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daughters sort through a rack of ballerina costumes.
    “The snow’s let up,” I said with forced cheerfulness. “It’s a balmy day out there. Perfect for building a snowman.”
    “A snowman?”
    My mouth got sticky, but I pressed on. “I was just outside admiring your window display. Do you arrange that yourself, or is there someone you hire to put together everything?”
    “You should know all about that, Miss Day.”
    My mouth went completely dry. I glanced over and watched as the woman gathered her daughters and left the store, leaving me alone with Mr. Strangling Hands, who knew my name.
    I let out a squeak.
    He pulled off his eyeglasses and started cleaning them with a kerchief.
    “Pam does my window displays these days,” he said. “She’s a crafty woman, that Pam. She’s still with your father, isn’t she?”
    “Oh. Yes.” I remembered that Pam had been hounding me to let her do the displays for the gift shop window. I’d insisted on doing it myself. Pam did nice enough work, but her taste had always seemed a bit off, to me. She couldn’t tell the difference between things that were so ugly they were cute, like certain breeds of dogs, and things that were just ugly, like garishly floral bath robes.
    The main continued, “In fact, Pam was by here earlier this morning to say hello and chat about this and that.” He tilted his head to the side and gave me an appreciative look, which felt flattering but not lecherous. “If you ask me, your new haircut is charming. It really suits your nice features, Stormy.”
    “Thank you.” I patted the back of my head and fluffed up the top as I tried to recover from the shock that everyone in town knew all about my business, and I barely remembered who they all were. Maybe I was a big city hotshot after all, and I’d never fit in again.
    As I looked at his thin, yet friendly face, a name floated up. “Mr. Jenkins,” I said. “You did the costumes for the school band. I remember you now. Let’s see… that must have been fifteen years ago, right?”
    He nodded down to show me the top of his head. “That was back when I had hair up here.” When he straightened up again, his eyes were twinkling. All at once, the time that had passed folded up like an accordion, and didn’t seem so long after all. He still had that same twinkle.
    “Mr. Jenkins, I remember how funny and charming you were at the high school. Everyone on the marching band loved you, and I think a few of the girls had crushes on you.”
    “They loved my thick, luscious hair.”
    “I don’t know,” I said with a grin. “It was pretty sparse up there, even back then.”
    He clutched his hands to his chest and stepped back, pretending to be shot, but still laughing.
    I quickly added, “Not that anyone would ever see the top of your head, anyway. Don’t worry, you’ve got plenty left where it counts.”
    He finished cleaning his glasses, put them back on, and rang up my purchase with a smile on his face.
    “How are things at the gift shop? I got a postcard from the former owner. She’s enjoying her world tour by cruise ship.”
    “I bet she is,” I grumbled. The woman got the deal of a lifetime when she suckered me for twice what the shop was worth.
    Mr. Jenkins gave me a curious look, like he was eager for me to spill some town gossip about what a liar the former gift shop owner was. As much as I wanted to tell him how she’d cooked the books and buried expenses to make the store seem more profitable, I knew to bite my tongue. People already had plenty to talk about when it came to me.
    Mr. Jenkins tucked my purchase into a bag, then pointed one long thumb in the direction of a cork board on the back wall behind the counter.
    “There’s the postcard she sent me,” he said. “Alaska.”
    The store’s lighting was a little brighter near the counter, but I still had to lean in to get a good look. The cork board contained dozens of postcards, business cards, and photos of smiling