Mistake in Christmas River

by Meg Muldoon

  Daniel saw it in my eyes.

  “You want to talk about anything?”

  I thought about it for a long moment, but then I finally shook my head.

  Talking more wouldn’t do much good.

  “Have you thought anymore about telling Warren?” he asked.

  “I just… I don’t see the point right now. Warren’s got the beer show that’s filming at the brewery tomorrow, and he’s in such good spirits lately. Telling him about what happened would only spoil it and bring up all that old anger again. And it’d make him worry about me. He’s too old to be worrying more than he needs to.”

  “You’re sure?” Daniel whispered.

  I held in another sigh and rubbed my face.

  “After Ireland, I’ll tell him. And after that, I’ll figure out what I want to do.”

  Daniel nodded understandingly.

  “You know, Cin. If you want me to call, I’ll—”

  But I shook my head before he could finish the sentence.

  Daniel had already asked the question a dozen times or more since January – and while I appreciated the offer, I knew this was something I had to figure out for myself.

  I reached for his hand, squeezing it gently. Letting him know that I appreciated him being there for me.

  I rested my head on his shoulder, and we sat there like that for a long, long while in silence, gazing out at the foggy night.

  “Will you do something for me?” I asked.

  “Anything for you, darlin.’”

  “Tell me more about what we’re going to see on the Galway Coast.”

  He didn’t miss a beat.

  “Well I don’t have the guidebook in front of me, but I remember reading that…”

  It wasn’t long before I nodded off to the sound of Daniel’s reassuring voice, dreaming of emerald-colored cliffs and steel blue Atlantic waters.

  Chapter 11

  “So tell the audience again, Warren – how old are you?”

  My grandfather stepped a little closer to the copper brew tank and scratched his head for a long moment, looking at the camera.

  Then he returned his attention back to the man asking the question.

  “87 years young, mister,” he snapped. “And I don’t mean to be rude, but I hope that’s the last time you’ll ask me that question. After all, it ain’t polite to ask an old man his age five times in as many minutes.”

  The baby-faced, thick-necked host let out a forced laugh and it echoed around the cold brew house. He crossed his muscular arms tighter across his perfectly-pressed J-Crew flannel shirt.

  “Okay, okay,” he said into the camera. “Everybody out there who decides to visit Geronimo Brewing, remember this: Warren Peters does not like to talk about his age.”

  “Oh, I like talking plenty, Harrison,” Warren interjected, coolly. “But I’d just rather not go in circles if I can avoid it. After all, time is the most precious thing we have, son. Best not to waste it when there are more interesting things to talk about.”

  Harrison Gordon, the host of the Travel Now Channel’s popular “Brew Town” show, let out a hearty laugh.

  “Okay, fair enough,” he mumbled.

  Harrison was good-looking, knowledgeable, and could give you an impressive verbal history of the craft beer movement in America.

  Harrison Gordon also happened to be an epic fool. He’d arrived late to the shoot this morning, looking and smelling like he’d already spent a good deal of time getting acquainted with the local brewpubs. He’d been distant and aloof, despite Warren’s kind and friendly greeting, and Harrison couldn’t quite seem to get it through his thick skull that there was more to Warren than his age.

  If the cameras hadn’t been rolling, I might have stepped in and given Harrison Gordon a piece of my mind. But this was Warren’s big moment – the one he’d been waiting for since producers from the show had contacted him back in late December about filming a segment out here in Central Oregon. And despite Harrison being unpleasant and immature, I couldn’t help but be proud of my grandfather.

  He was handling the whole thing with such style.

  “So, Warren, how’d you get into brewing? I mean, you don’t exactly see too many brewers like yourself these days.”

  Harrison smiled smugly, but Warren wasn’t baited by the thinly veiled rude remark.

  “Well, I’m a blue-collar man, through and through. I worked in the mills here in Christmas River nearly my whole life, but working with lumber was never my passion. When I retired, I promised myself that I’d find something I loved to do so I’d have a reason to get up in the morning. For a while, that was playing poker with my buddies. I ended up drinking my fair share of beer during those poker nights. And being here in the Pacific Northwest – a shining beacon of the craft beer movement – I eventually found myself becoming quite knowledgeable about…”

  I smiled, watching Warren in his element – rattling on endlessly about beer.

  He had a twinkle in his eye as he spoke, and despite the fact that Harrison had been trying to goad him this whole time, he hadn’t broken a sweat.

  If I was the average Travel Now Channel viewer watching this at home, I would have booked a trip to visit Geronimo Brewing Co. the moment the show ended.

  Of course, I was slightly partial.

  “…so you see, Harrison, I’m not really much different than a lot of younger fellas who got into this business. We’re all after the same thing – making a damn fine pint of beer and not—”

  Just then, a shadow crossed the window panes facing Main Street. My eyes drifted over for a second.

  I glanced back at Warren, who had started going into the offerings that Geronimo Brewing Co. had on their beer menu. Then I quietly tiptoed around a few production assistants and piles of equipment, heading for the door. I slid out of the pub, not making a sound.

