Chapter 10
“Boston,” Stephanie said, for the fourth time.
“Boston.”
“You said yes. On the phone. To the lady.”
“I said yes.”
Stephanie put her coffee mug down on the kitchen counter so hard that coffee jumped out of it. Then she came around the counter and grabbed Caroline in a hug that lifted her off her feet, which Stephanie was not tall enough to do, so it was more of a violent lean.
“I’m so proud of you,” Stephanie said into her hair. “I’m so proud of you, I could scream. I’m going to scream. Can I scream?”
“It’s six-thirty in the morning. Your neighbors.”
“My neighbors can suck it.” Stephanie let her go and held her at arm’s length. Then her face changed. “Why do you look like somebody died?”
Caroline didn’t know how to answer that.
She had not slept. She had lain on the pull-out bed with the metal bar in her back and Joyce’s card in her hand, and she had waited to feel the way Stephanie looked right now.
Proud. Free. She had said yes on her father’s front step, and for about ten seconds, it had felt like jumping off a high rock into cold water. Then it had just felt cold.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I think I’m still in shock.”
“About the plan.”
“About all of it.”
Her phone buzzed on the counter. They both looked at it.
It was Connor.
The board met at 6. They threw the plan out. Unanimous. It’s gone. It will never come back. I’m sorry.
A minute later, another one.
Brittany’s on leave. I tried to fire her this morning. Her lawyer says she has two months of texts and she’ll sue. My lawyers say wait. I’m not going to wait long.
Caroline read them both and put the phone face-down.
“What did he say?” Stephanie asked.
“He fixed it,” Caroline said. “He made some calls, and he fixed it.”
Stephanie looked at her for a long moment. “And you’re going to Boston anyway.”
“I’m going to Boston anyway.”
“Good,” Stephanie said, and meant it. Then, more quietly, she said, “Does he know?”
“No.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
“After Christmas,” Caroline said. “When I file.”
* * *
Hadley’s was busier on Monday than it had been all year.
It was the story. Half of Philadelphia had read the Inquirer over Sunday breakfast, and the other half had seen it on their phones.
By ten in the morning, there was a line down Walnut Street.
People came in and bought things they didn’t need.
They bought scarves and ornaments and boxes of fudge.
They told the girls at the registers to tell Mrs. Bradshaw they were on her side.
One man bought forty dollars of peppermint bark and left a note for Caroline that said, My ex did this to me too. Give ’em hell.
A woman in a church hat stopped Caroline by the elevators and took both of her hands.
“Honey,” the woman said. “I’ve been shopping at Hadley’s since 1972. They are not taking this store away from you. Not while I’m alive.”
Caroline thanked her. She did not tell the woman that nobody was taking it away from her anymore. She did not tell her that she was the one leaving.
She did not tell Luz, either.
She wanted to. Luz kept looking at her all day with a question in her face.
But every time Caroline opened her mouth to say it, she thought about the staff clapping on the gold star, and about Homer the head elf saying I report to her, and about Luz walking three miles from Broad Street in the snow. And she closed her mouth again.
After Christmas, she told herself. Get through the season. Then tell everyone.
At four o’clock, she went up to the mezzanine to get ready for the broadcast.
* * *
Carols Under the Dome was the other thing Hadley’s did every year that the whole city watched.
It happened on the third Monday in December.
From seven to eight at night, Channel 6 carried it live from the atrium.
There were three church choirs and a high school brass band and the pipe organ, and Rick Santos hosted it in his Hadley’s scarf.
People sat on folding chairs on the marble floor and stood three deep on the balconies, and at the end of the hour, the whole building sang “Silent Night” with the lights down low.
Old people in nursing homes all over Philadelphia watched it.
Caroline had gotten letters about it for eight years.
She ran it the way she ran the lighting, from the mezzanine, with a headset in one ear.
At six-thirty, Jenny the producer came up the mezzanine stairs with her clipboard and her nose ring. She looked nervous. Jenny always looked nervous, so Caroline didn’t think much about it.
“We’ve got a small change to the running order,” Jenny said. “At seven-forty. After the brass band, before ‘Silent Night.’”
“What kind of change?”
