“It won’t work if you drag us around this”—he waved his hand to indicate the entirety of my hometown with the same gesture one used for shooing flies—“forgotten flyover with that perpetually sullen expression of yours.”

“My expression is not perpetually sullen!”

“As one who has the better perspective on your face, I can assure you it is.”

“Maybe you’re the common factor. Maybe every time you’re around I feel sullen.”

“Regardless, put a lid on it for the duration of our holiday enterprise.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. “Jesus, Arthur. You sound seventy.”

“It’s called speaking properly. You should consider trying it sometime.”

“You should try not being a dick.”

Wow, that was a terrible comeback, which Arthur also recognized.

He smirked. “Impossible.” He flicked back the sleeve of his now-familiar puffy green jacket to look at his watch—a Rolex, of course, because while Arthur Chakrabarti Watercress ranked highly among the pantheon of annoying people, he was also disgustingly rich, or at least his parents were—then back at me.

“It’s half past noon on this, our first full day here. Auntie Esha and I will be having our dinner in the dining room at six. We can talk before then to plan tomorrow.”

“I won’t be able to get anything ready by that time; I have to work until four. I’m Grandma Jo’s Assistant Manager of Guest Actualization Services.”

“That title is clearly made-up.”

“Aren’t all titles made-up, if you think about it?”

He thought about it. Then half nodded. “Fair enough. But we’ll still pursue this further tonight.”

He walked away before I could muster any response, which was undoubtedly his intent. Dramatic Exit 101, thy name was Arthur.

Though, who was I to talk? Hadn’t I done pretty much the exact same thing to him back at the pond? Minus the flourish, of course.

I watched him stride across the small courtyard to the inn’s back entrance, the only sound being the swish of his sleeves as they brushed against the sides of his jacket, his spine ramrod straight like he had been in some accident and had all his vertebrae fused together in a line that allowed for no bending whatsoever.

He stopped at the back patio and turned abruptly to meet my eyes. Then tapped his phone once again to emphasize his demands before entering the inn, letting the door slam shut behind him with an impressive reverberation that echoed in the otherwise quiet afternoon.

God, this Christmas was going to suck.

Two

I waited in the back courtyard for a full five minutes to make sure I wouldn’t run into Arthur again before I went back inside the inn and headed straight to the kitchen.

The Hoyden Inn was built in the late 1990s in the traditional American Craftsman style, with a redbrick base, a wide front porch complete with narrow white vertical railing, and white siding.