For the next few moments, they continued their steady progress, adding a variety of ornaments —colored globes, silver bells, bedazzled diamonds, cheery snowmen, and more —to the tree.
They heard a buzz and Eva glanced at her phone. “Oh, drat,” she said. “My mom’s ready to go home.”
“So you need to leave,” Penny said.
Eva was crestfallen. “But you’re not done with the tree!”
“How about this: I’ll take video of the finished tree with my phone and send the video to you. Will that work?”
The girl looked doubtful. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“I also need a shot of Mr. Bedford putting the star on the top of the finished tree, and a video of him turning on the lights.”
“Consider it done and done.”
“You sure?”
“We’ll be good, Eva,” Daniel added. “Promise.”
“Okay,” the girl said with a worried sigh. “But remember, Mr. Bedford —you have to promise you’ll put the star on the top of the tree, and then you need to turn the lights on.”
“Got it.”
“Also,” she said, turning to Penny, “we need a shot of the finished lighted tree from inside and also outside.”
“Understood.”
The girl’s phone buzzed again. “Okay, gotta go.”
“Thanks for your help today,” Daniel said.
“Send me the video as soon as you have it,” she said as she unlocked the front door. “Good night!”And with that, she dashed across the street into the square.
Penny locked the door behind her. “Free again,” she said with a smile.
Daniel chuckled. “Time to getcrazy.”
Penny laughed and returned to the tree.
“You know,” he said as he hung another ornament, “I’ve been thinking about something Mabel said.”
“Oh?” Penny said as she threaded a hook through an ornament. “What?”
“She wasn’t wrong about me needing to get my head on straight about why I came up here.”
Penny’s pulse quickened. Did that mean he was thinking about what Christmas meant for him? “Tell me more.”
“I came up here feeling a bit resentful,” he said with a sigh. “Like we talked about earlier, I felt guilty about causing a headache for my agent and publisher. When they cooked up this ‘Christmas immersion’ plan, I felt I had no choice but to go along.”
“I kind of sensed that when you arrived,” she said. “You weren’t exactly thrilled to be here.”
“No, I was not.”
“Though I have to say, you’ve been a complete gentleman about it.”
He took a moment to reply, searching for the right words. “I realized on the drive up here that I didn’t want my problem—my resentment —to become anyone else’s problem. I’ve made that mistake before.”
