When she finally set her feet on solid ground, Kate braced herself for an earful from Miss Carolyn. After volunteering with the festival since she was seven years old, Kate graduated to full-time employee status at nineteen, the youngest person ever hired by The Christmas Company, and as Assistant of Festival Operations, her list of duties was as extensive as it was satisfying. She ran into trouble, though, with her enthusiasm. As a volunteer, she scrambled to make herself useful, invaluable. Now, as an employee, she always found herself trying to do everything, a habit her boss hated. Miss Carolyn wanted her at her side, not off fixing the hem of Mrs. Cratchit’s costume or refilling the mulled wine in Fred’s apartment scene.
“What have I told you about getting up on that ladder?” Miss Carolyn asked, hands firmly on her hips, silver eyebrow firmly raised. Kate avoided her gaze. She focused instead on breaking down the ladder for storage, no easy task considering the ladder’s height.
“Tomorrow’s the big day and everything has to be perfect.”
“There’ve got to be a thousand lights on that tree. How in Heaven’s name did you spot the broken one?”
There were actually 12,460 lights on the Main Street Christmas tree, but Kate didn’t want to correct her boss. Or look like the biggest festival nerd in town, though everyone probably already suspected as much. She shrugged.
“It’s a gift.”
To be fair, her eagle eye came more through experience than through some miracle of heavenly gift-giving. A lifetime of staring up at the tree with joy and awe had taught her the weak electrical spots. With the ladder broken down and folded, Kate scooped up the handle, groaning with the effort. She’d definitely feel the strain in her muscles tomorrow, but it was all worth it for that one tiny light. If the tree brought joy and the holiday spirit to even one person, Kate’s mission would be accomplished. Christmas Eve was the night the crowds were the densest and most hopeful; Kate didn’t want even one thing to go wrong for them.
She started off for Town Hall to return the ladder. With its balcony level and classic architecture, the main ballroom was used as Scrooge’s house, but they used some of the anterooms and recreation rooms for storage and costume changes. Miss Carolyn followed behind.
“You’re my best worker, kid, but you’re stubborn as they come.”
“We make Christmas for people, Miss Carolyn. What we do is important, right down to the tiniest little light bulb.”
“You really love this, don’t you?”
“More than anything.”
Kate didn’t need to think about that for more than a second. Her entire life revolved around the festival. As far as she was concerned, Christmas was the best time of year. Not because of the presents or the food, though those were certainly part of it. To her, Christmas was the one time of year when everyone put aside their differences and sat together at the table of humanity. Hope lit the lamps and compassion played the music. Christmas wasn’t a holiday but a microcosm of the best of mankind, a reminder of what they could be if they only carried the spirit with them all year round.
It also made her excessively poetic.
“Well.” Miss Carolyn cleared her throat and pulled Kate away from the side door. “I need you to come with me.”
“Why?”
“We have a visitor from Woodward. And they’re waiting on us.”
The swinging of the heavy, oaken front doors of the town hall punctuated the ominous line. Heavy ladder still in tow, Kate stepped through the main marble atrium to see they were not entering some intimate meeting with their corporate overlords.
Judging from the sheer number of people present, the room looked more like an intervention than a meeting to discuss cost-cutting measures or whatever it was corporate decided to throw at them next.
Heads turned at the doors opening and a sea of worried, familiar faces turned to greet them. Mitch and Betsy Plinkett held hands and stared with distant eyes. Lindy Turnbull’s perfect skin wrinkled with concerned lines. Even little Bradley Lewisham, their Tiny Tim, gripped his prop cane until his knuckles went white. Costumes mingled with plain clothes, but one thing was consistent: fear.
Something had happened. Or was happening. And no one had told Kate about it. Her stomach dropped too far for her to pick it back up. She glanced sidelong at Miss Carolyn. She was a rock of consistency and positivity. If there was a North Star in this room, she would be it.
But when Kate looked, there was no guiding light to follow. Miss Carolyn’s rosy cheeks sunk into a pale shade of gray. Her eyes hardened. Dread prickled the hairs on the back of Kate’s neck. If whatever happened was enough to rankle their leader, it could only mean one of two things. Either someone had died, or they were getting shut down.
“Good evening.”
Kate’s head snapped to the front of the room, where a hastily constructed podium and a microphone stood. Too distracted by her friends and neighbors, she hadn’t noticed the setup when she walked in, but now it was all she could do to even blink. Behind the podium stood a solitary man. Against the white walls of the atrium, his black suit and golden hair stood out with the entrancing shock of an abstract painting, as if he were nothing more than lonely brushstrokes on a canvas.
He was also, as far as Kate could see, the only person in the room without an identifiable expression in his face. For someone so young—he couldn’t have been more than a few years older than her, if that—he had the practiced look of a lifelong poker player. She wouldn’t have stood a chance against him in a game of Hold ’Em. His natural state seemed to be one of stone. Worse still, when he spoke, she realized it wasn’t just a skin-deep distinction. His unavailable emotions went all the way to his core.
“My name is Clark Woodward, and it’s my sad duty to inform you that my uncle, Christopher Woodward, passed away last month.”
Gasps from every corner of the room, including Kate’s. Mr. Woodward was a good, kind man. He lived in Dallas, but he made time every month to come and visit the ranches in Miller’s Point, and of course he visited the festival every year. He even played Scrooge in the festival once, after the real Scrooge took ill and couldn’t get out of bed. What he lacked in acting skills, he made up for with the biggest heart in all of Texas. Kate cracked at the news, but the young man behind the podium held his hand up for quiet, effectively silencing them with a single gesture. He wasn’t done yet.
“As the new CEO of my uncle’s company, it is also my duty to inform you that we will be shutting down The Christmas Company subsidiary, effective immediately.”
CEO. Uncle. Shutting down. Immediately. The words all made sense individually, but when sliced into that order and delivered with such dignity, Kate wasn’t sure she understood them. How could this man be Mr. Woodward’s nephew? Who made him CEO?
Kate didn’t even flinch when her shaking hands dropped the folded ladder with a room-shaking thunk, drawing the attention of a room full of her friends and neighbors. The other questions and confusions were nothing in the face of her biggest issue:
Destroying The Christmas Company would mean the end of Miller’s Point as they knew it. Woodward’s ranching operations made many of the families good livings, but the seasonal work meant working for The Christmas Company