Chapter Four

Chapter Four

IN THE end, Kyle was satisfied with his haul from the Snow Circus. He’d bought a bottled ecosystem for Zach—it’d probably go right on his bookshelf next to his ant farm. He also got him a smart-looking shadow box of minerals, all labeled and nestled into their own little sections in the glass case. For Alice, he chose a jar of pearlescent white slime dotted with sparkling crystals and a season’s pass to the ice rink. For them both, wool socks, jars of cocoa with mini marshmallows, and snow globes.

When he returned from his lunch break, he stashed the kids’ presents underneath his desk. He’d have to sneak them home from the office bit by bit, hiding them in his bedroom closet until wrapping time.

As he rose from crouching beside his desk, he spotted Jan’s face peeking over the edge of the cubicle wall. Eyes wide and owllike behind her glasses, she regarded him suspiciously. “Did you forget to eat on your lunch break again?”

Absolutely, yes.

Even when Kyle wasn’t shopping for presents, he generally used his lunches to simply walk and people-watch, especially during the holidays, when he felt connected to strangers just through the odd magic of nostalgic holiday cheer. “Jan, you don’t need to—”

But those bespectacled eyes already disappeared from the top of the dividing wall. Kyle sighed, settling into his desk chair before Jan returned with a wrapped turkey sandwich and an apple. It was pretty typical, and Kyle hadn’t yet found a way to get her to stop, but he was grateful. Well, as grateful as he could be beneath the mortification of being observed and known.

For some reason he seemed to collect older ladies, usually with grown children of their own, who tried to coax him into more self-care.

“It’s because you kinda look orphanish,” Alice had once told him. “You have a resting sad face. People see you and think you haven’t eaten and could use a compliment or five.”

As Kyle bit into the turkey sandwich he was certain Jan had made the night before just for him and his errant lunch habits, he began to think Alice might be right.

Is that why Vic had talked to him and given him the scarf? Because he looked subconsciously sad?

Kyle frowned while chewing. He would hate it if that were the case. Then he thought back to Vic’s genuine laugh, his warm smile, his strong grip. That couldn’t have been out of pity, could it?

A slice of tomato slipped from the sandwich. Kyle’s heart nearly dropped into his stomach until he found the slice in his lap and not on the scarf he’d left on after hanging up his coat. He ran his hand over his gift—his holiday blessing—and felt guilty for assuming so much about Vic.

After all, Vic was probably just a chatty shop owner with a too much charisma and time to kill. He’d probably already forgotten Kyle’s face among the many rosy-cheeked patrons he saw that day.

Still, Kyle couldn’t help revisiting their conversation, playing (and replaying) moments over in his mind like a goof. He could feel his heart quickening, the heat rising to his cheeks.

It’d been a long time since a chance meeting did that to him.

THE SKYwas already darkening by the time Kyle made it home. The snow took on a starry cast, and the streetlights contrasted with their harsh orange glow.

Alice, dressed in her winter coat and boots, was shoveling their neighbor’s sidewalk. She scraped the shovel against the concrete and threw the snow to the side in practiced motions. Mr. Munn, the neighbor in question, watched her progress from the window.

As Kyle approached, Mr. Munn banged on the glass to get Alice’s attention. When she paused, he pointed vigorously at a little dusting of snow that had fallen back onto the sidewalk. Alice paused, glanced at her father with a look of Really? and then back at Mr. Munn, who frowned at her and pointed again to the fallen snow. She sighed and shoveled it back up.

Pretty typical.

“Hello, Lloyd.” Kyle called, waving.

Lloyd started more frantic motions, beckoning Kyle inside. Kyle hoped his smile didn’t look as pained as he thought it might, but Lloyd would probably be the last to notice. He was used to humoring Lloyd—he didn’t have to offer Alice spending money in exchange for chores, but he did. He also generally sent Alice or Zach home with food and a stack of books, as well.

He’d done the same for Kyle twenty years ago. He and Lloyd’s son, Wesley, used to challenge each other over how many books they could read a year.

Lloyd had long owned one of the town’s established bookstores, that offered a mix of new and used titles. Once upon a time, you could waltz into the shop and see Lloyd behind the cash register or in the aisles to restock. As he aged, he began to develop back issues. He’d had years of physical therapy and then a couple of surgeries, but it seemed they did more harm than good. He spent a few years able to get by with a cane, but eventually, he became wheelchair-bound.

