Chapter Twenty

Mira had never devoured her mom’s beef Wellington so quickly.

She had expected dinner to have the same bittersweet tinge she’d been feeling all evening. She would have been thinking about how next year, they would be crammed into her apartment instead, and everything would feel different. This was the end of an era.

And that was no way to eat a meal, honestly: she would’ve meant to savor every last bite, but her feelings would have distracted her.

Wade’s plan had changed everything.

This was better. She may have gulped everything down with unnatural speed, but she enjoyed every second of it. She was caught up in exuberance, not melancholy.

She thought it was the same for her parents. They’d probably been feeling a little torn too. They were overwhelmingly happy to know their safety net had unfurled after all, and that they would soon get all the help they needed, but like her, they were bound to miss this place and all the traditions that had come with it. There was a big change ahead of them.

You know what it was more fun to focus on?

“An animatronic polar bear,” Mira’s mom said.

She’d been repeating those words over and over again since Wade had first said them.

“You have access to an animatronic polar bear.”

“Yes,” Mira said brazenly. She didn’t usually lie to her parents, but she could understand if Wade didn’t want to explain shifters tonight. There was a lot going on, after all. “I do. A remote-controlled one.”

“Voice-activated,” Wade said quickly. “You tell it what to do, and it does it.”

Mira nodded. “Like Siri. Or Alexa. But it’s a polar bear.”

“We do use our Alexa a lot,” Cliff said. “But ... a polar bear?”

She figured they’d have to give the Arbogasts some kind of explanation for the incredibly lifelike mechanical polar bear—maybe that it had originally been built to be part of Disney World or an unbelievably well-funded zoo exhibit? But she didn’t want to try that story out on her parents.

“We can explain more later,” Mira said, trading glances with Wade. He gave her a surreptitious nod. “I know it’s complicated. But to make a long story short, it’ll look just like a real polar bear, but it won’t do anything we don’t want it to do.”

“The kids can even ride on its back if they want to,” Wade said.

“Incredible,” Mira’s mom said. “Well, as long as it’s safe, everyone should be excited.”

That’s what we’re hoping for , Mira thought, crossing her fingers under the table. They just needed to be able to sell the idea to the Arbogasts.

She had to hope they would believe it. An animatronic polar bear sounded ridiculous, but a real polar bear sounded wildly unsafe, so convincing everyone that Wade was simply an unusually lifelike fake was definitely the way to go. It was the only way to explain how it was completely safe, since they couldn’t reveal the existence of shifters to the whole world just to save one mall’s Christmas Village.

They finished up dinner—there was pie for dessert, since they’d used the cookies as appetizers—and Mira and Wade offered to clean up.

“No, go,” her mom said, giving her an indulgent look. “I can tell you want to sell the mall on your idea as soon as possible, and it’s getting late. No executive wants to be hauled out of bed, no matter how good the idea is. If you catch them now, they’ll hopefully be in a good post-dinner haze.”

“I know the feeling,” Mira said, patting her stomach. “But are you sure?”

Her mom kissed her cheek. “I’m sure. You’ve done so much for us, Mira. Go do something for yourself.”

“Wade?” Cliff called from the living room. “Before you go, can you give me a hand building the fire back up?”

“Sure thing,” Wade said, heading right over.

Mira’s mom looked at Cliff and Wade, and Mira followed her gaze. The two of them were lit up orange and yellow by the flickering firelight, mellow and handsome. They looked like they were already family, perfectly matched bookends to Mira and her mother.

It made Mira’s breath catch in her throat. She had introduced men to her parents before, but none of those men had been Wade: none of them had stolen her heart so quickly and so completely. And none of them had ever made her feel like there were two true love stories in the room instead of only one.

“He’s it, isn’t he,” Mira’s mom said.

Mira hadn’t realized that she could see it too. Warmth suffused through her, and not just because Wade and Cliff had succeeded in getting the fire roaring again.

“Yeah,” Mira said softly. “I don’t know how I know it already, but I do. He’s great. I’ve never met anyone like him before. The more time I spend with him—”

“The more you love him,” her mom finished.

Mira had been ready to say “the more I like him,” just because she still felt like she should cover up for how deep her feelings already were. But if her mom could already tell, what was the point in hiding it?

“The more I love him,” she agreed.

Her mom smiled. “Have you told him yet?”

