by Meg Muldoon
“Even if it was 76 degrees and sunny, you wouldn’t have turned me out,” he said. “You take care of people.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said.
“You know, I woke up this morning with a hangover from hell,” he said. “But it was okay. Because for the first time in a long, long time, I woke up feeling like I had something to live for.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You made me feel better about it all,” he said.
“Well, good,” I said. “I’m glad.”
He lowered his voice.
“Does, uh, does Sheriff Brightman know what people are saying?”
I rubbed my face.
“Of course he does. How could he not in a town this small?”
He muttered a profanity, and then glanced back at me.
“It’s my fault,” he muttered again. “I just wish that…”
He didn’t finish the thought.
“Wish what?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. He kept his eyes dead ahead on the road.
We pulled off the highway onto a road that climbed up into the woods.
He killed the lights, and we slowly rolled along until an old cabin appeared in the distance on the right, lit by faint moonlight.
He pulled the car over to the side of the road and parked.
“It’s about two-hundred yards over there through the snow,” he said, nodding toward a thicket of trees next to the cabin.
He still wasn’t looking at me.
“What is?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” he said, pushing the car door open. “Try to be quiet.”
I looked out into the moonlit forest, icy fingers of fear squeezing tightly around my heart now.
Something about these woods scared me. Something I couldn’t put my finger on.
As I opened the car door, one thought replayed over and over in my mind.
I shouldn’t be out here.
Chapter 47
I stood over the depression in the snow, struggling to catch my breath.
Aside from the hoots of a lone owl, the woods were deathly quiet. No wind, no rustling of tree branches, nothing but the sound of our boots crushing snow.
Owen walked around the side of a large tree, and came back with a large, rusted shovel.
“I watched him doing this earlier,” he rasped loudly, handing me the flashlight to hold.
“Who?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. He dug the shovel into the snow, tossing loads of it aside until it began to turn a muddy color. He hit dirt and kept digging.
I couldn’t stop thinking about what lay at the end of this road, at the bottom of the hole.
For a split second, I thought about Marie, and my heart started pounding like a jackhammer in my ears.
Could this… Could she be…?
I swallowed hard as a sickly sweet bile started climbing its way up the back of my throat.
Owen suddenly threw the shovel aside and knelt down in the snow, reaching down into the hole and carefully removing handfuls of dirt.
Then, he grabbed ahold of something.
I bit my lip, trying to prepare myself for the worst.
He lifted it out of the ground, and placed it lightly on the snow next to the hole.
My breath caught in my throat.
Chapter 48
I dropped to my knees, kneeling down next to it, the cold snow bleeding through my jeans.
Of all the things I imagined might have been at the bottom of that hole, I wouldn’t have expected this.
The pink plastic orb lay on its side, bands of glitter circling it. Snowflake stencil decorations dotted its surface, catching the yellows of the flashlight.
The ornament was about the size of a large balloon.
And I was now more confused than ever.
“What is this?” I whispered. “What in the hell are we doing out here?”
Owen rolled the ornament toward him and inspected it.
“I don’t understand what’s going—”
There was a loud popping sound.
I watched as the ornament split into two hollow halves.
Owen took the flashlight from me and shined it down on the bisected pieces. I peered over, trying to figure out what—
My mouth fell open.
Owen glanced over at me.
“Do you know who this cabin here belongs to?” he whispered.
I shook my head, my eyes still on the ornament’s contents.
“He wanted you to forgive him yesterday,” he said, putting the ornament back together.
I inhaled sharply.
I was floored.
“Are you sure it’s his?” I said, in disbelief.
“I’ve been watching him all day,” he said. “I’m sure.”
He placed the ornament back in the hole, and started pushing dirt and snow back over it.
“What I need to know, Cinnamon, is whether there’s anyway that he would have this legally.”
I glanced over at the dark cabin.
I didn’t have to think too hard about the question.
A job building houses for poor families wouldn’t buy what was inside of the ornament.
A job like that didn’t provide the kind of income to buy thousands of dollars-worth of glittery, sparkly, breathtaking diamond jewelry.
Chapter 49
I took another sip of hazelnut coffee, trying to stamp out the chill that I had caught out in the woods earlier that morning.
I was in the pie shop’s kitchen, staring out the window, feeling more dead than alive.
It was the first sunny day in what felt like ages. The trees, still encased in a layer of ice, sparkled in the late morning sun. Water dripped down from the roof, adding to long, sharp icicles.
I stood there, lost in a sea of memories. Thinking back to a time and to a person that I used to be. A person that I hardly recognized these days.
To a teenage girl who couldn’t have possibly known what she was getting herself into.
Back in high school, I spent a weekend one summer at Evan’s family’s old fishing cabin on the outskirts of Christmas River. Even back then, the cabin was old and falling apart.
