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Packages were stolen right out from under people’s noses.

Mailboxes were pulled out for new models.

Pictures of said mailboxes were attached to stories.

By the time all the pancakes are gone and plates are scraped clean and the juice spill is shampooed off the carpet, it’s 1:53 p.m. and time to get going.

I have a plan to enact.

“Where are you heading?” Mom says, looking both happy and more than a little surprised at the suggestion that I just might actually have a social life already. Which is sad.

“I’ve got some Christmas shopping to get a start on.” It’s true. I haven’t picked out a thing for anyone yet. It wasn’t like I was going to lug a suitcase of wrapped gifts home.

“You going with Genie?”

“No.”

“With . . . another friend?”

There it is again. That sweet, irksome, sad, pathetic-on-my-part hope in her voice. I’m twenty-five years old and this conversation is filled with all the desperation of a mom who’s hoping her second grader made a friend at school.

“A new one. Sort of.”

Her face crinkles up in joy. “Oh, honey,” she says, waving a hand at me. “Don’t worry about us. You’re home for Christmas.” (Translation: We both know you have no money.) “That’s the only gift your father and I need.”

The shops downtown bustle with activity on this chilly Friday afternoon so close to Christmas. The roads are still covered in snow but it’s far less ominous; tire tracks sink so deep into the paved areas that they form a sort of sledding track. Children dragged by parents and bigger siblings cling to brightly colored toboggans while sliding along the paths, many heading for the eastern hill behind the cluster of buildings where the old war hero Reverend Charles Temple looks over the town in frozen soberness. The town statue has been on Temple Hill for as long as I can remember, and for as long as I can remember the hill has been the sledding spot, its name the first words out of children’s lips the second the snowflakes start to cluster.

Unlike yesterday the place is packed, what with it being six days ’til Christmas and the start of the last shoppable weekend left. The stores are revolving doors of people stepping in and out, bags in one hand and often coffee in the other. I watch more than one mother sidestep out of a store to glance at her child sliding down the big hill before she strides purposefully into another store.

Maple Hills is a town of only a few thousand, and yet you’d think everyone collaboratively decided today was the last possible day to meet up. Here. And have a jolly good time.

One man strolling the streets is dressed in some old-fashioned medieval getup of ballooning red-and-green puffy sleeves with a tip jar at his hip and . . . Are those bagpipes at his side?

James, for his part, is being no help at all this afternoon.

He has a way of specifically not displaying emotions, and it makes me very confused. He might look alert, sure, but I can’t help wondering whether it’s the kind of alert that happens when someone is very much not regretting making this date of sorts or whether he’s just enthusiastic about getting some clothing.

Or maybe he’s just on his third cup of coffee.

Did he want to do this at all?

Could be he’s exhausted from the past eight hours of small, sticky hands demanding he play safari and is thrilled to be out of the house.

I received an enthusiastic greeting at the door when I picked him up—but it was from a three-year-old. James gave me a direct look and the kind of polished smile you could give to a cute puppy in the park or flash in a business meeting with your mortal enemies, said something about assuming I had a good time with my family today, and got in.

I literally had his sister trying to trade phone numbers with me but got fewer than ten words from James.

So no. Not stressful at all for someone who overthinks everything.

As we step out of the truck and are met with the brisk, slippery cold, James, hands dug deep into his coat, looks around and says, “So, where are you directing us now?”

Guess I’m sort of leading the way again. That makes sense. It is my town.

I just thought maybe it would be a little different today since he was kind of the one to jump-start this plan. This was his idea after all. Or was it mine? We went halfsies on it at least.

“I . . .” With my hands in my own pockets, I look around and try to take the lead. “I guess we can . . . start at Lincoln’s?” I say, gesturing to the general store in front of me. Its clothes are not too overwhelmingly feminine, and it has lots of conversational distractions in the form of Hey, look at this singing fish and Did you know a Swiss Army knife could have that many functions?

A smile cracks on James’s face. “Let’s go.”