Aaaand now I blinked. A lot. Flummoxed. “Uh, actually, yes. That’s—that’s exactly what I was doing.”

He slapped the hand not holding his plate with the mountain of eggs against his thigh. “I knew it! And by golly, it worked! Christmas hasn’t looked that good since that evil basta—sorry—that piece of—sorry—since Ralph Tater-Hall stole all the money and left us capped at the knees. But our town looks awesome! At least on the site.”

“Oh. Well, I’m, um, so—”

He kept grinning. “Obviously you did a little ’mbelishment here and there.” I held up my finger and thumb—very close. “But that’s okay.” Thank God. “I showed it to some of the other folks on the council and we decided it was divine inspiration.” Hmmmmm. “We got some extra cash off beer sales when the Sonic Santas nearly won state in basketball thanks to Brody”—Of course—“and we’d been tryin’ to find a way to spend it and realized, why not start findin’ ways to fix it up ’round here? But start kinda small to see how it’d go over.”

“Small?”

“The parade!”

“The . . . parade?” My voice squeaked again.

“Yep! I’ma tell you what, the stuff you put on the site looked real nice, like that snowman balloon. The lights! And the goats were cutie pies! So we went lookin’ to get things like you imagined.”

“Me?” If my voice got any higher it would only be canine-audible.

“Yep. Figured it’d be easier than tryin’ to change the site since none of us are great with big website stuff. And it worked! Got a real nice write-up in the Norman Transcript. Print and website. Kicked up some real interest. Folks are already talkin’ about what we can do next year, when we got more time to plan.”

I legitimately didn’t know what to say.

“Feel free to lemme know if you get any other ideas.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Although, I changed the password on the site so you’ll have to email me directly.” He winked, then noticed Dr. Raymond across the room. “Gonna go talk shop with Dean. See ya, Finley. And good job.”

He successfully maneuvered his way through the crowd to join Dr. Raymond by the Christmas tree, making sure to say hello to everyone along the way like a true politician, and I realized it might not be the tailgate beer sales alone that helped get him reelected.

I also realized something else: I had made a difference. Admittedly it was an accidental difference and I was lucky Mayor Slaughter had a good sense of humor about my appropriating the town’s website. But the point was I had taken action that created changes that would be felt by others.

It made me want to do more. To take further action.

When I saw Grandma Jo’s gaze get snagged on the lonely pot of daal, I got an idea.