Page 48 of The Christmas Yes List

And there she goes again. Her shoulders ease down a little.

“Well, they’ve got a couple of big doll fans,” I say. “Cutest kids in town, minus my personal bias toward my own kin. But here’s the thing.” I slap the mannequin’s head for emphasis. “James here would like to take this mannequin—that’s gotta be, what, forty years old?—off your hands and pay you so handsomely you could put the money toward a whole new awning to replace the one that got torn years ago. Or you could buy a new window display. Or whatever you want, really.”

I shrug. “What I’m trying to say is, you have a real opportunity here. You’ve got a guy with a big wallet and a wildly delusional dream—one he’s willing to spend good money on—to make two little girls’ dreams come true. What do you say?”

I hold my breath.

Wait.

Trepidation rising.

“No.”

Mrs. Jessee is very kind about it, kind of stammers on for a full minute, but ultimately, the word she lands on is no. The idea is so far-fetched she can’t even pick a number. Our ask is too outside the box of what she considers the logical and ordinary ways of things, and with the pressure of a long line of people behind us, Mrs. Jessee ultimately isn’t willing to part with the old, partially broken, yellow-tinged mannequin with the slightly creepy eyes—probably because she can’t possibly conceive of this man being willing to buy it for any real number worth dropping it like a hotcake.

I feel the disappointment and heat spread across my face, and the sudden awareness that every single person’s eyes are on me. James puts a hand lightly on my shoulder, and I shrink back.

I didn’t realize in the moment that I had stepped forward and taken on James’s quest for a yes until the reality of public rejection hit me.

I guess . . . I just got rejected.

I just got a point without even meaning to play the game.

Now just don’t throw up and we’ll call it progress.

We’ve picked up the mannequin and are just walking down to return it to its spot when a man in line blurts out, “C’mon, Miriam. Seems a heck of an offer for an old piece of plastic. What if he gave you two hundred.”

We turn our heads.

A woman standing two places behind him motions up and down at James while saying, “I don’t know. The man’s got money. Look at his fancy coat. Let him take it off your hands for three.”

“We all wanna see a new awning on the place. I wouldn’t go a dime under three twenty.”

“I’d say give it to him for three fifty. The man basically set you up with a blank check.”

“Three seventy-five or you walk!” a mostly toothless man cries out, fist in the air.

And that bizarre backward auction at the checkout counter of Lincoln’s is exactly how, twenty minutes later, we end up hauling a mannequin into the back of my truck—to the triumphant cheers of the crowd. James receives plenty of hearty pats on the back as we go, and although a whopping $387.82 was not the price tag he bargained for, the whole experience of being a momentary small-town hero has him grinning ear to ear.

It was a win.

And surprisingly, a win for us both. I got my point. He got the doll and a victory lap around small-town USA.

When the mannequin is lying flat in the bed of the truck, with its super-creepy eyes staring at the cloudy sky, he closes the tailgate and slaps his hands together. “Where to now?”

“Technically,” I say, hesitating. I cast my eyes in the direction of the dissipating crowd. “We never made it to the sweater area . . . but I’m not sure we want to go back in there. Do heroes ever return to the scene of the crime?”

“Seems a bit anticlimactic to go back in,” he agrees. “Plus, everyone was only too eager to take my bank account for a spin. I’m afraid to see what would happen with a sweater.”

“Do you even still want to get a sweater?”

He frowns at me, as though I’m the Grinch now. “Are we quitters? No, Chloe. We’re not quitters.”

And off we hunt.

As it turns out, snagging some festive holiday sweaters is surprisingly challenging in Maple Hills, West Virginia. It doesn’t help that several of the shops have changed names and ownership in the years since I left. But to his credit, James carries himself with the air of someone who has nowhere to be, and he seems happy to stroll alongside me, pausing near store windows, discussing his theories on what the interiors might hold. After perusing a handful of shops selling everything under the sun except sweaters, we pause at a little mom-and-pop restaurant that’s wafting the smell of warm potato soup out to the street.

The floor is a checkerboard of candy-apple red and white squares and the place smells thickly of baking bread and homemade soup. Sure enough, two large steam-billowing stainless steel pots are sitting atop the kitchen stove on the right wall, settled beneath a row of hanging pots and utensils. Beside those are some framed photos going back to black-and-white days featuring people I can only assume are members of the owner’s very large and very extended family. The name on the menus we are handed tells us we’re at Mama’s Café—and the generously sized woman who bustles up with a pen and happy air of confidence fits the title.