Chapter 4

four

HARVEY

T he archive room at the Festival Museum was also the staff coat room, the junk room, and the utility closet. When I turned the light on, the bulb made a popping sound and left Sterling and me standing in the dark. So then I had to find a new lightbulb and the ladder, both of which were stored somewhere in the now pitch black room.

Sterling turned on his phone flashlight. “The exciting life of a small-town museum curator.”

“Curator is a generous term,” I said, climbing the ladder to change the bulb. “But yeah, it’s a rollercoaster, that’s for sure.”

After the little hiccup with the bulb, we got down to work. I dragged a few of the archive boxes to the middle of the floor, checking the dates. “So most of these have been here longer than I have. Let’s hope whoever shoved them back here put the right dates on the boxes.”

Sterling took his coat off and shoved the sleeves of his sweater up to reveal forearms that had no business being so distracting. “Okay, let’s see what we’ve got.”

What we had was a time capsule into festivals of Christmas Falls past. We had old flyers, tickets, photographs, old films and VHS tapes, and the newspapers we were after.

“You people really take Christmas seriously here,” Sterling said, examining a photograph of a street parade.

“Christmas saved the town,” I told him. “Back when the factory closed, this place would have died, except they changed the town name from Milton Falls to Christmas Falls and started the festival. It was a hell of a bold move, but it paid off. Now people come from all over to see this place.”

He raised his eyebrows then shook his head and let out a small laugh. “You have reindeer .”

“Yeah, they’re pretty cool, right? When I was in kindergarten we went on a field trip to the reindeer farm, and one bit a hole in my sweater. I’ve been too scared to pet them ever since, but every year I’m working up to it a little bit more.” I narrowed my eyes at his amused look. “It was my favorite sweater, Sterling.”

“I’m not a Christmas person,” he said, running his fingers down the front cover of an old store catalog from Santa’s Workshop, the corners curled up with age. “I’m not a grinch or anything?—”

“We already have one of those in town,” I said with a nod. “Ironically, he’s in charge of the entire festival.”

He snorted. “Anyway, I guess I’m saying I’m not a holiday kind of person. Not just Christmas, but any holiday. It’s not that my family doesn’t celebrate.” He shook his head as he gestured in the air with his hand. “Just that we don’t celebrate like this .”

“In a storeroom?”

“No.” He laughed. “I didn’t mean this storeroom. I meant the whole town .”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “So there were no sleigh rides and carols and in-your-face festive cheer for little Sterling?”

“In-your-face,” he said. “That’s exactly how to describe it. And no, there’s none of that in my family. My mother hires someone to decorate, and my father wears a tie that matches the year’s color scheme. On Christmas Day the extended family meets at my grandparents’ house and we exchange gifts.”

“Sounds boring.”

His mouth opened, then closed again. He wrinkled his brow and said, “Yeah, actually. It’s really boring.” He gave a rueful laugh.

No wonder Christmas Falls was a shock to his system. As a tourist destination, the town was very much geared toward people who were crazy about Christmas, and the people who weren’t crazy about Christmas had about a million other holiday destinations to choose from. We didn’t often get people who weren’t prepared for the whole in-your-face experience that was Christmas Falls.

“I love Christmas,” I told him. “My grandmother was on a teacher’s salary when I was growing up, so we didn’t have a lot of extra money around the holidays, but you know what teachers have in spades?” I grinned when he shook his head. “Arts and crafts knowledge. We’d make so many decorations every year that the house would be bursting with them. We still make our own, though not as many. And baked goods! We have so many baked goods! They start appearing on the cooling rack around Thanksgiving and don’t let up until the new year.”

“That sounds nice.” His expression softened, and something like longing cast a shadow in his blue eyes.

“It’s a lot of fun.” I fought down the crazy urge to invite him to Christmas at my house. That would be weird and awkward, even for me, and I was a twenty-two-year-old Trixie Belden fan. I was well acquainted with weird and awkward. “Oh, I think I’ve hit newspaper paydirt.”

I pulled a stack of newspapers out of the box and gave half to Sterling. We spread them out on the floor, giving ourselves room to open them, and began to carefully turn the pages.

It was a snapshot into a different world. The movie theater was advertising showtimes for Back to the Future Part II , linen jackets were overrepresented in the fashion pages, and every kid was lining up to ask Santa for a Game Boy. It took until my third newspaper to find an advert from Blitzen’s: Bah hamburger! Look out for the Blitzen burger stall on Dasher Street December 12-23! There were no names in the ad.

“Blitzen’s had a finger in every Christmas pie, didn’t they?” Sterling asked.

“They probably had a pun for that too,” I said. “Oh, here’s another one. It ’ s Chris-Matt time! They’re not selling anything, but apparently if you saw them wandering around at the ice skating rink and said ‘Merry Chris-Matt!’ you’d get a coupon for a boat ride.” There weren’t any pictures of Chris and Matt. Maybe people had been expected to recognise them because of their Blitzen’s shirts and caps. “Do you think Freddy’s boyfriend was Chris or Matt?”

“Maybe.” Sterling dragged a hand through his hair, somehow leaving a smudge of dust on his temple.

