“Hmm,” Christina said, studying me. “No, it’s fine. Surprised me is all.”
“Yeah, me, too,” I said under my breath.
I didn’t intend for her to hear me, but she did.
“Addie, are you okay?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said.
Her gaze shifted to my shirt. She frowned. “What pig are you not supposed to forget?”
“Huh?” I looked down. “Oh. Uh . . . nothing.” I suspected that pigs were probably prohibited in
Starbucks, too, and I saw no reason to get Christina all worked up by explaining the whole story. I’d keep
Gabriel hidden in the back room after I picked him up, and she would never have to know.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” she said.
I smiled brightly and peeled off the sticky note. “Never better!”
She went back to prepping the coffee station, and I folded the note in half and stuck it in my pocket. I
lugged the pastries to the glass case, put on a pair of plastic gloves, and started loading the trays. Rufus
Wainwright’s cover of “Hallelujah”
filled the store, and I hummed along. It was almost pleasant, in a life-
sucks-but-at-least-there’s-good-music sort of way.
But as I listened to the lyrics—truly listened, instead of just letting them float over me—the almost-
pleasant feelings went away. I’d always thought this was an inspirational song about God or something,
because of all the hallelujahs. Only it turned out there were words before and after the hallelujahs, and
those words were hardly uplifting.
Rufus was singing about love, and how love couldn’t exist without faith.
I grew still, because what he
was saying sounded way too familiar. I listened some more, and was horrified to realize that the whole
song was about a guy who was in love, only the person he loved betrayed him. And those heartbreakingly
sweet hallelujahs? They weren’t inspirational hallelujahs. They were . . . they were “cold and broken”
hallelujahs—it said so right there in the chorus!
Why had I ever liked this song? This song sucked!
I went to change the CD, but it switched to the next track before I got there. A gospel version of
“Amazing Grace” filled the store, and I thought,
Well, it’s a heck of a lot better than a broken hallelujah.
And also,
Please, God, I sure could use some grace.
Chapter Eight
B
y five
A.M.
, our morning prep was done. At 5:01, our first customer rapped on the glass door, and
Christina walked over to officially unlock it.
“Merry day-after-Christmas, Earl,” she said to the burly guy waiting outside. “Didn’t know if we’d see
you today.”
“You think my customers care what the weather’s like?” Earl said. “Think again, darlin’.”
He trundled into the store, bringing with him a gust of frigid air. His cheeks were ruddy, and he wore a
red-and-black hat with earflaps. He was huge, bearded, and looked like a lumberjack—which
worked out
nicely since he
was a lumberjack. He drove one of those semis you never wanted to get behind on one of
the many mountain roads around here, since, first of all, the weight he pulled meant he maintained a speed
of a rip-roaring twenty miles an hour, and, second of all, the back of his open trailer was filled with logs.
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