by Muldoon, Meg
On the other hand, when Daniel had asked me for a drink, I didn’t even have to think about it. I hadn’t seen him in 17 years, but the answer was the same.
Yes.
That said something right there. That said that even if Daniel hadn’t come into the shop this afternoon, I still shouldn’t have accepted John’s invitation to dinner.
There was no future there. That was clear now.
I would have to tell him that evening before Daniel stopped by. John might be angry, he might never come into my shop again, he might hate me.
But I needed to be honest with him. I owed him that much.
All was fair in love and war. That’s what Kara had said, and she was right. I knew that, better than anyone. I’d been on the other end before.
And I owed myself what little happiness I could get. I’d been through hell in the past two years.
I talked myself into this as I waited for another batch of pies that I had made that afternoon to finish baking. They were meant to replace the burnt ones. It was late afternoon, and the long line of customers had all been helped, and the shop was mostly empty.
I had called Kara and told her that we’d have to work on the gingerbread mansion tomorrow rather than tonight. She said she understood and asked if I needed a girls’ night. I thanked her, but told her that I had other plans. By the tone of her voice, I knew she wanted to ask more about those plans, but she dropped it, seeming to sense that I didn’t want to talk about it. At least not yet.
Now, all I had to do was finish up baking the pies and cleaning up the shop, and then I’d go over to John’s office and tell him.
My stomach turned just thinking about it. But that was what an honest, respectful person would do. He might hurt some, but it would save him some heartache in the long run.
I stopped for a moment, looking out the back window of the kitchen to admire the sunset.
It had stopped snowing briefly, and it was one of those early winter sunsets that turned the sky a flaming shade of pink and gold, and made the snow glow.
Whenever I started wondering about whether or not I should be living in a bigger city, and from time to time I did, I’d have a moment like this and realize that I was exactly where I should be.
Christmas River was a beautiful place to live. Nestled in the heart of the pristine Cascade Mountains, the woods and lakes around here were some of the loveliest in the country. And to me, the world.
I knew a lot of people who grew up in small towns only wanted to run away from them, but not me. Maybe it was the death of my mother at an early age that changed my view of that, but these woods were my home. My base. As a child, it was the place that comforted me when my world was turned upside down. As an adult, these woods still comforted me when I had heartbreak or sadness or depression. They reminded me of who I was, of where I came from. They grounded me.
Suddenly, I heard a noise below the window. I looked down and saw Huckleberry there, eating away at the tin pans of burnt pie.
He was looking older and more haggard. His fur was wet with melted snow. He was shaking, and eating at the tin pans feverishly.
I watched him as he slopped away at them, standing still so as not to scare him. In a matter of moments, he had finished off both tins.
I expected him to dart away into the woods, the way he usually did. But he didn’t. He looked up at me, and started whining.
It was a heartbreaking little whine.
Poor little Hucks.
Maybe he was ready. Maybe he was ready to trust me now.
I slowly turned the knob to the backdoor and opened it. I was met with a burst of frigid air.
“Come here, Huckleberry,” I said, quietly. “Come inside, poochie.”
He leaned back on his paws defensively, but stayed there. A good sign, I thought.
“Come here,” I cooed again.
He started moving toward me. Slowly. Closer to the door.
I started smiling. Maybe he was finally going to trust me.
He got to the door threshold, and then placed a paw over it.
“It’s okay,” I said. “C’mon.”
Suddenly, a gust of wind rushed through the kitchen, pushing the front door of the shop open, and slamming it shut with a loud crash.
I saw fear flash across Huckleberry’s eyes. He backed away and took off, running back into the woods.
“Damn it,” I muttered, watching him run.
But then he did something strange.
He didn’t disappear. Not like he usually did, deep into the woods.
This time he sat there, waiting. Looking at me.
A crazy thought crossed my mind as I saw him gazing at me from the woods.
Did he want me to follow him?
I thought back to what Daniel had said about him. That he felt like the dog wanted him to follow him.
Was that true now? Did Huckleberry want more than just a few pieces of pie? Did he want something else?
It didn’t take me too long to decide. I quickly took off my apron and went to the coat rack to grab my jacket. As I put it on, I went to the front of the shop to make sure there were no other customers. There weren’t. I turned the sign around to say closed, and zipped up my down jacket.
When I went to the back door, Huckleberry was still in the same spot in the woods, still gazing at me.
I went out the door, closing it behind me. I walked down the steps, and out into the woods, trudging through the thick snow as the skies above me turned red with the dying sun.
Chapter 15
He ran out ahead of me, but not so far that he lost me.
The deeper I walked into the woods, the more I felt like Huckleberry had a purpose, a reason for doing this.
He wasn’t just a starved stray looking for a meal. There was more to it.
The snow was deep and I was breathing hard as I made my way through it. With each step, my foot would fall through several layers of the powdery white stuff. I almost stumbled a few times, falling down to my hips once, but I kept going.
