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Chapter One
Jordan Davis belted out the last line of You Give Love a Bad Name, playing over the fuzzy Minneapolis radio station, and tapped on the fuel gauge of his silver Grand Am. The little red arrow flickered back and forth and then settled resolutely on empty. He swore and tossed the empty soda can into his passenger seat, where a collection of fast food containers and his briefcase sat.
“Come on, baby.” He stroked the rippled dashboard with the tips of his long fingers. The last few chords of Bon Jovi’s ballad crackled through the speakers, momentarily leaving the car silent. “Just ten more miles to New Hope. Don’t fail me now.”
He should have filled up on gas at that little dive of a town outside of La Crosse, but he couldn’t bring himself to step on the breaks. It had been years since he’d stepped foot in Junction. His mom and step-dad still lived there, according to the measly one card he got from them each year at Christmas.
This year’s card was laying in the back seat of his messy car, the envelope ripped in two and then abandoned. On the front of the card was a silhouette of a manger scene. Inside, four measly words: Love, Mom and James.
There was no way he was going to risk running into someone he knew from Junction. So instead of filling up his tank, he sailed on past with the hope of making it to the New Hope motel before his tank ran out of fuel. It hadn’t been his idea to make this trip, after all.
If he had his way, he would’ve quit working for the State of Minnesota months ago. Right when his old boss retired and the new one took the helm. Mary was a pain in Jordan’s rear - the kind of boss who liked to check in all the time and track his every move. He couldn’t breathe at work anymore. He used to like numbers and accounting and the peaceful quiet that came with them - but not anymore. Now, it just meant another day with Mary breathing down his neck.
“Right on cue,” Jordan moaned as his phone began to ring. Sure enough, Mary’s number came across the screen. If he didn’t answer, she’d just keep calling and bog down his already dying phone. “Hello?”
“I’m assuming you’ve already checking into the motel,” her brisk tone cackled through the speaker. He held the phone a few inches from his face, willing the call to drop. “I hope you know this isn’t a vacation. I expect strict regiment from my auditors. Three weeks away from the office doesn’t give you the right to slack off. You will hit all the deadlines I’ve set for you.”
Jordan fought the desire to bang his head against the steering wheel and remained calm. “No, Mary, I’m not checked into the motel yet. It’s a four hour drive from Duluth to New Hope. You had me scheduled to leave at six this morning. I left on the dot and I should be there in a few minutes.”
“Hmmm…” The silence told him she was probably consulting the line by line time schedule she’d made for him and emailed over last night. “I suppose that would be true. But, as soon as you get into town I want you over at that office. If the Department of Education is going to be funding such a huge program through the Foundation, we have to make sure their ducks are all in a perfectly arranged line.”
“I know, Mary.” She’d only been driving that point into his skull every chance she could get this past week. He realized she was new on the team and had something to prove, but she didn’t need to breathe down his neck so much. “This isn’t my first audit. It’ll be fine.”
“It better be.” She breathed heavily into the phone, like Darth Vader summoning some mind control abilities. “Evaluations are coming up, Jordan. Don’t forget it.”
She hung up before he could respond to her thinly veiled threat. He tossed the phone into his briefcase and slapped his hand against the steering wheel, instantly regretting his violent outburst and stroking the dashboard to apologize. His last boss had loved him. Never questioned him a day in his career at the state department. His evaluations had been spectacular. Not a red mark in his file. He couldn’t risk one. Not when his dream job was right around the corner.
Word on the street was that the Minnesota Vikings had an opening on their accounting and financing team. He’d sent in his resume five times already to the sound of crickets. If he could get a spot working for his favorite football team in the world, he’d die a happy man at the age of thirty. Nothing could surpass that goal.
New Hope appeared in his windshield - a small town at the most southeast tip of Minnesota. Population seven hundred and twenty-three. It reminded him of Junction. The kind of place people went to die and kids tried to escape, only to end up stuck working at the nearby factory, just like their pops did for the past twenty years. He shuddered at the thought. He’d worked hard to get away from that kind of life and he wasn’t going to get sucked back in.
The motel sat just outside New Hope on the south side of a long stretch of highway. Jordan kissed two of his fingers and pressed it to the steering wheel as his car rolled to a stop in the parking lot. They’d made it.
The motel was everything he’d dreaded - a dinky little place with about five rooms and a little office to the right with cigarette smoke wafting out the open window. It was the kind of place you saw in horror movies. Men like him didn’t last very long in those movies. Oh, well. Too late to back out now.
He hopped out of the car and pulled his coat tight around him, the December air instantly seeping into his bones. His coworkers were loving the snow season, looking forward to the holidays. Jordan hated everything about this month. As far as he was concerned, December could be blotted off the yearly calendar. He didn’t do the holidays. Which was probably why he was the only employee available to do this audit before the end of the fiscal year.
“Are you Mr. Davis?” An old white man with a crooked back and a cane hobbled out of the office, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. He pointed an arthritic finger at him, the skin wrapping around his limbs nearly translucent, and coughed. “We were expecting you an hour ago. A lady named Mary kept calling here for you.”
Jordan rolled his eyes. Of course she had. She’d been checking up on him, trying to catch him in a lie. “Yes, sir. I’m here now.”
