The Christmas Company Read online

  Storming across the frost-strewn lawn, Clark made a beeline for the first wreath on the first floor. Earlier today, she’d told him taking these things down would be an impossible job for one person. She lied about everything else. Why would she lie about this? He reached for the four-foot monstrosity and tugged. And tugged. And tugged. Until finally it let loose. The momentum shot him back a few steps until he tumbled to a halt, gripping onto the wreath for dear life.

  With a minor success under his belt, he went for the rest. In a snowstorm of rough pulls and tugs, he yanked and pulled and ripped at each one in turn. By the fourth, his arms ached and when he fell backwards, he landed flat on his back with a face full of wreath pressing him down into the damp grass.

  Fine. He could stay in this house for one night. One night in a house where every ware reminded him of Kate Buckner wouldn’t kill him.

  It might break his heart even worse. It would no doubt keep him up all night. He wouldn’t be able to escape the pain. But it wouldn’t kill him.

  He abandoned his pursuit of a fresh, un-Jack Frosted house. The wreaths stayed on the front lawn or at their window-side post and Clark took himself inside, where the fires Kate tended still burned hot and her decorations twinkled even more brightly as the night darkened and grew denser around the house. Room by room, Clark made the journey of extinguishing Christmas from the place. He took nothing down—he didn’t want to touch anything, while the memories and pain burned fresh—but he unplugged the lamps inside tiny porcelain villages and flicked off breakers controlling scores of hung fairy lights. The formal dining room. The kitchen. The downstairs study. The hallways. One by one they fell to his power until Clark reached the closed French doors of the living room, the one room he’d been dreading all along. Where Kate told her story about her family and how much the festival meant to her. Where they watched It’s a Wonderful Life and laughed at the plot holes while debating if George Bailey was a real romantic at heart. Where they decorated the tree.

  Where Clark realized he was falling for her.

  He considered leaving it, but knew it would only hurt worse in the morning. Might as well rip it off, Band-Aid style. The doors spread for him, spilling golden light into the hallway.

  All at once, his body deadened. He couldn’t lift his arms. His feet refused to obey commands. His own skeleton revolted against him, forcing him to stand in the frame of the doorway and revel in all the ways he failed himself today. Ghosts of them together flitted around the room, teasing him with the promises of what might have been.

  If he hadn’t believed her. If she hadn’t been lying. If he’d just listened to her explanation. If she’d said sorry. If. If. If.

  Maybe he wouldn’t have tried to tear down all remnants of her and maybe they wouldn’t have spent Christmas apart from one another. Maybe he still would have believed everything she told him, about love and Christmas and all the rest of it.

  But Clark learned long ago his life wasn’t a movie and it didn’t follow his whims or wishes. He was a sailboat at the mercy of its whims. All he could do was try not to capsize.

  The fire. It needed dampening first. Then, he moved onto turning off the television, blowing out the candles, ripping down the mistletoe from the doorway. Piece by piece, he deconstructed her fairy tale until he stood alone in a dark room with nothing to guide his way but the bulbs on the Christmas tree. He ducked to unplug those too, but stopped when something strange tucked behind the tree caught his eye. A flash of red, sparkly paper caught the light, and he reached back to investigate. After a moment of grappling, he finally caught the hidden object and pulled it up to his face for inspection.

  A small package, wrapped in red wrapping paper, tied with white and green curlicue ribbons. A practiced hand made the lines of the wrapping absolutely flawless. It could’ve been done by someone behind the wrapping department at Macy’s, though Clark knew immediately only one person could’ve done this.

  Kate Buckner. Kate Buckner had given him a present.

  Clark couldn’t remember the last time someone—not a business colleague, not a client or prospective partner—got him a present. Even his secretaries knew not to bother because he wouldn’t open them anyway. Anything he got went straight to one of the lower-level directors who would no doubt enjoy tickets to the Cowboys game or a wine tasting trip for two more than he ever would.

