Chapter 1

one

STERLING

H ad my father been the sort of man who offered advice about what to do when your car hit black ice when you were driving from a shitty regional airport to the shitty regional town you’d never heard of until a week ago, I liked to imagine it would have been something like, “Don’t panic, Sterling. And whatever you do, don’t slam on the brakes or wrench on the steering wheel.”

Unfortunately, my father’s advice tended to skew more towards “You can have one olive in a martini, or three, but never two,” and “Unless you’re running a marathon, you have no reason to be wearing sneakers”—nothing that would help much in my current situation—so when I hit the ice, I panicked, slammed on the brakes, wrenched on the steering wheel, and crashed the car nose-first down a snowy embankment into a ditch.

“Holy shit.” I gripped the steering wheel tightly and watched a clump of dirty snow slide down the windshield. It stopped halfway, meeting the pile already there.

The seatbelt hugged my body tightly; I was at a steep enough angle that my weight was hanging in it. There would be no reversing out of this. I uncurled my fingers from their death grip on the wheel and turned the ignition off. Then I wondered if I should have left it on, for warmth. What were the rules when you crashed into a ditch in the middle of an Illinois winter? Had my father ever shared any practical wisdom about snow?

“ Aspen ’ s not as charming as it used to be. I prefer Gstaad.”

Not now, Dad, thanks.

I drew a deep breath and tried to think.

About an hour ago, I’d landed at the tiny airport after flying from New York via Chicago. After waiting for ages because the baggage handlers had somehow failed to locate my suitcase in the cargo area of the very small plane, I’d made it to the car rental desk long after all my fellow passengers had happily driven off. I’d finally picked up my rental car, which was at least five years old and smelled slightly musty, and headed for town, my phone resting in the cup holder and calmly giving me directions to the town of Christmas Falls.

My phone!

I scrabbled around in the car for a while, but I couldn’t find my phone.

So much for that.

I’d passed a gas station only a minute or two before ending up in the ditch—the neon FOOD AND GAS sign was still imprinted on the backs of my eyelids when I blinked—so if I couldn’t find my phone at least I wouldn’t die of exposure walking back to the gas station, since it was literally just around that last curve of the road, and freezing to death in my car when help was only a quarter of a mile away was stupider.

I checked the pocket of my jeans for my wallet and then grabbed my wool coat off the passenger seat. I unclipped my seatbelt and shoved the car door open. The immediate blast of cold air chilled me to the bone as I struggled to get out. I sank into the snow immediately, pulling my coat on and then scrambling awkwardly up the embankment and onto the road. From here, not even the trunk of the car was visible. I hit the lock button on the keys, and the car chirped. At least that was still working. I thought about trying to grab my suitcase out of the trunk, but after struggling and slip-sliding my way up to the road, the last thing I wanted was to have to clamber up the slope again.

I dug into the pocket of my coat for my scarf and wrapped it around my neck. I tugged the edges up as far as I could without blinding myself, then strode forward, following the road back the way I’d already come.

I couldn’t see any other cars to wave down for help. It was also cold as hell, and what little Christmas spirit I’d had before leaving New York this morning—and to be honest, it was a negligible amount—rapidly deserted me.

Oh my fucking God it ’ s cold. Cold cold cold.

I hunched down into my scarf and coat, squinting at the snowbank and having horrible visions of wandering in circles, getting lost, and dying ten feet from my car. Which was stupid, since it was the middle of the day, actually sunny, and I knew exactly where the gas station was. I’d hardly had time to imagine my poor mother, struggling to make an appropriate expression of grief past the Botox, or my poor father, having to make an appointment with the family lawyers to have his entire will rewritten now that I’d ruined all his intricate estate planning by dying before him, when the neon sign appeared before me: FOOD AND GAS .

I’d never seen anything so beautiful.

I turned off the highway onto the narrow road that led to the parking lot, stumbled into a snowbank, climbed out again, and hurried toward the cluster of little buildings underneath the sign. There were four or five cars in the parking lot, ice on the windshields and tiny snowdrifts built up against the tires. Two gas pumps stood under an awning. As I drew closer, I saw another sign. This one was above the bright FOOD AND GAS . It looked as though it was supposed to be lit up too, but it wasn’t. I peered up at it. It said “Christmas Falls Gas” in a font that was either intentionally retro, or just hadn’t been updated in about eighty years.

I hurried to the door and pushed it open, welcoming the blast of warm air that hit me like a balm. I drew in a deep breath and held it and luxuriated in the sensation of warm filling my aching chest. I could have cried in relief except, of course, it went without saying that Van Ruyven men didn’t do anything as unseemly as shed tears.

Unseemly or gauche? I wasn’t sure, but I bet my father would have an opinion about it. Except for once, it wasn’t his voice that intruded on my thoughts.

“Merry Christmas!” The kid sitting at the booth couldn’t have been more than nine or ten, and he was waving at me like we were old friends.

“Uh, Merry Christmas,” I said.

The kid raised his eyebrows at my lackluster response.

