“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Bailey said. “It’s an institution.”
“A landmark,” the old man added, then bent his head back over his book of triplicate forms.
She wasn’t going to take a ticket. “What are you, uh, writing there, Mr. Baer? Because, you see, I’m in a bit of a hurry. Mom’s home alone, probably keeping dinner warm for me, and-”
“Dan’s really moved out then?” He stopped writing to squint at her over silver-rimmed bifocals. “Heard he’s in one of those ugly condos on the bay side.”
“Um, well…” Bailey wasn’t sure if her mother and stepfather’s recent separation was public knowledge, but heck, this was 7.4-square-mile Coronado. Secrets were impossible to keep, plus perhaps she could use the sympathy to wiggle out of whatever the Retired Citizen Patrolman had written on that little form. “They’ve been living apart since September.”
Mr. Baer nodded. “Heard one won’t step inside the shop if the other one’s there.”
“That’s true too.” Which had resulted in the frantic phone calls she’d been fielding from the part-time assistant manager and the guy who did the books-both old family friends. With her mother and Dan refusing to share the same air space, no one was minding the store. During the season when they made seventy-five percent of their year’s profits, this meant the likely end to a Coronado institution. A landmark.
The bankroll that kept her mother, stepfather, and freshman-in-college younger brother living in the style to which they were accustomed.
So she’d been guilted into coming home to save the day.
“I’m leaving on the twenty-fifth, though,” she murmured.
“Eh?” Mr. Baer squinted at her again. “What’s that?”
“I’m running the store,” Bailey explained. “But only until Christmas.” By then her mother would have accepted the hard lesson Bailey had taken to heart a decade ago. She even had her own private axiom to cover it, a Christmasy twist on the famous phrase from the Robert Frost poem. “Nothing flocked can stay.”
“Eh?”
“My take on ‘Nothing gold can stay’ and my personal motto, Mr. B.” A reminder that trusting in pretty promises and the lasting strength of romantic relationships was about as sensible as believing in Santa and all his itty-bitty elves. That kind of magic didn’t exist.
“Now, about that ticket you’re working on, you can’t mean that…”
But of course he meant it for her. He even had a special measuring stick he’d made that proved she was nineteen inches away from the curb, one inch over what Coronado parking regulations allowed. And since she was an admitted perfectionist herself, Bailey took the ticket with as much good grace as she could muster.
Which meant that when he wished her a “Merry Christmas,” she managed not to flinch.
After that it was in the car and the short trip to Coronado Island’s Walnut Street. The “island,” really a peninsula, had once been a wheat farm, a whaling station, and then, in the late 1880s, it had been turned into a tourist destination thanks to the founder of a piano company and his partner, a telephone executive. The superlative Hotel del Coronado had been built first, then more streets, housing tracts, a ferry landing.
To maximize all this prime real estate, the home lots were small, hence the houses were close together. Back in the day, presumably the community planners assumed vacationers wouldn’t mind the close quarters. In modern times, the result was that the year-round residents inside the cheek-by-jowl Victorians, Craftsman cottages, and suburban ranches lived in a cozy, nosy community.
Everyone had always known her business, from the day in first grade when Jeremy Barger had kissed her, to the day she’d been caught kissing-
As she accelerated around the next corner, she could see a radioactive glow up the next block. The block of her childhood home. Spooked by the strange light, Bailey braked and peered into the distance. Maybe things had changed recently. One end of Coronado was fenced off as the North Island Naval Air Station. Perhaps the military had moved in on the residential community and built a new runway or something. Up ahead it was just that bright.
With a gentle foot on the accelerator, Bailey moved cautiously forward. At the corner of Walnut and Sixth, she stopped again, dazzled. Lights were everywhere. On mailboxes, flowerpots, bicycles. Across bushes like fishnets, rimming rooflines, marching up tree trunks, running over anything that didn’t move. Make that things that moved too. A cat skipped past, wearing a collar studded with red and green Christmas bulbs.
And music. Piped out of windows and doors and from the mouths of plastic carolers, cardboard snowmen, and poster-painted plywood angels. “Hark the Herald” clashed with “Silent Night” clashed with “O Tannenbaum.”
“Oh, ton of crud,” Bailey cursed. They’d turned her block into Christmas Central. Giant-sized presents were stacked on porches. Overstuffed Santa butts were heading down chimneys. Reindeer pawed at patches of grass.
And there, in the middle of the block, stood her childhood home. The solitary oasis of darkness. She headed for the simple porch light like it was a homing beacon. As she braked her car in the driveway, she glanced over at the neighboring drive, just a tire’s width away. A sleek SUV sat at rest, and the dark gleam of it sent another spooky little chill down her spine. It didn’t look like the kind of car their eighty-something neighbor Alice Jacobson would drive. And there was a tasteful, lacy edging of icicle lights hanging from her eaves. In the old days, Christmas lights at Mrs. Jacobson’s meant only one thing.
Finn was back.
Her driver’s door jerked open.
Bailey gasped, her heart jumping, just as it used to when she saw those Christmas lights. When she saw Finn for the first time on his biannual vacation visits.
But of course it wasn’t Finn. Thank God. “Mr. Lantz.” Recognizing her mother’s across-the-street neighbor, she held her hand against her chest to calm her heart. “Good to see you.”
So much better than Finn, whom she never expected to see again.
“Bailey-girl, it’s good to see you too.” He was beaming at her, the lights from the holiday ostentation reflecting off his bald head. “Your mother’s thrilled you’re coming home. Heck, we’re all thrilled.”
“Oh. Well. Nice.”
He was nodding. “Worried about the store, you know. It’s an institution.”
The albatross tugged hard on her neck. “A landmark.”
“Exactly.” He patted her shoulder as she slipped out of the car. “But you’ll take care of everything, sharp girl like you.”
Surrounded by overdone dazzle, nearly deafened by the dueling carols, Bailey thought longingly of the quiet and order of her anonymous Los Angeles condo building. The housing association there posted rules and regulations that prohibited just such displays as those that were right now smothering her.
It was why she’d chosen the place.
Mr. Lantz didn’t seem to notice her disquiet. He beamed at her again. “I know you’ll fix things. Save the store, save the season.”
Bailey sighed, wondering what he’d think if he knew she hated the holiday. If he knew that from the day she’d left home she’d never once celebrated on December 25-except for the fact that she didn’t have to celebrate it at all. What he’d think if he realized that the “sharp girl” assigned to save The Perfect Christmas was in fact a certified, holiday-hating Scrooge.
Bailey speed-rolled her suitcase along the path to her mother’s front porch, eager to escape the cacophony of merry tunes tumbling down the narrow street. But with the solid brick steps leading to the front door beneath her feet, she paused.
Just as The Perfect Christmas had been her maternal grandparents’ store, this had been her maternal grandparents’ house. The most stable thing in her life. The idea gave a little lift to her spirits, and the weight of the albatross eased some too.
Maybe she’d overreacted to the phone calls. Maybe she only needed a face-to-face with her mother to straighten out all their lives.
It could work.
On the strength of that thought, she pushed open the front door, wearing an almost-smile. “Mom?” she called out. “It’s me. I’m here.”
