Page 1 of Candy Cane Dreams
Chapter One
Kate Woolbert tightened her grip on the steering wheel and watched the snowflakes as they fell lazily down, drifting up and over her car windshield as she drove through the sleepy town of Mistletoe Meadows.
The street lights, with large lighted outlines of Christmas trees, candy canes, or snowmen anchored around them, made the snow glisten and glitter as it slid past her car as she motored slowly down the street.
Everything she owned was in her car, although she wasn't thinking about that as she looked at the dark storefront windows that somehow, despite the early hour and the lack of anyone walking around, still managed to seem warm and welcoming.
She left Baltimore shortly after midnight because she hadn't been able to sleep. She still had several hours before she was supposed to meet with Principal Stevens about her new job as school counselor, which started after the holiday break. But since her old job had ended at the end of November, they had agreed that she could spend the month of December hanging around the school, helping where she could, and getting to know the teachers and students and their parents.
It was the kind of opportunity that existed only in a small town school.
Small towns.
She looked again at the sparkling Christmas decorations, the cheerful, yet dark, store windows, and wondered again how she'd ended up here, because she didn't really think of herself as a small town girl.
A light caught her eye, something a little different, a little warmer than the rest, and she looked across the street, her gaze catching on a cute, weatherbeaten sign in the shape of a candy cane. Then she looked below the sign to the yellow light that had caught her attention.
Behind the counter, a man—impossible to tell his age from where she was in her car—stood at the counter, dumping ingredients into a large mixing bowl. A white apron was tied around his waist, with a picture she couldn't discern, but she guessed probably had something to do with Christmas on the front of it. It was faded and worn, and yet somehow still cheerful and Christmasy, even though she couldn't see the details.
Someone was up early this morning. As early as she was.
Although he hadn't driven from Baltimore. He was happy, content to do his job in an old store in a small town, where he'd probably lived all of his life.
It wasn't something she ever saw for herself, but... somehow the idea of living in a small town didn't seem quite as repulsive as it had through her teen years and college years.
Her roommate, Nelly, had constantly raved about the amazing close-knit, family-like atmosphere of her small town. But Kate had been determined that she would remain a city girl. After all, teaching in an inner city school for an impossibly low wage was one way to give back to her community, wasn't it?
Her car inched down the road, and she lost sight of the man in the window as she pondered that question. It didn't feel likeshe was giving anything back. The things she was teaching at the inner-city school didn't really help her students at all, and she wasn't allowed to talk about her faith. Not even a word. And yet, she could tell them all kinds of lies about genders and sexuality and despicable things that went against every moral code she might have, and it was perfectly okay. How was that serving her children?
It had become a moral dilemma for her, and then the terrible breakup last Christmas of the engagement that she thought was going to lead to a happily ever after for her had ripped everything out from underneath her, and she had started applying for other jobs in other communities, although... again, she wasn't sure she wanted to be a small town girl.
Somehow, she found herself in a parking lot at a church at the edge of town. She turned around and started driving back through, ostensibly looking for places for rent.
Baltimore’s high rents and low wages had left her with very little savings, and she needed someplace cheap and fast.
Her savings would dwindle exceptionally quickly if she had to stay at a hotel for very long. Not to mention, the closest one was forty-five minutes away.
She turned around and tried to justify the second trip through because she needed to find a place to stay, and she might have missed a for-rent sign.
But deep down, she knew it was because the town made her feel like she was curled up in an ugly Christmas sweater, a mug of cocoa in one hand, a fire blazing in the hearth, as she read a good book and the Christmas tree twinkled in the corner beside her.
How did a town give a person a feeling like that? She never felt like that in the city. But she loved the hustle and the bustle and the busyness and the fact that there was always someoneawake, and she never felt alone. Weren't small towns lonely? And dead? Boring?
The yellow lights of the candy shop caught her attention again along with the man, still behind the counter, still working, still doing what he always did, she supposed.
This time, she noticed the elaborate candy cane display in the window and the sign that said "Handmade Candy Canes."
Did people actually handmake candy canes?
She didn't even know that was a thing.
But the store just seemed so cozy, the display so blatantly Christmasy, and the man obviously content with his work. He wasn't on his phone, and he didn't even look up as her headlights flashed by.
What would it be like to be so grounded and rooted in one's life?
Kate set the feeling aside. More than likely, small towns were not for her, but it would be a nice change of pace, give her a little bit of something to put on her résumé to beef it up some, for the time when she got her next job at a big school in the city.
And not as an assistant counselor, but as the head counselor.
