3 Madness in Christmas River (2 page)

“All this food is going to kill me,” he said. “I just can’t seem to stop myself. It’s too delicious.”

I smiled.

“Just try to hold out until the wedding at least,” I said. “I’m not going to like it if you leave me stranded at the altar.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, stuffing a large piece of yam in his mouth. “But I’m not making any promises.”

I glanced around the table, making sure that everyone had everything they needed.

“Cinnamon, honey, this is
de-lic-ious
,” Aunt Marie said, taking a sip of Warren’s beer. “Hot damn. Mmm, mmm, mmm. I’m sure glad to be here this year.”

I was too. Even though Marie wasn’t a real aunt, it felt like she was. She had been like a sister to my mother, and she always had a kind of magical quality to her that made a big impression on me when I was a kid.

Marie had left Christmas River when she was just 17, taking off with Victor Blackwell, the young Blackwell Jewelers’ heir who used to vacation here with his family in the summers. They moved to L.A., where she got married and then pursued a singing career. It never really took off for her, but she sure had plenty of good stories to tell from her days brushing shoulders with 80s hair bands.   

Victor had died a couple of years earlier from stomach cancer, and Marie was now a widow. She’d had a rough time of it. Not only with Victor’s death, but also with her finances. From what I gathered, Blackwell Jeweler’s was on the verge of going bankrupt, and Marie had been struggling to keep the business afloat.

But she carried those burdens with a kind of elegance and style that was typical of her. She never acted sorry for herself, and almost always kept a smile on her face through all of it.    

“How long are you in town for, Marie?” Kara asked, just as most of the guests were finishing up their second helpings.

“Until after the wedding,” she said, winking at me from across the table. “So Christmas River better get used to the sight of old Marie. She’s back in town.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Kara said. “It was getting dull around here.”

“Warren, this pumpkin ale is better than any beer they’re making in California,” Marie said, turning toward my grandfather. “Honest to God, it tastes just like pumpkin pie.”  

Warren looked down and started stroking his white beard—his tell-tale bashful expression.

The pumpkin ale recipe was his baby. He’d made three test batches over the last few months, perfecting it just for this meal.

“I’d venture it’s better than anything the breweries in Oregon are making, either,” Daniel said.

A satisfied expression spread across the old man’s face.

“Well, thank you all kindly,” he said. “But the beer’s just a small part of this meal. The real credit goes to Cin.”

Now it was my turn to be bashful.  

“Aw, it’s nothing,” I said, the understatement of the year if my feet had any say in it.

“Pish-posh,” Warren said, holding up his beer mug.

“It’s true, Cin,” Kara said. “You knocked it out the park this year.”

Grunts of agreement came from full mouths up and down the table.

I smiled.

“I’m just thankful all of you are here to share it with,” I said.

I didn’t know if it was the beer, or maybe the exhaustion, but I suddenly felt lightheaded and drunk with a kind of mad happiness that seemed to rise up from the very core of my being.

Earlier in the day, I’d been thinking a lot about my mother. The holidays can’t help but make you think of the loved ones you’ve lost, the chairs at the table that remain empty.

But sitting there, surrounded by so many loving, supportive people, I could almost feel her there too.

She would have been proud of the life I’d built, of the great people that I had in it.

I glanced over at Daniel. His face was fixed in an expression of pure joy as he finished the last bit of turkey on his plate.

I reached for his hand underneath the table and gave it a hard squeeze.

He looked over at me, and I could tell that he knew what I was thinking.

And I could tell he was thinking the same thing, too.

We were so lucky.

Chapter 3

I woke up just before 4 a.m. to the sound of Daniel groaning.

He was sitting hunched over the side of the bed, holding his head in his hands, clearly in pain. 

“You okay?” I asked, groggily.

“Those yams are coming back to haunt me,” he said. “Warren’s brew has decided to chime in too.”

