Chapter 5

five

STERLING

M y plan after Harvey dropped me off at the hotel was to get some food delivered and go to bed, but I found myself restless after spending so long poring over old newspapers, and it didn’t take long to realize I needed to walk off some of my energy. So instead of ordering delivery, I put on my coat and scarf and walked back downtown. I ate at The White Elephant, the first pub I came to, sitting at a small table by the fireplace to enjoy a Scottish meat pie and a beer. The beer wasn’t one I knew—the menu told me it was from a local microbrewery—but it was delicious.

While I ate, I listened to the conversations from the tables around me. Some of my neighbors were tourists, going over the day’s events with bright smiles while they planned tomorrow’s. Some were clearly locals, talking about their jobs, their families, and the weather. I would have thought eating alone in a place filled with couples and families would be uncomfortable, but it wasn’t. It was nice catching small pieces of other people’s conversations, and sharing in the warm mood of the pub.

I should have invited Harvey to join me for dinner.

It was stupid, but the longer I spent in Christmas Falls the less it seemed over the top, and the more it seemed...hopeful. The message of Christmas, I supposed, was one of optimism, and the town itself seemed to be the sort of place where good things could happen. I thought of Freddy and wondered if he’d felt that too, when he’d come here well over thirty years ago. Had he found hope and joy here, if only for a little while? I hoped so.

I dawdled on my walk back to the hotel. Lights twinkled, and the faint strains of music played from the shops I passed, and laughter and light spilled out of doorways. The bells on the sleighs signaled the approach of reindeer. It really was beautiful here, infused with a warmth of spirit that even the cold night air couldn’t dull. I felt as though I’d fallen into another world, and it couldn’t have been more different than the one I was familiar with.

The real world came knocking almost as soon as I got back to the hotel, in the form of a phone call from my sister, Sarah.

“Hey,” I said, holding the phone awkwardly as I peeled off my gloves and scarf.

“Where are you, Sterling?” she asked, straight to the point as always. “I know you’re not in Chicago, because I just saw Declan’s Instagram and he’s in Aruba.”

Declan was the old fraternity brother I’d let everyone assume I was visiting.

“I’m taking some time for myself,” I said. I put her on speaker and sat down on the bed to take my shoes off. The modest hotel room was toasty warm after that cold walk back from downtown. “I’ll be back next week.”

But where are you?”

In a place so crazy you can hardly believe it exists.

“I’m in a little town called Christmas Falls,” I said.

“ Where ? Why?”

“I told you, I’m taking some time for myself, after Grandfather’s funeral.”

“Are you okay?” She sounded hesitant; that wasn’t the sort of question we asked in our family. We didn’t expose our vulnerabilities, and caring about someone else’s hurt feelings was just as much a weakness of character as having your feelings hurt.

“I’m fine, honestly. I just needed a break.” I kept my tone light. “I’ll be back before anyone even notices I’m gone.”

“ I noticed you were gone,” Sarah said.

“I told you I was going.”

“You mean you lied to me about where you were going?”

“Only because I knew you’d ask why I’d come to somewhere as random as Christmas Falls.”

“It’s a valid question.”

“And one I don’t have an answer to,” I lied. “I’m too young for a midlife crisis, surely.”

“I know you’re up to something,” she said. “But you’re okay?”

“I’m okay, I swear.”

“Okay then. As long as you’re sure.”

I was overwhelmed with a rush of affection for my sister. Growing up, she’d been pushed aside to make room for me, for no other reason than I was a boy and she was a girl. When it came to the business—and everything in my family was about the business—I was the one who was expected to take over one day. My grandfather had called it tradition; I bet Sarah had realized a long time before I did that tradition was just another word for sexism, and more than a few other ism s as well.

I lay back on the bed, my feet still on the floor, and stared at the beige ceiling. “I am. I’ll send you a postcard or something. This whole town is Christmas-themed. It’s crazy.”

“Why would you go somewhere like that?”

“Haven’t you ever done anything on a whim?”

