The Christmas Company. Alys Murray

have been more different than Clark Woodward. Where the out-of-towner played perpetual poker, Michael slapped himself open and let you read every page of him. He was the all-American type, dark-skinned with a smile that could light up a football stadium on its own, the exact image of a small-town golden boy. She always assumed he’d be mayor one day, but now she wasn’t sure if the town would be around long enough for him to make the leap from ranch medic to political mastermind. For a long time, town gossip had it that the two of them, the town’s two favorite children, would end up married, but she could never imagine it. They were like two trees planted too close together. Their branches intertwined and they shared the same soil, but they’d never become one. She only thought of him as a friend.

      “What I really can’t stand is that he has the audacity to stand there and mansplain to me about economics. Of course the festival doesn’t make money for them, but it makes money for us, and that helps keep the town—the town where his business is, I’ll remind you—afloat. What’s he gonna do about workers when they all move to Fort Worth or something because there’s not enough money circulating here? Huh?”

      “I don’t know, Kate.”

      The diner was completely empty, perhaps because it wasn’t meant to be open. It closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, usually because Mel, a rotund, redheaded man with a missing front tooth, always played The Ghost of Christmas Present, but this morning Kate showed up at his front door with a determined knock and Michael in tow, ready to pay top dollar for black coffee and as many pancakes as it was humanly possible to consume in one sitting. She couldn’t fathom sitting alone in her tiny apartment above the town’s solitary bookstore for another minute, looking out onto the empty town square; the loneliness would have consumed her.

      Now, all that consumed her was the frustration she’d been venting to herself all night. Saying these things out loud helped slightly, but as usual, Michael wasn’t content to nod his head and agree with her. He just had to be difficult. The man never knew when to quit, an admirable quality he and Kate shared.

      “And who doesn’t celebrate Christmas? Christmas!” She exclaimed, waving her hands in her usual manner, the kind that almost always ended in her accidentally knocking over a salt shaker or a full glass of Diet Coke.

      “Off the top of my head? Jewish people, Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses, some other sects of Christianity, some atheists—”

      The sass earned him a withering look.

      “I don’t know, Kate. Maybe he just doesn’t like…” Michael picked at his biscuits and gravy, the first course of the six he’d ordered immediately upon sitting down at the bar. After half a lifetime of friendship, Kate had taught him these moods of hers meant he would need to be settled in for a long, long time. “I don’t know. Trees. Maybe he’s allergic to Christmas trees.”

      “He could get a fake one.”

      “Or he gets paper cuts from wrapping presents.”

      “He could use gift bags.”

      “What about eggnog? Maybe he’s vegan.”

      “Then he needs to move out of Texas.”

      On some level, Kate knew she was being useless. Sitting in this diner complaining about the impossibility and injustice of it all seemed like a perfect way to get absolutely nothing done. On another level, the impossibility and injustice almost gave her permission to whine. Nothing could be done. Why shouldn’t she just moan and groan and commiserate with her friend? She dropped her head into her hands.

      “I don’t want to be that guy,” Michael said through a mouth full of biscuit, “but you don’t look so good.”

      “I don’t know why. I got a solid four hours of sleep last night. That’s a full hour longer than usual.”

      Kate knew full well how she looked. Besides her daily uniform of jeans, a red flannel, her reliable pair of sturdy-heeled boots and her dirty blonde hair tied away from her face in a sensible braid, heavy bags dragged her hazel eyes down and her splotchy skin spoke of a restless night. Michael was more of a solid eight hours of sleep kind of guy, so his surprise was understandable.

      “What were you doing up that late?”

      Kate brightened up. Her ideas may have been half-baked, but at least she had them. And even if it would never happen, she liked feeling useful.

      “Brainstorming. I have tons of ideas to save the town.” And only two of them involved hiring Bono and Beyoncé for a telethon. Most of the others involved social media campaigns and petitioning the federal government for a grant of some kind once she figured out how to write grants, but some of the ideas were sensible and others not cooked up. “We’re gonna call the governor and petition to have the square designated a historical—”

      Her ranting came to an abrupt halt as Michael’s fork clattered to his plate and his jaw dropped halfway to the floor. He stared over her shoulder at something Kate couldn’t see. She tried to make it out in the reflection of a window behind his head, to no avail.

      “No way,” he said.

      “What?”

      “Don’t look now,” he muttered, casually reaching for his coffee cup, “but your boyfriend from yesterday’s meeting just walked in.”

      “My what?”

      Kate spun in her seat, but Michael caught her shoulder and pulled her back to face front.

      “I said don’t look now!”

      Thank goodness for the Bing Crosby Christmas hits. If he weren’t crooning so loud, Clark Woodward would’ve heard them. Mind racing, Kate tried to place the pieces of this puzzle together. This was their town and their diner. He must have thought himself as bulletproof as the real Clark Kent if he thought he could show his face in public after what he did yesterday.

      “Why is he here?” Kate hissed, leaning into Michael to prevent herself from giving in to the temptation to glance over her shoulder at the intruder.

      “I don’t know. He’s just sitting at a table, looking at a menu.”

      “What in the world does he think he’s doing? Is he going to shut this place down, too?”

      “Maybe he’s just hungry.”

      “No.” Kate shook her head. He wasn’t a diner breakfast kind of guy. He was a protein bar and kale smoothie kind of guy. Dallas men always gave off a clean living vibe; it made them unable to function in a small town like Miller’s Point. “He’s got to have something up his sleeve.”

      “Shh. Mel’s going to take his order.”

      They fell into silence as Mel’s heavy steps took him towards the booth behind Kate. She tuned her ears for any whisper of underhanded moneygrubbing. The first time Clark tried to barter over the price of eggs, she was going to flip.

      “Hi, stranger.” Mel greeted him with the same warmth and openness with which he greeted everyone. His friendliness crawled under Kate’s skin. Clark didn’t deserve Mel’s good nature. He deserved a one-way ticket straight out of town. She believed in universal good. Everyone had wonder and joy inside them. Everyone could be reached with kindness. But…this guy made her so mad she could spit. “What can I get you?”

      “Yeah, can I have a double stack of buttermilk pancakes and a black coffee to go? With a side of bacon, too.”

      Even with her back turned, Kate could picture him in her mind’s eye, sitting unmoved with the perfect winter backdrop behind him. His voice was as flat and lifeless as she’d heard it. Still, she applauded his order. Simple, direct, and he even got some of Mel’s famous double-crispy bacon. Maybe he was human after all.

      “To go? You off somewhere?”

      “Work.”

      “Work? It’s Christmas Eve, kid. Didn’t anyone tell you?” Mel chuckled. He always made conversation with his customers. Maybe it was