“A two-minute address.” Jenny looked at her clipboard. “From the chairman of the Hadley’s board.”
Caroline put down her headset.
“Who set that up?”
“He did. He called my boss directly. This morning.” Jenny’s face went pink. “I thought you knew. He said—my boss said he said it was important. That it was about the store. And the season.”
“He’s not supposed to—” Caroline stopped.
No statements with the store’s name in them.
That had been the rule. She had said it on the fire escape.
But the fire escape felt like a year ago.
And the rules had been for a husband who had kissed another woman under a light.
They had not been written for a husband who had signed away her floor.
She hadn’t known there needed to be rules for that.
“Do you want me to cut it?” Jenny said. “I can try. My boss won’t like it. But I can try.”
Caroline looked down over the rail.
The atrium was filling. The choirs were lining up by the elevators in their red robes. The brass band was tuning. Below the clock, in the space where the Santa chair usually sat, the crew had set up a small podium with a microphone.
She thought, he’s going to apologize. He was going to stand up in front of the city and say he was sorry about the plan. It would be short. It would be like his statement. My marriage is hers to speak about. She could stand on the mezzanine for two minutes and let him say it.
“No,” she said. “Leave it.”
* * *
The first forty minutes were beautiful.
They always were. The Mount Airy Baptist choir did “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” and the whole floor clapped along.
The girls’ choir from Saint Anne’s sang “O Holy Night,” and one little soloist hit the high note so clean and hard that people on the third-floor balcony gasped.
Rick Santos told a story about his first Christmas in Philly and cried a little, which he did every year.
The brass band played “Sleigh Ride” much too fast and nobody cared.
Caroline stood at her red X at the rail and called the cues and did not look for Connor in the crowd.
She saw Stephanie, though. Stephanie had come straight from court. She was standing near the candy counter in her work suit, with the pink NINE SECONDS shirt pulled on over her blouse. When Caroline looked down, Stephanie gave her two thumbs up.
At seven thirty-eight, the brass band finished. Rick went to the podium under the clock.
“Folks,” Rick said, “we’ve got a little something different this year. The chairman of Hadley’s has asked for a couple of minutes. Please welcome Connor Bradshaw.”
The atrium went quiet in a strange, uneven way. There was some clapping. There was some murmuring. Somebody on the second-floor balcony booed, and somebody else told him to hush.
Connor came out from beside the organ and walked to the podium.
He was not in a suit. He was in the old navy peacoat, the one from Stephanie’s landing. He stood under the brass clock with his hands on the sides of the podium and looked out at nine hundred people and three cameras. He looked tired and pale and very steady.
He did not look up at the mezzanine.
“Good evening,” he said. “I’ll be quick. I know you came to hear the choirs.”
Some people laughed. Not many.
“Yesterday,” Connor said, “the Inquirer printed a document with my signature on it. It was a plan to take the Hadley’s holiday season away from my wife and give it to someone else.
It’s real. I signed it. I signed it without asking her, because I was a coward, and I believed something I should have checked. ”
The atrium was completely silent now.
On the mezzanine, Caroline held on to the brass rail. Okay, she thought. Okay. Say you’re sorry. Then get off the stage.
Connor reached into the inside pocket of the peacoat and took out two sheets of paper.
She knew what they were before he held them up. The gold H was visible even from the mezzanine.
“This is the plan,” he said.
And he tore it in half.
He did it slowly, so the cameras could see. He tore it down the middle, and then he put the halves together and tore them again, and then he let the pieces fall on the marble floor in front of the podium.
The atrium broke into applause. It came up from the floor like a wave. People stood up off the folding chairs. Somebody whistled. On the third-floor balcony, a woman shouted, “Yes!”
Caroline did not move.
“The board threw it out this morning,” Connor said, when he could be heard.
“Every vote. It’s gone. So let me say this as plainly as I can, in front of the whole city, so nobody ever has to wonder.
” He leaned into the microphone. “Caroline Bradshaw will run the Hadley’s holiday for as long as she wants it.
Not because I say so. Because there’s nobody alive who does it better. ”
The applause came again, louder. Rick Santos was clapping with his microphone under his arm.
Up on the mezzanine, something cold spread through Caroline’s chest.
For as long as she wants it.