by Muldoon, Meg
“Well, it’s always a safe place until it isn’t,” I said.
There was a moment of silence. I suddenly got the impression Gretchen was here for something else. To ask me something.
She looked at me for a moment, and then cleared her throat.
“Do you think he suffered?” she asked.
She said it with a sincerity that took me by surprise.
She said it the way you would ask after a friend.
I hadn’t realized that Gretchen O’Malley was human.
But maybe I had been wrong.
“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “By the time I found him… it was hard to tell. But I’m sorry if the two of you were close.”
“No, no. We weren’t,” she said. “It’s just… he was such a mainstay at the competition every year. An institution to himself. It’s a shame he perished like that.”
Leave it to Gretchen to call Mason Barstow an “institution.” And to make it sound like he was a bag of lettuce left too long out on the counter.
She placed the untouched pie plate back on the glass case, lightly sliding it toward me.
“See you tomorrow at the competition?” she said. “The beat must go on, right?”
I let out a troubled sigh.
I was just about to tell her about what happened, about my gingerbread house being destroyed when I stopped myself.
The beat must go on.
That phrase seemed to resonate with me in that moment. It rang true.
She was right.
Even in the face of sabotage, I wasn’t going to give up on the competition. I wasn’t going to let anyone stop me with gutter tactics.
It wasn’t in my nature to quit. To let anyone make me quit.
I was going to compete. Even if all I showed up with was a store-bought gingerbread kit and some gumdrops.
Because winning wasn’t the point anymore.
The point was showing up, showing Bailey that she hadn’t beaten me. That she couldn’t break my spirit. No matter what dirt she flung my way, I would stand tall and wouldn’t give up.
“Yeah, of course,” I said. “See you there.”
The corners of Gretchen’s mouth almost turned up into a muted smile. She then walked out of the shop, the door slamming behind her. I saw her get into the passenger side of a car waiting out in front where I could make out the silhouette of her husband in the driver’s seat.
I watched them pull away down Main Street, still strewn with parade streamers and horse droppings.
I turned the front sign over to “closed” and locked the front door.
Then, I went into the back and preheated the oven. I sent a text message to Kara to come over if she could. As I started mixing the ingredients for gingerbread, I thought about how odd things turned out sometimes.
That my archnemesis, Gretchen O’Malley, would give me the exact inspiration I needed to carry on in the competition.
That she would come through in my hour of need.
Yep. It had been a bizarre week. That was for sure.
Chapter 33
I was exhausted, but I was determined. And determination can take you through just about anything.
But I wasn’t so exhausted that I didn’t notice that Daniel hadn’t stopped by, like he said he was going to the night before.
I tried calling him, but it just went to his voicemail. I sent him text messages, but heard nothing back.
As we rolled out sheet after sheet of gingerbread cookie dough, Kara noticed me stealing glances at the kitchen door from time to time. I told her about Daniel, and how he was supposed to be coming but hadn’t shown up yet.
“Be careful, Cin,” she said. “You might not, but I remember how devastated you were when he left the first time.”
“The first time? Doesn’t that imply that there’s going to be a second?” I asked.
“I’m just saying,” she said.
I didn’t respond. I didn’t feel like fighting her on this. I was too tired.
But I would have been lying if I said that the thought hadn’t crossed my mind, too.
I couldn’t let that happen to me. Not again. He seemed different than he had been all those years ago. More mature. But I knew that when it came down to it, most of us never changed.
Deep down, we were all the same as we had been in high school.
Like Evan, for example. During senior year, I found out that Evan had made out with another girl at a Christmas party I didn’t go to because I’d come down with the flu.
I had been angry, but he had apologized to me, and like a fool, I had accepted it and kept dating him.
Years later, it happened again, only much worse. And this time, there was no real apology. And it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I wouldn’t have taken him back.
But he was the same person he was back in high school. I had just been too blind to see it.
Maybe Daniel was the same he’d been in high school. Someone who blew out of town without so much as a word, not caring about the sadness he left in his wake.
“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” Kara said. “You deserve a good man. A man who’ll treat you like the queen you are. You’ve had enough duds in your life.”
I scooped some frosting into a pastry bag.
“I won’t get hurt,” I said.
But I knew that I couldn’t control that. Not really.
We spent the rest of the night up to our arms in gingerbread dough and frosting and marzipan and candy decorations. The wind howled outside as a blizzard descended upon Christmas River, burying everything under a fresh, three-foot coat of snow.
And as the dark sky gave way to the grey fingers of dawn, we finally placed the final candy decoration on the gingerbread house.
Kara and I looked terrible. Hair plastered to our faces with sweat. Bloodshot eyes. Melted makeup.
But we had finished.
We had made the gingerbread house in record time.
And suddenly I felt sure that there was no way in hell that Bailey was going to beat us.
