by Muldoon, Meg
I let out a long sigh and looked up at her.
“Let’s not go there,” I said. “I’ve got enough on my mind as is.”
“You never want to go there,” she said. “And I’m your best friend. If you can’t talk about it with me, than with who?”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I said. “We’re just friends.”
Kara gave me a look. One of those looks I’d become familiar with in our many years of being friends.
The kind of I smell bull crap and I’m calling you on it look.
“You’re dead wrong,” I said.
“Well, he goes to your pie shop for lunch every afternoon,” she said. “I’ve got enough sense in that department to know that he’s not just being friendly.”
I started building the support beams of the second floor, feeling like the kitchen was getting stuffy.
“What can I say?” I said. “I make a mean pie. I’ve got a lot of repeat customers.”
“Get out of town,” Kara said, rolling her eyes. “As good as the pie is, you know that ain’t it.”
I suddenly wanted to change the subject.
Mostly, because whenever Kara tried to talk about Dr. John Billings with me, I’d be struck by this wave of confusion mixed in with a little guilt.
John first started coming into the shop about a year ago. Soon, he was there every afternoon at exactly noon. Every day, he’d order a slice of the strawberry rhubarb pie, but he’d never finish the slice. After a few months, I started putting together the fact that John didn’t really like pie, and that there were other reasons he was there.
He wasn’t a bad sort. He was in his early 40s and had once been married a long time ago, but was now divorced. He moved to Christmas River about five years earlier from Boise to start up his own Podiatrist practice. He was smart and good-looking by most standards, and he did a lot of pro-bono work in the community.
Like I said, he wasn’t a bad sort.
But sometimes, you just know when something isn’t going to work out. I wasn’t right for him. I felt it in my bones.
And he wasn’t right for me.
But sometimes, I wondered if I was approaching the situation with a closed mind. I was getting older. That was a fact. Plus, he was a nice man. That kind of love that they always talk about, the one that sweeps you off your feet and makes you feel drunk and dizzy and obsessed all the time, I’d been there before. I’d known a love like that before.
And I knew that those kinds of love only ever ended badly. I knew what kind of a monster love like that could turn you into.
Sometimes I wondered if maybe someone like John was just who I needed. Someone who was steadier and calmer. Someone who I could grow to love, maybe. Maybe that’s what mature love was. Maybe that was the kind of love that really lasted forever.
I was undecided about John. And in the meantime, it just felt like I was leading him on. He sat there, ordering slice after slice of pie that he didn’t even like, while I just took his money and made it seem like he had a chance with me.
“I guess we’re not as young as we used to be,” Kara said, echoing my own thoughts. “No more Billy Sanders or Kevin Rhines or Daniel Brightmans to serenade us these days. It’s not like high school anymore.”
I laughed, remembering those three boys from high school. But soon felt a wave of chills run up and down my back.
I didn’t like to think about getting older any more than she did. But we weren’t that old.
“You make it sound like we’re fossils,” I said.
She sighed.
“Well, lately I’ve been feeling like one,” she said. “Living in a small town doesn’t help any.”
A shadow passed over her face.
“C’mon,” I said, refilling a pastry bag with more frosting sealant. “Fossils wouldn’t be able to take Gretchen O’Malley to the floor the way we’re going to this weekend, so cheer up.”
That made her laugh.
Gretchen O’Malley was our Gingerbread competition archnemesis. She was a retired, nasty woman who was the reigning queen of the competition. I couldn’t prove it, but I was pretty sure that when she wasn’t scaring children or collecting toadstools and dead ravens for a potion, she spent all her time in the kitchen, working on her gingerbread house.
Gretchen was good at the competition. But we were going to be better this year.
“You’re right,” she said. “We’re going to make her wish that she never picked up a spatula.”
I smiled. The bell on the front door jingled, and I put down the pastry bag to go help the late afternoon customer.
Kara smiled as I walked away, but I had a feeling it didn’t last too long.
It was hard getting older. It was hard being single and getting older.
It was something I didn’t like to think about when I could avoid it.
Chapter 3
After I closed the pie shop, I walked on over to the Pine Needle Tavern. The streets had been icy the night before, but now a fine dust of snow settled over the concrete and asphalt.
I passed Gretchen O’Malley by coincidence as I walked there. She was strolling down the street, wearing some sort of fur jacket with giant gold earrings. Her arm was hooked with her husband’s. Gretchen’s husband was a stout bald man who would yell things to the judges when they were taking notes on our gingerbread houses. Gretchen would give him angry glances every once in a while in response.
I didn’t know the ins and outs of their marriage, but I got the feeling that Gretchen was the one who wore the pants in their relationship.
I nodded as we passed on the street, but she pretended not to see me, keeping her nose high in the air.
I swear, the woman would drown if a rainstorm hit.
Gretchen was a piece of work, all right.
But she didn’t have to say hi to me. She’d hear me loud and clear, soon enough. She wouldn’t be able to ignore me then.
I walked on, picking up the pace.
