“Maybe Santa’s real and he’s coming to personally give us our presents,” Clark joked.
“Or maybe there’s a freak snowstorm and we’ll get to have a snowball fight.”
“Snow in Texas? Better chance of Santa coming to town.”
Another stretch of silence met those words as Kate didn’t know what else to say. The only words she could come up with were: I really like you and I want to kiss you, but I don’t think it’s a good idea because you’re trying to destroy my town and maybe liking you means I won’t mind if you do. I have to love my town more than I love you or I’ll lose everything.
An impulse moved her hand to the dark radio. Some music would distract them both. She almost pressed the power button before remembering his stern words against Christmas music this morning. They’d ridden in silence all the way through Miller’s Point because he hated it; she didn’t need to invite more conversation or conflict with a stupid choice.
“What’s up?” he asked, when her hand retracted.
“Oh, sorry. I know you don’t like the music.”
A pause. Then:
“Go ahead. I don’t mind so much anymore.”
“Really?”
“It’s growing on me.”
And you’re growing on me. As she turned on the radio and switched the dial to her favorite Christmas station, she kept that particular opinion to herself. It wouldn’t make a difference anyway. She was going to show him the meaning of Christmas (somehow, and apparently with Michael’s help), he was going to give them the company back, and then he’d be gone. Back to Dallas where he belonged. This would be nothing more than a memory. A cocktail party joke he could tell about that time he almost kissed a poor, provincial, Christmas-obsessed girl in Miller’s Point.
But at least she’d have the festival, right? That had to matter more than anything, including this crush she’d fallen headlong into.
The problem with breaking the crush completely was that as they drove deeper and deeper into the darkness, Clark started tapping the steering wheel and humming off-key with her favorite song. I’ll Be Home for Christmas. It was so sweet, so unexpected, she almost cried. And if she hadn’t been careful, she definitely would have fallen in love with him right then and there.
“Well.”
Upon their arrival, they found no bonfire, no Santa, and certainly no snow. They didn’t even find a single other human being. Only a large, dark, grassy field.
“Are you sure we went to the right place?”
“Yeah. This is where the GPS took us.”
Her illuminated phone was meant to take them straight to the coordinates sent her way by Michael, but he must have gotten them wrong. Or perhaps the dense forest kept the location services from working properly. Kate squinted at the screen and checked her roaming settings. No, this seemed to be the right place. Only, it couldn’t be. There wasn’t anything here. She shot off a quick text to Michael.
Why’d you send us out to a random field?
The three little dots appeared. A text followed shortly thereafter. Walk to the edge of the hill. Overlooking town.
“He wants us to look down into town, I think.”
Miller’s Point was something of a geographical oddity. More accurately, it was a linguistic oddity due to its actual lack of a point or nearness to a point. Essentially landlocked and settled into the valley between two high, forested hills, Miller’s Point was a fraud. Miller’s Valley was actually correct, though it didn’t have quite the same ring to it. Kate led the way to the edge of the hill, less than fifty yards ahead of them. When the light from the car’s front bumper finished guiding them, the ambient light from the town below led them the final distance, until they could see Miller’s Point down below.
And that’s when Kate realized Michael’s plan.
“Wow.” To her surprise, Kate realized she wasn’t the one who said that. Clark did. Whipping her head back to see him a few paces behind her, she spotted him, illuminated by the light of the town, the image below reflected in his emerald eyes. “What is happening down there?”
In his official letter of dissolution of The Christmas Company, Clark demanded the immediate removal of all decorations from the town square. They were to be put in storage immediately. And to their credit, the grounds crew team of the festival, both paid and volunteer workers, all stayed through the night to get the job done. The only thing not packed away for storage was the Christmas tree itself, which stood unlit in the center of town. Not a single decoration accented the square. The only lights that should have been coming from town were the actual lights of the houses down below. People should have been tucked away in their living rooms or in their beds, ready to celebrate tomorrow’s holiday.
Only, they weren’t all tucked in their beds. They weren’t silently waiting for the morning to come and the now private festivities to commence. The town square of Miller’s Point was alive, as active and full as any evening of the actual festival. Without the decorations or trappings of the season, they made their own color and illumination. Tacky Christmas sweaters and red and green tights were lit by hundreds of white candles, held by singing people. Even here, high upon a hill just on the edge of their village, their voices rose up to Clark and Kate’s ears.
Kate realized her misplaced cynicism in Michael. He hadn’t organized this for their benefit. He’d been invited and wanted them to share in it. It wasn’t a trick to get Clark on their side; it was a sincere expression of a town’s faith.
O Holy Night
The stars are brightly shining.
It is the night of our dear savior’s birth…
Their voices didn’t ring out in perfect harmony. The song was at times too fast and at times too pitchy to be easily recognized as
