’t hurt.” He handed her one.
“Fair enough.” She sat beside him on the frosty bench. From there, the LOVE sign rose in the distance by the railroad museum, the metal L still shaped from an old train crossing. “Were you waiting for me?”
“More like hoping to cross paths again.” Nate looked away for a moment. “I’ve been thinking about the locket. Do you really think someone buried it there a long time ago?”
“Hard to say,” she said. “Remember how rain used to wash down that hill? Mud could have hidden and uncovered it a dozen times over the decades.”
“True.”
“Birdie overheard us talking about it,” she added with a grin. “She must’ve caught part of it while stringing garland by the front doors. Now she’s made it her holiday mission to help solve the mystery.”
He groaned. “She’s got the best heart, and the worst boundaries.”
“I think she means well.”
“She means headlines.”
“True.” For a moment, the air between them warmed.
When she met his eyes, the notion she’d been chasing vanished clean out of her head. Heat climbed her neck before she pulled herself together. “Would you—uh—help me figure it out?”
“You mean, become your co-conspirator in Christmas sleuthing?” Nate teased.
“Exactly. Because if Birdie gets involved, this thing will be national news by Thursday.”
Nate smiled, slow and sure. “I was hoping you’d ask.”
That old flutter stirred in her chest again—light, stubborn, impossible to ignore. She blamed the cocoa. Definitely the cocoa.
“Where do we start?” he asked.
“I’ll talk to Aunt Winnie,” she said. “She might recognize the couple in the photos. They look old. Like really old.”
“The photos could have faded over the years. Heat. Moisture. All that. Hard to say.”
“Either way, I’d love to return it to the family. Especially at Christmas.”
“I’m in,” he said easily.
His agreeableness caught her off guard. “Tomorrow morning I’ve got to help at the Chamber with stuffing Santa’s Secret Race gift bags.”
“I’ve been dying to know what that is this year,” he said. “Are you entering?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“I always do,” he said proudly. “Last year it was a cocoa chug with oven mitts. A fourteen-year-old beat me. Kid’s a legend.”
“What did he win?”
He gave her a mock look of offense. “Does it matter? An ‘I Survived the Cocoa Chug’ shirt and a year’s supply of marshmallows. Which just so happens is four jumbo bags.”
“That’d last me a decade.”
His laugh came low and easy. “I’ll skip the race this year to help you with the gift bags, and afterward, coffee is on me. We’ll figure out this mystery together.”
That caught her by surprise.
He moved backward, hands in his pockets, smile lingering like an afterthought. “Glad you came home, Hannah Leigh.” Then he turned and walked away.
By the time she found her voice to say me too, he was already gone.
It was late, and this trip had caught her off guard right and left. She’d worked so hard to avoid Nate after the movie only to have to face him out here in the dark alone. She might have been better off just letting things be amicable at the theater.
Doubting myself won’t get me anywhere, and Nate doesn’t deserve this much thought. He was a childhood crush. It’s the past, and I’ll be gone before I get to know the grown-up Nate anyway.
She made a dash for her truck, the heater groaning to life. Headlights tunneled through the night, the road unspooling before her like a dream she half-remembered. South Hill at its winter best—quiet, familiar, tender around the edges.
When she reached Aunt Winnie’s, frost silvered every surface, making the holiday lights along the porch shimmer brighter.
She’d always loved how her father used to drive them through town to admire the decorations.
They’d been gone almost eight years now, and the ache never fully left. Especially not at Christmas.
On the porch steps, the air scented with wood smoke. Inside, the comforting aroma of Aunt Winnie’s beef stew welcomed her home. A note on the kitchen counter read, Help yourself, sweetheart.
She served herself a bowl of it and sat at the kitchen table. Through the bay window, the tall pines stood like guardians, branches dusted in white. The sight tugged a smile from her.
She cradled the bowl in her hands, savoring the stew’s warmth as her mind wandered back to the locket.
She pictured it lying on the table—the way the faint light would catch on its worn edge, gold softened to bronze from years underground.
In her mind, the clasp opened easily now, revealing two black-and-white portraits smiling out, faces preserved in miniature, waiting for someone to remember them.
Maybe the locket hadn’t been a token of romance after all. Maybe it was a family’s heirloom, a keepsake waiting for the right hands to hold it again.
She imagined her own grandparents’ faces in its place and the ache of how much she’d give for even that small connection to her roots.
The locket didn’t seem lost anymore, but patient, as if waiting for the right moment, and the right heart, to tell its story.
Discovering it at Christmastime seemed like more than chance. The past had found its listeners, and maybe, just maybe, so had they.