  Throw it away, reason said.

  Open it, sentimentality replied.

  For some stupid reason, he listened to sentimentality. For some stupid reason, Clark glanced up at the clock on the wall, checking to make sure it was really Christmas. Snake though she may have been, he didn’t want to insult her by opening a Christmas present before Christmas morning. But at almost 1:30 a.m., it was most decidedly Christmas morning. Early, early in the morning, but morning all the same.

  Rusty from years of not opening presents, Clark struggled with the paper. At first, he attempted to lift the wrapping off at the tape lines so as not to completely destroy the stuff, but when the tape proved tougher than anticipated, he ripped straight through it, revealing the gift inside. It wasn’t a box at all. It was a book. The red leather-bound cover gave no hints about the contents inside, so Clark picked himself off the floor and found a seat in his favorite chair by the now-darkened fireplace.

  He opened to the first page, though the words were not type-written and official as he expected. Instead, a dark blue pen swooped cursive handwriting onto the first blank page.

  Dear Clark,

  The same compulsion telling him to light the fire and throw the book straight into it also told him to stop reading there, but his curiosity tamped down all of that. He read on.

  Dear Clark,

  I don’t know you very well. Yesterday, we didn’t exactly get off on the right foot. You want to destroy my town. I was rude and abrasive. We both made mistakes. But this morning, I saw you eating breakfast alone at the diner in town and my heart broke for you. Everyone in this town thinks you’re a villain. And maybe they’re right. But I don’t think they are. And I’m hoping I can prove it.

  Or, maybe better, I hope we can prove to you that you’re not a villain. If, in the end, I fail to do this, I hope you’ll read this book. It’s made me see the best in people all my life. Maybe it can do the same for you.

  Yours Most Sincerely,

  Kate Buckner.

  He parsed her words, picking them apart alongside everything he now knew about her. Everything in him wanted to stay angry with her, to cling to that pain that shot straight through him when she’d asked about the festival. It was no small thing for him to open up, so it was no small thing to be betrayed.

  But…what if she hadn’t betrayed him? The gift had been sitting there since her arrival that morning. She’d written all of this before they’d known each other, wrapped it with care when the last time they’d spoke he’d carelessly insulted her home and everything she cared about… Even then, she didn’t think he was a monster. Even then, she saw good in him. And gave him something without any expectation of a return.

  Clark sunk to the lowest pits of despair. She’d been honest all along. Sure, the festival was important to her, but this morning before she even knew him, she wanted to help him. He’d misjudged her character. He’d failed her, not the other way around. He would not cry. He would not cry. He would not cry. He just needed to see what was so special about this book. He sniffled, holding back his torrent of angst as much as possible. Delicate as he could, Clark turned to the title page and read the bold print declaring the name of Kate Buckner’s favorite piece of literature.

  A Christmas Carol.

  In Prose.

  Being a Ghost Story of Christmas.

  By Charles Dickens.

  Oh, no… He’d have to read this thing, wouldn’t he?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Christmas Day

  “Kate! Kate!” />
  To her profound disappointment, Kate Bucker did not sleep until January second as she’d been hoping. Groaning from her place under the blankets, she reached a single hand out and shooed whoever thought it smart to intrude this morning. No doubt word of her story and failure with Clark made its way around town by now—Miss Carolyn was many things, but discreet could not be counted among them—and she did not want to spend her new least favorite day of the year listening to her friends try to comfort and console her. For the first time in her life, Christmas Day would be hers to do with exactly as she liked. With no festival to plan and run, she could stay in bed until well past noon and listen to heavy metal or whatever it was anti-Christmas people listened to on December 25.

  “Go away.”

  The security in her apartment didn’t exactly rival Fort Knox. On most nights, since she didn’t have a working lock on her front door, she usually kept a can with a bunch of coins in it directly in front of the door as a kind of makeshift alarm system. Apparently, she’d forgotten to put the can out.