It was a dark winter’s night, and I could feel the chills coming on. I pulled my down jacket tighter around me. All the storefronts were brightly lit with old-fashioned red and green bulbs, trying to instill the holiday spirit.
The longer I lived here, the more immune I became to that spirit.
It made me sad. I didn’t want to be bitter about Christmas or holiday cheer. But maybe that’s what happens when you live in a town where it’s Christmas year-round. Christmas just doesn’t mean the same.
Or at least it hadn’t for the past two years.
I pushed on the heavy doors of the tavern and was greeted with a burst of warm, fermented air. I made my way to the bar at the back. The place I knew Warren would be.
“Hey there, Cin,” Harold said, catching my eye from behind the bar. “What can I get you?”
“Aw, nothing for me tonight,” I said. “I’ve got some more work to do back at the shop. I’m just here for the old man.”
“The clock’s struck 12, boys,” Warren said from his crowded table, taking a long drink from his pint of beer.
I wondered how many that was for him. He was drinking more lately, and he really shouldn’t have been. I was pretty sure his doctor would have been harassing me if she found out how much Warren was drinking. But I knew that coming down to the tavern, drinking with the boys and reminiscing about the old days at the lumber mill was one of the things that kept him going.
“How’s the shop these days, Cinnamon?” Larry, my grandfather’s best friend of nearly 55 years, asked.
“It’s been a good season so far,” I said. “How’s Sheila? Is she ready for the Gingerbread Junction?”
“The house has smelled like gingerbread for days,” Larry said, rubbing his wrinkled face and sighing.
“And that’s a bad thing?” I asked.
“It’s been torture. The woman won’t let me even try any of it. I swear, I feel like she’s watching me all the time, making sure I don’t take any of her gingerbread.” Larry said.
> Warren started laughing, his whole body shaking. I shook my head.
“Well, Sheila means business,” I said. “I look forward to seeing her at the competition.”
“I’ll just be glad when it’s all over,” Larry said. “Cruel, inhumane woman.”
Warren finished the last of his beer.
“One of these days you’re gonna have to learn to stand up to her, Larry,” Warren said getting up off the barstool.
“It’s too late for that,” Larry said. “I’m about a century too old to change my ways.”
“Isn’t that the truth. Well, I’ll see all you degenerates tomorrow,” Warren said.
I waved goodbye. I hooked Warren’s arm to help him. As we walked away, I noticed a man sitting at a table in the corner. He was maybe in his thirties and he had a thick, dark beard. A cowboy hat sat on the table next to the double shot of whiskey he was holding. He was staring at the shot glass like he had a lot on his mind.
I didn’t recognize him, but he didn’t look like an average tourist. The Pine Needle Tavern didn’t get many tourists, anyway—it had “local” written all over its aging paneled walls and sticky floors.
The man sitting at the table lifted his eyes for a moment and our eyes locked.
Then, he quickly looked away, like the moment hadn’t ever happened.
It left me with a strange feeling that followed me all the way out to the street.
Chapter 4
I drove Warren back home in my black Ford Escape. He liked walking to the tavern for his daily exercise, and then I would pick him up and drop him back at our house. When we got home, I made sure he took his pills and then set him up in front of the television to watch Where Eagles Dare, one of his favorite movies. He said I worked too much for a young beautiful woman. I rolled my eyes and then pecked him on the cheek. Then, I drove back to the shop.
I thought about Warren on the way over. I worried about him a lot lately. It wasn’t just the drinking, either. He was getting old and that worried me.
My grandfather and I were close. He’d raised me since I was 13. After my mother died, a lot could have gone differently for me. I was on the brink of going down a bad path. Warren looked out for me and made sure I stayed right. In the meantime, he taught me how to play poker and how to build a fire without using matches, and how to survive if I ever got lost in the woods.
But he was forgetting things lately. Sometimes he’d be as sharp as blackberry bush thorn. But every once in a while, he’d lose track of something.
Once, last year, he left one of the burners on after cooking breakfast. It nearly caused a fire at his house.
Since then, I’d been doing my best to take care of him. He’d moved in with me, even though he protested. He said he didn’t want to burden me and that he didn’t need someone to watch him all the time. But it wasn’t a burden, and I liked having him close by. Just in case.
I still worried about him a lot, though.
I pulled up to the shop and got out of the car. I was met by a sharp and bitter wind.
The streets were dead as dead could be. I still had a lot of pies left to make for tomorrow morning. Starting on this year’s gingerbread house had really cut into my time.
I sighed as I opened the front door of the shop. I didn’t mind going back and putting in the extra hours. It was my own business after all, and I was grateful that it was doing so well. But I really needed to hire some help. I didn’t know if I’d be able to survive the season by myself in the shop.
I went inside, locked up the front door, and hung my jacket and scarf up on the coat rack. I stamped my boots free of snow, and then went in the kitchen to get down to business.
I turned the lights on, put some Otis Redding, The Four Tops, and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes on the speakers to get me energized, and wrapped an apron around my waist. I pulled out the pie dough that had been sitting in the fridge since I’d made it earlier that morning. I pre-heated the ovens, and rolled out the crusts, taking care not to touch the dough too much with my hands. That was a secret my mom passed down to me. If you touch the pie dough too much, the oils in your hands will affect the flakiness of the baked crust.
