“Then, she turned it into a whole Christmas Festival that runs from Halloween to New Year’s. There are sleigh rides and hot cocoa tastings, barn dances, gingerbread competitions, cookie swaps, and something at midnight with reindeer. They even put real candles on trees and have a big ceremony to light them. It’s a walking, talking Christmas card owned by an old Jewish lady,” Cole continued. “It’s literally the best place on Earth—sorry, Disneyland.”

Miriam decided to rescue the stranger. She laid her head on Cole’s shoulder.

“Distract me, bashert.” Miriam said. Cole, blessedly, left the seatmate alone, and turned his body, squished into a middle seat, fully toward her to better regale her with the emergency he’d called her about earlier.

Once again, he had ghosted a perfectly nice girl. She wasn’t convinced this was an emergency, but he needed to talk out what tiny thing he’d found wrong with her. He met lots of wonderful women and always seemed to like them a great deal, until he found a problem, got bored, or forgot they existed. Miriam wondered if he just hadn’t met anyone yet who made him want to be serious. As she ribbed him comfortably about his dating habits, her stomach settled into their well-worn dynamic.

They landed at LaGuardia, Cole once again physically moving her through the packed crowds. She didn’t know how she would ever have gotten out of the airport without him. The only thing her brain had room for was terror at the prospect of going back home. They took the train upstate, to Advent, the closest station to Carrigan’s Christmasland. Advent was the kind of small town that went all out and then some for Christmas, although Miriam wasn’t sure if that was because of their proximity to Carrigan’s, or if Cass had chosen the land for Carrigan’s because of its nearness to an already-established Christmas destination.

Stepping off the train used to mean seeing Aunt Cass, in high-heeled boots, turban, and fur coat, climbing out of her beat-up farm truck with mud splashed up to the windows. Now, it meant anonymously boarding the Carrigan’s shuttle and bouncing along the winding road through the trees. The absence felt like a vacuum had opened inside her.

All of the Adirondacks was riotous in autumn reds, lush and crisp and overdressed. There were glimpses of lakes and flashes of moose. Then the Christmasland came into view over the curve of a hill. The house and its immense lawn sat at the front of the property, with 160 acres of evergreens growing behind it. Little-girl-Miriam had taken enormous pleasure in spending Hanukkah at the Hundred Acre Wood.