When Mr. Kritchinger first asked me to stay after class, I’d been nervous. But then he asked if I was interested in tutoring Brody and my nervousness transformed into awe. Two days later I was walking into the library and sitting down at the back table opposite the most popular boy in school and trying to be cool while not spilling the can of sugar-free Red Bull or word-vomiting all over him.

I only accomplished one of those goals.

The last thing I would have ever believed was that I would wind up being the one to break his heart.

Four

An hour after my Arthur encounter, I was manning the inn’s oak-paneled front desk. The main staircase that led to the second floor was directly behind me. There was no third floor, unless you counted the attic where Grandma Jo stored things. Such as the multitude of Christmas decorations occupying the lobby. Because even though Grandma Jo fought off the town’s pressure to rename the inn so it was thematically in alignment with the other businesses, she loved Christmas with a fierceness usually reserved for the fans of K-pop stars.

Everyone knew it, which was one of the reasons her annual Christmas Eve party was such a draw. Folks from all around dropped by from five p.m. to eight p.m. for a variety of hors d’oeuvres and socializing and to bask in the unabashed holiday ambience.

And there was plenty of holiday ambience. Sometimes the place felt like ground zero for the Christmas bomb.

The two back corners of the lobby were guarded by five-foot-tall wooden nutcracker soldiers that Grandma Jo found several years ago on one of her excursions to Dallas—where “too big” was regarded as a starting point—and had shipped up here. Much to my father’s dismay, since he was the one who had to haul those suckers up and down the stairs each year.

The corner closest to the window overlooking the front yard was hidden by an ornament-covered, plump blue spruce Christmas tree with a tendency to lean that was hidden by some cedar blocks and a red felt skirt with green swirl piping.

And the last corner had a permanent beverage station, which, as soon as Thanksgiving concluded, was turned into a hot chocolate hangout that lasted through Valentine’s Day.

It was very popular.

The mantel over the fireplace was camouflaged by pine boughs with red ribbons and silver bells, and the logs burned in the fireplace were, I could attest, 100 percent real. Yours truly brought in a new batch every morning from the log pile located out back in a spot not nearly close enough to the main house.

I kept an eye on the flames from my position at the front desk because another part of my job was to make sure the fire didn’t die out. It was part of the guest-actualization holiday ambience.