by Meg Muldoon
I glanced down the street to see if anybody else noticed her standing there, glaring at me. But the streets were oddly empty at the moment.
“Did you find it?”
I nearly jumped at the sound of her gravelly, ragged voice. A voice which I was fairly certain no one in Christmas River could have claimed to have heard for decades.
I gathered up my courage and met her gaze. Her face was unchanged, as if she hadn’t uttered a thing, and for a second I wondered if I had imagined the words. She just studied me with those distant, vacant eyes. Eyes that looked like they were reaching out from another era.
“Excuse me?” I said.
She moved closer to me, and I instinctively took a step backward.
“You did,” she said. “Your eyes just told me.”
I cleared my throat, furrowing my brow.
“Mrs. Blaylock, is there a reason you’re here? Can I help you with something?”
She shook her head slowly.
“No, Cinnamon Peters,” she said. “Nobody can help me. God has cursed me.”
I felt a lump at the back of my throat when she said my name.
Christmas River was a small town. Most people knew who I was, being that I ran a popular pie shop in town and was married to the Sheriff. But the fact that Hattie Blaylock knew my name, and said it as though she knew me too, scared me badly for some reason.
“Goodbye, Cinnamon,” she said.
I felt bitter chills run through me as the old woman brushed past me, stepping up onto the sidewalk with a creaky, labored motion.
I watched as she turned her back and headed north, away from downtown, in the direction of Santa’s Nightmare Lane.
I stood by my car for a long time after she disappeared from view.
Chapter 15
“This is highly unusual, Cinnamon,” Kristy Varner said, peering over the desk at me. “In fact, I very much doubt if we’ll be able to help you with this request.”
The way Kristy Varner said it, it was like she was just hoping and praying that she could say no and tell me she was unable to help. Which wasn’t all that surprising: Kristy, who had been two years ahead of me in high school back in the day, had always been something of an unpleasant malcontent. She used to be on the dance team back then, and let it be known to anyone who would listen that she was a star in the making bound for Broadway. But getting married and starting a family early seemed to have put a wrench in those plans. All these years later, here she was, sitting behind the desk of the same high school she attended, wearing her hair in a high ponytail like she was still on the dance team, enjoying saying “no” as often as she could.
I dug my hands into my jacket pockets, feeling the heavy class ring between my fingers.
“It wouldn’t take that long,” I said. “I could just go down to the library and ask Mrs. Longmont if they have the yearbooks dating back that far.”
I smiled my best pretty-please smile.
“I’d consider it a real favor,” I added.
The receptionist was unfazed.
“I’m afraid that I just can’t approve this right now,” Kristy said, picking at her long nails, which were painted a garish shade of zombie green. “Principal Henry is not here this afternoon to authorize me to let someone like you, who has no connection to the school, into the library. School security is a priority here at Christmas River High School, and we just can’t—”
“I went to school here, Kristy,” I said, trying not to bite her head off, the way I wanted to. “Same as you.”
“Yes, but I get paid by the district to be here,” she continued. “You don’t have a child who attends this school, and your reason for being here is well… it’s just a bit odd.”
She scrunched up her nose as she said the last part, something I remembered her doing plenty of times while gossiping about girls she didn’t like in her class.
“I don’t feel comfortable letting you through these—”
“What is it you want, Kristy?” I said, cutting her off.
I knew that she was giving me a hard time for a reason. And it wasn’t because she was concerned that I was a threat to the students of Christmas River High School.
She narrowed her eyes at me. Then she looked up at the ceiling, as if she was contemplating what it was she wanted.
She leaned back in her chair and gave me a coy look.
“I take it you heard about our little problem at the school earlier this week?” she said, raising her eyebrows.
“I don’t see why I should have,” I said. “Like you said, I don’t have any connection to the school these days.”
She cleared her throat.
“Well, three of our kids were caught with marijuana in their lockers following an anonymous tip that the vice principal received,” she said, lowering her voice. “Principal Henry was up in arms about it. He’s been threatening all sorts of punishments.”
I placed a hand on my hip.
“Well, that’s a shame that the students of Christmas River High are doing the same things today that they did when we were in school, but I don’t see how—”
“My boy was one of them who was caught,” she said, narrowing her eyes again.
I furrowed my brow, unable to see how I could help in any way with what her teen decided to do with his life.
But within a few moments, it became clear.
“I need you, Cinnamon, to talk to that Sheriff husband of yours,” she said. “I need him to come into school to talk about the dangers of smoking pot to the student body. If I can provide this little peace offering to Principal Henry, then maybe, just maybe, I can convince him to be a little lenient when it comes to punishing my Tommy.”
I stared at Kristy hard for a long moment.
Daniel and the Sheriff’s Office usually did come into the high school once a year to talk to the students about drug use. However, the talk usually took place in January, and I knew that he loathed doing it. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the kids. He just disliked the manner in which the schools wanted him to talk about drugs. As a law-enforcement officer, Daniel did not condone underage drug-use of any kind. But he also knew one other thing: the more you told somebody not to do something, the more they were apt to do it.
