“Henry, you’ll drive slowly through the mountains, no speeding, no spinning the tires, is this understood?” Ellen said to her husband. “Since he got that new Porsche, he thinks he’s a NASCAR driver.”

Again, Lauren chuckled, thinking the couple’s humor was a good start to her day. “A Porsche? I’m impressed.”

“It’s his third-childhood vehicle. A red Mustang, then that black Corvette, and now this Porsche. The darned thing is so small you can barely put a few bags of groceries in that space they call a trunk.” She said this with a smile, and Lauren had a sudden thought: she hoped she was this vibrant and full of spunk as this couple when she reached their age. She didn’t have a clue how old they were, but their lightheartedness with one another was infectious.

Lauren’s day had started out as normally as one could expect for the time of year. But then she’d had the conversation with Angela in which she was offered the opportunity to write John Gerard Giampalo’s biography for an almost unbelievable amount of money, and the day had become one of the most momentous in her life. She could barely contain her excitement. Meeting this couple and making an enormous sale was an added bonus.

She directed Ellen and Henry over to Ruby’s for breakfast while she spent the next thirty minutes carefully packing the angels, the snow people, and the set of four stars, the largest and most delicate representing the Star of Bethlehem. When she was satisfied the package was as secure as she could achieve, she added up the sale, so that when the charming couple returned, their purchase would be ready for them.

An hour later, they returned, their cheeks flushed a bright pink from the brisk temperatures. “It’s so cold out today, I wouldn’t be surprised if that white Christmas they’re forecasting doesn’t hit us this year,” Henry said to Lauren.

“I heard that on the news this morning,” Lauren said. “It’s certainly cold enough.”

“Henry, give the young lady the credit card,” Ellen said when she saw the large package on the counter.

“Yes, dear,” he said, taking his wallet out of his pocket.

Lauren swiped the card through the old-fashioned machine that made a carbon imprint of the card’s number, then gave it to Henry for his signature. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of these old-timers,” he said, eyeing the outdated contraption.

“Yes, it’s a dinosaur, for sure, but my father—he owns the store—refuses to get one of the modern machines because we’d need an Internet connection to use it, and he’s totally against anything connected to the twenty-first century that makes things a bit easier.” Lauren wasn’t sure why she felt the need to explain this to the couple, but they had at least twenty years on her dad and were driving a Porsche, and she’d seen that both had the latest version of the iPhone.

“You gotta keep up with the times,” Henry said. “Right, Ellen?”