  She was dressed in the beige slacks and collared long-sleeve Sheriff’s uniform. There was a serious, stiff expression on her face that immediately worried me.

  “I stopped by the pie shop, and they told me you were here,” she said quickly.

  “Yeah – Warren’s got a film crew in there. They’re featuring the brewery on the Travel Now Channel. Is everything okay?”

  “When, uh, when I was working at your shop last night, I think I might have left something behind by accident. Something important. I…”

  “A photo, right?”

  Her eyebrows lifted suddenly and a look of pure relief suddenly swept across her face.

  “I put it in a safe place in the kitchen,” I said.

  She inhaled deeply.

  “We can go now and get it if you want.”

  “No… I just got worried that I lost it. I can come by later and get it – I wouldn’t want you to miss your grandfather’s moment.”

  I shrugged, craning my neck and looking back in the window.

  Warren was waving his arms around wildly, and I couldn’t help but smile.

  He was a natural.

  “Knowing him, he’s only just getting started. Besides – I’ll catch the rest when it airs.”

  Vicky nodded, obviously relieved.

  We walked back through the thick fog to the shop.

  Chapter 12

  “I know it’s probably none of my business, and I’m sorry for prying. But the woman in that picture looks familiar to me somehow. I can’t put my finger on it.”

  I took off my plaid wool coat and hung it up. Tiana passed by, balancing a big tray of fresh HubbaHubba Chocolate Cherry Pies with all the expertise of a professional juggler. A small trickle of sweat was running down her temple and her face was as red as the sour cherries that went into the pie.

  I nodded gratefully to her as she headed out to the front case with them.

  Being down to one oven had put a lot of stress on all of us.

  I went over to the small bookshelf near the back door where I kept all of my most treasured cookbooks, including my mother’s old weathered one that she used t
o write down pie recipes and easy weeknight meals. I pulled it out, flipping gently through the stained pages to where I’d placed the photo for safe-keeping. I gently handed it to Vicky.

  “Anyway, I thought I should tell you that she looked familiar. You know, in case it might help somehow…”

  “This woman would probably look familiar to a lot of people,” she said. “This photo was featured on news channels across the state in 1993. There were a few billboards with this picture on the highway in and out of Christmas River.”

  “Oh,” I said, suddenly feeling a little foolish.

  Here I’d been thinking that maybe I was on to something.

  “It’s an old case that I’m working on,” Vicky said. “This woman, along with another one, went missing in the early nineties after getting off of a Greyhound bus here in Christmas River. The police never found out what happened to either one of them.”

  I’d had a feeling that the girl had met an unhappy fate, considering that the photo seemed to be part of Vicky’s police files.

  But hearing it out loud made my heart sink a little.

  “I see,” I said in a quiet voice.

  Vicky gazed at the photo.

  “It’s a cold case now. But I’ve been working on it for a while. Trying to find something – anything – that tells us what might have happened to those girls.”

  I glanced at the picture.

  “Where was she from?”

  Vicky stared at the photo, and for a long minute, I wasn’t sure if she’d heard me. There was a faraway, distant look on her face.

  “Gresham,” she said. “Just outside of Portland. She was headed to Boise that February. But she never made it.”

  Vicky bit her lower lip absentmindedly.

  “She disappeared at the Marionberry Truck Stop Diner on the west side of Christmas River. The bus stopped there for a break. She got off, and never got back on.”

  I felt a chill pass through my body when she said that.

  And what was more, it suddenly jogged my memory.

  I closed my eyes, the smell of the heater of Warren’s old car as we drove those icy streets to school coming back to me.

  “I remember hearing about her now,” I said.

  My mom had still been alive back in 1993, but she always had to get to work early, so Warren usually drove me to school in the mornings. We’d listen to the local country station, and I remembered hearing the news segments talking about the girls who went missing at the truck stop.

  I remembered the billboards, too, now. And the way Warren clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and muttered “Those poor families.”

  “This one’s name was Amy or Emily or—”

  “Amelia,” Vicky said, correcting me. “But her friends called her Millie.”

  Vicky gazed at the photo for a second longer. Then, abruptly, she took the wrinkled picture and stuffed it in the folder she had tucked under her arm.

  “Thanks for saving this, Cinnamon,” she said quickly. “I better get back to the station now.”

  Before I could say anything more, Lt. Vicky Delgado had turned and walked past the swinging dividing doors. A second later, I felt a draft work its way through the kitchen.

  I stared out the back window at the ghostly trees, rubbing my chin.

  Thinking about the past.

  Chapter 13

  A deep chill settled across Christmas River that afternoon. But despite it, I was sweating like I was running through a swamp in the middle of summer. Sweat poured down my back, seeping through my fleece pullover. My deep breaths came out in puffy wisps. My heart thumped wildly in my ribcage.

  I’d just come from the brewery. They’d had a break during the filming of the show, but when I walked in, the entire crew – save for Harrison Gordon who was in the corner talking loudly to his agent on his cell phone – was gathered around the old man, listening to one of his stories. All of them were clearly smitten with my grandfather, and predictably, he was just lapping up the attention like a dog at a plate of gravy.

