5 Mischief in Christmas River (22 page)

“Pepper Posey wanted me to drop this off, too,” I said. “Merry Christmas, Deirdre.”

She furrowed her brow and then took the envelope.

“You too,” she said slowly, opening it.

I backed away, leaving Deirdre to her dogs.  

As the door closed behind me, I heard her shout something.   

“
My goodness!
”

I smiled, thinking about all the food and supplies $500 would buy for those cute little pooches in the shelter.

Chapter 64

“You ready to go home?” he asked as I hurriedly walked down the Humane Society building’s walkway.

The night had turned downright frigid. Another storm was set to roll on through the area tonight, and the temperature was plunging quickly.

“I guess it depends on what’s at home,” I said, taking Daniel’s arm.

“A couple of filets mignons,” he said.  

“Yeah,” I said as we started walking down the street. “That’s a decent start.”  

“A rip roaring fire.”

“Better.”

“A bottle of champagne.”

I smiled.

“Sold.”

Huckleberry led the way, and we hooked a right down Mistletoe Road, the street that ran behind the Humane Society and would take us straight home. I rested my head lightly on Daniel’s shoulder while Huckleberry trotted out in front of us.

“Are you sad about Warren not coming home for Christmas?” he asked.

“Sure I am,” I said. “But you know, I’ve come to terms with it I think. I’m kind of looking forward to it being just the two of us this year. After Thanksgiving, I don’t much mind a quiet evening at home with just you and—”

The slack that Daniel had given Huckleberry on the leash tightened. Daniel’s arm went forward as Hucks started pulling hard on the other end.

“What the—” Daniel said, pulling back the leash.

Huckleberry started whimpering. Daniel played tug-of-war with him and the leash, his knuckles growing white with the effort, but the dog was pulling with all his weight, his nose pointed out toward the woods behind the shelter building.

“C’mon, Hucks,” Daniel said, gritting his teeth. “We’ve got some steaks at home to get to.”

Huckleberry quit pulling for a minute, and looked back at us. There was a look in his little brown eyes I didn’t understand. He let out a long, lonesome whimper, and started pulling on the leash again.

“What do you think he means?” I asked.

“Something probably died over there in the woods,” Daniel said. “Probably a raccoon or skunk. C’mon, Hucks.”

But the dog was determined. He let out a desperate howl this time and then started barking loudly. Daniel was having trouble keeping his ground, and was slowly being pulled off the sidewalk and into the woods.

There was something in Huckleberry’s howl, something that sounded desperate and needy. As if he was trying to tell us something. Something important.

“Dammit, Hucks, stop—”

But just as Daniel said that, there was a loud snap. Huckleberry’s old vinyl leash ripped, and the dog bolted into the woods.

“Son of a—” Daniel mumbled, taking off after Hucks.

A moment later, I found myself running too, chasing both of them through the shadowy, snowy, moonlit woods, my heart pounding hard. Huckleberry getting farther and farther out in front of us.

Hucks was usually such a well-trained pooch. In the three years since adopting him, he rarely even tugged on the leash during our walks, let alone tried to break free. He always listened, and he was the kind of dog that if you told him to come back, he’d listen to you.

But something had come over Huckleberry this cold and frosty Christmas Eve. Something that I couldn’t understand.

Up ahead, by the milky blue light of the moon, I could see that the dog had stopped running. He started barking, rearing up on his back legs, that same wild desperation in his cries.

I ran faster, my legs pumping hard through the soft layer of snow. Up ahead, Daniel had stopped dead in his tracks where Hucks was barking, but made no motion to try and grab the dog’s collar or leash.

Daniel was staring at something on the ground.

Huckleberry’s barking had turned into blood-chilling whimpers.

My heart pounded even harder, the blood thundering in my ears.

“What is it?” I said breathlessly, running up behind him. “What’s he—”

I stopped talking, following Daniel’s gaze.

“Oh my…” I started, trailing off.

A small, frail creature lay curled up at the base of a large pine tree, not moving. In the moonlight, I could see that its long fur was dirty and muddy. Ice gleamed off the pink pads of its paws. Its face was buried in its matted coat.