Suddenly, I saw Huckleberry up ahead. He had stopped. He was waiting for me.
I tried to pick up the pace to get to him. He had started whining again.
“I’m coming,” I yelled.
By the time I got to where he was, I was sucking in deep breaths of frosty air that stung my lungs.
“I’m right he—” I started saying, but then stopped mid-sentence.
Huckleberry was pacing around something. Something I couldn’t make out. Something covered by a layer of snow.
Then, my eyes fell on something that looked like a log sticking up out of the snow. A form that had previously just blended into the field of white.
I stood frozen for a moment, putting it together. Putting it together, but unable to process it.
Then, I understood.
I put my hand over my mouth and stifled the scream that traveled up my throat, looking for a way out.
The form in the snow.The outline. The pale purple color of it.
In the dying red light, I finally understood what it was.
A hand, sticking up from the blanket of rosy snow.
A frozen hand.
Chapter 16
I left Huckleberry barking around the hand and stumbled through the deep snow, back to the shop, back to a phone.
A feeling of absolute horror circulated through my body. I ran, falling into the brutally cold snow and getting back up again, and falling again and repeating the whole process like I was running from Jack Torrance in The Shining.
The sun had gone down, and the woods were falling into twilight, a gray dust settling over them.
It took me about five minutes of fighting through the snow to make it back to the shop. I rushed for the cell phone in my purse and called 9-1-1. I felt the snow melting on my jeans, and bleeding through to my skin. I couldn’t stop shivering.
I tried to keep my voice steady as I talked to the operator.
“Is he alive?” she asked, he
r voice calm and steady.
“I don’t know,” I said.
But I was lying.
I did know. There was no other possibility.
Whoever that hand belonged to out there in the woods behind the pie shop was dead.
And had been for a while.
Chapter 17
Sheriff Trumbow told me to stay inside the shop while they investigated the scene, so I did.
I could see their lights out in the woods and hear the frightened barking of Huckleberry as several deputies sectioned off the area.
I was still shivering. Daniel had put his coat around me, and had poured me a shot of the Bourbon I kept in the cupboard for the Bourbon Chess Pies I made in the summertime.
He’d come at five instead of five thirty like he said he would. He forgot about the revision in the plans. And when he showed up, he was greeted with a row of flashing cop cars parked outside my shop.
When I finished talking with them, telling the story of how I was led to the body, I repeated the story to Daniel. About how Huckleberry had come and eaten the pie scraps and then waited out in the woods for me.
“It was just like you said, like he wanted me to follow him,” I said, trying to keep the shakiness out of my voice. “Just like the other night. And then he led me to this clearing, and that’s where I saw…”
I trailed off.
He waited for me to continue. I took a deep breath.
“Where I saw the hand,” I said, finishing the sentence.
“It’s going to be okay, Cinnamon,” Daniel said, placing the glass of bourbon in front of me. “Drink this.”
I did as he said, the liquid feeling sharp at first, but then warm as it traveled down my throat.
He poured me another, but I let it sit on the kitchen island.
“What do you think happened?” I said. “Who is he and how did he end up out there? Do you think he got lost, or did he…. Was he…”
“Shhh,” Daniel said. “Don’t think about that right now. It’s all going to be okay.”
Suddenly, I heard the front door open in the dining room. I had the sign turned to closed, but hadn’t locked the door. Whoever came in didn’t seem to care about the sign.
“Cinnamon? Are you here?”
I let out a short sigh. It was John.
“Back here, John,” I said.
“Cinnamon, I saw all those police cars out in front. Are you al—”
John entered the kitchen and saw me. And saw Daniel.
I saw a flash of anger cross his face. Anger that he tried to hide by averting his eyes.
“What’s going on? Are you okay?” he asked solemnly.
I nodded and stood up.
“I’m sorry, I was just about to head over to your office. But something got in the way.”
“But you’re okay?” he said, giving Daniel a sharp and jealous look.
“I’m fine,” I said. “It’s just… I found something out in the woods back over there. I found a... it was a body in the snow.”
“What?” John said, surprised. “How? What were you doing back—”
“She’s already had to explain it to the cops several times,” Daniel said before he could finish. “She should rest.”
John’s eyes narrowed with anger.
“And who the hell are you?” John said. “Clearly I haven’t been made privy to that information yet.”
“An old friend,” Daniel said, standing up. “Now, I propose that we get you home Cinnamon. I’m sure the police will have more questions for you about what happened, but it can wait until the morning. You’re in shock, and you need to go home and rest.”
“Good idea,” John said. “I’ll take her.”
“I can’t yet,” I said, shaking my head. “I told Warren I’d pick him up from the tavern in a little while.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Daniel said.
“C’mon,” John said, coming over to me. “Let’s go.”
“I can drive myself,” I said. “I don’t need to be carted around.”