That line of logic could be multiplied by at least a dozen when it came to teenagers.
But at the moment, Daniel’s personal feelings about anti-drug talks didn’t seem as important as the reason for me being at the school.
I drew in a deep breath.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll talk to him.”
Kristy’s lips curled up slightly at the edges, no doubt pleased at the way she’d manipulated me into getting what she wanted.
But I didn’t care as much as I usually might have that Kristy Varner had gotten the better of me.
I had bigger fish to fry.
She pushed the visitor sign-in sheet toward me, along with an adhesive tag that labeled me as such.
“You do remember how to get to the library, don’t you Cinnamon?”
I shot her a sharp look just before signing in.
Chapter 16
I sat hunched over one of the library’s old tables – the same one I had often sat at during the years I was a student – poring over the old yearbook like it was the most absorbing, scandalous read since Fifty Shades of Grey.
In 1958, the students at Christmas River High School weren’t that much different than the kids who attended the school today. Coming from a small town, students were slightly behind the times, and had a certain Oregon mill town look to them. But in other ways, the students in the class of 1958 were brazenly different than the ones today. They were more reserved. They smiled, but most of them did so self-consciously. They dressed nicely, and even though they were only photos, you could tell that the teens in them lived during a time when etiquette and politeness mattered.
They were an entire people oblivious to the concept of a selfie.
But the pros and cons of different generations’ soci
al graces wasn’t what I was there in the library during my lunch break to learn about.
I placed the ring out on the desk in front of me, eyeing the initials on the band. Then I flipped to the page of class photos where the senior “B” last names began.
Within a few moments, my finger stopped midway through a page.
Ralph Henry Baker.
R-H-B.
My eyes went from the name to the correlating photo. My breath caught in my throat as my eyes fell upon his picture.
He had the kind of face that seemed to belong to the era. It was wide, but not chubby. Deep-set eyes gave way to a large nose and thick lips that spread into a broad smile. His dark hair was slicked back in a style that had gone out of fashion in the late sixties. In his eyes, there was just a hint of mischief. The kind that I imagined got him into trouble every now and then.
Though I couldn’t tell from the head shot, the teen seemed like he could have had a football player’s build. His features were large and his energy and zest for life practically leapt off the page.
Ralph Henry Baker was about as all-American as you could get.
And as I looked through the rest of the yearbook, it became apparent that that assumption extended beyond his looks.
Ralph was on the football team. He was on the baseball team. He threw the javelin for the track and field team. The yearbook was littered with various photos of the youth. In all of them, he looked like he was having the time of his life.
Popular, good-looking, and seemingly never short on friends, Ralph Henry Baker was—
A shadow crossed the yearbook page in front of me. Followed by an old, crackling voice.
“I’m afraid it’s time to leave.”
Startled, I looked up to see an old woman staring back at me.
For a split second, I felt my eyes widen with fear. But when I realized it wasn’t Hattie Blaylock, and that she hadn’t somehow followed me to the school library, I let out an enormous sigh of relief.
“I’m sorry… I don’t understand, Mrs. Longmont,” I said, peering up at the elderly librarian.
I didn’t know exactly what time it was, but I knew that it couldn’t be the end of the school day just yet.
“There’s an assembly,” Mrs. Longmont, who wore her hair in the same long braid that she did when I went to the high school, said. “We close the library during important assemblies. We don’t want students missing the vital things that Vice Principal Davidson has to say to them about their conduct as young men and women.”
Mrs. Longmont was about as humorless as they came.
“I see,” I said.
I closed the old yearbook and handed it back to her.
“Thanks for your help,” I said.
I quickly pocketed the class ring, then stood up.
Mrs. Longmont eyed me suspiciously.
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
“I think so,” I said, sliding on my jacket.
I wrapped my wool scarf several times around my neck and grabbed my purse. When I looked up, I was surprised to see the old librarian still watching me.
“You know, some things should just stay in the past, Ms. Peters,” she said, her mahogany-colored eyes boring into me from behind her thick glasses.
I felt my face scrunch up in surprise.
“What?”
“You’re not doing anybody any good by stirring the pot,” she said. “And plenty of folks in this town would agree with me. Plenty don’t want to see old things dredged up – you understand?”
She raised an eyebrow at me, and I suddenly felt like I was 16 again, getting scolded for talking too loudly in the library.
“No, I don’t understand,” I said, a sharpness seeping into my tone. “What is it you’re trying to say, Mrs. Longmont?”
She shook her head, and then began backing away toward the library’s small, windowless office. She clutched the yearbook to her chest tightly like it was some sort of treasure.
“Just some friendly advice, Ms. Peters,” she said, a darkness crossing her face. “I won’t say anything more.”
She flipped a switch on the wall, turning out the library’s lights. Then the old woman disappeared into the office. She shut the door behind her with more force than she needed to.
