The Thief Who Saved Christmas

Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

ANABELLE

Eleven months later

Tuesday, December 2, 23 days until Christmas

Santas sold today: 5

Santas made or purchased today: 7

It’s Tuesday afternoon on December 2 nd .

Ryan Reynolds is officially late.

“He’s already one day late,” I whisper to my cat, Saint Nick, as he circles the claw-footed wooden legs of my chair. “I trusted Grandma Edith implicitly, but I don’t think much of a man who can’t be bothered to keep his commitments.”

He meows in agreement, and I glance back at my laptop screen. I’ve gotten carried away at estate sales lately, hence my Santa-overflow problem.

The thing is…after my grandmother died, I’ve had a hard time saying no to elderly dead women.

That probably came out wrong. What I mean is that I feel a gush of emotion whenever I go to an estate sale and see a woman’s holiday treasures collected into plastic bins or falling-apart boxes, unwanted by her survivors.

This creates an irrepressible need in me to rescue them.

The problem is that most of this stuff really is junk—plastic Santas without the correct number of fingers and toes, Santas dressed in hula skirts, or Santas who dance drunkenly to music if a sticky button is pressed. Ornaments that are cracked or should be. Sometimes I can reuse the parts to make a better whole, and sometimes I have to admit that I have trash on my hands.

Which doesn’t make it easier to let it go, because each of these things was treasured by some little old lady, who would pack it lovingly into its box every holiday—only for one of those holidays to end up being her last.

It’s been a month, today, since my grandmother died of heart failure. Of course it was heart failure. If she’d needed a kidney, I would have given her one. Bone marrow, too. I’d have given her half my heart if it would have done any good, but much to my disappointment, science and medicine have not progressed that far.

Grandma Edith died on a mild day—a high of 60 degrees, even in November. After we left the hospital, my parents offered to buy me lunch, but I turned them down. Instead, I parked in Colonial Williamsburg and walked down Duke of Gloucester Street, fondly nicknamed DoG Street, in a haze. Everywhere I looked, there were people outside going on strolls and kids playing with those purposeless hoops and sticks the stores market to tourists who feel obligated to buy them.

My grandmother, who’d had a love for efficiency, would probably have approved of life moving on so quickly, but it had felt like an affront to see such normalcy. So much so that I asked one woman, who was drinking boba tea from a disposable plastic container, “What’s wrong with you?” in a shaking voice.

She dropped the boba tea, the little tapioca pearls bouncing slightly on the cobblestones. But either she hadn’t been taught to clean up after herself or she thought I was mentally imbalanced, because she hurried away, leaving the mess.

I cleaned it up as best I could, because Grandma Edith had always believed in leaving a place better than you found it. I’d started crying while I was doing it, which had felt like a relief— yes, you have emotions, Anabelle, and someone just gave Sadness the wheel.

“Oh, it’s only spilled tea,” said a woman with puffy curled hair and an overpowering scent of pumpkin spice. “No use crying over spilled tea, sweetie.” She clucked her tongue as she hovered a couple of steps from where I was trying to collect the tapioca pearls.

“My grandmother died,” I said through a sudden torrent of tears. “She died, and now I’m alone.”

The sliminess of the tapioca added to my grief, because what in the world was I doing, anyway? I hated touching slimy things, and that woman’s saliva was probably all over it, and everything was a mess.

I cried harder.

In response, the stranger moved closer as if she was about to hug me, which was enough to jolt me out of my meltdown. I backed up several paces, clutching the cup to my chest. “Oh, please don’t do that.”

“Are you okay, dear?”

“No, I can’t possibly hug a stranger.”

She gaped at me. I was used to people gaping, though. That’s what happened when you are a weird person who says weird things—a revelation I’d had years ago, which had made life a lot simpler for me. So I walked off, barely aware of my surroundings until I found myself at the door of The Crooked Quill. Using the key she’d given me years ago, I let myself in. Went to her desk. Sat in her chair and breathed in the smell of her. Lavender and a hint of vanilla. I had the aching awareness that it would fade soon and then she would fade—only in my own memory would she remain sharp, because I was Anabelle Whitman, and I never forgot anything that had ever happened to me.

Ask Rob Mertz, who’d pushed me into a pile of horse poop on our third-grade field trip to Colonial Williamsburg.