“Oh, we don’t have those,” she said, and I heard the smile in her voice. “Our parents wouldn’t approve.”

“You got that right.” I laughed. “I’ll call you when I’m back in the city, okay? We should catch up for dinner or something.”

“I’d like that.” Sarah sounded surprised, and I did the calculations on when we’d last caught up for no reason at all. I didn’t like the answer. “I’ll talk to you then.”

“Okay, goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” she echoed, and ended the call.

I undressed and showered in the poky bathroom, then changed into my sleep pants and an old T-shirt and climbed into bed. I was tired, but not tired enough to fall asleep straight away. I considered the television, but then, thinking of Harvey, I reached for my phone instead and opened the book app.

Huh.

Who knew you could get Trixie Belden ebooks?

I settled into bed as I waited for it to download.

I slept better in a budget hotel bed in Christmas Falls than I had in months at home. I was refreshed when I woke, and I smiled when I checked my phone to see a message from Harvey telling me he’d pick me up at nine. I was waiting in reception for him ten minutes early, peering through the gaps between Christmas decorations to check the parking lot. When he pulled up, I was already out the door.

The day was bright and cold, and the air smelled fresh.

“Morning!” Harvey said as I climbed into the front seat of the little car. He was wearing jeans and a soft blue sweater that made his eyes appear even more striking. He nodded to the center console. The scissors were gone, replaced by two takeout coffee cups. “The top one is a coffee with creamer, and the second one is a hot chocolate. I didn’t know what you liked, and some people don’t like coffee.”

“What if I don’t like coffee or hot chocolate?”

He blinked at me. “I honestly didn’t even consider that possibility. You drank the one I got you yesterday. Were you just being nice?”

“I like both,” I reassured him. “Do you?”

“Coffee is okay, I guess,” he said. “But I really love hot chocolate.”

I grinned and reached for the coffee. “Thanks for this. Don’t you have to work today?”

“Martha is coming in today,” he said. “She’s my best employee—well, she’s my only employee. But I swear it could be halfway through a nuclear apocalypse and she’d still show up for work.”

“She sounds very reliable.”

He laughed. “Oh, no. She’s not reliable at all, but she always shows up and she’s good company, so.” He shrugged, as though that settled it. “Okay, so let’s go visit Bob Hanks and see what he can tell us about Cap Guy.”

“It was a long time ago,” I said, gazing out the window as we headed away from downtown. Every house we passed had Christmas scenes in their front yards. Even in the day, the lights twinkled. “He might not remember.”

“But he might,” Harvey said, “and there’s only one way to find out. You’re a glass-half-empty kind of guy, aren’t you, Sterling?”

“Am I?”

“Hmm.” He threw me a smile. “I think you’re trying to be, to keep yourself from getting disappointed, but here you are all the same. There’s an optimist inside you somewhere. Otherwise, why come all this way chasing a couple of boys in a blurry photograph taken over three decades ago?”

A warm feeling spread through me at Harvey’s approval, although it was followed by a sharp stab of guilt, because while Harvey seemed certain my motives were unselfish, I wasn’t. I was a Van Ruyven, to begin with, and unselfish wasn’t written anywhere in our DNA. It wasn’t Freddy’s happiness I was chasing down in Christmas Falls—at least, not entirely. It was business too. I was the man who was going to one day take over the Van Ruyven empire. At the moment, everything in my grandfather’s will had gone directly to my father. One day, it would come directly to me. Sarah would get money, of course, more than she could probably ever spend, but the business side of things? All the family’s companies and trusts and properties and securities and investments would come under my direct control, just as long as no other Van Ruyven son turned up in the meantime with a claim of ownership.

So while a part of me very much wanted Freddy to have his happy ending, another part of me—the one my grandfather and my father would be most proud of—wanted to make sure that wherever Freddy had got to, he was going to stay gone. And in all honesty I couldn’t say which part of me had been making the decisions when I’d booked my ticket to Christmas Falls.