Luckily, he’d built up a big enough clientele in his bookshop that he was able to step back physically. These days, Lloyd was relegated to offsite accounting work and executive decisions. And, much to the chagrin of his staff, he spent the rest of his days monitoring the shop’s security cameras and occasionally calling to remind them to clean and reshelve in their downtime. Depending on his mood, this could occur… more than a few times a day. Lloyd paid them well, but made them earn it.

There was a reason Wes hadn’t stuck around to take over the family business.

Kyle walked to the front door and, after punching in the numeric code he knew by heart, let himself in.

“Zigler!” Lloyd called out his usual greeting. “I have more books for you. Don’t just stand there letting the heat out, come in. Nice scarf.”

Kyle grinned and closed the door behind him, making sure to wipe his shoes thoroughly on the welcome mat before joining Lloyd at his perch by the window. “I’m still working through the stack you gave me last time, Lloyd.”

The Munn house was cluttered, but not in a way that conveyed messiness. Piles of books had long overtaken the shelves and spilled out along the borders of the living room, den, and half the hallways. Kyle had once asked Lloyd if this was overflow from the bookstore. Lloyd raised a long, arched eyebrow at him. “What, are you kidding me? The store has plenty of stock on hand. These are mine.” The old bookseller claimed to have read all the books in his house. Kyle didn’t doubt it. Lloyd’s favorite pastime seemed to be trying to try to fill everyone around him as full of books as he as.

“You that busy, eh?” Lloyd barked.

“Well, sometimes it’s more the content,” Kyle admitted. “No offense, Lloyd, but I think if I try to blaze through Blood Meridian, I’ll need therapy.”

“Bah!” Lloyd waved this away. His hair had abandoned the crown of his head a long time ago, most of it making a new home in his eyebrows. His eyes were gray, always darting and assessing, and his nose crooked and avian in shape. “It’s a classic. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Besides, you loved Harlan Ellison well enough.”

“Yes, Lloyd. But I think we can agree that there is a time and a place for I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.” Kyle shrugged off his coat and hung it up near the door.

Lloyd wasn’t listening which, admittedly, never made much difference. He was staring at the laptop resting on his coffee table, where a grainy stream from his legacy filled the screen. The employee on camera, with a visible sag of his shoulders, picked up the ringing store telephone. “I don’t pay you to be on your phone, Ian. You’re on the clock now. Act like it.” Without waiting for an answer, Lloyd snapped his phone shut.

Kyle silently thanked his past self for leaving retail. “Alice seems to be devouring the books you’ve given her. Age-appropriate, I hope?” That was at least halfway a joke. Recently, Kyle spotted Stephen King in Alice’s backpack.

“She really enjoyed The Parent Trap. Not many know that’s even a book. Much less that it was first written at the beginning of the twentieth century.” Lloyd rolled himself over to one of his shelves, already piling up three paperbacks on his lap.

“The Parent Trap?” Kyle frowned. “You didn’t recommend that because of what happened with my divorce, did you?”

Lloyd coughed. Or it could have been a laugh. “Young man, if that were my intention, I would have given her a copy of Gone Girl.”

Kyle made a noise somewhere between a choke and a yelp. At that moment Alice opened the front door and vigorously stamped her feet on the rug before pulling her hood down. “Mr. Munn,” she said breathlessly, “if you see a snowflake even think about landing on that sidewalk, shoot it.”

Lloyd peered out the window, still balancing the books on his lap. His eyebrows arched and furrowed, as if they were furry creatures that needed to stretch. Then he nodded. “That’ll do.”

It took some rummaging for Lloyd to dig a twenty-dollar bill out of a candy tin, of all things. Kyle was able to negotiate Lloyd down from five books to three, which he assured Kyle would take “no time at all to read. You sit at a desk all day, for crissakes.”

Kyle walked Alice back to the house, where Zach was already curled in a blanket on the couch. Over dinner, he asked Alice and Zach about their respective school days.

Kyle did not mention Vic, even though Alice lavished compliments on his new scarf. She called it scholarly. He also did not bring up The Parent Trap.

By the time he hit the hay, he’d decided he would swing by Snow Circus again tomorrow to thank Vic properly. Only polite, right?