“No. You’re in shock,” Daniel said. “You shouldn’t drive.”
He looked at John.
“Make sure to get her home safe,” Daniel said.
John didn’t say anything. He just put his arms around my shoulders in an awkward and uncomfortable way. He led me out through the dining room and through the front door.
Any other time, I might have protested more.
But a deep exhaustion had settled over me. Maybe it was the discovery in the woods, or the extreme highs and lows of the busy day, but I felt like a zombie emerging from the ground as I walked out of my pie shop.
John opened the door to his car and I got in, nearly falling asleep on my feet.
Chapter 18
Once, when I was a teenager, I saw a pie eating contest at the Pohly County Fair where one of the participants ate too much pie and threw up all over the place before being rushed to the hospital.
There were rumors that a little girl riding the Ferris wheel found a regurgitated blueberry in her hair.
That was a hot mess.
But it was nothing compared to the kind of day I had had.
The only light at the end of the tunnel had been the fact that Daniel had been there for some of it.
I heard the front door slam just as I was dozing off to a rerun of The Big Valley, watching Victoria Barkley descend the stairs of her ranch mansion in an outrageous purple dress. I was lying in my room, wrapped in a pile of comforters and flannel sheets to get the cold out, but so far, it wasn’t working.
John had tried to stay, but I told him I was tired and just needed some rest. He said he would check up on me in the morning and that he was glad I was okay. I thanked him, and then felt guilty about the whole thing.
I should have talked to him on the way over in the car about what I had decided, but it just never came up.
I sighed. There were some voices downstairs. Warren’s, and then someone else’s.
It must have been Daniel.
I suppressed a smile. That must have gone over well. After the second week of me moping around when Daniel left 17 years ago, Warren finally got it out of me what had happened. He told me that of course Daniel was probably going through a rough time, but that he should have returned my calls at least. Warren got pretty angry and threatened to go to California and find both Daniel and his father, and have a real talking to them. Nobody treats my granddaughter like that! I remember him saying. But I begged him to drop it, and he did.
Now, here Daniel was picking him up from the tavern. I was sure Daniel got an earful on the car ride over.
And maybe he did deserve it, in some ways.
I heard heavy, slow footsteps up the stairs, and then they stopped in front of my door. It creaked open, the hall light crept in across the wood floor.
“You awake, Cinny?” Warren whispered.
I sat up in bed and rubbed my eyes.
“I’m sorry I didn’t pick you up,” I said.
He came in and sat at the edge of the bed. He hadn’t taken off his jacket and hat yet.
“Don’t you worry about that,” he said, patting my leg. “Your friend told me what happened.”
I sighed and adjusted the pillows so I could sit up.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s been a weird day.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
I pulled the covers around me tightly to lock out the cold.
“I didn’t even see the body,” I said. “Just a hand. It wasn’t a big deal.”
I was trying to brush it off, that same old defense mechanism kicking in. The one that tried to make others believe I was strong, to show that I couldn’t be touched.
But Warren could see through all that. He always could. Like when I dyed my hair black in the seventh grade, or got a lip piercing a year later. Most parents would have freaked about those kinds of things. But Warren never did because he always saw those little acts for what they were—ways to fee
l like you had control over yourself and life when the truth was, you had none.
“Don’t give me that,” he said. “You’re shook up. I can see that easy enough.”
There was no use in trying to hide it. It’d just be a waste of time for both of us.
I rubbed my face, trying to erase the image of the frozen hand sticking up from the snow field that kept running through my head, but it was no use.
“I just keep wondering who he was,” I said. “And how he ended up buried under the snow like that. It’s just… it’s a lonely way to go.”
“Every way’s a lonely way to go,” Warren said. “In the end, we all come in this world alone, and we leave it alone.”
“Yeah, but there’s a difference between dying in your bed at home and being found in a snow drift.”
Warren shrugged.
“His time was just up,” he said. “One way or another. And there’s nothing you could’ve done about that. Hell, nothing any of us could’ve done about it. He’s just lucky you came along. He might have been there until the spring thaws.”
Warren was right, but I was having a hard time hearing it.
I felt too close to all of it to see it from such a practical angle.
“But what do you think happened to him, Grandpa? How did he get back there, behind my shop?”
Warren stood up and leaned over, kissing the top of my head.
“Sometimes life throws us a curve ball like that. But don’t let it get you down, darling. The police will do right by him,” he said.
I nodded again and looked up at him. I flashed back to the time in the eighth grade when I fell off my bike riding home from school and scraped my knees to hell. He had that same look on his face then. He was concerned, but also confident that I was strong enough to get over it. He knew because my mother had raised me that way, and so had he. To be resilient and strong, even when things got rough or you hit a few bumps in the road.
That was the kind of person I was. He knew that, and seeing that he knew that sometimes gave me the strength to believe it was actually true.
“Now, do you need anything?” he asked. “Something to drink maybe? Some whiskey?”