“Not in so many words,” Mira said, hedging a little. “We’ve both made it pretty obvious that we’ve got it bad. He asked me if it was okay to start talking about plans for next year’s Christmas. We haven’t said ‘I love you,’ though. But I think he wants to. There’s something he started to tell me earlier, but we got interrupted. It sounded like it might be that.”

If it was, maybe he could tell her tonight. Or maybe that would be the perfect confession for Christmas Eve, after they had (hopefully) saved the Christmas Village. She couldn’t decide. Wade was the one who had started the big moment off, so she would let him decide when to finish it.

“Well, I hope the interruptions stop,” Mira’s mom said. “There’s no point in wasting time. Believe me, you’ll always want as much of it as you can get.”

Mira knew that was true.

“I’m glad you and Cliff are going to be able to make good use of your time,” she said.

Her mom smiled. “Thanks to you, sweetie.”

“All I did was close the gap. It’s not like you guys didn’t put plenty of money into it too. I’m just happy that this’ll get Cliff the help he needs and let the two of you stop worrying so much. That’s all I really wanted for Christmas.”

“Us too,” her mom said, giving her a one-armed hug. “But I’m glad you got Wade along with it. And that gives us another present: getting to see our daughter look happier than ever. Now go persuade these mall executives that all they want for Christmas is an animatronic polar bear.”

*

“Are you sure about this?” Mira said, eyeing the Arbogasts’ front door. She could feel nervous sweat start to prickle up on the back of her neck. “Paying a surprise late-night visit is a big risk to take.”

Wade grimaced. “I’m not as sure as I’d like to be. But this is the kind of request it’s hard to make over the phone. We don’t want them assuming it’s a prank call and hanging up on us. And we don’t have time to do it all over email.”

True. If the Arbogasts didn’t check their mail outside of working hours—and good for them if they didn’t, honestly—then they wouldn’t know about the “animatronic polar bear” idea until the morning. That could be too late to drum up the necessary publicity and make the event as much of a splash as they needed it to be.

No, it was now or never. And no one ever saved Christmas by being too shy to ring a doorbell.

Besides, Wade had safely ushered little Billy out of the reindeer’s way, and Mira had managed to drag it back to its pen. The Arbogasts had thanked them both for it very nicely. Maybe it wasn’t too much to hope for that they’d go on being nice, even when the two of them were proposing something that objectively sounded kind of nuts.

She crossed her fingers again as Wade raised his hand and pressed his finger against the doorbell.

It took a moment—one where Mira both feared and prayed that no one was home—but then Mrs. Arbogast answered the door.

“Oh,” she said, her face lighting up with recognition. “Wade and—Mira, wasn’t it? Please come in.”

This was already easier than she’d been afraid it would be. She just had to hope that trend would continue.

She could tell she was going to be crossing her fingers so much tonight that they might go numb.

Mrs. Arbogast led them inside. It was a much, much bigger house than Mira was used to, and the Christmas decorations were much fancier and much more tasteful than the ones at her parents’. No Popsicle stick reindeer ornaments here, just artful custom-made glass bulbs that made every light on the tree sparkle with new depth and magic. It was beautiful, and she could tell it had been assembled with the utmost care, but she couldn’t help finding it just the tiniest bit too cool for her tastes.

She couldn’t help it: she was drawn to exuberance and passion, to tackiness and excess, to tradition and cliché, not minimalism and modernism and elegance. She liked the warmth of Wade’s wood, not the chill of this glass, and she liked her parents’ overblown Christmas explosions better than the Arbogasts’ restraint.

“I feel like I’m going to break something by accident,” Wade whispered to her as Mrs. Arbogast went to fetch her husband and some mugs of hot apple cider—she really was a very generous hostess even for surprise guests.

“Me too,” Mira said back in an undertone. “I was just thinking that this is beautiful but not exactly my thing. So that’s good: we have the same kind of thing.”

Wade’s smile warmed her more than any of the lights. “Maybe because we’re each other’s kind of thing.”

Maybe because they were even each other’s everything.

And that thought warmed her even more than his smile. It was still glowing inside her, bright as her parents’ fire, when the Arbogasts came in with their apple cider.

It was a good sign that they didn’t look irritated by tonight’s interruption. Politely confused, sure, but that was understandable.

