Chapter 13
Chapter
Thirteen
Whitney
I open my notebook to the page my pen is clipped on and make a checkmark next to the bakery’s name to indicate we have their signed paperwork and that task is complete. Everybody who signed up is now parade official.
Now we’re on our way to the last known location of the wayward Santa suit.
Through the corner of my eye, I see him watching me stow the notebook back in my bag. “You’ve got the laptop and the tablet and your phone and the watch, and you seem like a very plugged-in kind of person. And yet you use a notebook instead of a digital notepad app.”
“I learned a long time ago, when my mom bought me a notebook for Christmas, that I think best with pen and paper. Brainstorming and just letting thoughts come and stuff like that. You know I love my spreadsheets and lists and tables, but those are boxes the info goes into. If you start with those, the creative part of your mind is trying to fit those boxes. When you have an empty page in front of you, you can do anything you want and then worry about slotting it into the proper boxes later.”
“So what you’re saying is that your mom got you a Christmas present that changed your life?”
“Maybe not as life-changing as vinegar on fries, but yeah.” I don’t really want to talk about my mom. Something about this town has me thinking about her a lot, and I keep remembering the sad resignation in her voice when I told her I’d be busy at Christmas, catching up in the office after being stuck in New Hampshire for two weeks.
So I change the subject. “Do you drive this vehicle in the parade?”
“I should. My predecessor drove his with the lights on and one of the guys drove the firetruck. But my deputy chief owns an excavation business and he likes to drive his own truck, pulling a backhoe they decorate with lights and stuff. Another one of the guys owns the antique tractor that pulls the church’s float, and he won’t let anybody else drive it. The others have small kids and they gear up and walk along the parade route with their families, interacting and stuff. So I drive the firetruck.”
“That’s way cooler than an SUV, anyway. Anybody can drive one of those.”
“That’s what I think, too.” He turns right onto a poorly paved road, and I’m thankful I wasn’t sipping my coffee at the time or I would have worn it. “You should ride in the firetruck with me for the parade.”
I laugh until I realize he’s serious. “I’m not riding in the firetruck with you. What if a problem pops up I need to address?”
“You found Donovan refills for his favorite pen from across the ocean. If something comes up at the fair, I’m confident you can fix it from the middle of Main Street. We go pretty slow, so you could even jump out if you had to. Just tuck and roll.” He takes a left onto a dirt road. “Actually, you’re so good at your job, I don’t think there will be any problems at all.”
His praise warms my cheeks, and I look out my window so he can’t see it. “What happens if there’s an actual emergency during the parade? Do you just turn the sirens on and make everybody scatter?”
He laughs as though he’s imagining doing just that. “We report as out of service during the parade, and our mutual aid partners from nearby towns handle anything that comes up. We do the same for them. Most of Charming Lake is at the parade, though, so it’s rare to have an emergency pop up. We had a fall on the ice once, but mostly we just yell at the people on the floats for not dressing warmly enough.”
“It’s like Halloween. Nobody wants to cover their costumes.”
“Nobody likes getting frostbite, either. But I think Charming Lake’s only had one fire on the day of the Christmas fair during my lifetime. An older couple was rushing so they wouldn’t miss the parade and each thought the other blew their scented candle out. Their cat and some Christmas decorations were involved somehow—I was in high school still, so I don’t know all the details—but FD was able to save everything. Things got a little soggy, of course, but it could have been worse.”
After flipping on his turn signal, Rob pulls into a driveway and throws the SUV in park. “I’ll be right back.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I know I said that before, but George wanted to give me hell about the increase in the fuel budget for the fire department and he wasn’t really understanding that if he’s paying more at the pump, maybe we are, too.”
“And the time before that?”
“Oh, Kath wanted me to have some pie.”
I reach over and slap his arm. “You had pie while I sat in your truck?”
“No!” He makes a big show out of rubbing his arm, even though my nails barely grazed him. “She wanted me to have some cherry pie, but I declined and it can take a while to keep persistently declining until the other person gives up.”
I narrow my eyes. “Is offering you some cherry pie a euphemism? I’ve heard fire fighters get a lot of calls from lonely damsels who aren’t in the 9-1-1 kind of distress.”
“No, it was literal pie, but—between you and me—Kath might be the worst baker in the entire state. Possibly in New England.” He nudges me with his elbow, grinning. “Why? Are you jealous?”
I snort and turn my head away, looking out my window and folding my arms as if that idea is too ludicrous to consider. It’s true, actually, but I’m not about to give him the satisfaction.
A blast of cold air followed by the closing of his door tells me he’s gone, and I turn the radio up so I can sing along with the Christmas songs in peace.
He’s only gone ten minutes this time, and he emerges with a large plastic tote. More cold air swirls in from the back when he opens the lift gate and shoves it into the back of the SUV.
“Sorry,” he says once he’s back in the driver’s seat. “It wasn’t enough to give me the damn suit. I had to hear all about how it’s been taking up room in her attic but that she doesn’t really mind because her grandmother made it and somehow she saw that as a segue to talking about what a jerk her grandfather was and how nobody was sad when he accidentally killed himself falling off the ladder while cleaning the gutters.”
“Why do I get the impression there are implied air quotes around accidentally ?”
He gives me a raised eyebrow look before backing out of the driveway. “Well, it was before my time, of course, but there was some question about trajectory—like where he would have landed if he fell versus where he might have landed if somebody reached out a second-story window and gave the ladder a good push—but the police chief at the time didn’t want to prolong his newly widowed sister’s grief by digging too deep.”
“Oh. Wow .”
“Let’s just say the people who were in charge of determining his cause of death were also people privy to how many times his wife went to the ER due to being clumsy.”
“Well, that story was certainly worth sitting in the car for,” I say. “What’s next?”
“Next, you have to help me get the suit on so we can inspect it because everybody I talked to thinks somebody else fixed it and we can’t have it coming apart on the big day. And with a storm coming, we’ll lose some of our time to get things done.”
“There’s a storm coming?” When he glances over at me, frowning, I know he’s going to make a crack about me not being on top of the weather. “My app is set to the weather at Mr. Wilson’s location, so I’ll be notified of any potential issues with his schedule.”
“Well, there’s a bunch of snow coming our way. Penny will know it’s coming and have everything needed for food and supplies, but don’t plan on going out after noon tomorrow and probably through Sunday.”
I look out my window, already dreading not being able to get to the General Store. The inn has coffee, of course, but it’s not as good as Beth’s. Of course, nobody delivers. “And just when I was starting to like this town.”