Page 21 of The Sugar and Spice Kitchen

Because this was Emily Whitaker. The same woman who had once been his best friend, though that was seventeen years ago. Before the cookies, before the accusation, before half the town started choosing sides, there had been a whole childhood of her climbing the fence between their grandparents’ yards because the gate took too long. Building forts in his grandfather’s hardware store. Making Slip ’N Slides with used tarps and dish soap. Playing Super Mario Galaxy late into the summer night. She had been the person he told things to.

The only one.

Then her grandfather had accused his grandfather of stealing her nana’s bake-off cookies in front of half of Maple Falls, and everything changed.

He remembered being ten years old and realizing his best friend looked at him like his family was made of thieves. He remembered calling her nana a liar, saying she stole the cookies because she knew she wasn’t going to win.

His family had moved to New York not long after.

And now here he was. Back in this town, having spent the night with his arms around her, only for Emily to wake up and file the whole thing under “catastrophic error in judgment” before slamming the drawer shut.

He’d heard her mutter it even though he’d pretended not to.

Cole exhaled. A long, controlled breath that disappeared into the cold.

That was why he wasn’t staying.

He’d taken the assignment on a twelve-month contract, which the county had been happy to offer because his family was local. Running a volunteer fire station in a town of three thousand people in the rural Midwest was not a career move. It was a pause. A year, maybe eighteen months, long enough to make sure his grandfather was steady on his feet after losing his grandmother, long enough to get the station organized, and then back to New York.

New York made sense. His crew was there, his best mates, Rivera and Cho, who he’d shared an apartment with for four years and who still texted the group chat daily. His captain was holding a spot for him at Engine 54, had said as much when Cole told him he was leaving. Take the time you need. The spot’s yours when you’re ready.

His father’s station. The place his dad had walked into on a September eleventh morning and walked out of a different man. Cole had spent years building something there—a reputation, a career, a version of himself that made sense in a city where nobody knew the Alders name or cared about a tin of stolen cookies.

A year. He’d give it a year.

For now, his duty was in Maple Falls.

He surveyed Oak Way. The plow had managed one lane but had thrown a four-foot wall of packed snow along the length of his truck in the process, which was going nowhere. At least his dog, Captain, was at the station. His crew would take care of him.

He reached for his radio to call for a pickup, something he would have done inside if he’d been thinking straight. Before he could key it, the rumble of a snowmobile rounded the corner of the hardware store and headed directly toward him.

Cole had two thoughts.

The first was: What in the hell?

Because unless he was losing his mind, which was possible, Santa Claus was driving a snowmobile down Oak Way.

The second was: It is too early in the morning for this.

The man wore a one-piece red snowsuit trimmed with white fur at the cuffs, with jingle bells where the buttons should have been. His snowmobile helmet was green, the words HO! HO! HO! airbrushed across the side in gold. He pulled to a stop in a spray of snow, raised one brown leather mitten in greeting, and pushed up his visor.

“Hello there, m’boy,” Mayor Bloomfield called out.

Cole cleared his throat, schooled his features. It took a moment.

“Hello, sir.”

“Hop on, son. I’m doing a sweep of the downtown before the morning briefing.” Bloomfield patted the seat behind him with one leather mitten. “Can’t have my fire chief stranded on Oak Way.”

Cole looked at the snowmobile, at Mayor Bloomfield in his jingle bell snowsuit. He thought briefly about what his crew was going to say when he arrived at the station on the back of Santa’s ride.

He got on.

The mayor pulled out with considerably more enthusiasm than the situation required, the jingle bells rattling against the cold air as they picked up speed down the cleared lane. Cole held on and said nothing. The cold hit his face in a clean, clarifying rush.

“Bad business, this storm,” the mayor called over his shoulder, cheerfully. “Worst since 2019. You know what got us through 2019?”

Cole did not know.