Usually, I was in the same boat as he was about this time after Thanksgiving. But this year, I was on a strict portion control diet so that I’d be slim enough to fit into my wedding dress. Because of this, I’d eaten a lot less than most of the guests at dinner. I’d been sleeping as sound as a newborn before Daniel woke me.

I scooted across the bed and sat next to him, rubbing his back.

“You know, I was joking earlier when I said that your food would kill me,” he said, letting out a burp. “Now the joke’s on me.”  

“You want to get some air?” I said.

He nodded.

I got up and opened the window. Cold air burst into the room. I went over to the closet and changed, pulling on some boots. Then I helped him change, and we quietly headed downstairs, trying not to wake Larry. Warren’s best friend had had a wee bit too much to drink at dinner and was now sleeping it off on our couch. When I glanced over, I noticed that Huckleberry had found a place on the cushions next to him to sleep off his own food hangover.

Both of them were snoring shamelessly.

We stepped outside into the cold night. The streets sparkled under a thin dusting of frost. I wrapped my scarf tighter around my neck, and we started walking slowly down the deserted road.

We strolled a little ways in silence. I held onto Daniel’s arm, propping him up.

“It feels good out here, doesn’t it?” he said.

“Your stomach any better?” I asked.

“It’s getting there,” he said.

We headed in the direction of downtown, walking slowly, leaving footprints in the frost that coated the sidewalk behind us.

I sighed, thinking about this weekend.

We hadn’t really talked about it yet. Perhaps as a way of delaying the inevitable.  

“I wish you weren’t leaving so soon,” I said.

I’d been dreading it since Daniel received the call from him old captain back at the police precinct where he used to work in Fresno. They’d asked Daniel for his help in an unsolved murder case that he had worked when he was there. The case now had new evidence, and they had asked him to lend a hand.

Of course, I knew he would have to go. Any help he could give them to solve the murder would be worth it.

But I couldn’t help feeling, rather selfishly, that I just wanted him to stay home. With the wedding so very close, I didn’t like the idea of several snowy mountain passes between us. 

Noticing my concerned expression, he placed his arm around my waist and pulled me close.

“Maybe it’ll be a good thing,” he said. “You know, what they say about absence making the heart grow fonder and all that? Might be a good time to test that theory out.”

“As Warren would say, pish-posh, Daniel Brightman,” I said. “
Pish-posh
.”

In my 35 years, I’d never found much truth in that old saying.  

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m not buying any of it either.”

He kissed the top of my head.

“I wouldn’t be going if I didn’t think it was important.”

“I know,” I said.

“I’ll miss you,” he said.

“I know that, too.”

He sighed.

“But maybe me leaving for a little while will be good,” he said. “Maybe when I come back, we’ll have sorted out this house business.”

I nodded my head, but didn’t say anything.

I didn’t much feel like getting into all of it now. Daniel and I had been through it at least a dozen times since he’d proposed back in the summer.

We hadn’t settled on where we were going to live once we were married. He wanted me to move into his current house, which was a pleasant, but small, cabin-style home that needed some renovations. I loved Daniel’s old home, which had been in his family for years, but I had Warren to think about too. Warren was coming with me, being at the ripe old age that he was. And while Daniel was more than happy to have the old man come along, he didn’t seem to understand that his house just wasn’t big enough for all three of us. There was nowhere for Warren to even brew his beer. Something that would be a serious problem for the old man.  

And besides, it seemed a little unfair to me that I would have to be the one to sell my house. Mine was newer, had better appliances, and was big enough for all three of us.

But Daniel didn’t see it my way. And we’d been going in circles with it for months now without any kind of decision.

I guess we both had a little stubbornness in us.

Daniel didn’t push the conversation, taking my silence as an answer.

I was grateful not to get into any of it.

We walked a little farther in silence until we came up on Meadow Plaza in downtown Christmas River. We strolled over to the massive fir tree standing in the middle. The city had just raised it in the plaza, and volunteers had been decorating it with jumbo-sized ornaments, tinsel, and light strands in preparation for the annual tree-lighting ceremony that was set to take place the next evening.