  Some mumbling voices, dampened by the comforter pulled over her head, didn’t make enough sense for her to understand their words, but she did recognize the voices. Emily and Michael. Those two. The best friends a girl could have…except for when she didn’t want any friendship. Petty though she knew it was, she wanted to wallow in her own self-pity, not accept it from anyone else. She’d always been the reliably cheerful, good ship lollipop kind of gal, but for once she had a real reason to disappear into her mattress. The mumbling stopped, only to be followed by the clicking of heels against hardwood and the sound of a closing door.

  Wish granted. She was alone once more. Moments passed with no noise.

  “Emily?” she called. No response. “Michael?” Again, no response.

  The covers flew away from her body as she sat up and faced the day, but when Kate opened her eyes, something strange happened. Her little apartment didn’t look as she’d left it. Decorations that had been shoved into the bowels of her trashcan—now crumpled—were placed back on her walls. Light shone through her windows though she could have sworn she closed the curtains before she fell asleep. Everything was almost exactly as it was when she woke up on Christmas Eve.

  Why was her apartment back to normal? She shot up to sit in bed, giving herself a head rush. Spots appeared in her vision. She never slept well, so the sensation could almost certainly be caused by oversleep. The clock on the wall read 9:30. When had she ever slept that late?

  It was then, as she checked the clock, that Kate noticed that something was out of place. There, on the windowsill, sat a book with a sticky note upon it. Sunbeams played on gold lettering.

  “READ ME,” it said.

  A stubborn denial locked Kate’s limbs. She recognized that book. Of all the books in all the world, it was the one she’d recognize anywhere. And she wasn’t interested in reading it ever again. With a single bound, she was on her feet, ready to throw the book back into the garbage where it belonged—her best guess was that Emily or someone heard about her night and snuck in to make her feel better, a losing proposition—but then something hanging over her front door halted her stomping.

  Her heart clenched. She gasped.

  The Belle dress. The one she’d never gotten to wear after staying with Michael after he’d broken his leg, with its green velvet and perfect bustle, hung from a satin hanger over the lip of her door, complete with a corset, stockings and those shoes she’d always wanted to steal. Makeup and a curling iron, along with a plastic box of bobby pins and hair ties sat on her kitchen counter. Tacked to the dress waited another note, this time reading, “WEAR ME.”

  She had to be dreaming. She had to be.

  Her fingers reached out to brush the lush material of the gown. It ran like water beneath her skin. Quickly, as if afraid someone would come in and take it from her, she held it up to her body and rushed to examine herself in the bathroom mirror. Yep. Definitely a dream. The Belle dress for the festival stopped fitting after her growth spurt in junior year of high school.

  No. It wasn’t a dream. If it was, she would have woken up by now. She didn’t know who had gifted her this dress, but if the festival was closing and all its assets sold, she was going to get one good Christmas Day use out of this gown. Even if she hated the book from which it came—which she did—it was too beautiful to pass up. Her practiced hands flew through the motions of dressing and preparing herself. Years and years of helping Belles fit themselves in the fabric guided her until she looked the part. Victorian curls framed her face, crowned by a halo of holly, a customary feature of Belle’s costume. Bright red lipstick brought some color to her otherwise pale skin. A red and gold brooch glowed at the base of her throat, pinned to the lace collar of her gown.

  Oh, the gown. It fit as if it had been made for her. She spun, letting the skirts swirl up and reveal the petticoats and shoes hidden beneath. Even if everything was falling apart, even if her heart still felt half-stitched together, even if she didn’t want to believe in Christmas anymore, her girlhood dreams were coming true.

  She looked better than beautiful. And she felt it.

  “Extra! Extra! Read all about it!”

