Chapter 4
The Hadley’s windows had six panes along Walnut Street, and every December, five of them opened on Thanksgiving weekend and one of them didn’t.
The sixth window stayed behind a red velvet curtain until the second Monday of the month.
Then, live on Good Morning Philly, somebody from the store walked the host down the sidewalk past all six, told the story in them, and pulled the rope.
People came at dawn to stand in the cold and see it.
Kids made guesses. The morning radio ran a contest. For eight years the somebody with the rope had been Caroline.
Luz found her in the stockroom at six-forty on Monday morning and shut the door.
“The producer called me,” Luz said. “Jenny. The nice one with the nose ring.”
“Okay.”
“She wanted to confirm that the store was sending a spokesperson this year instead of you.” Luz folded her arms. “Her words. She said she got a call Saturday afternoon from Mr. Bradshaw’s office.
The office said Mrs. Bradshaw would be stepping back from public appearances during a difficult time, and a representative would handle the segment. ”
Caroline put down the box of ornament hooks she was holding.
“Who called?”
“She didn’t say. She said it was a woman. Very polite. Very sorry about everything.”
“Connor promised,” Caroline said. “No statements. No people. He promised me on the phone.”
“Maybe he didn’t know.”
Caroline looked at her.
“I’m just saying maybe,” Luz said. “I’m not saying I believe it. I’m saying it’s a possibility, and you should know it’s a possibility before you walk out there and lose your mind on live television.”
“I’m not going to lose my mind on live television.”
“Good. Because the other thing Jenny said,” Luz went on, “is that they want the kiss. Obviously. Rick’s going to ask. He’s been told to ask.”
Rick Santos had hosted Good Morning Philly for twenty years. He had a big laugh and a bigger tan, and every December he put on a Hadley’s scarf and pretended to be surprised by the sixth window. Caroline liked him. She had also watched him make a city councilman cry.
“What did you tell Jenny?” Caroline said.
“I told her Hadley’s is sending the same person it always sends.” Luz looked at her over the top of her reading glasses. “Was that right?”
Caroline picked up her red scarf from the shelf where she’d left it and wound it twice around her neck.
“That was right,” she said.
* * *
Walnut Street was eighteen degrees that morning, and by seven-thirty the news van was already parked at the curb with its dish up.
Two big lights on stands had been set up on the sidewalk, and they made the air look white and thick, like the inside of a snow globe.
A crowd had come. It was bigger than usual.
There were regular Monday people, office workers with travel mugs and mothers with strollers bundled in plastic.
And there were people who had not come for the window.
They stood in a tight bunch near the van with their phones already up.
And behind the camera, next to Jenny the producer, stood Brittany Vail.
She was in the camel coat. She had a black knit hat on over her blonde hair and a phone in her gloved hand, and she was talking to Jenny in a low, warm voice, touching her arm now and then, the way you’d touch the arm of a friend.
She was not inside Hadley’s. She was on the public sidewalk.
She had kept the rule exactly, and broken it completely.
When she saw Caroline come out of the front doors, Brittany’s face went very still. Then she smiled and lifted one hand in a little wave.
Caroline did not wave back.
“Mrs. Bradshaw!” Jenny hurried over with her clipboard. She was pink from the cold and plainly miserable. “Hi. Hi. I’m so sorry, there was some confusion about who was coming—”
“There’s no confusion,” Caroline said. “It’s me. It’s always me.”
“Great. That’s great. Totally great.” Jenny glanced back at Brittany, and then back at Caroline, and then at her clipboard.
“So, same as always. Rick walks with you from window one to window six. You tell the story. You pull the rope at seven-forty-eight. We’ve got about six minutes.
” She lowered her voice. “And he’s going to ask you about—”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry. It came from upstairs.”
“It’s okay, Jenny.” Caroline looked past her at Brittany, who had lifted her phone and was typing something. “I know exactly where it came from.”
Rick Santos came out of the van in a huge parka with his Hadley’s scarf on top of it. He saw Caroline and his face did a real thing, a sorry thing, before it did the TV thing. He took both her hands in his big gloved ones.
“Sweetheart,” he said. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Everybody keeps telling me that.”