Tonight, it was a giant black silhouette. Tomorrow, it’d be visible from the moon.

In the past, I’d had mixed reactions about the annual lighting of the Christmas tree. When you live in a town called Christmas River, you get a little tired of the whole Christmas thing. Or at least, I used to feel that way. Especially right around the time when my ex-husband left me.

But things were different now. I guess I was getting soft as the years passed. Or maybe I was just happy. I was actually looking forward to the tree-lighting ceremony this year. Who knew, I’d probably end up hanging a few ornaments if I had any energy left over from Black Friday at the pie shop.

We stopped for a moment, admiring the fir. A few flakes of snow began falling from the sky, settling in the tree’s long black branches.

People went completely overboard when it came to Christmas in this town. But it was easy to see why.

This time of year just seemed to be magical. Even a cynic like me understood that.

“Do you remember that snowy night when I drove you back home?” I asked.

Daniel’s face lit up with one of his million-dollar smiles.

“Every moment of the ride,” he said. “It was the night I found you again.”

I scoffed and punched him lightly in the arm.

“You didn’t even recognize me,” I said.

He blocked my punch.  

“Well, not right away,” he said, still smiling. “But you can’t hold that against me. I’d had a few too many that night. But even then, I knew you were something special.”

“Remember what you said to me when you were getting out of the car?” I said. “You said,
I don’t want you to be sad
anymore
.”

He nodded.

“I saw it in your eyes,” he said. “You had the saddest eyes I’d ever seen. The most heartbreaking, country ballad-worthy eyes there ever were.”

Daniel always did have a way of describing things.  

“What do you see in them now?”

I looked up at him, searching his face in the muted lights of the plaza’s streetlamps.

He rubbed my shoulders.  

“Now I just see you, Cin,” he said. “As beautiful as the day I first saw you back when we were kids.”

My heart skipped a beat.

I held him tightly.  

We stood there, looking up at the fir as its branches filled up with a dusting of late November snow.

And I wondered how I was going to make it a week without him.

After a few moments, we started walking away, back toward the house.

“Now, what do you say when we get home, we make up some turkey cranberry sandwiches?” he said, draping his arm over my shoulder.

I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth.

“Daniel Brightman, you were just about hurling not more than half an hour ago. Now you’re going to make yourself sick all over again.”

“I can’t help it,” he said, shrugging. “I’m so hungry, I’d even eat Mrs. Billings’ green bean casserole.”

I started laughing and punched him lightly in the gut.

Now I was positive he was feeling better. I was pretty sure that if I were sick, so much as thinking about that flabby casserole would be enough to make me upchuck all of my turkey dinner, and then some.

Chapter 4

On hindsight, having a wedding on Christmas Eve was just about the stupidest thing I could have done.

But there was nothing I could do about it now.

Granted, it was only the Friday after Thanksgiving and I still had a month to plan for the big day. But I guess I was wound a little tight about all of it. Like any bride, I wanted the wedding to run perfectly. And that just wasn’t going to happen without flowers. 

I had left a message for Penny the florist over a week earlier about getting the poinsettias and white roses that were supposed to decorate the church we were having the wedding in. I’d yet to hear back from her, even though I knew for a fact that she’d been in her florist shop all week.

And even though I had plenty to keep my mind busy with on this Black Friday, I couldn’t help but dwell on the fact that Penny was giving me the run-around.

I opened the oven and pulled out a pan of freshly baked Lemon Gingercrisp pies. The tops had turned a rich caramel color under the oven’s heat, and the entire shop smelled of buttery lemon, spices, and all the good things in the world.

Torture for someone on a diet. 

I removed my oven mitts and took a sip from my vegetable shake. I checked my phone again. Again, there was still no call from Penny.

I let out a long sigh, biting my lip.

“Remember, Cin, she needs you more than you need her,” Kara said, looking up from her holiday Martha Stewart magazine. “You can always go somewhere else.”