  I left shortly after getting there, figuring he’d give me all the details of the filming later when he wasn’t in such high demand.

  I forced my legs to move faster as I approached another small hill. The trail was frozen solid, which was a good thing in some ways. Sometimes during the winter, the trails around Christmas River could turn into slippery rivers of mud that made it hard to walk on, let alone run on.

  I guess the freezing fog was good for something.

  I kept going, climbing and climbing. My mind wandered.

  I’d been thinking about Amelia – the missing woman. About her poor family, and the family of the other woman who went missing later that year.

  I’d been thinking about how terrible it would have been for the family to go through their lives not knowing what happened.

  Knowing that most likely, their loved one was dead. But the bitter circumstances of that death left as a terrible mystery. Leaving them with nothing but questions.

  And I’d been thinking about families in general. About how when someone left, whether it was by choice or not, it was like they left behind a kind of ghost of themselves to haunt the rest of their family. A phantom of memory. Because that empty chair at the dining table or that seat in the living room where they always watched television wasn’t ever truly empty. It was filled with memories that came back to you every time you looked in that direction.

  If you were lucky, there were good memories.

  But most of the time, there was usually some bad ones mixed in.

  I thought about the small house I’d grown up in. That rickety chair at the head of the breakfast table.

  I got to the top of the hill and then pulled off to the side, leaning forward and placing my hands on my knees, wheezing hard and feeling sick.

  A moment later, the bacon and eggs Daniel had made me for breakfast covered the frozen ground in front of me.

  Chapter 14

  That morning, almost four weeks earlier, had been just like any other sleepy day in January.

  The pie shop had settled into its usual post-Christmas hangover slump. Folks, ready to put an end to the madness of holiday eating, were holding strong to their New Year’s resolutions and staving off their sugar cravings. I knew from experience that this lull generally lasted until the second or third week of January – when those New Year’s Resolutions crumbled like a stale cookie. Sometimes, the diet resolve fell apart in a single moment of weakness when they stole a bite of pie off of a friend’s plate. For others, it happened in a more spectacular fashion. The starvation they’d put themselves through for the first few weeks of January would come to a head, and they’d wind up in my shop, looking to eat their body weight in sugary, buttery pastry and comforting calorie-laden fillings.

  Some nearly succeeded.

  But the morning the man in the gray coat came into the shop and took a seat at one of the booths was before those annual resolutions dissolved, and my pie shop was a near ghost town.

  I’d been out in the dining room when he came in, recognizing him straight away as the man from the retirement home. The one in his mid-60s who was always sitting near the reception desk when I came in to drop off my weekly stack of pies for the residents.

  “I knew I’d make a believer out of you, yet,” I’d said, grabbing a fresh mug and the pot of bubbling coffee from off of the coffee cart.

  I was smiling to myself when I said it, pleased that I’d finally gotten him to come into my shop.

  I thought it was because I’d been persistent and kind.

  I went over to his table, pouring him a fresh cup of coffee. In the gray morning light, he looked older somehow. Jittery, too, and pale. Like maybe he’d already had too much coffee that morning.

  “What can I get you?” I’d asked.

  I began rattling off the shop’s pie offerings, the way I always did for a new customer.

  I didn’t notice the way he was looking at me.

  No
t until I’d gone through my list and he didn’t say anything.

  “Is something wrong?” I’d finally asked.

  He just kept looking at me, his brown eyes reaching for something.

  I put it together a split second before he uttered the words.

  “It’s all wrong, kiddo.”

  The pot of coffee slipped out of my hand and sprayed glass and hot liquid all across the dining room.

  Chapter 15

  “What an attention hog!” she shouted.

  I cracked a smile.

  I stopped stroking Crabtree’s scrappy neck and looked beyond the wooden fence.

  Elise Orcutt emerged from the small greenhouse, setting down a pot of white flowers and shutting the glass door behind her. She picked up a large bag of feed by the barn, and began walking across the frozen ground toward us. Her rubber boots made hard thuds against the pasture ground as she walked.

  “You could say that again,” I said.

  Elise placed the bag down near the fence and clapped her gloves free of dust. Crabtree made a honking sound at that, his nostrils flaring out.

  “He’s one lucky donkey to have such a nice friend visit him so often,” she said. “There’s not enough time in the day for me to give him all the pets and attention he’d like.”

  I smiled, glad that my stomach had finally settled down.

  I had come to know Elise the year before when she adopted one of the cattle dogs I used to walk at the local Humane Society. I followed her on Instagram, where she actively posted photos of the various rescue animals to a large following who helped support the farm with donations. We’d developed a friendship of sorts since I’d started running by her ranch regularly and bringing Crabtree treats.

  I’d learned that Elise had bought the small farm a year earlier, not long after the death of her husband from a sudden heart attack. Her daughter was attending graduate school up in Seattle, and Elise ran the whole operation by herself.

  Elise struck me as a little gruff, but overall, there was something about her you couldn’t help but like. I could also see that she was still grieving over the death of her husband, and I half wondered if this was the reason why we didn’t see her in town much. I couldn’t imagine how hard it was to go through such a loss.