“Mm-hm.” Clark bit his bottom lip to keep from laughing. Bradley was a character. It didn’t surprise him he got cast as the lead in this town-wide play. His little face expressed a range of emotions in a second. The little boy huffed and leaned on some kind of roughly carved wooden walking stick. Not being familiar with the Dickens canon, Clark was vaguely aware the Tiny Tim character was crippled… Was this boy also injured, or did he just not want to let the role go?

“You’re not making this very easy.”

“Making what easy?”

With his free, non-walking-stick hand, Bradley smacked his face and sighed. Clark called him a character, but “ham” would have been more accurate.

“Miss Kate said I could have a candy bar if I came over and made you happy but you’re not making it easy. Well, she actually said I could have a stick of gum. I don’t think Miss Kate can afford candy bars either.”

Ignoring Kate’s desire to make him happy for the moment, he caught instead on the insinuation of her poverty. She was clean and well-dressed. Her boots were scuffed and strained from wear, but that could just as easily be explained as she loved them too much to get rid of them, rather than them being the only shoes she owned or could afford to own.

“Why’s that?”

“She lost her job when you cancelled the festival. It was kind of her life. She was the youngest person to work there, you know.”

This is exactly why Clark avoided children. They didn’t know anything about tact or keeping secrets or not punching their conversation partners in the stomach with their words. The only thing Clark knew concretely about Kate’s relationship with the festival was that she loved it. Having deliberately kept his attention in the business to non-Christmas matters when his uncle was alive, he hadn’t taken a look at the employee roster yet or familiarized himself with their staff, so he didn’t know she worked there. Or that it was her life.

He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to know. Change the subject, Clark. Change the subject.

“Stay here for one second.”

“Where’re you going?”

Back in his car, Clark dove for the glove compartment. He usually took pride in its perfect organization—he liked his registration and safety manual where he could easily get them—but today he needed the one bit of clutter shoved in it. A white plastic bag with a blue outline of a tooth stamped on it. Out of that baggie came a silver-wrapped chocolate bar. Clark returned and handed it over to the wide-eyed boy.

“I got this at the dentist office the other day.”

“You dentist gives you candy?”

“All dentist offices are rackets. They give you candy so you have to go right back and get more fillings. Make sure you brush your teeth.”