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Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Shane

Hope Peak was the same as it ever was. The mountain was big, the town was small, and everyone acted damnably pleasant and spoke so congenial it was difficult to tell a friendly face from a false one.

Shane had long since given up on trying to differentiate friend from foe. The only way to keep from getting hurt was to turn everyone away. He thought that worked out well enough, and in the end, it was for the best.

"Hey there, Mister Harding!"

The cheer in Jessie Mae's voice rivaled the merry chime of the bell on the front door…and the ridiculous amount of vibrant red and green decor.

Goddamn, Shane thought as he took a glance around. Folks were still polishing off their Thanksgiving leftovers, but the store was already decked out for Christmas.

It was too early in the season for this shit.

Shane snatched his ratty baseball cap off his head as he stepped inside and shoved it into the back pocket of his jeans. He may have left his boyhood far behind him yet the memory of his mama's scoldings about politeness had stayed with him no matter how old he'd got.

"Hey."

He'd done the right and polite thing of doffing his hat and speaking a greeting, but he refused to butter it up with insincerity.

Shane wasn't there to chat. He was only there to shop.

"I don't care what my grandpappy says, I think it's always a pleasure when you come around. You're probably my favorite face to see about town."

Shane didn't take a bite of that bait. He didn't give a damn what the girl's grandfather had to say about him and Shane wasn't going to ask after him.

All Shane cared about was that he didn't have to take his business elsewhere. He set about that business with a single-minded focus. As he shopped, she continued to chat a mile a minute. Some nonsense about the decoration, how long it took and how she'd come to decide what went where.

Jessie Mae was everything that Shane avoided.

Too happy. Too loud. Too young.

And too womanly.

Not that he'd ever had much interest in the ladies to begin with. They'd simply never had any appeal to him and Shane had never been one for romantic notions.

The only woman to ever hold any special sway over him had been his dear mama.

"So, are you here to shop or here to sell?" Jessie Mae questioned. "We got space out front for your firewood."

Shane shook his head. He wasn't there to hawk anything. Or stand around running his mouth. He hardly knew what to say to Jessie Mae's chatter, so he opted to say nothing.

He only grunted every so often as he moved about.

Jessie Mae carried the conversational weight alone. She stayed behind the front counter and leafed through a magazine while smacking away at her bubblegum.

The general store was small but every inch of space was put to good use. A little bit of everything and anything crowded inside. Shane had to give the girl some credit. It was a feat how she'd managed to find so many places to hang up lights and garland along the walls as well as stick in a few reindeer and snowmen figurines in the windows.

One by one, Shane checked everything he needed off his mental grocery list.

Rice. Beans. Coffee. An armful of canned vegetables. A hefty bag of dog food that was as wide as his chest and as tall as his legs.

After the food came the other necessities.

Extra matches. A jug of kerosene.

Shane hesitated, but he added a new can of bug spray and a bar of soap. By the time he was done he'd made a little mountain of his own on the counter.

Jessie Mae peered over her magazine and surveyed his chosen goods. "Is this all?"

They had this exchange every time he came into the store. Shane answered the same as he always did. "Yep."

He gave a nod as he fetched his wallet from his pocket. It already felt too light. By the end of the exchange, he knew it would feel damn near empty. He needed to hurry along this errand and get back home. Being in town for too long always set his teeth on edge and became a source of worry rather than comfort.

There was nothing and no one there to make the trip worth it.

Jessie Mae, never deterred by his flat and monosyllabic replies, forged ahead with more cheerful chatter as she tallied everything up. "It's a shame about the animal shelter closing down. Isn't that where you got your dog?"

"Yep." A one-word answer that covered everything.

Everybody knew everybody in a town as small as Hope Peak.

And everybody included everyone's dogs.

"She's such a good girl," Jessie Mae smacked her gum again. "I've never seen a dog so well-behaved. You trained her real well. I wish I could get a dog of my own, but my grandpappy says the only good dog is a hunting hound. I went to the shelter's last day and they still had puppies that needed homes. I didn't see you there — weren't you curious about it at all?"

That was a lot of words. Shane reacted only to the most pertinent one. "I only got the one dog." That was all he intended to utter but the topic of his beloved dog pulled a few extra words out of him. "Her name is Pumpkin."

"How cute," Jessie Mae cooed. "Why don't you ever bring her inside? You know we allow dogs in here."