Bob Hanks lived on the outskirts of Christmas Falls, in a long ranch-style home with dark shingles on the roof. Like every other front yard I’d seen so far, this one was a veritable North Pole, complete with a life-sized sleigh and reindeer. On the other side of the driveway, there was a tableau of elves in front of a workshop backdrop, putting toys together.

The cold air bit at us when we got out of the car, and we walked briskly toward the front door. Harvey raised his hand to press the doorbell, but the door opened before he could do it.

The old man who opened the door wouldn’t have looked out of place in the workshop in the front yard. He was short and thin, and as wizened as a walnut. He wore green pants and a bright red knitted sweater, and his eyes sparkled from behind his thick glasses.

“Well, goodness me! Harvey Novak!” he exclaimed. “Come in, come in.” He stepped back to give us room to step inside, and then took his glasses off and squinted at me. “And you are?”

“This is Sterling,” Harvey said, and I stuck out my hand for the elderly man to shake. “I’m helping him with a family history project.”

That was one way of putting it, I guessed.

“Oooh! Is this like one of those adoption shows on the television?” Bob asked keenly. “Did one of my cousins leave a girl in the family way? My Uncle Stu’s boys were wild when they were younger, let me tell you, and you can’t hide anything these days with those FDA tests, can you?”

“DNA,” Harvey corrected with a smile.

“Is it?” Bob hummed, and reached up to pat me on the shoulder. “Well, if you’re looking for long-lost family, son, I’ve been married to my Linda for sixty-one years and never even looked twice at another gal.”

“Sterling is looking for long-lost family,” Harvey said. “But his family, Bob, not yours.”

“Oh.” Bob’s brows lifted. He looked right at me. “Did you leave a girl in the family way?”

It took me a few seconds to respond—not because the question was wildly inappropriate, which of course it was—but because I couldn’t even wrap my head around the thought. Aimee Gockstetter flashed through my mind. No danger there. “I…did not,” I said.

Bob burst out laughing. “I’m only kidding. Have a seat.”

He motioned to the living room, which seemed surprisingly devoid of Christmas, given the man’s outfit and former profession. There was a small tree in one corner with tasteful gold lights and minimal tinsel. A garlanded fireplace with three matching stockings and a couple of family photos on the mantel. Maybe after all those years at Blitzen’s, he’d lost his enthusiasm for Christmas, and only wore the green pants and the sweater to keep from being run out of town on a rail.

I took a seat on the cracked leather couch, and Harvey sat beside me, rather than in one of the armchairs.

I liked that.

Bob took the chair across from us. He leaned back, his arms on the chair’s arms, and said to Sterling, “So your family is from Christmas Falls? What’s your last name?”

I opened my mouth to answer and found myself oddly embarrassed. The idea of giving a name Bob Hanks wouldn’t know—or, best case scenario, would know through Freddy’s guy, and worst case through headlines about my family’s wheeling and dealing—seemed impossibly sad. I suddenly wished I had a name Bob knew because he used to bring my parents a home-baked, too-dry fruitcake every Christmas, which they never ate but always accepted with sincere gratitude. Or because my grandfather used to help him put up his lights each year, or my grandmother and Bob’s wife had run the town charity drive together, or whatever.

I wanted, for a second, to belong .

Then I thought about how weird and pathetic that sounded, and said, “Van Ruyven. I’m not from around here.” I pulled out the photograph and passed it to him. “That’s my uncle. He disappeared in 1987 and ended up here—I don’t know for how long. We thought you might know the guy with him, in the Blitzen’s cap.”

Bob plucked his folded glasses from where they hung on the neckline of his sweater and put them on. “Let’s see, let’s see.”

As he studied the photograph, there was a scraping and shuffling sound from the back of the house, then some clicking and scrabbling. Bob looked up, and Harvey and I both turned as a black streak whipped into the room. At the fireplace, it whirled and went down on its forelegs, backend thrust in the air. It was a medium-sized dog with a plumed tail and longish silky coat that was slightly wet with melting snow, all black except for a patch of white on its chest. It crouched there for a moment, mouth open as it stared at us. Then it leaped up and zoomed out of the room again.

