Every child in Garland Falls knows, in their town, Christmas letters never go unanswered.
For six Decembers, Mara Bell has kept the Letter House, her grandmother's white clapboard place next to the post office.
Four hundred letters to Santa come through that slot every season. Every one of them gets an answer on cream paper, sealed in green wax and hand-cancelled, because a letter is a person, folded small.
Then a man in a gray wool coat walks in the post office with a clipboard.
Elliot Hayes has been sent by the regional office to decide what this town's post office costs and his recommendation must be filled before Christmas Eve.
She means to keep Elliot Hayes at arm's length. Instead she gets twelve evenings of him, sleeves rolled at her grandmother's sorting table, reading the day's best letter aloud in his careful voice while she seals the replies, setting a second cup of tea at her elbow before she knows she wants it, looking at her like she's the one lit window on a long dark route.
Nothing happens. Nothing can. He's the man reviewing her. She's the woman being reviewed.
So they work. They argue and while the whole town thinks he's stringing her along, she knows …
A cozy small-town Christmas romance novella.