But despite the fact that he hardly looked himself, I recognized the small creature.

My jaw came unhinged and nearly hit the forest floor.

I gasped.

“It’s him!” I shouted, louder than I needed to. “By Kris Kringle, Daniel… Hucks
found
him!”

Huckleberry was still whimpering, sniffing around the little creature. But the frail animal wasn’t moving.  

A thick, fearful lump started growing at the back of my throat.

He was so still and small, lying there like that. He hadn’t moved at all, almost as if he’d always been lying there, part of the landscape. Like he was a rock sitting at the base of the tree.

Daniel kneeled down, scooping the creature carefully up in his arms. Its head limply hung over Daniel’s shoulder.

I swallowed back hard, the walls of my throat as rough as sandpaper.

“Oh, no,” I said, my voice quivering. “Oh no.”

Daniel looked down at the little dog.

“Is he…?” I started saying.

Daniel held the creature’s head up.

The dog’s eyes were closed.

“Chadwick?” I said, holding his little head between my hands. “Chadwick, wake up.”

The pup’s eyes remained closed, and I realized that I was crying.

“Chadwick?”

I looked back at Daniel. He looked helpless, holding the small, frail body in his arms.

“He’s cold,” Daniel said. “He’s awfully cold, Cin. I can’t feel a heartbeat.”

I bit my lower lip until I tasted blood.

“No,” I said. “It can’t end up like this. It just can’t—”

But the little dog wasn’t moving.

I felt a sob rise up from somewhere down at the base of my soul.

The little pooch had traveled so far to get here. So very, very far. Miles and miles, just to end up like this. Dead just a few feet away from—

I thought I saw Chadwick’s eyelids flicker ever so slightly. So slightly, I couldn’t even tell if it had happened, or if my eyes were playing tricks on me.

“Daniel,” I said, placing a hand on his arm, my voice suddenly trembling with hope. “Daniel, he’s—”

The faintest, quietest of whimpers escaped the little dog’s mouth.

My heart jumped, a feeling of hope surging up like a geyser inside of me.

He was alive.

Chadwick was alive!

Happy tears streamed down my face as the dog’s lids opened further, and he rolled those large, hollow eyes of his up in my direction.

His eyes were dull and glazed-over, but there was still a spark of life left in them. If only just a spark. 

Somehow, the dog had found his way back to the Humane Society. Through snow and ice and bitter temperatures, the little dog had faced countless dangers to find his way back home.

“We need to get him inside,” Daniel said, glancing up at me quickly.

I nodded, noticing that Daniel’s eyes were glassy.

Chapter 65

I awoke Christmas morning to the heavenly smell of pancakes.

I turned on my side, noticing that Daniel wasn’t there. I stared out the window for a few moments, watching large chunks of snow fall from the timber grey sky above.

There had been no filet mignon for us on Christmas Eve.

No champagne. No cuddling up by a warm fire. No long kisses or exchanges of “I love you” for our first wedding anniversary.

Instead, there was the cold, muddy smell of the Humane Society and hours spent nervously pacing the concrete floors.

We could have just dropped Chadwick off there and checked back in in the morning. But neither one of us wanted to leave.

Chadwick was half-frozen when Huckleberry had found him, clinging to life after days of wandering those cold and snowy woods. Balls of ice had grown on his feet and it was impossible to tell how long he’d been there, under the tree, only a few feet away from the shelter. Having somehow traveled the distance between Julianne Redding’s shed to the Humane Society on his own.  

Deirdre had called in the shelter’s vet for the emergency, and she had taken a long time inspecting Chadwick. But finally, the vet had come out and given us a verdict.

“He has mild frostbite on his paws and he’s severely dehydrated,” she said. “But he’s lucky. If you hadn’t found him when you did, he probably wouldn’t have made it.”

I almost collapsed into Daniel’s arms then and there out of sheer joy.

I didn’t know how it happened, how little Chadwick had found his way through the woods, all the way back here. Reappearing in our lives in such a sudden and miraculous way.

