Chapter 6

six

HARVEY

W e went to the Snowflake Shack for lunch. Christmas Falls didn’t really do fancy, at least the level of fancy that I suspected Sterling was accustomed to—The White Elephant was probably more his style. I liked The White Elephant a lot; it was just that The Shack, with its burgers, fries, and shakes, was much more friendly to a guy on my budget.

The Shack was on Blitzen Street. Last year, like much of the town, it had gotten an unauthorized facelift courtesy of Christmas Falls’ resident graffiti artist. The whole holiday graffiti campaign had caused some consternation in town, but then it turned out the tourists loved it. The Shack now had a bunch of kids building snowmen painted on the front of it, gifts and ornaments floating down around them like snowfall. Like everything else in town, it was beautifully festive.

Sterling and I snagged a booth in the back and ordered.

“I hope we can find out more about Gabriel Baum,” I said when our food came, dragging a fry through my side of ranch dressing. “Do we really think he and Freddy are the same person?”

Sterling shrugged. “I don’t know. Bob said he didn’t think it was Gabriel in the photo, but he seemed like he wasn’t being totally open with us.”

When I’d agreed to help Sterling track down Freddy, I’d thought it would be fun investigating a real-life mystery in Christmas Falls. But the thing with real-life mysteries was they came wrapped in real-life secrets, and I didn’t necessarily like the idea of uncovering those. It was stupid that I’d never thought of it before, but until I’d seen the way Bob and Linda had looked at each other, having a whole unspoken conversation between them, I hadn’t considered there might be some things about Christmas Falls and its residents that wouldn’t be fun to find out. I wasn’t expecting to discover Bob was D.B. Cooper or anything exciting like that, but it was clear when we’d brought up Gabriel Baum that we’d touched on a subject Bob and Linda weren’t comfortable discussing, and I didn’t like that I’d made them feel that way. They were good people. At least, I thought they were, and I didn’t want to discover anything to make me change my mind. About them, and everyone else in town. I wasn’t cut out for this amateur detective stuff at all, was I?

“I think if I was going to be a reporter, I probably wouldn’t be the sort who wins a Pulitzer by going undercover to investigate drug cartels and human trafficking,” I said. “I think I’d be the sort who does the stories about dogs that ride surfboards, or troublesome geese.”

Sterling didn’t roll his eyes at my apparent non sequitur the way Steven would have. He smiled instead, the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkling warmly. “Do you get many troublesome geese in Christmas Falls?”

“The seedy underbelly of Christmas Falls is made up entirely of geese.”

His smile turned into a laugh. “I’ll bet. Geese a-laying and lords a-leaping all over these mean streets.”

“The lords are fine,” I said. “It’s the maids a-milking you have to watch out for. Never turn your back on a maid a-milking, Sterling. Never.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

“Did you know that all the things mentioned in ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ are actually birds?”

“What? No, there are lords, and maids, and dancing ladies.”

“Okay, so they’re all medieval food,” I said. “They’re getting a feast every day, and they loved to eat all kinds of birds back then. The pipers are probably sandpipers, and the drummers might be grouse or even snipe, because they were both eaten back then, and they both drum on the ground when they court their mates.” Usually at this point on whatever tangent I was on, Steven would tell me to shut up, but Sterling looked as though he was actually interested, so I kept going. “The ten lords a-leaping are herons, and the nine ladies dancing are lapwings. They’re both on medieval menus. But the fun one is the maids a-milking. Because guess what?Doves and pigeons both produce crop milk to feed their chicks. Isn’t that amazing?”

“Huh.” Sterling sipped his milkshake, his handsome brow furrowed. “Wait. What about the five gold rings?”

“Pheasants,” I said. “They have rings around their necks.”

“That is...” He shook his head, smiling. “I’ve always had this vision of this weirdo turning up every day at his true love’s house with a whole parade of people behind him, and it turns out it’s just some guy delivering birds . It’s not as impressive, is it? But it’s a lot more practical. What are you going to do with all those lords and milkmaids? Are you supposed to house them and entertain them? It’s the worst Christmas gift ever. It makes much more sense if they’re birds.”

Warmth filled me, and I ducked my head to shove a fry in my face, hoping he didn’t see the flush of color on my cheeks. “It’s weird and pointless trivia.”

“But it’s interesting.” His smile grew. “Don’t tell them at the Pear Tree though, or they’ll need to replace the decals on the doors.”

