Deep in the bowels of the Fort Trent Bennington’s Department Store, Elise Babcock stopped dead in her tracks as the women’s locker room door swung shut behind her, smacking her hard on the ass.

“What. The hell. Are you wearing?”

There, standing before her in all its glory, was the dreaded December vest. Her coworkers had been talking about it since September, back when a few Christmas items had trickled onto the shelves of the big box store. Since this was Elise’s first Christmas season there—and hopefully her last—she had no clue what to expect.

But this was awful. Like I’d-rather-scrub-public-toilets-all-day-than-wear-this awful.

Grace, one of the few retail associates also in her late twenties and someone Elise considered a solid work friend, spun around from her place in front of the lone locker room mirror, its corner cracked slightly, and planted a hand on her cocked hip.

“What?” She lifted her chin and fluttered her fake lashes—jet black, a stark contrast to her bright blonde hair. “They’re wearing it everywhere in Paris and Milan, darling.”

Fuck me. Elise let her head thump back against the door and closed her eyes, but the image of that thing was burned into her retinas.

“They aren’t serious with that, are they?”

“You better believe it, bucko,” Grace said, sighing. “It’s is my second year in a row rocking this little number. Never mind that I have exams, an exhibit to set up, and a stage production wardrobe to organize. No. This is where I belong.”

Swallowing a groan that would have sounded like a beluga whale, Elise shuffled in, staring at that vest monstrosity and hoping it might look better from a different angle. Nope. The Bennington’s holiday uniform was so ten thousand seasons ago; Grace, a fashion student with dreams of moving to New York when she finished her degree, must have been dying.

Elise didn’t have the heart to ever tell her, however, that the job market was savage in the Big Apple, the very city she had fled almost a year earlier when her unpaid internship at a marketing agency, the one she had landed before final grades were even out, decided not to extend an offer of employment. Penniless, on the verge of bounced rent checks and no electricity after a year of unpaid work in one of the most expensive cities in the world, Elise had schlepped all her crap home to Fort Trent, a little town in a cluster of other cookie-cutter little towns near the New York–Vermont border.

Fort Trent’s claim to fame was a very small liberal arts college—and Bennington’s Department Store. Most locals had worked there at one point in their lives. Everyone shopped there. Two weeks after moving back home, Elise had interviewed to become assistant manager, one of six, but discovered she had been offered sales associate when she signed her contract. Now, almost a year later, she donned her black dress pants and white tee six days, forty-eight hours a week, to rebuild her shattered bank account.

Normally, the uniform included a shitty red vest with the company logo on the back so shoppers could scope out employees from a mile away—like a shark zeroing in on a speck of blood in the water.

The green vest she’d be wearing for the next month looked like Christmas had shamelessly vomited all over it. Poofy white and red balls—that were supposed to look like tree ornaments?—paired with actual candy canes superglued to the fabric, wrapper and all. Every seam was lined with gold tinsel—a lot of tinsel. The hem had little brown reindeer silhouettes prancing from front to back.

“What a fucking eyesore.”

“You’re telling me,” Grace muttered as she applied concealer to her cheeks. Once sufficiently covered, makeup smooth, she snapped the compact closed and stepped back with one last smoldering look at her reflection. “Still. I’m pretty sure I can rock anything.”

She then deposited her makeup into her messy locker, stuffed her phone into her back pocket, and blew Elise a kiss.

“See you out there! I think we’re doing inventory counts today.”

Fuck me slowly. Elise groaned and smacked her head against her locker. When the locker room door closed behind Grace, she drew in a deep breath as a dull ache started right where she’d made impact with the slightly rusted metal. “Ow.”

Nothing made Elise feel smaller than the five minutes she usually took to get ready for her shift. Sometimes there were others getting changed, most of the time she was just by herself—remembering that she’d been on the path to ad executive once. And now she was here. Back in Fort Trent. Working at Bennington’s.

Just as the depression set in, she would remind herself that she was fortunate to even have a job in this economy. And that she had a mountain of student loans to settle and a nearly depleted bank account thanks to that internship jerking her around. So. This was better than nothing.

