This decision was innocent and knee-jerk. He saw her struggling under the weight of packages, fighting to hold them upright, and eventually falling right down the steep hill from the Woodward House into town. He imagined being called to the hospital and having to identify her scraped-up face—a ridiculous thought, of course, since he would have been the last person she ever listed as an emergency contact. However absurd, the horrible images wouldn’t leave his head, so he volunteered to drive her and her friends.
Now, he was here, in front of a tiny shack of a home. The second he pulled the key out of the ignition and got a good view of the place, not to mention the little boy with the Tiny Tim cane sprinting into Kate’s arms, a swirling hurricane drew all of the energy from Clark’s body and concentrated it in the pit of his stomach. His palms grew clammy, and as soon as he was finished carrying the heavy tub of general sundry and supplies up to the porch, he slipped on a reliably dark pair of sunglasses and focused his attention on his phone.
He knew how it looked. They would think him standoffish and rude, superior and arrogant. He’d rather they think that than know the truth.
The truth was…he’d taken something important away from these people. The festival was stupid as far as he was concerned, but it clearly meant more to them than he realized…
He was used to being hated. Hatred was the cost of doing business. But hatred was always a distant thing brought on by business decisions. It wasn’t up close. Personal.
When he came to town, he’d assumed he could hide from people. Dissolving the company would be easy enough; he was the boss. No one could openly hate the boss. But here at someone else’s house, the house of a family who clearly loved the festival…
He couldn’t face them. Hence the sunglasses. And the phone. And general please don’t come near me vibe.
So, it surprised him when a small child ran up and stood beside him.
“Hey.”
Clark did not respond.
“Hey, guy.”
The child tugged on Clark’s suit jacket. Still, he did not respond.
“Hey!”
When children shout, there’s no choice but to respond. Raising one eyebrow over the top ridge of his pitch-black sunglasses, Clark glanced down.
“Yes?”
“My name’s Bradley. And you’re Clark Woodward, right?”
“Mm-hm.”
He pocketed his cellphone. There was no reason to invest his time in this kid at all, but it would be worse to ignore him and have him run up to the house screaming about the mean man outside. Clark believed in his ability to be minimally polite.
“I knew that was your name. I’m really good at remembering stuff. That’s why I got the part of Tiny Tim. I can remember all the lines. And I have a ton of lines. I’m good at remembering stuff and I’m really short. And poor. I guess it’s at least a little bit because we’re poor. I really get the Tiny Tim thing, you know?”
“Mm-hm.” Clark bit his bottom lip to keep from laughing. Bradley was a character. It didn’t surprise him he got cast as the lead in this town-wide play. His little face expressed a range of emotions in a second. The little boy huffed and leaned on some kind of roughly carved wooden walking stick. Not being familiar with the Dickens canon, Clark was vaguely aware the Tiny Tim character was crippled… Was this boy also injured, or did he just not want to let the role go?
“You’re not making this very easy.”
“Making what easy?”
With his free, non-walking-stick hand, Bradley smacked his face and sighed. Clark called him a character, but “ham” would have been more accurate.
“Miss Kate said I could have a candy bar if I came over and made you happy but you’re not making it easy. Well, she actually said I could have a stick of gum. I don’t think Miss Kate can afford candy bars either.”
Ignoring Kate’s desire to make him happy for the moment, he caught instead on the insinuation of her poverty. She was clean and well-dressed. Her boots were scuffed and strained from wear, but that could just as easily be explained as she loved them too much to get rid of them, rather than them being the only shoes she owned or could afford to own.
“Why’s that?”
“She lost her job when you cancelled the festival. It was kind of her life. She was the youngest person to work there, you know.”
This is exactly why Clark avoided children. They didn’t know anything about tact or keeping secrets or not punching their conversation partners in the stomach with their words. The only thing Clark knew concretely about Kate’s relationship with the festival was that she loved it. Having deliberately kept his attention in the business to non-Christmas matters when his uncle was alive, he hadn’t taken a look at the employee roster yet or familiarized himself with their staff, so he didn’t know she worked there. Or that it was her life.
He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to know. Change the subject, Clark. Change the subject.
“Stay here for one second.”
“Where’re you going?”
Back in his car, Clark dove for the glove compartment. He usually took pride in its perfect organization—he liked his registration and safety manual where he could easily get them—but today he needed the one bit of clutter shoved in it. A white plastic bag with a blue outline of a tooth stamped on it. Out of that baggie came a silver-wrapped chocolate bar. Clark returned and handed it over to the wide-eyed boy.
“I got this at the dentist office the other day.”
“You dentist gives you candy?”
“All dentist offices are rackets. They give you candy so you have to go right back and get more fillings. Make sure you brush your teeth.”
Bradley ripped away the wrapping like a Roald Dahl character. He tore into the chocolate. Clark couldn’t help but wonder when the child last had