I know. How wildly exciting for a class of kids who live in Williamsburg to go to Colonial Williamsburg. But I digress…

I’m fairly sure adult Rob regrets his behavior on that fateful day, but only because he had the audacity to ask me out a few years ago, as if a woman could forget and forgive such a thing.

Sitting in my grandma’s chair, I tried to catch my breath, slow inhales, slow exhales, but then I noticed the envelope lined up with the corner of the desk. My name was on the front in her handwriting:

Anabelle Edith Whitman

“Oh, I don’t think I’m ready for this,” I said to no one in particular, rapping my fingers against the desk’s surface.

Sucking in a breath, I opened the letter. It was thick, and there was another, smaller, envelope inside of it.

Anabelle,

Everyone will know soon enough, but the inn is yours. So is everything else I have left.

It’s not a lot.

You know, of course, that I gave the sunburst ornament away, and I’d do it again to keep your father from selling it the instant my body turned cold. There are a few other things you might be able to sell online to raise money, should you decide to keep the inn open. The armoire in my bedroom is an original, and so is the drinks cabinet in the parlor. Some of my jewelry has also been passed down and might be worth a penny or two.

It’s all yours, my dear. Do what you like with it. I only want you to be happy.

The one thing I will ask is that you never, ever give or sell the inn to Weston. The Crooked Quill is and always has been a family place. For it to be owned by a corporation that buys paper-thin sheets and doesn’t believe in deep cleaning or unprocessed breakfast foods is unthinkable .

I also ask that you reserve the enclosed envelope for a man who’s calling himself Ryan Reynolds. You can expect him to arrive on December 1st of this year. He will likely want to book a room. I put him in Room B last time. But if you decide to close the inn, you can refer him to The Peddler and the Pig across the way. The boy may be upset, so try to be a friend to him, Anabelle. He will need one. YOU will need one.

He’ll probably want to pay you in cash. Accept it, if you will.

Most of all, I hope you will be a friend to yourself, my dear. Your light shines brighter than you know.

With all my love,

Grandma Edith

Did this send me down a fruitless research black hole to try to find out who Ryan Reynolds could be?

Absolutely.

I learned more about Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place than I ever wanted to know, and it turns out there are many people named Ryan Reynolds. There’s probably one in every town in the United States. Five in every town in Canada.

I could have opened the mysterious letter, of course, but it would have felt like an affront. Possibly also a federal crime. She wrote his name on it, after all, and asked me to deliver it.

In any case, despite Grandma Edith’s assurance that I could sell the B&B if I wanted to, I’ve kept it open. I had to. Closing it would have been like kicking those boxes full of other people’s beloved treasures. Never. Not on my watch.

To be frank, I’m not very good at running an inn, a fact my parents enjoy pointing out to me every time they see me. I like most people individually, but in groups they can be overwhelming. Loud, demanding, pushy.

My boyfriend, Weston, also enjoys pointing out my inadequacies to me, and has made eleven and a half offers to buy the inn and absorb it into his hotel group, Comfort Zone.

The one-half offer is due to me cutting him off and telling him that I would never kiss him again, ever, if he let the rest of his sales pitch leave his mouth.

There are only two people who support me. One is Cynthia, who worked part-time for my grandmother and now does the same for me. I’m grateful that she makes breakfast for my guests, since I am an appallingly bad cook.

I’ve never understood why. I’m good at following instructions, and do it to the letter, but what I make never turns out the way it’s supposed to. It’s like there’s a magic to cooking that I just don’t possess.

Sometimes I think there’s a magic to life that I just don’t possess, which is why I’ve chosen to find it in Christmas.

The other person who supports me is my good friend Jo, who runs an online Christmas shop for vintage holiday finds: Santa Knows. We met while bidding against each other in an auction, and now we talk multiple times a day, every day. Of course, Weston would say we don’t actually talk every day—we write. But for someone who thinks best in written words, it’s the ideal friendship.

Thinking of Jo makes me think of my little workshop upstairs in my room. A couple of hours of crafting might be exactly what I need. I’m about to get up when the front door creaks and then opens with a gust of cold air, the bell above it ringing.

The man who just stepped inside is objectively handsome, with wavy light-brown hair, hazel eyes that look like sunbursts, and a leather jacket that is…well, cool (although my friend Jo says that calling something cool immediately makes you less cool). He’s carrying a leather duffel bag.

There’s a something look in his eyes as they move over me.

I know it’s Ryan Reynolds.

I know it instantly, in my gut.