But as she opened her empty locker and found it waiting for her on a hook, that Christmas nightmare she’d be forced to wear because, hooray, it was finally December 1^st, she stood there staring vacantly and wondered: was this really better than nothing? Was there somewhere less humiliating she could work, where the senior citizen associates didn’t belittle her for not folding a T-shirt right and the management didn’t despise her because she’d booked Black Friday off for a family trip to the cottage in Connecticut?

Her watch beeped and she shoved her purse inside, then shut her locker. The depression-guilt-frustration-disbelief cycle was over. No time to contemplate any of it now. Eight hours of retail beckoned.

* * *

“Maya, sweetheart, what do you want Santa to bring you for Christmas this year?”

Jack Lewis braced himself for the inevitable: what if she didn’t believe in Santa Clause anymore? Was six still young enough to go for that crap? He scooped some of her mac and cheese with little hotdog bits into a bowl, waiting. When there was no response, he risked a look over his shoulder—only to find his darling daughter totally mesmerized by her show. Huh. This was probably why her mom wouldn’t let her watch TV with dinner.

Fuck it. Jack had always wanted to be the fun, supportive dad, even before the divorce. He didn’t let Maya get away with everything, but according to his ex, Gloria, it was pretty close. And she was right, honestly. But how was he supposed to say no to someone so tiny with a face so round and cute and riddled with baby fat? He just couldn’t. It was like denying a puppy. Only a monster would—

No. He had to get his shit together at some point, or Maya would walk all over him.

But he loved that tiny human with such ferocity that he almost didn’t care.

“Maya,” he called, this time a little louder.

“Daddy,” came her standard response. In Jack’s spacious three-bedroom apartment, the open concept kitchen and living room area let him keep an eye on her while he cooked, yet the granite-topped island separating them gave her the illusion that she was a big girl on her own.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“No.”

Nabbing a spoon on the way, he sauntered over and plopped down on the leather couch beside her, then grabbed the remote and lowered the volume.

“I asked what you want Santa to bring you for Christmas this year,” Jack repeated. He placed the bowl in her lap, but she recoiled with a squeal.

“Hot,” she whined, and Jack hastily removed it. Right. Fucking…terrible ceramic bowls.

“I’ll hold it,” he said, “and you do the spoon.”

She seemed content with that, eyes flicking between her dinner and the TV screen, which was filled with some high-octane cartoon that would give Jack a migraine if he let her watch it for too long.

“Well? If Santa doesn’t know, then Santa can’t—”

“I sent him a letter at school,” she said absently. He gently chastised her for chewing with her mouth open, and she corrected herself right away. Once she swallowed, she added, “I told him I want a Miss Molly doll.”

“A Miss Molly doll?” Fuck. He’d seen that thing advertised for months now. Some slim, wacky-haired doll with lots of accessories and pets and clothes—like Barbie on steroids, if that was possible.

“A blue-haired one,” his little angel specified, eyes glued to the TV. She looked so much like her mom these days: huge, round brown eyes with lashes so long everyone swore they were fake. She had her mother’s darker complexion courtesy of her Latin heritage, but she had Jack’s nose. Poor thing. Jack’s nose was like a Roman emperor’s. He could already hear the teenage-era pleas for a nose job.

He’d probably give it to her, too, because he had the money and was a total pushover.

And because he wanted to make her happy. Divorce was never easy on anyone, kids especially, and even though he and Gloria were on great terms, the last two years had been rough on Maya. This was Jack’s first year having his daughter for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and if she wanted that Miss Molly doll that all the kids were going nuts over, he’d find it for her—and then some.

But, just in case, he’d check with Gloria tonight to make sure she hadn’t already bought it. After all, school days were with Mom, weekends with Dad. Not because he didn’t want her in his life—Maya was his world—but Jack traveled a lot for work. He’d sorted things out with his boss to give him weekends off so he could spend guaranteed, consistent time with his daughter, and he wanted to make every second count.

“Well,” he said, watching her shovel a too-big bite of hotdog into her mouth, not breathing until she swallowed successfully, “I’m sure Santa is working on your very own Miss Molly doll as we speak.”

“Blue-haired Miss Molly,” Maya specified, shooting him an almost too-pointed look before returning to the show.

“Sure.” Jack leaned back against the couch with a sigh. “A blue-haired Miss Molly.”

Should be no big deal. He made his company millions every year through client acquisition alone. He could find a blue-haired doll before Christmas.

Right?