I snorted at the thought.

“I wonder if Freddy got the same culture shock I did when he came here,” Sterling said, his voice softening. “My grandfather was not a warm man. We’re not a warm family. I don’t even know…” He shook his head and cleared his throat. “I came here on business. If Freddy is still alive, then that’s something my father and the board and the shareholders need to know.”

“That’s not why you came,” I said, and he looked startled. “I mean, maybe that’s what you tell yourself, but I don’t think it’s the only reason.”

“You think the best of people.” Sterling’s smile had faded. “That’s not always the smartest thing.”

“I know. I’m not always the smartest guy.” I shrugged. “This one time, when I was a kid, a woman at the grocery store told Grandma she needed ten dollars for diapers. And after Grandma gave it to her, this man said she’d just got scammed. You know what Grandma told him?”

“What?”

“That she’d rather get scammed out of ten dollars than let someone’s baby go without diapers.” My chest ached a little. “And that’s how I try to be. I’d rather think the best of people and sometimes be disappointed than think everyone was out to get one over on me and never take a chance at doing a good thing because of it. And maybe that’s dumb or naive, but that’s okay. I mean, if I’d been smarter, I never would have dated Steven, but it’s mostly okay.”

“The guy who didn’t want to break up with you.” Sterling’s expression did something complicated. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“About Steven?” I picked up my shake and sucked the straw slightly too aggressively. “Not really. And, just to clarify, it’s not that he didn’t want to break up with me that was the issue, it’s that we were never actually together. I thought we were, but apparently Steven didn’t agree. And his actual boyfriend probably wouldn’t either.”

Sterling sucked a breath in through his teeth. “Yikes.”

“Yeah,” I said, wishing the burn I felt was more from anger than humiliation. It wasn’t, though. “ Yikes .”

Sterling looked at me through narrowed eyes, as though he was reevaluating everything he thought he knew about me. Probably negatively. Then he surprised me by opening his mouth and saying, “I think I can beat that.”

“What?”

“I think when it comes to terrible romantic history, I’m winning.” He popped a fry in his mouth, and chewed and swallowed. “I’ve never had a boyfriend.”

“Oh,” I said, “Well, that’s...that’s not unusual?”

Why did I say it like a question?

“I’m gay,” he said. “And I’ve never had a boyfriend because I’m in the closet.”

His words hit me in the gut like a punch. “Holy shit. Wow. I’m...that sucks. I’m sorry.”

“We all make our choices,” he said with a faint smile. “And I’ve made mine.” For a moment the silence lay between us, heavy and low like storm clouds about to break, and then Sterling picked up the menu and said, “Is the cheesecake good?”

“Um,” I said, then echoed the question he’d asked me moments ago: “Do you want to talk about it?”

“The cheesecake? I’d like your opinion on it, yes.”

“No. The other thing.”

“No,” he said, his faint smile back again. “I definitely don’t want to talk about that.”

But he’d brought it up, hadn’t he? Maybe he didn’t want to talk about it, but he wanted me to know. After my confession about Steven, he’d wanted me to feel like I wasn’t alone. Sterling had said I thought the best of people, and he was probably right. Because the one thing I was certain of, as we ate our burgers and fries in a booth in The Shack, was that Sterling Van Ruyven was a better man than he thought he was. And before he left Christmas Falls, I was going to help him figure that out and believe it just as much as I did.

Travis Jones of Wonderland Heating & Cooling didn’t answer his phone after lunch, so I left him a message and then decided to take Sterling on a stroll through downtown Christmas Falls, or Santa’s Village as the tourist maps called it. It was a nice day, chilly but bright, and the garlands wrapped around the old-fashioned lamp posts glittered in the sunlight. There were more tourists than locals in the streets today, which was no surprise with the festival underway. And if the number of people on the sidewalk meant that Sterling and I brushed against each other sometimes as we walked, then that was just an added bonus.

“Has the town changed much since the nineties?” Sterling asked me, inhaling deeply as we passed Ginger’s Breads. I didn’t blame him. Was there anything nicer in the world than the smell of a bakery?

“Yes and no,” I said. “Downtown looks pretty much the same as it always did, but a bunch of the businesses have changed. Like I think Season’s Readings used to be a shoe store once upon a time? I’d have to check that. But if you took someone from a hundred years ago and dumped them in the middle of downtown, they’d recognize it as Christmas Falls. Well, it was Milton Falls back then.”

