Page 40 of No Business Like Snow Business

I feel it too, I wished I could tell him.We have chemistry, we have fun. You’re everything I’ve always wanted but thought I couldn’t have. I want to know a hundred thousand random trivia facts aboutyou. “I’d rather hear it from you,” I said, meaning it.

He shut off the ignition, and I didn’t miss the way he passed the back of his gloved hand quickly beneath his nose before saying, “Alright, let’s crack this case,” in a shaky voice.

Before I knew what I was doing, my arms were around him, and we once again found ourselves contorted into a position God never intended in a vehicle that didn’t belong to either of us. Though it was mostly me doing the contorting. He patted theforearm I had slung around his middle, as though I were the one in need of reassurance. “Sorry,” he whispered. “I’m being stupid about this.”

“No, you’re not,” I murmured, resting my head awkwardly on his shoulder. He leaned into me a little.

“We were just having fun.”

And here was the part where I ought to say,Yes, we were having fun, but it became something more for me, and I don’t want to let you go.“I don’t want it to stop,” was about all the honesty I could manage.

“We’d better go in,” he said after a moment. “Martha’ll be wondering if I ran over a reindeer with her car if I’m not back soon.”

“Oh God,” I said, drawing back. “The museum. If you have to go, go. I don’t want you to lose your job.”

He snorted. “I’ll be okay.” He said it like he was trying to make it true by saying it. I felt like such a shit. “Could I see the photograph?”

I dug in my pocket and handed it to him. It was more dog-eared than it had been at the start of this trip. Harvey studied it like he was trying to memorize it. I wondered if he was thinking what I was: that my uncle had taken a chance, seized the happiness he couldn’t find with the Van Ruyvens in New York, so why was I such a coward? “I wonder what it felt like,” I blurted. “To realize he couldn’t be Frederick Goodwin Van Ruyven anymore. Or at least, not that version of him.”

Harvey eyed me skeptically. “FrederickGoodwinVan Ruyven?”

“My family has issues.”

“Apparently.” He looked back at the photo. “I don’t know how it felt. I’d guess pretty freeing. But I don’t know. I’ve never had family I wanted to get away from.”

Of course. And now I felt like an even bigger jerk, expecting sympathy for my family issues from a guy who’d lost his parents.

“It sounds like he did what was right for him,” he said diplomatically.

Then he unbuckled his seatbelt and got out of the car.

Frosty’s was between the lunch rush and the dinner rush when we entered, but there were still plenty of people at the tables. Mostly tourists, I guessed, by the fact most of them had clusters of shopping bags shoved under their chairs. Harvey cast a gaze over most of the diners, his brow furrowed, and then his expression brightened as he made his way to the bar.

“Juan, hi!” he said to the man behind the bar. “This is Sterling. We’ve been doing a research project. Sterling, Juan’s one of the managers here. He knows everyone.”

Harvey was still holding the photo, and he slid it across the bar.

Juan picked it up by the edges and looked at it for a moment. “I don’t know either of these guys.”

“It’s from 1989,” Harvey said. “They’d be a lot older by now.”

Juan squinted. “Shit, Harvey. That makes it even harder.”

Harvey wrinkled his nose and shot me a hopeful glance that made my chest tighten.

Maybe it hadn’t been our Hail Mary moment at the dock. Maybe this was it right here.

And, looking into Harvey’s eyes, I realized I didn’t want to waste my last chance at snatching a piece of good luck on Freddy. I wanted to save it forHarvey, because it was easy to believe that with my whole heart when the lights behind the bar were twinkling and promise hung in the gingerbread-scented airof this ridiculous town, whispering to me that Christmas was the time for miracles.

And then I imagined myself twenty-four hours from now, standing in my apartment, trying to believe what I did in this moment. How could I? Despite what the people of Christmas Falls would have you believe, and despite how incredible the illusion was, Christmas had to end at some point.

“I can’t even see that one’s face.” Juan tapped on Cap Guy. “Did you ask Bob?”

I opened my mouth, since it was my research project and I should probably get better at taking the lead. But nothing came out.

“Yeah,” Harvey said. “He wasn’t sure.”

A customer at the bar leaned over to look at the photo, then shook his head. “You should try posting it online. With all that AI, facial recognition stuff, you’d be able to figure out who it is.”

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