Stuffing. No fewer than six varieties of potato. Sweet potato casserole. Sweet potato biscuits. Green bean casserole. Cranberry sauce—homemade and canned. Cornbread. Corn pudding. Corn on the cob. Creamed corn. Mac ’n’ cheese. Gravy. Brussels sprouts. Soup. Ham. Spinach dip. Broccoli salad. And on and on until the room nearly exploded with plate upon plate of delicious calories.

Three turkeys. Who needed one turkey, much less three?

It all looked so delicious. And so, so unnecessary. He clenched his jaw so tight he thought it might break his teeth.

“What is this?”

“It’s a feast.”

Kate joined the crowd, leaving him alone against a sea of strangers. He marveled. They all believed in this garbage. They all thought he would sit down at the table and suddenly be a changed man. Kate believed it. She was wrong. They were all wrong. He shoved his hands into his pockets so no one could spot their trembling.

“I can see that. Where did it all come from?”

“We ordered it. Well, some of it was already cooked and frozen for the feast, but we had to order some of it because—”

“Who paid for it?”

This time, Kate hesitated. The air in the room tightened, tense and uncomfortable. People shuffled, shifted their weight from one foot to the other, glanced uncertainly at Kate and coughed. With every tick of the grandfather clock placed against the far wall, as the inevitable explanation came closer and closer, Clark’s pulse boomed in his ears. His right hand kept flexing and clenching against the lining of his suit pocket. One woman stepped back, apparently afraid he’d turn violent.

He wasn’t a violent man, but he didn’t rule out knocking over a gravy boat or two.

“It’s part of the company expenses. We do this every year for the festival and—”

There it was. The explanation he knew was coming still managed to enrage him. His carefully constructed mask flew away, leaving nothing but the anger. He may have admired Kate, even liked her a bit, but she was still, at her core, stealing money from his company by disobeying his directive to cancel all festival-related orders. Stealing that which didn’t belong to her all to prove some stupid point about a holiday he would never like.

“I’m dissolving the company because it’s wasteful. This entire stupid holiday is a monument to waste and excess and it sickens me!”

A woman stepped forward, a coaxing but vain smile on her aging face.

“We worked really hard on this and—”

“Well that hard work was a waste of time because I’m not touching this. Go. Leave. Get out of here.”

“Clark.”