Page 45 of Grace & Henry's Holiday Movie Marathon
“Moms like scented candles, right?” Cal asks.
“Sure,” I say. “Dads less so, though, I’m thinking.”
“Oh, hey, you know what?” he says. “There’s a shop that I worked on here. Let’s swing by so I can show you how cool it is.”
I tell him sure, whatever, and we veer left. Moving through the plaza, I mostly pay attention as he tells me about recessed lighting. “The wood floors are sweet, too,” he says. “Total pain in the A-S-S to source, but worth it. It’s just up here.”
“Great.”
“By the way, why are you limping?” he asks.
My nether regions mostly feel better, just a dull ache now. “I went running yesterday.”
“Running?” he says. “Really? Were you, like, being chased by a bear?”
We’re about to walk into a little shop called Precocious HQ when Cal catches me by the shoulder.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I’m looking at you,” he says.
“Why are you doing that? I don’t like it.”
He assesses my outfit, my face, my hair. From his chest, Kelsey offers me her crab teether.
“Nah, thanks, I’m good,” I tell her.
“Some advice,” Cal says. “Maybe consider being more intentional with your facial hair. Right now, it just kinda looks like you forgot to shave.”
“What?” I touch my face. “You didn’t shave, either.”
“Yeah, but Imeantnot to. Also, you do this thing sometimes where you avoid eye contact. Maybe stop that. Kinda comes off as weird.”
“Dude?”
He opens the shop door. “I love you, by the way. Okay, just be yourself—but maybe a little better.”
Before the warmth of the cozy little place even fully washes over me, I realize what’s happening. A woman looks up from behind the register and pushes her hair out of her face. She sees my brother, then she sees me. She’s tall, she has glasses, and I’m surrounded by children’s books. Crap. It’s the client Cal told me about at Thanksgiving, and if my niece weren’t strapped to his chest, I’d punch him in the back of his head.
“Meredith G.!” says Cal. “How’s business, lady?”
Her name is Meredith Greer,and she tells me that Precocious HQ is her dream store.
“I know how earnest that sounds,” she says, “but, well, it is.”
She has an impressive cascade of long, dark hair that she keeps having to tuck behind her ears, and her glasses are striking—silver-rimmed and quite large. They frame her face well, but something about them also indicates hyperfunctionality, like she really, really needs them.
In addition to kids’ books, the shop sells a mishmash of other things. Art supplies, games, puzzles, a few racks of T-shirts with fun graphics. There are displays devoted to banned books, Maryland-themed stuffed animals, and famous feminists.
“I wish this had been here when I was a kid,” I say, and she smiles. “Oh, and kudos on the decorations.”
“Yeah? You like it?”
“Honestly, I don’t know if I could like it more.”
Somehow Meredith has managed to re-create a shop-size version ofRudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,that old stop-motion TV special from the ’60s that Grace and I talked about. Along with pretend snow on the floors and individual flakes hung from the ceiling, she’s set up life-size replicas of the characters, and it’s all just fabulous.
“When I met with your brother the first time, I had the whole place laid out,” she says. “I’d drawn all these pictures on graph paper. He helped me bring them to life.”