“Here. You’ve got—” I reached out and wiped it away with my thumb before I even registered what I was doing. Then, heat rising in my face as Sterling blinked at me, I leaned back again and cleared my throat. Pretended I couldn’t feel my thumb tingling as though I’d brush a live wire instead of Sterling’s skin. “Uh, you had some dust. I got it.”

See? Weird and awkward.

Sterling’s gaze caught mine, and my face burned some more.

“Thanks.” He smiled, and then cleared his throat. “It seems like Blitzen’s employed every teenager in town. This is such a long shot, isn’t it?”

“Sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying.” I tilted my head. “I think it’s nice you’re doing it. Looking for Freddy. Though it does sort of seem like you have actual money.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Your coat,” I said. “And your shoes. And your whole...” I waved my hand. “Everything. So, why aren’t you hiring a PI for this?”

Sterling hummed. “A couple of reasons. Firstly, I wanted to do it. It feels private, you know? Freddy’s story is...well, I want to know what it is. I want to find out what happened. I feel like maybe I owe him that? Or at least the family owes him that, and for now that means me.” He snorted. “And mostly because if I did hire someone, I wouldn’t trust that my father wouldn’t find out.”

It was my turn to blink. “Um...okay?”

“My grandfather just died,” he said with a shrug. “Having Freddy turn up again would be extremely inconvenient to my father, his cousins, the board, and the shareholders.”

Wow .

So maybe boring Christmases weren’t the worst thing about Sterling’s family.

“Wouldn’t your dad be happy to see his brother again?” I asked.

Sterling paused, the edge of a newspaper sheet shivering in the air as he held it mid turn. “I don’t know,” he said at last, turning the page. “On the extremely long list of things my family doesn’t talk about, Freddy is somewhere near the top.”

“Wow, if a missing uncle is only near the top, I can’t imagine what beats that.”

Sterling snorted and dragged his hand through his hair again. “You know. The usual scandals. Wearing white after Labor Day. That sort of thing.”

But his smile wasn’t as genuine as some of the others I’d caught from him, so I knew he was lying. I didn’t know him well enough to reassure him that he didn’t have to lie to me—we were clearly bound by the ethical code of the newly formed Fans of Teenage Girl Amateur Detectives Club—but from the very little Sterling had said about his family, it was obvious he didn’t have much experience with sharing and caring.

“Oh, well no wonder,” I said. “Crimes against fashion are the worst .”

His smile grew.

We went through a few more newspapers from 1989 and ended up with two more names to add to our list of male Blitzen’s employees: Eric and Mike. Four names in total wasn’t a lot, and there was a good chance Cap Guy wasn’t any one of them, but this still hadn’t felt like a waste of time. Going through the newspapers was interesting, and gave us a picture of what Christmas Falls was like all those years ago. It also gave us a few names to throw at Bob Hanks tomorrow in case he needed his memory jogged. I’d gotten to spend a little longer with Sterling, and I wouldn’t pretend I didn’t enjoy that—and not just because I was a helpful research assistant. Sterling was handsome enough that stealing glances at him felt like winning a prize every time, but, more than that, we’d smiled and laughed, and I didn’t think I was the only one who’d noticed we had actual chemistry. Something crackled in the air between us when our eyes met, something electric and a little breathless, which was more than I’d felt on my last actual date.

I was actually disappointed when the alarm on my phone beeped, telling me it was time to go and pick up Grandma.

Sterling helped me restack boxes, and then I locked up the museum. It was almost seven, so the Arts and Crafts Fair had shut down for the day. The entire building was dark apart from the lights in the foyer, and quiet.

“Is your museum haunted?” Sterling asked as we walked toward the exit.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “But also, don’t turn your back on that creepy as fuck elf in the third room. He’s a horror movie waiting to happen.”

Sterling laughed, and we headed outside into the cold.

After I dropped Sterling off at his hotel, I swung by Fisher Street to collect Grandma. She must have been watching out for me since I texted her to let her know I was on the way, because as soon as I pulled up, she came out to meet me. She was looking very bright-eyed and pink-cheeked, and it wasn’t all holiday cheer, let me tell you. I’m pretty sure the ladies at quilting club liked a little something in their eggnog.

“How was quilting club?” I asked as we pulled away from the curb and headed for home.

“Lovely,” she said. “How was...whatever you were doing?”

“Fun,” I said.

“And what is it you’re doing again?”

“Helping a visitor out with a research project about the town,” I said.

“I know that’s not the whole story, Harvey Novak,” Grandma said, “but as long as you’re having fun, I suppose. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

I loved my grandma to bits, but in another life she could have been a professional interrogator. I could just imagine her in some kind of military uniform, turning on a light to shine it in a prisoner’s eyes and saying, “Tell me all about the plans.” Except in Grandma’s case, it wasn’t the stolen nuclear codes or anything, it was whether or not I was happy with my life, if I had any plans for the future, and if there was anyone I was interested in. To which the answers were, respectively, Yes , I don ’ t know , and Please stop trying to set me up with guys, Grandma , because despite all appearances to the contrary I can actually get my own dates.

“It’s been a while since you had fun, hasn’t it?”