Up until that point in our relationship, I hadn’t been serious about Evan. Part of me was still reeling from Daniel leaving Christmas River. And while I thought Evan was a nice enough guy, it had been clear as day that he was the one chasing me.
My heart was still set on a certain pair of green eyes that had left me behind in the dust.
Up until then, I could have gone either way about Evan. But it all changed after that weekend at the cabin.
I saw another side to Evan there. The side I fell in love with. A kind, gentle, sweet side. We stayed up all night talking and slept in until the afternoon. We went fishing and I caught a trout, and he lifted me up and twirled me around like I had just won gold at the Olympics.
When night fell, he built a fire and roasted hot dogs and made S’mores. We talked about our hopes and dreams for the future, about all the things we wanted to do once we got out of Christmas River.
And in the light of the camp fire, he kissed my nose and told me that he loved me. And I told him what I felt in my heart then.
That I loved him, too.
That weekend, so long ago.
We left for home Sunday evening, both different people.
Evan was right in some ways.
We did have some good times when we were together.
But it just wasn’t enough to make up for what he did later.
That weekend was the last time I saw the cabin.
His family sold the property a few years later. After we got married, Evan would sometimes talk about saving enough money to buy it back one day, but we barely had enough money to pay the mortgage on the house, let alone buy a fishing cabin.
Sometimes late at night, right after the divorce, I thought back to that weekend in the woods. Sometimes I wondered what would have happened if
I hadn’t gone. If I’d been sick, or if I had gone with Kara to Portland for the weekend like I was supposed to, or if I just decided I wasn’t ready for a trip like that.
Sometimes I wondered whether or not the relationship would have just fizzled out.
I hadn’t recognized the old structure earlier that morning. At least not right away. I had never seen it in the winter, covered in snow.
It made sense that that was where Evan was living now. His old cabin, the place he spent summers growing up.
But what still didn’t make sense, even after I saw it with my own eyes, even after I thought all morning about it, was what he was doing with a pink ornament stashed beneath the snow in his backyard.
And why that ornament was filled with thousands of dollars-worth of diamond jewelry.
The sound of sirens suddenly erupted from somewhere down Main Street, the ear-shattering noise jarring me from my thoughts.
I put down my cup of coffee and went to the window at the front of the house.
Chapter 50
I squeezed my eyes shut, knowing what was coming next.
I didn’t want to face it.
Daniel’s hand gripped mine firmly. He didn’t say a word, knowing that there wasn’t a thing he could say at this moment that would help.
The only thing left to do was to look, to face it.
To deal with it.
I took a deep breath, opening my eyes.
Pain ripped at my heart, like the sharp claws of the wolf in my nightmares.
I reached out, my hands running over the soft, cascading satin. Over the rhinestone-studded bodice. Over the lace train.
All cut to pieces.
All ripped to shreds.
A lump the size of Texas nestled at the back of my throat.
All this time, I had thought the dress was so over-the-top, so extravagant, so needlessly decadent. So not me.
But now that it lay there, in shreds, ripped and ruined, I felt nothing but devastation.
I had loved the dress. More than I actually let myself believe.
It had represented something. A person that I had actually believed I could be. Someone sophisticated and beautiful and chic.
But now, all of that was gone.
I was never going to be that person. Not on my wedding day. Not on any day.
The dream was ruined.
And as I looked at the destruction lying on the floor of Bethany’s dress shop, I realized that other brides’ dreams had been ruined as well as mine.
A chilly blast of cold air shot through the broken front window of the shop.
Somebody had broken in and done this, in the darkness of early morning. Someone with no heart, no soul, and no concept of the pain his actions would cause.
“I’m so sorry, Cin,” Daniel said, squeezing my hand.
I squeezed his hand back.
“They’re going to pay for this,” he said. “That’s a promise to you. They’re not getting away with it. And that’s not me talking to you as Sheriff. That’s me talking to you as your husband. All of this is going to stop. You have my word.”
I wiped my nose with a Kleenex that Deputy Billy Jasper handed to me.
“Do you think it’s the same person doing all of this?” I asked.
“It’s not all a coincidence,” he said. “Somebody’s trying to say something.”
He pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket, and held its contents up for me to see.
I quickly realized what it was.
“Another one?” I asked.
He nodded, placing the faded photo of Anthony Matthews away in his pocket.
“They left it on the front door after breaking the window,” he said.
“What in the hell is going on?” I asked.
“I’m going to find out,” he said. “You can put money on that.”
I looked back at the wedding dress draped over the chaise lounge chair. Shredded and frayed, and now no better than a pile of dish rags.
Two and a half weeks.
My wedding was in two and a half weeks.
And I would have nothing to wear to it.