I didn’t know how we ended up at the Humane Society at just the right time. How Huckleberry had sensed that a dog near death was out in the woods, maybe even knowing that it was his buddy, Chadwick, himself.

I didn’t know how any of that had happened.

But it didn’t really matter.

All I knew was that it had been a miracle. One of those rare moments in life when everything comes together right. When you no longer have to wonder whether or not there was a greater reason behind it all. Because you knew, deep down in your bones, without a doubt, that something like this
couldn’t
happen if there wasn’t a greater reason.

You couldn’t explain something like this away with words like
coincidence
, or
fortuitous
, or
luck
. There was more to it than any of that.  

We were meant to find Chadwick that night, just in time.

I sat up in bed, took in a greedy breath of Christmas morning air, and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I nestled my feet into my slippers and threw on my red checkered robe. Then I wandered down the hall, following the mouthwatering smell of gingerbread pancakes and hot maple syrup, and the sound of Dean Martin playing over the speakers.

Daniel stood with his back to me over the griddle, a spatula in his hand. He was whistling along and hadn’t heard me, and for a while, I just watched him there. There wasn’t anything particularly special about the moment: Daniel had made breakfast in this house dozens of times on the weekends. But there was something about the way the soft grey light fell on him there, something about the way the snow-covered trees outside swayed gently behind him, something about the way he flipped those pancakes. Something about the way he whistled, off tune but not caring one bit. Something about all of it…  that I knew that this image would be one of the ones that burned in my mind forever, that I would one day look back on when I was old and think…
I sure lived a full and beautiful life
.

After a moment, I snuck up behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist.

“Merry Christmas, baby,” I said.

He smiled, looking back at me.

“Merry Christmas, darling.”

He kissed the bridge of my nose.

“How’s the hero doing?” I said.

“I fed Hucks the first few pancakes,” Daniel said, smiling. “He gorged himself and now he’s passed out by the fireplace.”

I chuckled.

“And our little trooper?”

“Chadwick? Aw, he got the next round of pancakes. He’s next to Hucks by the fire. He seems like he’s doing pretty good to me.”

I smiled.

Being as the Humane Society was full up again, Deirdre had asked me if I wouldn’t mind providing a foster home for Chadwick while he recovered. I had said yes, without hesitation, knowing that we weren’t just going to give him a foster home.

Chadwick, the moody, feisty, squirrel-barking, fence-evading little Cocker Spaniel, was no longer a permanent resident of the Humane Society.

Chadwick had finally found a forever home.

I was going to fill out the adoption papers tomorrow.

“So I’m guessing given all that, breakfast probably won’t be for a little while for us humans then?” I asked.

“We’ve probably got a good fifteen minutes,” he said. “But that’s okay. You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve got something for you.”

He pulled my arms from around his waist, and then led me to the dining room.

A large green and red-wrapped box sat there in the middle of the table, strung with silver and gold ribbon.

“Daniel, I thought we had an agreement,” I said, glancing over at him. “That we weren’t going to exchange gifts.”

“We did, and I kept to that promise,” he said. “This is for our anniversary. I was gonna give it to you last night.”

I stared at it, and then back at him.

“Daniel…”

“C’mon, go ahead and open it,” he said. “It’s just sitting there.”

I slowly went over. I sat down at the table, then pulled the package to me.

It was heavy. I tugged at the ribbon. Then I started peeling at the paper. It came undone in large swaths.

My mouth fell open.

I knew that box.

I nearly gasped.

“Daniel Brightman, you
didn’t
.”

He smiled a devilish, mischievous grin that I could tell he’d been waiting to show now for a long, long time.

“But they cost so much!” I said, ripping off all the paper from the package.

I opened the shoebox, lifted up the tissue paper, and took in another gasp.

The smell of fine leather wafted up. The red Lucchese boots sparkled back at me. Intricately tooled to perfection.

They were even more beautiful here in my dining room than they were in the
Cowgirl Depot
.

“Daniel Brightman,” I said, holding one up and admiring it. “Daniel Brightman, I can’t accept this. This is too much and we both agreed…”