“No,” I said. “I have fun all the time. I’m a fun person.”

“I just meant that you’ve not been your usual self,” Grandma said. She pursed her lips into a disapproving line, so I knew what she was going to say before she even uttered the words: “Not since your breakup with Steven.”

I could hear the air quotes around ‘breakup.’

Which was fair, because did it even count as a breakup when you were never actually in a relationship to begin with? I’d thought we were boyfriends, whereas Steven had thought we were just casual. And Steven’s actual boyfriend, I was sure, would have strong opinions on my use of the word. The fact that Steven hadn’t wanted me to tell anyone we were together should have been a red flag, but the thing about red flags is that they were invisible until you took off your rose-colored glasses.

“Excuse you, I have fun,” I said. “I went on that date with Jett.”

Grandma raised an eyebrow. “And how did that work out?”

“Well, now I have a new friend. Which is great.”

Jett was great, we just hadn’t had any actual chemistry. Whatever we should have been feeling on that date, neither of us had been. But he was a great guy, and I was glad we were friends. It wasn’t as though being friends was a consolation prize or anything. I loved my friends, they just didn’t help me get laid.

Ugh .

And now I was thinking about getting laid, or not, in a car with Grandma.

I was also thinking of Sterling, and how handsome he was, and the ridiculous offer he’d made to pretend to be my boyfriend if we ran into Steven at the museum. He probably would have just held my hand or something, right? Not thrown me over one of the vendor tables of the Arts and Crafts Fair and ravished me?

That scenario should have been in no way as hot as I suddenly found it.

“Harvey?” Grandmas asked.

“Mmm?”

“You’ve missed the turn,” she said, eyes sparkling as we took a slightly longer route into our neighborhood.

Our house was on Oak Street. It was a small bungalow-style home, a perfect match for all its modest neighbors. It was cream with blue trim, and for most of the year the front garden burst with color from all the flowers that Grandma planted out. In winter, those bursts of color came from the Christmas lights that decorated the front porch. Unlike some of our neighbors—looking at you, Herb Larson—our front lawn wasn’t a blinding display of lights that could be seen from space, but we did just fine. This year I’d found a huge inflatable reindeer for sale at the hardware store, and it towered over the mailbox and the other yard decorations. I hoped we wouldn’t get any storms before Christmas, because that thing would be a pain in the ass to deflate and move.

I carried Grandma’s quilting bag inside for her—that thing got bigger every week, I swore—and said, as I unlocked the door, “Chloe says I should get a museum kitten.”

“That’s what you’re going with?” Grandma asked, shutting the door and then shrugging her coat off. “Not the handsome man that you’ve been seen around town with today?”

Gossip traveled fast in Christmas Falls, especially in Grandma’s circles.

“I’m helping him research,” I said. “And don’t say?—”

“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”

“I said not to say it!”

“You didn’t!” She hung her coat on the hook by the door, eyes twinkling. “I was too quick for you!”

“Ugh.” I set her bag down, waiting until she’d gone past me before I took my coat and boots off. “Did you eat yet?”

She headed for the kitchen. “Not yet.”

“Do we have anyleftover soup?” I asked, following her into the cozy kitchen.

Grandma made the best chicken and sweetcorn soup. It was perfect for cold nights.

Grandma opened the refrigerator, a sound of triumph escaping her when she discovered we had soup left.

We heated the soup and ate it with warm bread rolls in front of the television.

“How’s your quilt going?” I asked.

Quilting was a mystery to me. For months and months, Grandma lugged around a bag full of fabric scraps, and nothing seemed to happen. Then, at some point, it was suddenly a blanket. I’d given up trying to judge when the scraps were at that stage. There was a science to quilt making, or maybe some kind of alchemy, that I just didn’t get.

“It’s coming along great,” Grandma said.

“Are you going to keep this one?”

She hummed. “I don’t think this is the one.”

Grandma had started off quilting when she retired so she could make a bedspread. Except each quilt she made wasn’t quite right for her, and just happened to be perfect for someone else. She’d never yet kept a quilt she’d made, but she loved working on them just as much as she loved giving them away.

“When are you going to make me one?” I teased.

She smiled at me. “When I find the perfect fabric that matches your eyes. You have your mom’s eyes, Harvey.”

“I know.”

Grandma’s smile wavered but didn’t lose any of its warmth. It didn’t matter how long ago it had been, we both missed my mom. It didn’t hurt the way it had when I was a kid, when the pain was still raw and new, but at the same time it was a pain that would never fully go away. It had transformed into something less sharp, and it came wrapped in more happy memories these days than sad ones, but it would always hurt just a little, and that was fine. That was how you measured love, I guessed: by both the light and the shadow it left behind.

I thought of Sterling, and of the way his expression tightened when he mentioned his family. I thought of how he’d described his family Christmases in terms of decorators and tie colors, and of how he’d struggled to explain why he was looking for Freddy in secret.

It wasn’t a secret to me: Sterling was looking for more light than shadow. Maybe he hadn’t realized it yet, but I hoped he’d figure it out, because one thing I was already sure of was that Sterling Van Ruyven could use some more light in his life.