Chapter 51
I ripped open the bag of cranberries, and emptied them into a sauce pan on the stove. A few lost their way and bounced out onto the kitchen floor. I let out a frustrated sigh, picked up the fallen soldiers, and angrily threw them into the garbage can.
I went back to the stove, turned up the heat and waited for the cranberries to start popping.
I had picked the most time-consuming pie on my menu to make with the hopes that between rolling out the dough, making the cranberry filling, and making the lime white chocolate key lime custard, I would forget all about my ruined wedding dress.
But, as I realized, that was just wishful thinking.
There wasn’t any forgetting.
I added sugar, cinnamon, cloves and a hint of ginger to the sauce pan, and stirred it. I brought the custard ingredients out from the fridge, and tried to drown my anger in a sweet and sour mess of lime, cranberry and white chocolate.
I soon found that my face was moist, a few angry tears running down my cheeks.
I felt myself starting to slip into self-pity.
I stirred the cranberry mixture rapidly, turning all of my anger inwards.
This was always my reaction. Anytime anything bad happened to me, I just folded up on myself and crumpled like ash. When my dad left, when my mom died, when I found out Evan was cheating on me.
When my wedding dress was ripped apart.
I’d just break, snapping inward, hurting myself even more. I’d overeat, overdrink, stay up late at night wondering what was wrong with me and why these things happened to me, and why I had such a difficult time dealing with them. Why I was always the victim.
Then I’d stuff the hurt and pain away, deep inside, until something else bad happened, and everything would be dragged back to the surface again.
That was the way it always happened, that was my pattern.
And I was suddenly very sick of my pattern.
I couldn’t do it anymore.
Not when there were things I could do to help the situation.
I turned the burners off and got a roll of aluminum foil from the pantry. I covered all the pie filling ingredients with the foil, and threw the bowls into the fridge.
I brushed away the tears and grabbed my jacket off the coat stand, sliding my arms into it and zipping it up.
There was more I could do than cry and bake pie.
Chapter 52
I looked up at the battered and bruised Christmas tree, leaning in the middle of the plaza.
It was a sad sight to see.
City workers had hoisted it back to its rightful place and had tried to cover up the scars of what had happened with more ornaments, tinsel and colorful strands of lights. But it was hard to disguise the tree’s broken branches and damaged sections.
The tree just wasn’t ever going to be the same. Not after what had been done to it.
I leaned against the railing, letting out a long, nervous sigh that came out in the form of a small puff of fog. I dug my gloved hands into the pockets of my down jacket, trying to get some feeling back in them.
It was mid-afternoon, but the sun was already sitting low in the sky. Long, wintry shadows spread out over the snowy plaza as the temperature started dipping into the mid-teens.
I had been out here 15 minutes already, and was beginning to have serious doubts about whether or not he was going to show.
But just as I was about to give up, I saw a figure walking briskly across Main Street toward me.
I knew that arrogant gait all too well.
I sucked in cold air as I watched him, and then let it out slowly.
Seeing him still made my skin crawl. But I would have to keep that feeling down as long as possible, because giving it a voice wasn’t going to help with anything.
He approached me, smiling.
“I knew you’d come to your senses,” h
e said.
He leaned in and kissed me on the cheek.
I wanted to vomit.
“Uh, thanks for meeting me,” I forced out.
“No problemo,” Evan said. “But is everything all right? You’re looking a little under the weather.”
“It’s just the cold,” I said.
“You look like you’ve been crying. Is everything okay between you and the sheriff?”
He faked a concerned expression, like he really cared.
I swallowed back bile.
“Listen, I wanted to talk to you about something,” I said.
“I figured that much from your phone call,” he said. “Want to walk? It’s colder than a witch’s—”
He stopped himself before finishing the sentence.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m trying to be better.”
We started walking.
“So, Cin, have you had some time to think on what we talked about?” he asked.
I glanced back behind us, seeing if anybody else was around.
I took a deep breath.
“To tell you the truth, there’s something else that’s been on my mind,” I said.
“Oh?” he asked, raising his eyebrows in surprise.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about that weekend. You know the one.”
Something in his face changed. A smug look of triumph spread across it, and he broke out into a smile.
“Here you are about to be a married to good old Sheriff Brightman, and you’re thinking of the time you spent with another man,” he said. “I think most of the folks in this town would consider that scandalous.”
I bit my lip from saying something unpleasant.
We walked a little further until we made it to the footbridge. The bridge that I used to come to sometimes to think about things. Mostly about what Evan was getting from my friend that he hadn’t been getting from me. About why he would have done something to hurt me so bad.
It had been a while since I’d been on the bridge.
I stopped at the middle, looking down at the slower-than-molasses trickle of the Christmas River. Most of it had frozen into a sheet of ice.
