Page 2 of No Business Like Snow Business

I followed the server down the line of booths. She pulled a menu out from under her arm and set it on the scratchedlaminate table as I slid into the booth. My damp jeans squeaked against the vinyl.

“You’ve been through the wars,” she commented.

“I drove my hire car into a snowbank,” I said, “and then down a ditch. May I borrow your phone?”

“Are you okay?”

“Fine, thank you,” I said, rubbing my hands on my damp thighs and faintly registering that my fingers were shaking.

“I’m gonna get you a coffee,” she said, “and a burger and fries, and then I’m gonna call Roger to come get you.”

“Roger?” I asked.

“Roger Knight,” she said, a hand on her hip. “Runs the auto shop in town. The car rental place too, so it’s his car you crashed.”

“Great.” I sighed. “I’m sure he’ll be delighted to meet me.”

The server laughed and tucked her notebook into her pocket. “You wait right here, and we’ll get everything fixed up for you.”

For a man whose car I’d crashed, Roger Knight was surprisingly personable. He picked me up from the gas station diner, and we drove back to the car. Roger retrieved my suitcase from the trunk while I at last located my phone hidden in the dark footwell of the passenger’s seat. Then I sat in the cab of the tow truck while Roger did something with a cable and a winch. A few minutes later, we were on our way to Christmas Falls.

“You here for the festival?” Roger asked, turning up the heat as we rattled along the road.

That caught my attention, and I slid my hand into my pocket and curled my fingers around the card nestling there. “The festival?”

“The Christmas Falls Festival,” he said. “The place fills up with tourists from about now all the way through to Christmas. You’re lucky to even get a hotel room this time of year.” He gave me a speculative look. “You did get a hotel room already, right?”

As though he was worried he’d have to take me home like a stray puppy.

“Yes,” I said. “I booked a room at the Pear Tree Inn. And no, I’m not here for the festival. I’m here on business.”

Technically true.

It was more personal business than corporate, but the line between family and financial was blurry at best in my case. My father didn’t know I was here, and certainly wouldn’t approve, and the family lawyers would be frantically calling me and strongly advising me not to go any further if they had any idea what I was up to, which was precisely the reason I hadn’t told anyone. Even my sister, Sarah, who was more often on my side than against me, thought I was in Chicago for the week, catching up with friends.

I stared out the window as the outskirts of town appeared. The first few houses I saw with lawn displays of reindeer and sleds and Santas were charming in a whimsical kind of way. By the time we’d made it into town where the houses were closer together and the Christmas decorations appeared to be multiplying exponentially, it was less charming and more of a complete assault on the senses. Christmas waseverywhere.

As a resident, Roger Knight must have developed an immunity; he was telling me about the best place in town to get a good steak dinner. I hadn’t told him I wanted a good steak dinner, but Roger had the look of a guy who believed everyone’s life could be improved with a daily meal of grain-fed rump.

Colored lights slid past the window of Roger’s truck, bursting into green and red coronas when they hit the scattered droplets of water on the glass, putting on a tiny fireworks show just forme. When I was a kid, I’d played with a kaleidoscope—just a cheap, plastic thing, but the patterns it made were captivating; the effect of the Christmas lights refracting through the droplets on the trick windows was similar.

Funny.

This wasn’t the first time I’d thought of that kaleidoscope this week, when it hadn’t crossed my mind at all in the twenty years before that. But I’d been digging around in my grandfather’s study a few days ago, looking for any more papers, and suddenly remembered he’d used to keep a couple of toys on the bottom shelf of his armoire for me and Sarah and the cousins. When I was a kid, I’d crawled under his desk and played with them while, a million miles above me, Grandfather spoke on the phone to his assistant, and his lawyers, and boardrooms all around the world. He’d seemed so outwardly cold, but he’d kept a shelf of toys in his study for his grandchildren. He couldn’t have been totally heartless if he’d given me a kaleidoscope, right?

Well, what the hell did I know?

Less than I thought, that was for sure. So it almost made sense, or at least it wasn’t the craziest thing after the week I’d had, that I was now being driven into the middle of a town that could only be described as violently festive.

The Pear Tree Inn was on what appeared to be the main road through town. It was a single story L-shaped building that hugged its own parking lot. The brick walls were cream, and the roof was green. There was a tree painted on the short end of the L. A pear tree, I guessed, which meant the misshapen bird sitting on top of it could only be a partridge.

“Well, here we are,” Roger said as he turned off the engine in front of the entrance. “It’s not a bad spot, but you might want to avoid the complimentary breakfast.” He nodded toward theroad. “Downtown is about three blocks that way, and the coffee shop and the bakery both open early.”

I climbed out of the car. “Thanks. Sorry again about the car.”

“That’s what the insurance is for. Let them worry about it.” He dipped his chin in a nod, waited until I’d hauled my suitcase out with me, and then drove off with a wave.

I checked my coat pockets for my wallet, phone, and the old Christmas card I’d been carrying around since last week—after the morning I’d had, I needed to reassure myself that everything I needed was close at hand. Then I wheeled my suitcase inside reception at a brisk enough pace that I could almost, but not quite, keep in front of the voice in my head that told me nothing good could come from being here. And unlike earlier, the voice wasn’t my father’s. This time it was all mine.

---