Just because the store allowed it didn't mean it was the best thing for Pumpkin. Shane shook his head. "She's fine, I got her in the truck with the windows rolled down."

Pumpkin was a sweetheart, that much was true, and she'd made some mighty good progress over the years. But he still didn't trust her in an enclosed space like the store. Too strange a place with too many strangers. Pumpkin was special beyond Shane's love for her. She'd had a hard and unkind life before he adopted her.

Sometimes all the love in the world couldn't make up for the cruelty that came before it.

Shane didn't much like thinking of Pumpkin as a rescue dog or calling himself her owner. He was her protector and she was his friend.

If he was her forever home, then she was his forever friend.

"Oh, you want all these bagged in paper or plastic or…reusable?" Jessie Mae asked the question like she was revealing some grand secret.

"Come again?" he blinked.

"Reusable," Jessie Mae chirped with a look of pride. She ducked behind the counter and came back with a stack of green bags with white pawprints all over them. "It's what they're using down in the cities. Even Pleasantview is selling them now. I ordered the store a whole box. They're so much better for the environment and look, they're made out of polyester so they clean real easy."

She held up one of the bags for him to inspect.

"Huh."

He didn't do much of an inspection but he did glance at it. Modern marvels, he supposed, though they looked expensive and Shane had a feeling the girl was only trying to butter him up before making a sales pitch.

"They weren't able to find homes for all the dogs and cats before the shelter closed down, but they did find some foster homes for them. I'm gonna donate half the proceeds of these bag sales to help cover the food costs for the foster parents. How about it, Mister Harding? Will you take one or two for a good cause?" Jessie Mae gave him a hopeful grin. She might have been young, but she sure knew how to hustle.

Well, there it was. Shane considered it for only a moment before nodding.

The animal shelter had given him Pumpkin, after all. It might have been gone, but its last act of goodness carried on. Shane could help carry it a bit further. Even if he didn't have much to give.

"Sure. Let's get it all bagged up with them special bags. Go on and hand me a few."

Shane had no love lost for the people of Hope Peak, but he sure as hell had a soft spot for the animals. He bagged as if he were trying to beat a clock while Jessie Mae moved as slow as molasses. Even as her tongue continued to strike like lightning.

"Did you hear they're gonna bulldoze the shelter and put a hotel and apartments there? Fancy apartments. At the last city council, they said if we capitalize more on our Christmas festival we could make Hope Peak into a tourist destination for the whole state. Can you imagine it? This place being somewhere that folks want to visit."

Jessie Mae painted her gap-toothed smile back on her face as she finished packing his last bag.

"Yeah, I can imagine it just fine."

Hope Peak might have still been a small and sleepy town, but it had changed since Shane's childhood. The trickle of tourists was slow yet the fact that there were any tourists out this way was proof enough of the big changes coming their way.

"You got that thing I ordered special?" he asked.

"Sure do!" Jessie Mae chirped before she disappeared into the back room.

When she returned she came bearing a bouquet of white lilies with a single dark pink rose cradled in the middle. She beamed at Shane as she handed it over to him. "Are these for a special lady?"

"Yeah, they are." Shane cleared his throat as he accepted the flowers and finally paid what he owed. His wallet felt significantly lighter as he slipped it back into his pocket.

"I'll help you with—"

"No need," Shane said with a quick shake of his head. "I got it."

Shane needed the truck packed a certain way and he trusted no one else to do it right.

The look in Jessie Mae's big eyes was sad, but she didn't try to argue with him. Shane went for the biggest and heaviest thing first: the dog food. As he lugged it over his shoulder, the door to the store let out another dreadfully happy chime that was followed by an even more unbearably cheerful greeting. "Good morning, Shane! Haven't seen you around lately."

Shane grunted at the couple who stood aside to let him out of the store first.

He recognized the man. That was none other than Leonard Hill. Once, he'd called that man his friend. His best friend. Now they weren't anything at all to each other.

Leonard held open the door for Shane while his wife Becky stood there with a hand over her pregnant belly. They both smiled at Shane like they were glad to see him. Shane couldn't bear to look at them.

He needed to get out of there and away from the happy couple about to become a happy family.

He needed to get away from everyone in the whole damn town.

"You need some help there?" Leonard asked him.

"Never did," Shane called out.

He hadn't needed anybody back then. He sure as hell didn't need anybody now.

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