Once Upon a Christmas. Pamela Tracy

      Jared pictured the lunch boxes sitting on the kitchen counter. Grandpa Billy packed them every morning. Ryan’s was a plain blue. Nine-year-olds no longer needed action figures or at least his didn’t. Matt’s was Star Wars. Caleb’s was Spider-Man.

      “We should go buy a new one,” Caleb suggested. “There’s a really cool one—”

      “No, we should go to the cafeteria and see if the lunch ladies found it.”

      Caleb followed, feet dragging. “I don’t want to go there.”

      Of course he didn’t. The principal had just assigned him a full week of wiping down tables instead of going to recess. Jared intended to do the same at home along with no television for a week.

      The cafeteria hadn’t changed all that much since Jared’s years. There were still rows of tables with benches that could be levered up to make mopping easier. Large gray trash baskets were in the four corners. Right now, decorations of snowflakes and wrapped presents were taped to the walls. Snowmen and Santas shared messages of “Don’t Forget our Winter Program.”

      No way could Jared forget. He’d recently been put in charge of props. In just a few weeks, Caleb would be dressed like an elf and singing with his class. Ryan actually had the part of Santa. Matt would pretend to have a stomachache the night of the program. According to the note sent by Matt’s teacher, he had the role of delivering presents to people in the audience.

      Smart teacher.

      “You start in here,” Jared ordered. “I’ll go in the kitchen.”

      A few minutes later, Maggie Tate joined them in the search. She poked her head in the kitchen door. “I’m so sorry. She’ll be wiping down lunch tables with him.”

      Jared almost bumped his head as he looked up from the cabinet he’d been going through. “That’s okay.”

      She nodded and then went into the cafeteria, presumably to search.

      Jared was on his fifth cabinet when he heard the giggles.

      He followed the noise to the cafeteria and stopped. In the middle of the lunchroom tables stood Maggie and the two children, all of them looking at the ceiling. In her hand, she held Caleb’s lunch box. Jared could see the peanut butter smeared all over it.

      Finally, Maggie hunched down and shook her head. “Caleb, it would take a lot more peanut butter to make it stick.”

      “I wondered about that,” Caleb admitted.

      “I can go find some peanut butter,” Cassidy offered.

      Maggie simply shook her head again, smiled at Jared and sashayed past him into the kitchen where she washed the offending lunch box before handing it to Jared.

      For a brief moment he’d been worried she’d gone looking for peanut butter.

      * * *

      Maggie helped Cassidy into her coat and out the front door of Roanoke Elementary. Together they walked the mere block to Maggie’s shop Hand Me Ups.

      Well, Maggie walked; Cassidy did more of a sideways hop with a scoot and jiggle follow-up.

      “I don’t think it’s fair that I got in so much trouble,” Cassidy said after a moment. “I didn’t throw my lunch box at him, and we found the lunch box right where I hid it. And I only hid it so he wouldn’t throw it at me again.”

      “But you didn’t tell people where you hid the lunch box when they asked. That was wrong.”

      Cassidy contemplated, for all of thirty seconds. “But, if I gave it back, he might have thrown it at me again.”

      “Once adults were involved, that wasn’t likely. You were wasting our time. I might have missed a customer at the shop. And I’m sure Caleb’s dad had work to do. Plus, even you admitted he didn’t exactly ‘throw’ it at you.”

      “Oh, yeah.”

      “And, what if the lunch box was gone when we went back to get it?” Maggie asked.

      “He could have one of mine.”

      Cassidy had two, both pink and both secondhand, one with Dora on it and the other with Cinderella. Cassidy’s greatest wish was to get rid of both of them in order to buy a new one with a pony on it. Maggie doubted Caleb would be inclined to accept either.

      “No, if the lunch box disappeared, we’d be getting him a new one, with your piggy bank money.”

      “But I have to use that money to buy presents!” Cassidy’s scoot and jiggle stopped for all of a moment. Then, she was on to a new subject: one where her piggy bank wasn’t in danger and there were other problems to solve. “Am I pretty?”

      “Getting prettier every day.”

      “Today, Lisa Totwell said that she was the prettiest girl in class and that I was second.”

      “Well,” Maggie said carefully, “do you want to be the prettiest, or is it okay if Lisa is?”

      “It’s okay if she is. She’s my best friend, you know. Cuz we’re both the new students in second grade this year. Everyone else has been here forever.”

      Yesterday, Brittney Callahan had been Cassidy’s best friend. Before that, it was Sarah, a girl Maggie had yet to put a last name or a face to.

      Didn’t matter. Maggie was thrilled at how quickly Cassidy was fitting in—maybe fitting in a little too well. Coming to Roanoke, Iowa, was the right choice. For both of them.

      “Cassidy, you know that Caleb is only in kindergarten, right?”

      “Yep.”

      “Maybe you need to play with the kids in your own class.”

      Cassidy stopped so quickly, she nearly stumbled to the ground. “No way, Mom. Caleb is my friend, and he’s fun. Plus, he’s Matt’s brother.”

      Matt McCreedy was the subject of many a conversation. He was the only one in Cassidy’s second grade who hadn’t been given best-friend status, and Maggie suspected Cassidy might be going through her first crush.

      Now that Maggie had met Matt’s dad, she figured he and Matt were cut from the same cloth—rugged, sturdy denim. Caleb seemed to be cut from a different sort of cloth.

      Which meant that Mr. Jared McCreedy didn’t understand his youngest son’s creative personality.

      “We’ll talk about it later.” Maggie didn’t want to dwell on the plight of the misunderstood child.

      She’d been one—an army brat with an errant mother and a father who was used to giving orders and having them followed with a “Yes, sir. Right away, sir.” Her dad was a man who tried hard, but one who definitely didn’t understand girls.

      “Mom, you’ve got that look on your face again,” Cassidy complained. “Did I do something?”

      “Yes, you did something. You got sent to the principal’s office for the second time, and I had to leave work to come deal with it. After taking most of last week off, I really needed to spend time in the shop.”

      Cassidy suddenly was very involved in staring at a crack in the sidewalk.

      Maggie wasn’t deterred. “School’s only been in session three months. Next week is December and if you don’t...” Her words tapered off as a black truck drove by. Actually, she was glad for the interruption. She’d been about to bring up consequences, such as not attending Christmas activity at the church this Friday night or even the school’s winter play and the possibility of Cassidy not appearing in it.

      Don’t threaten unless you mean it.

      “Look, Mom!”

      Jared McCreedy sat tall and oh-so-serious-looking behind the wheel of the Ford diesel truck. His three sons, the oldest in the