Page 55 of Not Another Christmas Movie

“What? I don’t want to bid too high now if I don’t have to, maybe I can get more than one basket,” Annie muttered defensively.

“Now I don’t usually do this, but let me tell you about what you’re missing here, friends. Inside this basket I see what looks to be a handcrafted nutcracker!” Grant exclaimed. Annie heard a loud gasp that quickly turned into a sob and turned to see Eve loudly weeping into Ferguson’s jacket as he tried his best to comfort her. Ferguson patted her hair with one hand and used his other to present her with a royal handkerchief.

“Oh no,” Annie whispered.

“What?” Nick asked, completely confused. “What happened? Why is Eve crying?”

“It’s her dad,” Annie said. “He was involved in some kind of nutcracker incident, and he died.” Nick gave Annie a skeptical look before his face broke into a grin and he let out a loud laugh.

“That’s a good one, Annie, but it’s a bit much, don’t you think?” Nick asked, continuing to laugh as Eve cried.

“I’m not joking, Nick,” Annie hissed at him, swatting at his arm to get him to shut up. “She told me last night.”

“Papa! Oh, Papa!” Eve yelled in anguish. Nick stopped laughing and looked around at the crowd. The momentum of the event stuttered to a complete stop as Eve let out more wails, and more people tried to comfort her.

“But what does a ‘nutcracker incident’ even mean? I don’t understand, how is that a thing?” Nick asked. Grant looked desperate to draw the attention back to the event at hand.

“Well, Miss Annie, it looks like you’ll take the basket if there are no other bids—” Grant began.

“I bid forty!” Bailey called out over Eve’s howls.

“That’s what I like to hear!” Grant smiled, and Eve seemed to regain some of her royal composure now and was only softly weeping next to Ferguson. Grant opened the other side of the basket to search for something else to advertise. “Do I see chestnuts?” Grant asked, and a horrified murmur broke out. Annie covered her face in her hands, already knowing what was coming next.

“What now?” Nick asked, looking scared. Annie didn’t have to answer him because now Chris stood near Eve, who had decided to ramp her own crying back up so that she could match Chris’s own wails. Holly broke loose from wherever she had been standing to sprint to her dad so that they could hold each other and weep. Obviously, most of the townspeople knew about Chris’s wife’s tragic death with a warm chestnut because most of them were now shaking their heads in disgust at the basket or clutching their hearts with wet eyes of their own.

“Please tell me you don’t have some eggnog in there too,” Annie whispered to Nick. His eyes went large with fear as a look of horror consumed his face. “I bid one hundred Simsbury Bucks!” Annie said, racing toward Grant, throwing all of her currency in his direction. He gave her a thankful look.

“Going, going, gone to Annie Meyers for one hundred Simsbury Bucks!” Grant said into the mic, though everyone’s attention was still on Chris and Holly. And adjacently, Eve. Bailey shot Annie an angry look while trying her best to calm Chris by making soothing circles on his back with her mittened hand. “Please take this away,” Grant begged Annie. “And maybe it’s best you both get a head start on enjoying your brunch date?” Grant encouraged, and Annie took the basket and beelined for Nick.

“Let’s go,” Annie said through gritted teeth, and the two of them withdrew to the sounds of sobs. Once they were outside the gazebo’s proximity, Annie stopped by a bench and let out a loud laugh. “Now that was fun,” she cackled.

“It’s not funny!” Nick cried.

“It’s hilarious,” Annie said, her laughter growing every time she replayed the scene in her mind. “That was the best thing that’s happened here so far, my absolute favorite moment. How exactly did you put together your basket?” Annie asked when she was feeling a tad calmer and curious.

“Stuff was just there in my kitchen!” Nick exclaimed. “I didn’t think to examine it; everything seemed holiday-inspired, so I had no idea it would be full of triggering items. What was all that?”

“Ah, where to begin?” Annie giggled, “Felix’s wife, sweet Caroline, lost her life to ‘bad eggnog,’ Chris’s wife passed away thanks to a large warm chestnut, and Eve’s dad died after a tragic run-in with a nutcracker.” Nick’s eyes grew wide again before his face broke and he let out his own hoot of laughter, which made Annie laugh harder. When Nick thought he had gotten control of himself, he would give in to another spout of snickering, and his body shook from head to toe. The two looked at each other, their eyes both looking particularly twinkly, and laughed again before settling into a moment of quiet. “So now what? Should we break into this basket for a snack?” Annie asked him, wiggling her eyebrows in interest.

“Go ahead, it’s probably safer if we consume or destroy it all before we unleash another round of emotional trauma on the town,” Nick said, and Annie shook her head in agreement and placed the basket on the bench.

“Lukewarm eggnog?” Annie said, pulling out an unlabeled jar of thick white liquid. “This looks disgusting and would clearly kill us.” Annie opened the jar and tossed the contents onto the road.

“Annie!” Nick scolded her, frantically looking around.

“What? What are you worried about, Nick? Are the police coming to arrest me for littering? The whole town is still at that gazebo, and if there’s any type of crime community, you know it’s a one-man operation of Felix. With, like, Chris as the head volunteer firefighter who has never actually had to do anything but save a kitten from a tree … I can’t believe I paid a hundred Simsbury Bucks for this,” Annie complained, and she was grateful that her body still didn’t process feelings of being hungry here because she didn’t find anything remotely appetizing. Suddenly, her hands pulled out a small silver tin, and her heart stopped. Unable to speak, Annie turned to Nick.

“Oh, yeah, I found one of your grandfather’s tins. He used to leave us some of his lemon cookies in those every year; he’d put them in the mailbox,” Nick said softly.

“He did?” Annie asked, moving to sit down as her voice cracked with emotion. Annie knew it was exactly something her sweet grandfather would do. Nick nodded slowly. Annie closed her eyes for a moment and could almost smell the familiar combination of lemon and sugar that would fill the kitchen when her grandfather baked his famous lemon cookies. As a proclaimed chocolate lover, even Annie had to admit the bliss these cookies brought to her taste buds. He had claimed he had learned the language of proper baking from watching his Italian grandmother, and he got emotional when Annie watched him bake, as if he was witnessing the true circle of life. Annie opened her eyes, and the tears she had been trying to keep in check finally spilled out.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,” Nick said, sitting next to her. He looked like he wanted to put his hand on her back to comfort her but couldn’t build up enough courage to actually do it.

Annie tried to speak, to assure Nick she was fine, but the truth was, she wasn’t. She hadn’t seen one of those cookie tins since that last Christmas with her grandfather. And when he died, she had let her family sort and pack all of his things, unable to face the space he no longer occupied. But here it was with all the memories of that day coming crashing through now that the dam she had worked so tirelessly to build and maintain had broken.

When Annie’s grandmother passed away from a chronic lower respiratory disease, her grandfather had moved in with her family, begrudgingly taking the small room that had once been an office as his bedroom. He hadn’t wanted to inconvenience anyone. If it had been up to him, he would rather have passed away before his beloved wife, as he had never intended to live without her, but he had agreed to the idea on Annie’s insistence. At the time, she had just passed the test for her driver’s license, and her grandpa always let her borrow his car. It was more than car usage, though; of course, they needed him. He was the celebrator in the family, especially for Christmas.

Her grandfather had asked Annie if she’d sit and watch a holiday movie with him on Christmas Eve. He planned to call it an early night, since he was volunteering at McClean the next morning. Before the family gathered for breakfast and presents, he wanted to spread a little cheer for the seniors in the assisted living quarters, delivering his famous cookies and lending comfort to those who might otherwise spend Christmas Day alone.