A server, wearing jeans and a T-shirt—the sleeves pushed up to show off a collection of colorful tattoos—and an apron around her waist, tapped the kid gently on the back of the head as she sailed past. She was short, busty, and had pink streaks in her dark hair. “Hey, don’t you have homework to do?”

The kid slunk back down in his seat.

The server approached me. “You after a table?”

“Yes, please.” I had no idea how long I’d be stuck here waiting for a tow truck, and a greasy diner burger sounded amazing right now. Well, it sounded better than nothing, and, given the day I was having, I would take it. Gladly.

I followed the server down the line of booths. She pulled a menu out from under her arm and set it on the scratched laminate table as I slid into the booth. My damp jeans squeaked against the vinyl.

“You’ve been through the wars,” she commented.

“I drove my hire car into a snowbank,” I said, “and then down a ditch. May I borrow your phone?”

“Are you okay?”

“Fine, thank you,” I said, rubbing my hands on my damp thighs and faintly registering that my fingers were shaking.

“I’m gonna get you a coffee,” she said, “and a burger and fries, and then I’m gonna call Roger to come get you.”

“Roger?” I asked.

“Roger Knight,” she said, a hand on her hip. “Runs the auto shop in town. The car rental place too, so it’s his car you crashed.”

“Great.” I sighed. “I’m sure he’ll be delighted to meet me.”

The server laughed and tucked her notebook into her pocket. “You wait right here, and we’ll get everything fixed up for you.”

For a man whose car I’d crashed, Roger Knight was surprisingly personable. He picked me up from the gas station diner, and we drove back to the car. Roger retrieved my suitcase from the trunk while I at last located my phone hidden in the dark footwell of the passenger’s seat. Then I sat in the cab of the tow truck while Roger did something with a cable and a winch. A few minutes later, we were on our way to Christmas Falls.

“You here for the festival?” Roger asked, turning up the heat as we rattled along the road.

That caught my attention, and I slid my hand into my pocket and curled my fingers around the card nestling there. “The festival?”

“The Christmas Falls Festival,” he said. “The place fills up with tourists from about now all the way through to Christmas. You’re lucky to even get a hotel room this time of year.” He gave me a speculative look. “You did get a hotel room already, right?”

As though he was worried he’d have to take me home like a stray puppy.

“Yes,” I said. “I booked a room at the Pear Tree Inn. And no, I’m not here for the festival. I’m here on business.”

Technically true.

It was more personal business than corporate, but the line between family and financial was blurry at best in my case. My father didn’t know I was here, and certainly wouldn’t approve, and the family lawyers would be frantically calling me and strongly advising me not to go any further if they had any idea what I was up to, which was precisely the reason I hadn’t told anyone. Even my sister, Sarah, who was more often on my side than against me, thought I was in Chicago for the week, catching up with friends.

I stared out the window as the outskirts of town appeared. The first few houses I saw with lawn displays of reindeer and sleds and Santas were charming in a whimsical kind of way. By the time we’d made it into town where the houses were closer together and the Christmas decorations appeared to be multiplying exponentially, it was less charming and more of a complete assault on the senses. Christmas was everywhere .

As a resident, Roger Knight must have developed an immunity; he was telling me about the best place in town to get a good steak dinner. I hadn’t told him I wanted a good steak dinner, but Roger had the look of a guy who believed everyone’s life could be improved with a daily meal of grain-fed rump.

Colored lights slid past the window of Roger’s truck, bursting into green and red coronas when they hit the scattered droplets of water on the glass, putting on a tiny fireworks show just for me. When I was a kid, I’d played with a kaleidoscope—just a cheap, plastic thing, but the patterns it made were captivating; the effect of the Christmas lights refracting through the droplets on the trick windows was similar.

Funny.

This wasn’t the first time I’d thought of that kaleidoscope this week, when it hadn’t crossed my mind at all in the twenty years before that. But I’d been digging around in my grandfather’s study a few days ago, looking for any more papers, and suddenly remembered he’d used to keep a couple of toys on the bottom shelf of his armoire for me and Sarah and the cousins. When I was a kid, I’d crawled under his desk and played with them while, a million miles above me, Grandfather spoke on the phone to his assistant, and his lawyers, and boardrooms all around the world. He’d seemed so outwardly cold, but he’d kept a shelf of toys in his study for his grandchildren. He couldn’t have been totally heartless if he’d given me a kaleidoscope, right?

Well, what the hell did I know?

Less than I thought, that was for sure. So it almost made sense, or at least it wasn’t the craziest thing after the week I’d had, that I was now being driven into the middle of a town that could only be described as violently festive.

The Pear Tree Inn was on what appeared to be the main road through town. It was a single story L-shaped building that hugged its own parking lot. The brick walls were cream, and the roof was green. There was a tree painted on the short end of the L. A pear tree, I guessed, which meant the misshapen bird sitting on top of it could only be a partridge.

“Well, here we are,” Roger said as he turned off the engine in front of the entrance. “It’s not a bad spot, but you might want to avoid the complimentary breakfast.” He nodded toward the road. “Downtown is about three blocks that way, and the coffee shop and the bakery both open early.”