Chapter 34
We had a few hours before the competition started over at the auditorium.
Kara and I decided to take turns guarding our Western gingerbread mansion until we could transport it. She took the first shift while I went home to clean-up.
As I was leaving out the front of the shop, I noticed something taped to the door window.
I dusted the snow off of it, and found my name scrawled across the front of a card.
Scrawled in familiar handwriting.
For a moment, I hesitated in pulling it off from the window.
I knew who it was from, and I wondered whether or not I should open that can of worms. Especially with the competition in only a few short hours.
I wondered how long it had been taped to the door. It hadn’t been there when I had unlocked the door for Kara the night before. Sometime during the big blizzard, he had come by and placed it there.
I took it down and held it between the thumb and fingers of my mitten as I walked to my car, buried in snow.
After I scraped off the windshield and pushed the snow off the hood, I got in the cold car, took off my mittens, and against my better judgment, I opened the letter.
“Dear Cinnamon,
There’s something I have 2 talk to you about. I will b at the gingerbread competition. Please take a moment for me. I’ve needed to talk to you for a long while now.
Good luck, Cin.
Cheers.”
I read the note over at over. Astonished at the arrogance in it.
Not even signing his name, assuming that I already knew who the handwriting belonged to, which I did, but still.
It was unbelievable.
Especially because I already knew what he wanted to tell me.
Evan wanted to tell me that he was getting married.
He must not have realized that Bailey already beat him to the punch.
“Un-f-ing-believable,” I said, crumpling up the p
aper and throwing it in the back of the car before starting it up and pulling out in four-wheel drive.
I wouldn’t have any time for Evan today.
Or ever, for that matter.
Chapter 35
I went home, took a long hot shower, drank a few cups of coffee, and then got dressed. I went with a simple and elegant black turtleneck, a suede skirt, and my lucky red cowboy boots.
When I came downstairs, Warren had a big plate of over-easy eggs, bacon, and pancakes waiting for me.
It must have been the exhaustion, but I felt my eyes grow wet with tears.
“I figured Wheaties wouldn’t cut it,” Warren said. “Go get ‘em today, kiddo.”
I wiped away the tears before they could slide down my cheeks and gave him a big hug.
Even when it felt like every man on earth had abandoned me, I knew it wasn’t true.
I always had one man who would stand by me and support me in anything and everything I did.
“You shouldn’t have troubled yourself, old man,” I said, pulling away from him.
His eyes were glassy, too.
“Pish posh,” he said, waving his hand.
He was too good.
I sat down and scarfed down the entire plate while he sat across from me drinking coffee and reading the paper.
I finished and then went to the door to pull on my jacket and scarf.
As I opened the door to leave I blew him a kiss and said goodbye.
“I’ll start packing my bags for Hawaii,” he said.
I laughed.
“I’ll see you when I get back,” I said.
“See ya, champ,” he said.
I closed the door. Even though I hadn’t slept in what felt like days, I felt a renewed spark of energy.
Like I could conquer the world.
Chapter 36
The Gingerbread Junction Competition was more crowded than I had ever seen it before.
All the usual competitors were there, including a few new ones, but there seemed to be a never-ending stream of spectators flooding the auditorium.
On top of that, word had gotten out to local news organizations in the state about Mason’s mysterious death and how the town was continuing on with the competition, mostly fueled by a desire to make money off of the tourists. The place was crawling with camera crews and news reporters.
I felt thankful that the police hadn’t given them my name or mentioned that the body had been found in the woods directly behind my shop.
I wouldn’t have been able to deal with their questions on top of everything else.
There were police there, too. Sheriff Trumbow was in one corner, surveying everything.
I noticed that he was looking at me often. I wondered what that meant. I didn’t think it could have meant anything too good.
Maybe I would have been more worried if it weren’t for everything else that was going on.
And anyway, I was past the point of caring. Sheriff Trumbow seemed to think that I was guilty of something. But it no longer seemed to matter.
Once I had won, he could grill me all he liked.
Kara and I carefully carried our masterpiece into the crowded room, people splitting like the red sea in front of us as they eyed our creation.
It may have been the exhaustion bleeding into my thoughts, but this new gingerbread house that we had created was almost better than the one that had been destroyed. The decorations were better, the candy sheriff’s and marzipan horses and drinking wells and snow-covered willow trees were more realistic. The house was better constructed and better decorated; looking like Hansel and Gretel had wandered into The Big Valley.
It may have been the best gingerbread house we had ever made.
And whether we won didn’t even really matter anymore. The tropical vacation would be nice, but that was no longer the point.
The point was that we had already won on a more important and meaningful level than any judge could give us.
Chapter 37
I saw Bailey and her sister across the room. Bailey’s stringy, bleach blond hair was elegantly hanging in a loose pony tail. She was wearing high heel boots and a tight-fitting sweater with long feather earrings.