“So,” Mr. Arbogast said, after they’d all greeted one another. “What can we do for you?”

Now or never , Mira reminded himself.

She took a deep breath.

“We know you said the Christmas Village hasn’t always gotten rave reviews from Honey Brook’s guests,” she said, “and we know that Mr. Marsh—”

Mrs. Arbogast took the moment to say a few choice words about Mr. Marsh.

“ Honey ,” Mr. Arbogast said, sounding mildly scandalized.

“Our son could have been trampled by a reindeer!”

“I know Mr. Marsh didn’t exactly help the Christmas Village’s case,” Mira said hastily. “And you’re thinking of shutting the whole thing down for good. But we wanted to ask you to reconsider. People complain about the Christmas Village, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter to them.”

Wade helped bolster her argument: “And kids want to see Santa at Christmastime.”

“We can still have a Santa,” Mr. Arbogast said. “I’m not trying to be a grinch here.”

“I know. But the surroundings help make it magical.”

“Not carol-oke, though,” Mira interjected. She’d decided that they should get that enshrined in the foundations of the new Christmas Village before anything else. No one should have to suffer through more of that. No matter how much they wanted to reinstate the Christmas Village’s overload of holiday spirit, there were limits. “None of the adults actually like carol-oke. The kids do, I know, and I’m usually all for humoring them, but ... seriously, everyone else hates it.”

“The carol-oke won’t be coming back,” Mrs. Arbogast promised her. “But I don’t know why anything else should either. It’s more trouble than it’s worth. All the upkeep, all the staff—our accountants are never sure if it brings in more money than it costs.”

That was the in they needed. She traded glances with Wade, and he took the lead.

“What if we could guarantee that more people would come than ever before?” Wade said. “What if we had a publicity stunt that would really pack the place? You haven’t had everything taken down yet, right? You could still sell plenty of gingerbread. And the stores would all benefit too—there could be a ton of last-minute shopping. I know I’d like it, as someone who has a shop there.”

“A publicity stunt?” Mr. Arbogast said suspiciously. “That was what Marsh was aiming for, obviously. It’s safe to say it didn’t work out.”

“Ours would,” Mira said.

Wade added, “And it wouldn’t depend on wild animals, which would help.”

“Okay,” Mrs. Arbogast said. She still sounded cautious, but there was at least a hint of intrigue there too. “What did you have in mind?”

“Instead of a real-life reindeer, we bring in a fake polar bear.” Mira knew that didn’t sound that impressive, so she rushed on. “But it would be almost impossible to tell that it’s fake. It’s so lifelike that anyone would think they were looking at the real thing. We have access to an incredibly high-quality animatronic polar bear, is what I’m saying. It’s voice-controlled, so we could even get it to do some tricks.”

“A lifelike, voice-controlled animatronic polar bear,” Mr. Arbogast said flatly.

Then he burst out laughing. So did Mrs. Arbogast.

“It’s not a joke!” Mira said.

Mrs. Arbogast actually had to wipe at her eyes. To Mira’s immense surprise, she said, “Oh, dear, we know it’s not. But we also know it’s a lie.” She said to Wade, “I forgot that you were Petey’s brother.”

The meaning clicked for Wade before it did for Mira. Understandably—he had more experience, both with being Petey’s brother and with being a shifter.

“Petey told you,” he said, groaning. “He told you that we’re shifters.”

“I thought it was supposed to be a secret!” Mira said.

“It is, but Petey’s always been bad at keeping secrets. He’s told so many people over the years, I’ve honestly lost track. He says it’s fine because they’re all trustworthy, and I guess he has good instincts about it, because it’s never caused any problems before. And apparently it’s doing the opposite of that right now.”

Mr. Arbogast, still chuckling, stroked his chin now, turning thoughtful.

He said, “So you want to appear in polar bear form, pretending that you’re a very realistic fake.”

Wade nodded. “Even if people think I’m real at first, they won’t think it for long. Mira can give me the ‘voice commands,’ and no regular polar bear would be trained to follow those.”

“You can’t juggle, can you?” Mrs. Arbogast said suddenly.

Wade blinked. “Uh, no. Sorry.”

“I just thought a juggling polar bear would be pretty amazing.”

“She’s not wrong,” Mira said to Wade.

“Well,” Wade said, “maybe I can try to learn before next year. If we have a deal?”