Bob started to push himself out of the chair. “Caspar!” he called. “Ah, rats. I keep reminding Linda to put the box in front of the doggy door until the fence is fixed. “Linda! Caspar’s been outside. We’re lucky he came back.”

“He moves the box, Bob,” someone—presumably Linda—called from another room. “It’s not heavy enough.”

Bob sighed and sank back into the chair. “Well, could you keep him in there with you for a little while? I have visitors.”

“ I didn’t get to meet the visitors.” Linda sounded some combination of amused and affronted. A moment later, she entered the living room with Caspar trotting beside her, staring up at her empty hands as though treats might magically appear in them.

Linda looked a lot like her husband, short and slight with a wrinkled face and bright, shrewd eyes. Her pants were red, and her sweater green, an inverse of Bob’s ensemble. Her gray hair was up in a tidy bun. “Hello, Harvey,” she said. “Who’s your friend?”

Something about the way she said it made me think she wasn’t at all surprised to see Harvey with a friend. The back of my neck prickled. Were people seriously gossiping about Harvey and me? Why didn’t that bother me the way it should?

“Sterling Van Ruyven.” I stood and extended a hand.

“Nice to meet you, Sterling.” Linda gave a slight nod that was either acknowledging or assessing. Maybe both.

Caspar, clearly disappointed in the lack of treats, came to the couch and nudged his snout between Harvey’s knees, gazing up at him.

“Caspar, come here.” Linda reached out and tugged the dog back gently by his collar. “He doesn’t have anything for you.”

“I wish I did,” Harvey said to the dog.

I sat again, and the dog came to nuzzle me.

“Of course he came back, Bob.” Linda turned to her husband. “I told you, he’s too codependent to run away.”

“Well, let’s get something heavier to put in front of the door, just in case. We don’t need him wandering the neighborhood chasing the reindeer.” Bob glanced at us. “Part of our fence is down. Bunch of snow fell from the roof and collapsed it. I used to be the one to fix things like that, but these old bones…” He patted his knee. “Anyway, Caspar can’t be let out unsupervised until we get it fixed, but he’s decided where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Bob adjusted his glasses with one hand as he studied the photograph again. “Sterling Van Ruyven has asked me about the fellow in this photograph, Linda. He’s in a Blitzen’s cap. But I don’t think I know him.”

“Let me see.” Linda took the photograph from him. Caspar lifted his nose from my knee and shuffled backward, then trotted out of the room. “Travis,” Linda said after a moment.

Bob frowned. “Travis?”

“Travis Jones.” She handed the photograph back to him. “You remember Travis.”

“Travis.”

“He works for Wonderland Heating & Cooling now.”

“Travis!”

“Yes, Travis.”

Bob nodded. “We ought to see if Travis can fix our fence. They do a little of everything there.”

Harvey agreed enthusiastically, launching into a story about the emergency call Wonderland had made to the museum when the heating broke last year.

“So that’s Travis Jones?” I asked, nodding toward the photo in Bob’s hand, aware that I sounded a little impatient and hating myself for it. It was just that my neck was still prickling with a strange combination of embarrassment and inadequacy. I tried to imagine having this sort of conversation with anyone back home. Yes, Tuck Mounson, you remember him? Owns every media outlet in the tri-state area. Oh, Jemma Halworth? We ought to see if her billion-dollar software company can design our new home security system. They do a little of everything there.

Bob squinted at Possibly-Travis. “So says Linda.”

“I’m right,” Linda put in.

“It does look a bit like him. But everyone looked the same in those silly trapper hats.” He leaned forward in the chair to hand the photograph back to me. “I’d try Wonderland Heating & Cooling. Travis worked for me one summer when he was home from college. Good worker—it’s coming back to me now. Married…what’s her name? She wasn’t from around here.”

My heart sank. There wasn’t any reason to think Freddy would still be with the guy in the photo. Especially if Travis Jones had still been in college in 1989. But on some level, I guess I’d hoped.

“Betsy Horner,” Linda said at once.

