Chapter Eight

Molly

Molly stood in front of her dishes in the sink, wearing her pajamas and tapping her toes in time with a Christmas playlist blared over her headphones.

She often found that she did some of her best thinking while not thinking at all. The more she used her mental energy on another task, the more her thoughts flowed right through her.

And cleaning dishes seemed like a great way not to think about the Nicholas Kerstman problem.

She didn't want to think about what would happen to the store. She could feel it in her bones that the store wouldn't be Christmas Wishes without the Kerstmans running it. The town definitely wouldn't be the same Christmas-loving town without it.

She'd seen another store in town get sold the way Nicholas had explained. It had been a small hardware store that started doing well enough to attract attention from one of the big chains. Things had been fine for the first year or so, but then things changed. The employees weren't as well-trained. The quality of pro