Sterling looked up and down Prancer Street. There was a faraway expression on his handsome face, and I wondered if he was trying to see Christmas Falls as Freddy might have, all those years ago.

We crossed Prancer Street, passing Santa’s Workshop and the Dancing Sugar Plums, and then crossed Dasher Street to Sugar Plum Park. Sugar Plum Park was the heart of the festival, with its massive tree. The entrance to the park was guarded by a huge wooden gnome dressed as Santa. When we passed it, a mom and dad were trying to get their kids to stand still long enough to take a photo with it. Even in the middle of the day, Sugar Plum Park was busy. Food trucks lined the place, and there was a live band playing in the old, ornate gazebo.

“Back in the nineties,” I said, “this would have been full of teenagers in Blitzen’s caps. I think Bob and Linda employed almost every kid in town at some point. This is where Cap Guy would have worked. It’s probably where the photograph with Freddy was taken.”

There was a whole story unspooling in my head. I imagined Freddy coming here to hang out while he waited for Cap Guy to finish working. What did Cap Guy do? Maybe he’d worked the cotton candy machines, or maybe he’d run the train rides they’d had back then for the little kids, or maybe he’d roasted chestnuts, or made hotdogs or pretzels, or walked around selling hot cocoa to thirsty festival goers. Blitzen’s had left its fingerprints—hoofprints?—all over the festival back then.

We stopped to get caramel corn, even though we’d both just eaten, because who could resist caramel corn? Sterling, apparently. I could tell he was doing his best not to give me the side eye when I dug in.

“What’s it like growing up here?” he asked when we continued walking. “Don’t you ever get sick of Christmas?”

I considered his question and then shrugged. “Well, it hasn’t happened yet. Where did you grow up?”

“Manhattan.”

“Of course!”

He shot me a bemused look. “What do you mean, of course ?”

So I wasn’t saying I had a type or anything, or that I’d crushed obsessively on all the guys from Gossip Girl when I was a tween, but Grandma wasn’t at all shocked when I came out to her a little later. The life-sized poster of Ed Westwick on my bedroom wall might have given it away. The point was, I could see it. Sterling absolutely belonged in that Manhattan crowd—presuming they had the same vibe in real life as they did on The CW—with his expensive coat, his haughty good looks, and his ridiculous cheekbones.

I shoved some caramel corn in my mouth to save me from having to answer. Then I said, through my mouthful, “Oh, look! Pretzels!”

“We just had lunch,” he said.

“True.” I ate some more caramel corn.

“Why is it obvious I grew up in Manhattan?” he asked me.

Wow, he really wasn’t letting that go, was he?

“You just give off that vibe,” I said, waving a hand at him. “Like, all wealthy and businessy and stuff.”

“Businessy isn’t a word.”

“It absolutely is. I said it, and you understood the meaning I conveyed, and what’s a better definition of what a word is than that?”

He shook his head in what I hoped was a ‘Harvey is endearing’ kind of way, and not a ‘I am going to strangle him with my bare hands as soon as we’re out of the sight of witnesses’ one. The twitch of his mouth assured me it was probably the first one.

“Was Freddy businessy too?”

“Still not a word,” he said as we walked around a group of older residents who’d stopped to chat in front of the pretzel stand.

“Hello, Harvey!” one of them called.

“Hi, Dottie!” I gave her a wave. Dottie was one of the ladies in Grandma’s quilting club. She was also in the town’s knitting circle.

Sterling waited until we’d passed the group before he spoke again. “I don’t know much about Freddy at all. He was never really talked about, and he left home years before I was born. It’s weird, when you’re a kid, to have a sense of things like that. I don’t ever recall being told about Freddy. I just knew, for as long as I could remember, that he was one of the subjects we didn’t discuss.”

I couldn’t imagine any subject in the world not being discussed in my home. Then again, I’d inherited the chatterbox gene from Grandma, for sure.

Sterling must have seen the lack of understanding in my expression. “When I was eight or nine, I found one of my father’s old school yearbooks. He and Freddy were only a year apart, and they were both on the rowing team. I remember that I showed him the page with all the rowers on it, and he just glanced at it and closed the book. He said, ‘That’s all in the past, Sterling. It’s none of your business.’ So I never mentioned it again.”