“Betsy Horner,” Bob agreed.

I stared down at the photograph. At the smiles on the men’s faces. If Cap Guy was TravisJones, then we were probably no closer to finding Freddy than we’d beenyesterday. I couldn’t help glancing at Harvey. I didn’t know what I was expecting—or hoping—to see. Some indication that he was as disappointed as I was?

I was surprised to find him looking at me. Not some conspiratorial, back-to-the-drawing-board look either. When I turned, he sort of shook himself, like he’d been caught daydreaming. Like he’d been studying me on the sly and was embarrassed about it. He gave me a warm smile, and I gave a tight one in reply before turning back to Bob and Linda. “Thank you. That’s helpful.”

“Who was Travis’s friend?” Bob asked Linda. “They were joined at the hip that year. Oh, that friend of his would come meet Travis when his shift was done and stuff his face full of caramel corn from the machine while he was waiting for Travis to punch out. I can’t believe I’d forgotten about the two of them!”

My heartbeat had picked up again. Freddy, I thought.

“Gabriel Baum.” Linda placed a hand on Bob’s shoulder. “He left town after that summer. I don’t know that Travis stayed in touch with him. They had a falling out before Travis went back to school.”

Once again, that sinking sense of disappointment entered my gut. But I was confused too. Gabriel Baum, joined at the hip with Travis Jones and then gone, leaving Travis to finish college and marry Betsy Horner. Could my uncle have used a false name during his time in Christmas Falls? Had he wanted to separate himself from his family that badly?

“That’s right,” Bob said. “Hmm. Gabriel.”

A hint of disapproval slipped into his tone, and Linda stepped closer to his chair and nudged him with her hip. I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been staring again at the vibrant green of her pants.

Harvey’s leg nudged mine, and I couldn’t tell whether it was an accident, but it made warmth spark through me either way. He’d been unusually quiet during this interview, none of his usual amateur sleuthing skills on display.

“He a relation of yours?” Bob asked me. “Travis?”

“Oh, um. No. I… No.” I should tell Linda and Bob my uncle’s name. It was Freddy we were trying to find, after all—not Cap Guy. But something about the Gabriel Baum story had unsettled me. I could sure as hell think of a reason two boys might have been joined at the hip one summer, then had a falling out before going their separate ways. I could put two and two together and figure out why Linda and Bob Hanks were uncomfortable talking about it, too. Besides, if Linda or Bob had recognized Freddy as Gabriel, they’d have said so. Right?

Another glance at the photo. Maybe the two boys weren’t a couple after all. Or they were, but it only worked so long as they didn’t put a name to it. As long as they pretended to the world—and to each other—that they were merely good friends. Maybe one of them had tried to name it, tried to say what he felt. And the other had reacted badly.

I realized I was making quite an assumption here, thinking Freddy had used a fake name. Letting my imagination run away with me.

Why not just open my mouth and ask whether the other man in the photo was Gabriel Baum? Why was I suddenly afraid that would invite more information than I wanted? Prompt Linda and Bob to repeat the whispered gossip that had no doubt circulated about these two in the late eighties, with knowing nudges and winks. Harsher, uglier gossip than was likely circulating about Harvey and me now.

“Is that Gabriel, then?” I finally blurted, holding up the photo. “The other guy?” I could sense Harvey leaning forward alongside me.

“Oh, goodness.” Linda adjusted her position to peer at the photo again. “I couldn’t be sure. I only saw Gabriel once or twice. Bob?”

Was it my imagination, or was there something theatrical in the way Bob squinted this time? “I don’t think so. Gabriel had darker hair. Hard to remember what he looked like, it’s been so long.” He leaned back in the chair and left it at that.

That seemed strange. Freddy was looking right into the camera in the photo. Most of his hair was under the knit cap, and the photo’s overexposure could easily be making his hair look lighter than it had been. Still, it made a certain amount of sense. They’d both last seen Gabriel over thirty years ago. Whereas they saw Travis Jones around town and could make the connection between the young ‘fellow’ in the photograph and the man they still knew.

