Page 42 of No Business Like Snow Business

But since it was more than clear that another few painfully uncomfortable minutes in the front of a silver Ford Taurus thatsmelled of lavender weren’t going to change anything, I opened the door and let the cold air inside the car.

“Take care of yourself, Harvey.” It was the sort of thing friends said, and I hated myself for saying it, when it felt as though we could have been much more, if only we’d had time. It felt as though we could have been everything.

“Yeah,” he said, that lopsided smile still bravely clinging. “You too.”

And I stepped out of the car into the cold.

twelve

HARVEY

Life comes at you fast.

This morning I’d woken up to Sterling and hot chocolate, and now I was sitting in Martha’s car in the narrow alleyway behind the museum, between the back of the building and the dumpster, telling myself I wasn’t going to have a breakdown. I wasn’t sure if I was lying to myself or not, because it seemed ridiculous to be so upset about Sterling leaving. I’d thought I was heartbroken when Steven dumped me—or when I dumped him by declining his generous offer to continue being his side piece—but that hadn’t felt like this. I’d been angry and shocked and humiliated. I wasn’t feeling any of those things now. If I had to put a label on the chaotic swirl of emotions inside me, the only one that seemed to encompass everything waslost.

When I was a kid, I had one of those slot car sets with the loops and everything. If you hit the speed controls just right as your car was coming off the loop, it would jump off the track and skitter across the bedroom floor until it crashed. I felt like that slot car driver must have. He was on the track and going strong, when suddenly the whole world flipped and now he’s upside down in a Spider-Man sneaker with no idea how he got there.

I gripped the steering wheel like that tiny, imaginary driver must have, and closed my eyes while I let out a long breath. And then, because the world didn’t stop just because Sterling had left Christmas Falls, I got out of the car and hurried inside the building.

The familiar sounds of cheerful carols and happy voices coming from the Arts and Crafts Fair soothed me. So did the warmth that seeped into the cold tip of my nose. I debated going to the Arts and Crafts Fair to see if anyone there was selling fudge—I was going to need some fudge, STAT—but the thought of all those people was a bit too much to face right now, so I ducked into the museum instead, where I was much less likely to have to talk to anyone.

The museum was predictably, and comfortingly, empty of people.

I took my gloves off, shoving them in the pockets of my coat, and then I hung my coat on the hook by the door.

Okay then. Back to my regularly scheduled life.

Which wasgreat. I loved my regularly scheduled life. Just... it would have been nice to have someone special to share it with me.

I sat behind my desk. Maybe I really should call the animal shelter and get a museum cat. Or two museum cats, since the first cat would need a friend. Was I allowed to keep cats on what was technically city property? Some places had library cats; I’d seen it on social media. Maybe if I talked up the mouse threat, I could get permission. That seemed like the perfect way to distract myself right now, and if I pulled it off, I could get cats. That was a win/win, right? It was best not to think about not pulling it off, since I was emotionally fragile enough that the loss of my museum cats—hypothetical as they were—might be the last straw.

I opened my laptop, going to the Santa’s Helpers website. I was browsing kittens for research purposes when Martha bustled in from the next room, clutching a broom.

“Oh, you’re back!” she said. “There’s a cobweb on the ceiling, and I can’t reach it.”

“Oh God. You were going for the ladder, weren’t you?” I stood up. “Please don’t go up ladders, Martha. My heart can’t take it.”

Neither could her octogenarian bones, if she took a tumble.

I took the broom off her and followed her into the next room, where she pointed out a cobweb in the corner. I didn’t bother with the ladder; I just jumped and jabbed the broom toward the ceiling. It snagged the edge of the cobweb and brought the whole thing down.

“Good job!” Martha said, patting me on the forearm as though she was genuinely proud of my ability to jump and stretch at the same time. To be fair, she might have been. She had once seen me walk into a wall with my eyes wide open. It was probably a miracle she let me borrow her car.

I put the broom back in the storage closet. “I’m going to put in an order form for new postcards. Do you think we should get snow globes? They’re very Christmassy.”

She looked at me over the top of her glasses. “Harvey, I don’t think we get enough visitors to make back the cost of snow globes, even if everyone was to buy one just to be ironic.”

“How did you know people buy them to be ironic? They might genuinely like them.”

She cocked a thin, sardonic eyebrow in my direction. “Sure.”

“Igenuinely like snow globes!” I tried to inject some levity into my tone, but I might have overdone it and sounded too enthusiastic, like I didn’t just like snow globes, but I’d go to war for them, and Martha’s eyebrow gained even more ground in her wrinkled forehead. “I mean, not in a weird way or anything.”

Martha tilted her head. “Are you all right, Harvey?”

“Yes, I lied. “I’m fine. Everything is fine.”

“Hmm. Where’s that nice young man of yours?”

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