I climbed out of the car. “Thanks. Sorry again about the car.”

“That’s what the insurance is for. Let them worry about it.” He dipped his chin in a nod, waited until I’d hauled my suitcase out with me, and then drove off with a wave.

I checked my coat pockets for my wallet, phone, and the old Christmas card I’d been carrying around since last week—after the morning I’d had, I needed to reassure myself that everything I needed was close at hand. Then I wheeled my suitcase inside reception at a brisk enough pace that I could almost, but not quite, keep in front of the voice in my head that told me nothing good could come from being here. And unlike earlier, the voice wasn’t my father’s. This time it was all mine.

But it was fine. I’d get my room, dump my suitcase there, and then walk downtown to see if I could find the museum the town’s website had told me about, since that seemed like the best place to start asking questions.

I drew a deep breath as I stepped inside the tinsel-filled space that was the hotel’s reception.

Welcome to Christmas Falls.

It didn’t take long to check in; there was no queue, and the woman behind the counter didn’t seem overly interested in startinga conversation apart from mentioning twice that I’d been lucky someone else had canceled so I’d been able to snag a room. Within ten minutes I had a key to my room—Number 11—and directions to find it down the end and on the right.

I wheeled my suitcase down the hallway and around the corner, and realized that there were no numbers on the doors. There were pictures instead. Birds, and more birds, and...rings. Five golden rings.

This was ridiculous.

I ran through what I could remember of the Twelve Days of Christmas, but my memory let me down. My key wouldn’t turn in the first door I picked, and it wasn’t until I counted the figures dancing that I realized there were only ten of them. The one with eleven guys—silver silhouettes on the green door—was next door.

Eleven pipers piping, I remembered as I finally got the key to turn, letting me into my room.

This hotel took the whole Christmas theme way too seriously.

And so, I realized twenty minutes later as I was heading downtown and had to stop for a reindeer when I was crossing the road, did this whole crazy town.

A reindeer! An actual fucking reindeer, pulling a sleigh. I snapped a picture with my phone before I realized I had nobody to share it with whose immediate response wouldn’t be, “ Where the hell are you, Sterling?” I saved it as my phone’s wallpaper instead, pretending for a moment that I was the kind of guy who would have a Christmas-themed lockscreen.

Downtown Christmas Falls was picture-perfect. It had the main street charm of older towns—the sort that were built before strip malls were a thing—wrapped up in an even heavier layer of Christmas charm. The streetlights were garlanded, the shop windows twinkled with lights, and baubles and tinsel glittered in the sunlight. The air itself smelled of gingerbread and warm spices—although that might have been the bakery—aptly called Ginger’s Breads—that I found myself passing. I sidestepped a family with small children then crossed the street to the small cinema. On the other side of the street was the Jolly Java, and I made a note to get a coffee for the cold walk back to the hotel. Beside the coffee place was a bookstore called Season’s Readings. I wasn’t here on vacation, but, just like a part of me wanted to pretend I was the sort of guy who had a reindeer sleigh on his lockscreen, for a moment I allowed myself the fantasy of pretending I could buy a book along with that coffee, find a fireplace to sit by, and enjoy the both of them while the day slipped slowly away. Which was stupid, because I didn’t have time for that, and it wasn’t why I was here.

I slipped a gloved hand into the pocket of my coat, and the leather brushed the worn-down edges of the cardboard card I’d been carrying around for days now. I didn’t take it out to look at. I didn’t have to. I knew every detail of it by now.

The card was just some generic Christmas card with a snowman on the front. A basic, cheap card. The sort you got in packs of ten or twenty from a discount store. Inside it was written ‘To Mom and Dad. Merry Christmas, love, Freddy.”

It was the photograph I’d found inside the card that had brought me here. Two guys, both young, arms around each other’s shoulders. One dark-haired, and one blond. The dark-haired guy was wearing a red woolen cap with a brim and ear flaps—the sort you saw grizzled old backwoods people wear in movies—and looking down, most of his face obscured except for the curve of his grin. The blond, Freddy, was smiling at the camera, holding up a huge pretzel with his free hand. He was wearing a scarf and a knitted woolen hat. And behind them was a truck of some sort, or maybe the chassis of a tractor, and the sign painted on the side in cursive lettering said, “Christmas Falls Festival, 1989.”

Which was the part that made no sense at all, because I’d always been told my Uncle Freddy vanished in 1987 and had never been heard from again.

At least, it had made no sense for all of about ten seconds, until I’d taken another look at the way those guys had their arms around each other.

And then it made perfect sense.

Why he’d gone, and why he’d never come back. Why nobody talked about him and why, apparently, nobody had looked too hard. Until now, at least. In 1989 Freddy Van Ruyven had been in Christmas Falls and maybe, just maybe, someone here would remember him or the boy he’d been with. And there was one obvious place in town to start.

I checked the maps on my phone, and discovered I was just around the corner from my destination: the Christmas Falls Festival Museum.

This was crazy, probably. But I had to try. I didn’t think I’d like the man I’d be if I didn’t at least try.

I drew a deep breath and headed toward the museum.