I rubbed the class ring in my pocket between my forefinger and thumb, looking around the dark walls of the library.
I felt a chill pass through me like the gust of a dark wind.
I pulled my jacket tighter around my body, and booked it out of there like it was the last day of senior year.
Chapter 17
“Hello?... Hello?... Are you there, Grandpa?”
I held the phone out far from my ear as a crackling “Ping!” broke out across the speaker.
The noise, which sounded like a cash register on steroids, might have baffled most callers. But knowing Warren and Aileen as I did, I figured out right away what had made the noise.
So when a distinct, Scottish accented-whooping followed it, I was not surprised in the least.
“Way to go, honey!” I heard the old man say somewhere far in the background.
I set the timer for a batch of Chocolate Hazelnut pies that I had just whipped up for the next day’s tourist onslaught, and waited for the celebration on the other side of the line to lessen.
“Why, Aileen’s a natural at the slots, Cin,” Warren said after a few moments, slightly out of breath. “She just won fifty dollars. That’s practically unheard of here in this casino. Practically unheard of anywhere – slots are a losing game, I always say.”
I felt a bright grin possess my face.
“Sounds like you two are having a rip-roaring time in old Lincoln City,” I said,
“I can’t argue with you there, Cinny Bee,” he shouted over another loud ding.
I felt my grin grow brighter.
“But should you really be talking to me right now? I thought that you weren’t allowed to use a cell phone in a casino.”
I hadn’t been gambling in ages, but I did know that casino security didn’t look too kindly on folks using their phones while laying bets.
“Oh, pish-posh,” Warren said. “Nobody’s going to stand between me and having a conversation with my Cinny. Now what’s got you worried, hon?”
I felt my eyebrows arch in surprise.
“Who said anything about me being worried?” I said. “I just left you a message earlier to see how you youngin’s are doing over there.”
“Remind me again: how long have I known you?” he asked.
I puckered my lips together.
“Um, I don’t know,” I said, adding a heavy layer of sarcasm to my voice. “Like, my whole life.”
“That’s right,” he said. “And in those thirty-something years, have you ever been able to pull the wool over old Warren’s eyes when somethin’ was upsetting you?”
I thought about it for a moment, making my way over to the window, looking out as the sunset cast an eerie, fiery red light across the forest floor.
“Well, I guess the answer is: Never.”
“Mmhmm,” he said, rather pleased with himself. “Now, I heard that message you left. And while I know you were trying to put up a brave front, I could hear it in your voice. Something’s got you worried or preoccupied or something. Why don’t you tell old Warren about it?”
“All right, you got me,” I said, after a momentary pause. “But I’m not so much worried as I am wanting to ask you about something.”
I still wasn’t being completely honest with him, but I didn’t want to burden the old man. Especially when he was on his honeymoon, and maybe more importantly, on a winning streak at the slots.
“Go on and shoot,” he said.
“Well, a funny thing happened yesterday,” I said. “I was here in the pie shop, alone. And, well, you know all the renovation work going on here?”
“Sure,” Warren said. “You think it’ll be done this side of the New Year?”
I g
rinned.
“Fingers crossed,” I said.
The upgrades had begun in September, and were supposed to have been finished by the end of that month. But, as I found out, the contractor that Alex Rosell, a business developer who was investing in my pie shop, had hired wasn’t exactly the fastest man on the planet. His work was beautiful, and the dining room and kitchen were looking better than I thought possible. But he’d been dragging his heels these last few weeks, and it seemed like the renovations might not ever end.
“But anyway, I was here alone,” I continued. “And I heard this noise out of the blue that scared the hell out of me.”
I paused for a second.
“Then what?” Warren said.
“I went over to see what it was.”
“And?”
“Something had fallen out of the brick wall,” I said. “A ring.”
“A ring?”
I nodded, though I knew he couldn’t see me.
“Not just a ring. A Christmas River High School class ring. From 1958.”
“Really?” he said.
“Yeah. And it had the initials RHB on it.”
I waited, but Warren didn’t respond. I continued.
“So I went to the high school library this afternoon. You know, to see who the ring belonged to? And it matched up to a name… Ralph Henry Baker. Class of 1958.”
“Cin—”
“I mean, I know you were a few years ahead of that class,” I said. “But I figured Christmas River was such a small town back then that you might have known Ralph or the Baker family. And maybe you could tell me—”
“Sir, there are no phones allowed on the floor. If you do not hang up now, then I’ll have to confiscate the phone and escort you out of the facility—” a deep, mean-sounding voice broke across the speaker.
“Okay, message received, big guy,” I heard Warren say nonchalantly.
“Cinny, I’m going to have to call you back in a little bit. Is that okay?”
“Sure,” I said, trying not to let the disappointment sound in my voice.
A moment later, the line went deader than a doornail.
I let out a short sigh, and watched as the red faded from the sky and left the trees outside of my pie shop behind in the cold dusk.
