“You said he looks lonely. Go be a friend.”

“But everyone hates him! Everyone’ll hate me next.”

Hate, hate, hate. That wasn’t Christmas talk at all. That wasn’t Miller’s Point talk. Kate couldn’t let the poison of fear infect her town any more than it already had.

There was only one thing to do now: talk to the small child as though they were secret agents.

“No one’s going to be mad…” She looked left, then right, as if checking for spies. “You’re helping with the plan.”

“What plan?”

“The secret plan to get the festival back. I can’t tell you the specifics until you finish this mission. I have to know you can be trusted.”

“Deal.” Bradley started for the car, but stopped so hard he created a dust cloud. “And I want a candy bar.”

“You can have a stick of gum.”

He beamed.

“Deal.”

Clark didn’t often make bad decisions. At least, he told himself he never made bad decisions. Before coming to Miller’s Point, the last bad thing he did was choose the cranberry orange protein bars instead of the blueberry protein bars during his last grocery shop.

But upon arriving at Miller’s Point, he seemed incapable of making good decisions. Leaving his car on the street to get towed? Bad call. Letting Kate talk down to him on his first night? Really bad call. Giving Kate free rein over his family’s house? Terrible call. Coming along on this charity mission? The worst call.

Like most things—including the cranberry orange bars, which had fifteen fewer calories than the blueberry—it started with good intentions. Good, stupid intentions. That was the reason Clark tried his best never to do anything with good intentions. He preferred neutral intentions. Good intentions always backfired. Neutral intentions weren’t capable of backfiring, because no one had any skin in the game.

This decision was innocent and knee-jerk. He saw her struggling under the weight of packages, fighting to hold them upright, and eventually falling right down the steep hill from the Woodward House into town. He imagined being called to the hospital and having to identify her scraped-up face—a ridiculous thought, of course, since he would have been the last person she ever listed as an emergency contact. However absurd, the horrible images wouldn’t leave his head, so he volunteered to drive her and her friends.