I wasn’t sure whether it was time to say our goodbyes, and Harvey wasn’t giving me any cues. Luckily, Caspar bounded in just then with a squeaky toy shaped like a gingerbread man. He tossed it in the air, caught it, then leaped to ricochet off the end of the couch.

“Alright, alright,” Bob said, rising from the chair. “I can take a hint.” He looked at us. “My apologies, but it’s time for a game of fetch in the backyard.”

Caspar twirled in a circle, biting down on the gingerbread man repeatedly to make it squeak.

“Take some treats,” Linda cautioned. “In case he gets it in his head to go through the broken fence.”

“It’ll be fine. He’ll be so focused on destroying that gingerbread man, he’ll forget he can make a break for it.” Bob kept a hand on his hip for a moment and stretched, his back cracking. “Got to do something about that fence, though. Thanks for stopping by, you two.”

“Thank you,” Harvey said. “We appreciate your time.” But something was off. He didn’t sound like his usual sunny self.

“We do,” I echoed. “Thank you.”

Linda showed us to the door. Before we stepped out into the cold, she put a hand briefly on Harvey’s shoulder. “Take care,” she said.

“You too,” we said in unison.

We walked to the car without speaking, listening to the sounds of Caspar and Bob playing in the backyard, joyous barks punctuated by bouts of squeaking from the gingerbread toy. As soon as we were on our way, I started talking. But I could tell I was trying too hard to get back the vibe from earlier, the sense that this whole investigation was silly and probably futile but, surprisingly, fun . Something had shifted. And I seemed to be the only one who didn’t know what.

“I mean, that was weird, right?” I rambled. The way they just stopped talking about Gabriel? And then acted like they couldn’t tell whether that was Gabriel in the picture? I know it’s a long shot, thinking Freddy and Gabriel could be the same person, but if Freddy really didn’t want to be found, if he wanted to start fresh, who’s to say he wouldn’t use a different name?”

“Could be,” Harvey said.

“Why are you being weird?” I demanded, aware that wasn’t at all the right way to say it. We didn’t have that level of familiarity yet, did we? Where I knew him well enough to sense his shifting moods, and to ask about them?

Harvey didn’t look over at me as we drove down the long, quiet road fringed with melting snow. Dread was starting to form a knot somewhere deep in me, an echo of what I’d felt on Bob’s sofa. The sense that it might be better not to know if Freddy and Gabriel were the same person. If a ‘friendship’ had ended in two broken hearts. Maybe, I thought suddenly, the falling out wasn’t about feelings that were supposed to remain unspoken, but about the fact that Freddy had lied, pretended to be someone he wasn’t. And Travis had found out.

I was so caught up in the story I’d been inventing, I was surprised when Harvey spoke.

“I’m not the one acting weird.” He slowed to a stop at the intersection, then turned back onto the road into town. “You are.”

“ I am?”

“When they were telling us about Gabriel,” Harvey said. “You tensed up. Everyone noticed.”

“Bob was weird about it first,” I insisted. “When he said Gabriel’s name, his tone shifted. He didn’t like him, you could tell.”

“Yeah, but it’s not a crime to not like someone,” Harvey said softly. “Especially if we don’t know the reason. And I think, just because I have a feeling this is where your brain went, that you should know that Bob might be an old guy from a small town, but that doesn’t mean he’s a homophobe.”

I gave a guilty jolt.

“Because I think that’s what you were thinking, right?”

“I don’t know.” It had certainly crossed my mind.

“If Bob didn’t like Gabriel, maybe he has a reason for that,” Harvey told me. “Because people here, they’re better than you’re expecting, I think, and that makes me sad—not that we’re better, but because your expectations are so low.”

I hated that Harvey saw through me so easily.

“And your story,” he continued softly, “is not the same as Freddy’s story, except for one thing.”

“What’s that?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from rasping.

Harvey flashed me a quick, sympathetic smile. “You both deserve to live happily ever after.”

I looked away sharply, my eyes stinging, and stared out the window as we continued back toward downtown.