“I mean it. I’ve got to ask what I’ve got to ask. You can just say ‘no comment,’ and I’ll move on, and nobody will think less of you.”
“I know,” Caroline said. “Thank you, Rick.”
“Thirty seconds!” called the camera guy.
Caroline stood in front of window one. Her feet were already numb. The phones on her felt like heat from the lights.
She thought about Friday night and the red X on the mezzanine. You have a show. Run your show.
“Five,” the camera guy said, and counted the rest on his fingers.
* * *
“Good morning, Philly!” Rick boomed. “It is cold, it is dark, and it is the best day of December, because we’re out here on Walnut Street for the unveiling of the sixth Hadley’s window! And I am here with the woman who makes the magic happen every single year. Caroline Bradshaw.”
“Good morning, Rick.”
“So tell us. What’s the story this year?”
Caroline turned to window one.
This part, she could do in her sleep. She had built these windows. She had sketched them in January at her kitchen counter, and fought with the carpenters about them in April, and painted half the snow on them herself in October at two in the morning. She knew every inch.
“This year’s windows are called Home for Christmas,” she said. “They follow one little town through one Christmas Eve.”
She walked Rick down the line, and the camera came with them.
Window one was the train station, with a tiny steam train pulling in and people getting off with their bags.
Window two was the main street, with a baker in his doorway and snow falling past the lamps.
Window three was the skating pond, where the mechanical skaters went around and around, and one small skater kept falling down and getting back up.
The kids in the crowd always cheered for that one.
They cheered for it now. Window four was a church, lit from inside.
Window five was a house on a hill, with every window glowing and a family inside setting a table.
“And six?” Rick said, stopping in front of the red curtain. “What’s behind door number six, Caroline?”
“You’ll have to wait about two more minutes.”
He laughed his big laugh. “She’s a professional, folks. She’s making us wait.”
Then his face changed, just a little. It got serious in the way TV faces get serious. He turned away from the curtain and toward her, and he lowered the microphone a few inches, as if they were having a private talk.
“Caroline,” he said. “I have to ask. I know a lot of people watching have been thinking about you since Friday night. How are you holding up?”
The crowd went quiet.
Behind the camera, Brittany had stopped typing. She stood watching, her lips slightly parted, her phone held against her chest.
Brittany was hoping. That was the whole reason.
She had gotten Rick to ask this question on live television at seven-forty-five in the morning because she wanted Caroline to cry.
Or freeze. Or say something bitter and small that could be clipped and played on a loop.
Something that would make people say, poor thing, she’s falling apart, somebody else should run that floor.
The anger came up in Caroline so fast and so hot that for a second her ears rang with it.
She smiled at Rick.
“Rick, I’ve had better Fridays,” she said.
A few people in the crowd laughed, surprised.
“I’ve run the mistletoe lighting for eight years,” Caroline said. “And every year I tell people the same thing. I say the mistletoe has a way of finding people who need to be found.” She looked right into the camera. “This year, it found my husband. So I think we can all agree it’s still working.”
The crowd laughed out loud. Rick laughed so hard he had to hold on to his scarf.
“Now, I’ve seen some numbers going around,” Caroline went on, dry as a cracker.
“On Saturday it was thirty seconds. By Sunday night, a man on the radio said it was a full minute. I’d like everybody at home to know that I timed it myself, and it was nine.
But I’m sure that by New Year’s, he’ll have kissed her for an hour and a half and proposed. ”
Rick was wiping his eyes now. The camera guy’s shoulders were shaking. A woman in the crowd with a stroller yelled, “You go, girl!” and people cheered.
Caroline let them. Then she held up one hand.
“Rick, I’m doing fine,” she said, more quietly.
“Thank you for asking. I really mean that. I have my father and my friends and two hundred of the best people in this city working on my floor. That’s a lot more than most people have.
” She turned, and put her gloved hand on the rope beside the red curtain.
“But you didn’t bring a camera out here in eighteen degrees to talk about my husband.
You came to see the sixth window. So let’s see the sixth window. ”
“Let’s see it!” Rick shouted, and the crowd shouted it with him.
Caroline pulled the rope.
The red curtain slid back.