“Wow. That’s cold.”

Sterling looked a little uncomfortable. “It’s the way he is. The way my family is.”

“Not you though.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Aren’t I?”

“You’re here , Sterling, in Christmas Falls.”

“I’m here for the business as much as for Freddy.” His brow creased and he looked away, suddenly super interested in the struggles of a little kid trying to pull her mittens off.

I didn’t really believe it—I’d seen him express actual human emotions when he talked about Freddy—but if he wanted to believe he was just that wealthy, businessy guy in order to preserve the illusion, then that was fine. “Okay.”

We wandered away from the pretzel cart, heading for the edges of the park. It was a little quieter here, out of the way of the tourists and their excited kids, and the Christmas Falls locals who were all stopping to catch up. The trees at the edge of the park offered us shelter from the bustle.

“I think Freddy would have liked it here,” I said.

Sterling looked back at me, his brow creased. “We can’t know that.”

“He wasn’t faking that smile in the photograph.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Sterling agreed softly. He drew an audibly shaky breath.

“Hey,” I said gently, and reached out to...okay, I wasn’t actually sure. Put a friendly, supportive hand on his shoulder or something. But instead of doing that, I touched his bicep and then slid my hand gently down the sleeve of his beautifully tailored woolen coat. It was only when my fingers reached the cuff of the coat and fell away that I realized I’d just stroked him. A man I’d known about a minute.

“I’m so—” I began, but I didn’t have a chance to finish because Sterling stepped forward and suddenly we were kissing.

My body froze for the space of a few heartbeats, as shocked as though I’d suddenly plunged into icy water, but then I finally got with the program and grabbed Sterling by the coat to make sure he didn’t think he should step away or anything stupid like that.

Was it a good kiss? Hell if I knew. Objectively, it was the first kiss between two people who hadn’t quite figured out how to fit together yet, like which way each of us was going to tilt our heads so we didn’t smack our noses together, or how much tongue was the right amount. That sort of thing. So maybe not the greatest kiss in the world as we bumbled our way past those awkward first few seconds. But screw objectivity. Sterling was hot, and we were kissing, and everything was incredible. Heat bloomed in my blood and flooded my body, and my heart raced, and there was nowhere else I wanted to be in the entire world than in this moment forever.

It didn’t last, of course.

“ Harvey? ”

Shit.

I stepped away from Sterling and turned to find myself looking into the startled face of Steven, my ex.

Great. So now I was stuck in the moment I least wanted to be in. Thanks, universe.

“Oh,” I said, like a dumbass. “Steven. Hey.”

Steven glanced between me and Sterling a few times, as though he couldn’t be sure of what he was seeing. Which made two of us, actually. Steven and my self-doubt had always made a great couple. I felt a sudden rush of pure delighted spite that Sterling was so much better looking than Steven. Not that Steven was a bad-looking guy. It was just one of those things where I had no sense of objectivity again: my knowledge that he was a cheating asshole had colored my perceptions of his face. When we’d first met, I’d thought his features were angular and interesting. Now he just looked like a rat.

“I’ve been trying to pin you down,” Steven said. I was pretty sure he didn’t get to do that anymore, but before I could point that out, he added, “For the museum photographs.”

“Oh,” I said again. “Sure. Well, I’m actually really busy this week with a research project, but you could stop by anytime and Martha could help you out.”

Steven sighed the way he always did when he thought I was being stupid. “You’re the face of the museum, Harvey, not Martha.”

“If anyone’s the face of the museum, it’s the horrifying mechanical Santa,” I said.

Steven didn’t even crack a smile. “Are you going to be there tomorrow?”

“Yes,” I said. “Probably.”

“Good.” Steven narrowed his eyes at me, and then showed Sterling a tight smile. “I’m Steven Fanning, a friend of Harvey’s. Since he apparently isn’t going to introduce us.”

“Sterling Van Ruyven,” Sterling said. They shook hands like this wasn’t the sort of excruciatingly awkward moment that would wake me in a sweat in the middle of the night for years to come. “Also a friend of Harvey’s.”

And now it was even more awkward.

We all stared at each other silently, and then did it some more.

“Okay!” I exclaimed at last. “See you tomorrow, Steven!”

I took Sterling by the hand and dragged him out of the park. And if he gripped my hand warmly, linking our fingers together and squeezing, it was probably just for Steven’s benefit and not mine.