  Her vain inspection smashed to a halt with the intrusion of a squawking voice; it filtered through her thin window panes, a little, booming cry from the streets down below. Doing her best not to trip over her own feet—she couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn heels that weren’t her sturdy work boots—she scrambled for the window, stopping only for the briefest of moments to grab the READ ME copy of A Christmas Carol waiting on the sill. Costume firmly in place and book tucked under her arm, Kate opened the panes and looked down below, searching for the source of the newsboy cries.

  Only, she didn’t see the source. Not at first. Instead, an uncontrollable, unstoppable gasp flew from the depths of her chest as she stared out at the town square. It was there. Everything was there. As if Clark Woodward never demanded they take down the sets and facades and decorations, the square looked picture-perfect and ready for Christmas. As she leaned out of her window, she realized she was leaning into Dickensian England, with all of its beauty and wonder.

  They’d put it back. They’d put it all back. She just didn’t understand why. But there, on the corner between the facade of Marley and Scrooge’s office and the butcher’s shop, Kate spotted Susan Cho, a nine-year-old who played one of the Cratchit daughters in last year’s festival. Dressed in one of the countless street urchin outfits Kate put together over the years, she held a newspaper high over her head. From this angle, Kate couldn’t make out the headline or even if it came from Dallas or their stock of Dickens-specific recreations of London newspapers.

  “Merry Christmas, London! Extra! Extra!”

  “Susan! Come over here!”

  As if she’d been walked through this a dozen times, Susan hustled down the block to stand beneath Kate’s window, tucking the newsprint under her arm. If this were the festival come back to life, Kate would have scolded her for getting newsprint on the costume, but her confusion and awe at the entire situation overtook any practical thought. It didn’t matter if the costumes got dirty or the fake newsprint smudged, not when there was so much outside at which she could marvel.

  “Morning, miss!” Susan lisped through her two missing front teeth and tipped her newsboy cap. “What can I do for you?”

  “What in the world is going on here?”

  “Sorry, Miss Kate. Can’t talk now. I have to stay in character,” she stage-whispered before returning to her strolling and hawking. “Extra! Extra!”

  For her part, Kate remained rooted to the spot.

  “But if I was able to talk to you, I’d say you should come downstairs.”

  “What?” Kate whispered back, starting a complete conversation in hushed tones.

  “You’re supposed to follow me.”

  “Oh.
” Whatever was happening here, whatever character Susan was meant to keep and whatever was happening to this town, it was clear there was a plan and an order in place. Kate just didn’t know them. But if she knew anything from a lifetime of working with and around children, it was to play along with their games. “Okay. I’ll be right down.”

  She gathered up her skirts and did as she was told, skidding down her steps towards the town square. Once out on the street, following close behind the little girl as she hawked her papers, Kate couldn’t contain her curiosity.

  “Hey, Susan?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  The little girl must have felt Kate’s distress radiating off of her because she dropped her character in order to answer. God bless children and their inability to pay attention to anything for more than ten minutes.

  “Is this a dream? Am I dreaming?”

  She didn’t exactly believe she was dreaming, but it seemed as likely as Clark suddenly having a change of heart and giving her the festival back.

  “Hmmm.” The little girl tugged on her cap, considering the question. “I don’t think so. If you were I hope I’d be wearing something much cuter.”

  Unconvincing as the argument should have been, it swayed Kate. After the events of last night, would this bizarre journey through Miller’s Point be something she would dream about? Unlikely.

  By Sherlock Holmes logic, it meant she was definitely, for real, walking through the festival facsimile of A Christmas Carol in a sweeping ball gown on Christmas morning.

  Susan led her around the empty square, all while Kate puzzled out what little she understood about her surroundings. Dickens. Susan. None of it made sense, but she decided she saw no harm in playing along. Her heart broke yesterday. It couldn’t re-break. Besides, the pieces were too small to be crushed into anything else. What did she have to lose?

  When they reached the corner beneath Scrooge’s house, Kate turned to Susan for instructions. Susan, for her part, tapped her toe on the sidewalk and stared up at the closed windows.