She was standing by her cookie house. The one she had made with her sister.
It was better than I thought it would be. Much better.
“I’m going over there,” Kara said, once we had draped the table with a cowboy-inspired table cloth and arranged the gingerbread house nicely on top of it. “Remember what I said, about her paying for what she did? Well, it’s time to go collect.”
“No,” I said, stopping Kara. “I’ll go. You stay out of this. It’s between me and her.”
“No,” Kara said. “It’s between her and us. Now let me—”
“Man the fort here,” I said. “Let me deal with her.”
Kara let out a long frustrated sigh.
“Fine,” she said. “But I’m you’re wing man, wing woman. Whatever. Get me if you need help.”
“I will,” I said.
“Because you know I would just love to—”
“Got it,” I said.
I took a deep breath and threaded my way through the crowd over to her table.
I was going over there to show her that I was here. That I hadn’t been beaten. That I wasn’t going to let her break me.
And, I was going over to do something else. Something that I knew I needed to do. Not so much for her, but for me.
When I showed up in front of her table, she didn’t say anything for a moment. She just stared at me. Speechless.
But then, the shock that was plastered on her face quickly disappeared as she scrambled for something to say.
I beat her to it.
“Good to see you here, Bailey,” I said. “Good luck to you.”
It took her a moment to respond. I could tell by the twitching in her face that she wasn’t sure what to say. She wasn’t sure if I was being sincere, or if I was being sarcastic.
I glanced at her house.
It was ornately decorated and looked to be quite well-made.
And there was something familiar about it, too.
There were small marzipan horses and even a sheriff.
The sign next to her house said A Western Christmas.
I looked up at her, and smiled. Knowing I had caught her.
I had a story I could go to the police with now. Something real.
What were the chances that she’d do exactly the same decorations as Kara and me? Bailey didn’t know what our theme was this year. It wasn’t damning evidence, but it would give the sheriff a reason to look at Bailey more closely for the break-in, and who knew… maybe Mason’s murder, too.
“I guess you didn’t expect to see me here,” I said. “You thought you’d taken care of me, isn’t that right?”
“What are you talking about?” she said, looking around the room, her eyes seeming to dance with denial.
“I’m not that easy to get rid of, I’m afraid,” I said to her. “Something you didn’t count on.”
“Get away from my table,” she finally said, looking at me with hateful eyes that would have given a weaker person a serious case of chills.
But I wasn’t weak anymore. I was strong. And she no longer could get to me. Not ever again.
I started walking away but then stopped, remembering something. I turned back. She was watching me.
“I almost forgot,” I said. “I came over here to congratulate you.”
“What?” she said, venom oozing from her voice.
“On getting engaged. I mean it. Congratulations. I wish both of you all the happiness in the world.”
I may have hated Bailey, but as I said the words, I knew that I was being sincere.
I did mean it. I wished them all the best.
They deserved one another.
It wasn’t so much about them anymore and what they had done to me. It was about me moving on. It was about forgiving them for what they
had done. Not because they deserved it, but because I did. I deserved to be happy and to be clean of all the ugliness that their betrayal had brought into my life.
I deserved a fresh start.
I walked away from Bailey’s table, feeling her dagger eyes on me the entire way across the room.
I smiled at Kara as I took my place behind our table.
“Did you give her hell?” Kara asked.
“I didn’t need to,” I said.
Chapter 38
Kara and I manned our station as townsfolk and tourists alike came strolling by, ogling our mansion. It felt good. The house seemed to go over well with just about everyone. But it didn’t really matter what they thought of it.
All that mattered was what the judges thought.
I watched the three of them, dressed up in official jackets like it was a dog show, make the rounds to all the tables. I knew two of the judges—Adam Bybee, a retired baker, and Shanna Wellington, a pastry chef from Portland. The other one I didn’t know. He was filling in for Mason, and I had no idea what he was looking for in our gingerbread houses.
I watched as they went over to Gretchen’s table. She was back in fine form, that familiar smug look on her face. Her husband was standing by her, the two of them the picture of dysfunction.
I hadn’t had a chance to see what she’d come up with this year.
But despite Gretchen being my competition archnemesis, my views of her had changed a little since the day before. I actually saw some feeling in her, some humanity.
And she had been the reason Kara and I were here today with our completed mansion.
Maybe she wasn’t as bad as I had initially thought.
“All right, Cin, you ready for this?” Kara asked me.
The judges were just a few houses down from ours.
“Damn right I am,” I said.
I looked at her, and squeezed her shoulder.
And I was overcome with a feeling of gratitude for the people I had in my life.
In addition to Warren, Kara was always there for me, too. She’d stuck by me and been there to pick-up the pieces when things went sour.