“Good, good. Welcome to the New Hope motel. My name’s Eddie Lauer. My wife’s Edna Lauer. Ed and Ed.” He smiled, displaying a missing tooth on his bottom row. “Almost sixty years together and that never gets old. Here, let me show you to your room.”
The cloud of smoke that followed Eddie around was nearly unbearable. Jordan wondered how his wife could stand it. He kept a safe distance, grabbing his suitcase from the car and trailing a few steps behind the old man.
“It’s too bad you caught us at our worst,” Eddie explained as the sound of hammering broke the silence. “My nephew’s remodeling for us. All rooms except for you
rs are under construction. With only one room available, I’m afraid you’re going to have to deal with some of the overflow from my wife’s decorating.”
He pulled a diamond shaped key-chain from the pocket of his over-sized jeans and dangled it for Jordan to see. A key hung from the loop with the number five printed on it in black sharpie. He stopped in front of the furthest room from the office with a matching number five on the door.
“She’s been known to go a little overboard,” Eddie said apologetically as he unlocked the door and opened it for him.
Overboard was putting it lightly. Every conceivable inch of the small motel room was covered in green and red tinsel. The shelves had been wrapped in tinfoil paper with intricate snowflakes that glistened. A painting of Santa Claus and his reindeer hung above the bed, staring down on the place he was supposed to sleep. A dancing elf began to move when they walked in, swinging it’s hat from side to side as a squeaky little voice sang out that Santa was coming to town. Green garland hung from the windows and a red and white comforter graced the bed.
“It’s a little much,” Eddie said, shifting uncomfortably. “But if she doesn’t decorate the motel, it’ll be our house. And I don’t need a singing elf giving me a heart attack on my way to the toilet every night.”
Jordan held back a laugh and threw his suitcase on the bed. Whatever. This was only temporary. At least it got him out from under his boss’s thumb for a little bit.
Right on cue, his phone began to buzz from his briefcase. He didn’t have to guess who it was. Walking away from the vibrating bag, he ignored the sound. She could wait another minute…or two.
“I’m guessing that big red box over there with the bow is the TV?” he asked Eddie, pointing at the rectangular present on a stand. At least he’d have cable while he was here. Could catch a game or two in the evenings.
“Indeed,” Eddie smiled his gap toothed smile. “We get ten channels all the way from Eau Claire. My wife likes to watch Downton Abbey on PBS.”
Jordan could feel the smile on his face stretching thin. If he had to watch Downton Abbey every weekend in this room where Christmas threw up, he might go insane. “Thanks. I guess I’ll have to see what’s on.”
His phone began buzzing again like a wasp caught in a can. He waved Eddie out the door, trying to get the old geezer to move as fast as his feet could handle.
“You’re going to love New Hope, young man,” Eddie said on his way out. A piece of ash from his cigarette fell on the carpet and smeared as he shuffled over it. “It’s a lovely place. Changes lives, it does. You might just find yourself wanting to stick around.”
“Doubtful,” Jordan mumbled. He waved goodbye to Eddie and shut the door behind him. Pressing himself to the wall, he waited for the cigarette smoke to fade before falling onto the comforter. It felt nice to be alone for a moment, the quiet soothing his tired head.
That moment didn’t last long. His phone began to ring for the third time. As he went to answer it, the elf started to sing and dance again. Throwing a pillow at the singing monstrosity, Jordan worried about the next few weeks. How was he going to survive without cable TV and a boss that harassed him every few minutes? He was going to go insane.
If he was lucky, Eddie’s nephew would collapse the building on him as he slept, putting him in a coma for the rest of the holiday season. It was the only pleasant thought he could muster about the motel and the town as a whole.
Anything would be better than a Christmas stuck in New Hope.
Chapter Two
Children hung from the rafters of the church, howling like monkeys and scratching their armpits. A few ran around old pews in circles, screaming at the top of their lungs. Chloe Walker looked upon her newly minted cast members of the Christmas Eve musical and tried to hold in the dramatic sigh she felt building up inside her. She’d wanted this job. It was a dream come true. If she kept saying that, maybe it’d stay true.
“They’re cute,” her friend and coworker Laurie Fink cooed beside her. She’d been cast as the angel, Gabriel, for the modern day manger scene and was sitting in as one half of Chloe’s audition panel.
“Yeah and I think I just felt my ovaries die,” Chloe mumbled back. She shooed the children toward the back door where their parents were devouring the free lunchtime snacks and coffee. “If I make it through the next three weeks without losing my sanity, I’ll call it a win. Even if the musical stinks to high heaven.”
“It won’t stink.” Laurie smiled and tilted her head, her long red hair falling across her shoulders. “I’ve read the script. It’s brilliant. There’s a reason they chose you to put on this year’s Christmas Eve play. I still can’t believe you wrote it.”
Chloe felt a pleasant heat rise to her cheeks. She grinned to herself and then fanned her face with a spare church bulletin that had been stuffed into the pew rack in front of her. “It’s always been a secret hobby of mine. Accountant by day - playwright by night. Like Clark Kent and Superman, I guess.”
“Or Bruce Wayne and Batman,” Laurie said with an eager nod of her head. “Except, without the billions of dollars.”
“Or the alien superpowers.”
“Or the helpful butler.”
“Why do I need a butler when I have you?” Chloe grinned.
