Page 12 of No Business Like Snow Business

The 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 havereindeer.”

“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 likethis.”

“In a storeroom?”

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

“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 matchesthe 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 forBack 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.

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