Page 47 of The Christmas Yes List

“Okay,” I say. I pick up the feet. They smell musty. The skin on the mannequin is a touch yellow. And it is, without question, something that has lived in this store for at least forty years.

A passing shopper gives us a look and I feel the immediate temptation to crawl in a hole and die. “People are looking at us,” I hiss.

He glances over his shoulder. “So?”

I swallow.

So . . . so . . . what? It doesn’t matter.

I fix my attention on James like he’s the lighthouse in a storm.

We have a whole store’s width of space to walk through to get to the counter. And at least a hundred people to walk past.

I can do this.

“All right then,” I say. “After you.”

Chapter 5

“You want to . . . what now?”

Mrs. Miriam Jessee looks James up and down like he’s all but lost his mind.

There’s a string of customers waiting to check out, all standing impatiently with their odds and ends. The single cash register has been dinging and popping with such tapping the past half hour you’d think it was going to start smoking any minute. It’s clear that Lincoln’s general store, nestled in our small hollow as it is, has yet to discover the magic of portable card tappers. Which, given that half the people here seem to be still paying in cash, makes sense.

James and I stood there a full half hour before it was our turn to finally get up to the register. And we haven’t even finished our shopping yet.

“I want to see about the purchase of this mannequin,” James repeats, all smiles as he looks down at the seventy-something-year-old woman in simple flannel and wearing far too many rings.

Miriam Jessee and her husband, Frank, have owned the store for more than fifty years—as permanent nearly as the statue of old Reverend Charles Temple on Temple Hill. Yet the look she’s giving James now tells me she’s never been asked a question about a mannequin purchase. Ever.

“Plus the costume, of course,” James adds solemnly.

“Well . . . this is a mannequin,” the woman says. Gently. Like she’s trying to explain this to a child.

“I understand that.”

“It’s a display,” she says.

“And a convincing one at that. So convincing, it convinced me I’d like to buy it. Just name your price.”

Mrs. Jessee glances left and right, completely overwhelmed. She has always been the kind of woman who follows the rules. Puts the sticker on the bottom with the price. Types in the price on the register. Puts the item in a bag. Repeats. These are the types of laws she can follow. These are the rules in her world that make sense.

She slips off her reading glasses and replaces them with another, larger pair of glasses. Looks at him through big round eyes.

“But sir—”

I can’t take it anymore. The heat from the crowd watching us and just the heat from the crowd in general has gotten to me. I step in. “Hi, Mrs. Jessee,” I begin, folding my hands on top of the counter. “I’m Chloe Hollis. If you remember me.”

Her gaze through her big lenses swivels to me, centering on something familiar in this completely foreign conversation. A flicker of recognition lights her eyes. “Chloe. My goodness. It’s been years.”

I smile. So she remembers my lollipop years too. Twenty-five-cent lollipops on Mom’s errand runs were a staple of my childhood.

“It really has. Anyway,” I say through a big smile, “I know that technically this mannequin isn’t for sale. And technically, this man beside me has a crazy, if not possibly diabolical, idea. But he’s from New York City—”

The crowd erupts in murmurs as if to say Ohhhh. Well, sure then.

“And he’s got a dream to make his nieces’ dreams come true Christmas morning. You know Joanne and Michael Prickett? They’re the new owners of the Carriage Inn.”