I rolled out crusts for seven pies. I draped them over the tin pans, pressing them lightly into the bottoms and then cutting the overhang around the rim.
I whistled to Pain in My Heart. I kept stealing glances at the unfinished gingerbread house in the corner, making mental notes about additions that I needed to make. Kara and I had decided on the theme of a Western Christmas for the gingerbread mansion. It wasn’t that original of an idea, but it would be a winner with the judges. This was Central Oregon, after all. People loved their Western heritage here. Plus, we could add enough touches—enough peppermint candy boot spurs and licorice sheriff’s badges and marzipan Appaloosa horses and gingerbread sheriffs—to make it really special and unique.
I put the pans in the oven to pre-cook the crusts, and then started making the fillings. I was planning on making two Mountain Blueberry Cinnamons, three Christmas River Cherrys, a Lemon Gingercrisp, and if I had time, a Moundful Marionberry.
I started on the blueberry filling first, mixing together the blueberries, brown sugar, cinnamon and corn starch.
I caught my reflection in the glass pane of the window, suddenly.
I wasn’t looking that bad. My long brown hair was pulled back in a loose-fitting pony tail, and my bangs had maintained their shape throughout the day of hard work. I looked a little pale, but I was wearing a black sweater that seemed to bring the pale out in me. Plus, it was winter. I always got as pale as a vampire during the winter in the Central Oregon mountains.
As I mixed the pie filling, I thought about Maui. I thought about those warm sands, and the feeling of the hot sun browning my skin. Of the sound of the wind in the palm trees.
I couldn’t wait. I glanced at the gingerbread house base in the corner, and felt hopeful.
I suddenly heard a noise at the back door, and stopped mixing. I put down the spoon, and went to the door to look out into the blackness of the night.
I looked down to where the noise had come from.
It was the dog.
Huckleberry had come back.
His fur was dirtier than the last time I had seen him, and there was more desperation in his eyes. He was whining, too. A high-pitched whine that would have melted the coldest of hearts.
And it was starting to snow out there. Large flakes of crystalized snow sailed through the air, carried by a wicked winter wind.
I went to the front and got the pan of leftover strawberry rhubarb pie from the glass case, and went back. I opened the door slowly, trying not to scare him, but it didn’t work. He bolted away into the black woods.
I wedged the pan into the snow on the back porch. The snow was getting blown sideways, and I wished so very much that Huckleberry would stop his skittish protest and just come inside for the night.
It sent a chill through my heart to think of him out in the cold snow, wandering those dark woods.
I called out for him, my voice carried off by the cold north wind into the woods.
“Come here, Huckleberry!” I yelled. “Come here, pooch!”
There was no sign of him, though. I started stepping back inside the shop, when suddenly I saw a shadow moving through the trees in the distance.
I squinted into the swirling snow.
“Come here, Huckl—”
The words got caught in my throat and was replaced with a muffled cry.
The shadow in the woods wasn’t Huckleberry.
Or any kind of animal for that matter.
It was a man.
I rushed back inside and locked the door, my mind racing with fear.
I’d suddenly stepped into a horror movie. The shadow in the woods was lumbering through the snow, and it looked like he was coming toward the shop.
“Damn it,” I said out loud.
Christmas River was a safe place—most of the time. But it
was just like any other Oregon town bordering the boonies. Everybody knew about the meth houses out in depths of the Oregon woods. Everybody had seen those kind of people come to town every once and while.
I was a tough girl, but seeing a strange man in the woods behind my shop was enough to jar me. Hell, it would have jarred most people.
I turned off the lights in the kitchen and rushed for my cell. I pressed 9-1-1 into the keypad and hesitated before pressing send. The man was just about up on the back porch now.
My heart was racing out of control as I heard his heavy footsteps coming up the back steps.
“Hello?” a faint voice, muffled by the wind, said. “Is anybody there?”
I shivered. I didn’t know if I should answer. It was obvious that somebody was here, and he knew that. He would have seen the light go out.
“Hello?”
I took a deep breath and tried to steady my voice.
“Stay where you are,” I yelled through the glass, showing myself, and making sure that he saw the phone in my hands.
He walked up to the glass to get a better look inside. And through the heavy snowfall, I got a better look at who he was.
I gazed at his face for a moment.
And when I recognized him, the phone slid out of my hand, hitting the cold tile floor with a crash.
Chapter 5
“What are you doing here?” I yelled through the glass.
“I… uh…” he started, pulling his cowboy hat off. “I followed the dog. Then I saw this place.”
I could almost smell the whiskey through the pane. I could tell by his glazed eyes and confused expression that he was inebriated.
Big flakes of snow were falling into his hair and his thick beard. He shook with a visible chill, but he tried to hide it.
I let out a sigh of relief and wiped my sweaty hands on my apron.
I looked hard at him, sizing him up.
I had the advantage now. I knew who he was.
And because I had that advantage, I decided to do something I wouldn’t normally have.
