by Alys Murray
“I did it so you could finally understand what it’s like to have a friend.”
No. He wouldn’t listen to that line again. He wouldn’t be a victim twice. She said this stuff because she needed him. He was nothing more than a pawn in her game, a piece she could move around to get what she wanted. The glory of having saved Miller’s Point.
Did she even like Christmas? Or was her slavish devotion to the rituals and false promises of the season nothing more than a ruse, too?
“I don’t need friends. And I don’t need you.”
“Clark. Please don’t…”
“You know what, Kate Buckner.” He spit her name. It would be the last time it ever crossed his lips and he wanted her to know how much he hated it in the deepest pits of his being. Once it was spoken, he straightened, pulling on the hems of his coat to give him a more dignified, regal appearance. He was once again the Clark Woodward of this morning, the Clark Woodward he would be forever. “You did make me believe in something today. Love or whatever you want to call it is just as fake as Christmas. And I don’t want anything to do with it. I was right when I said I didn’t care about you. I wish I’d listened to my gut.”
“You’re just saying that to hurt me,” she said, though the defense, like the flicker of compassion in her eyes, was weak. He turned his back on her. His car lay less than fifty yards away; he’d use it to head straight for Woodward House. Tonight, he could remain in the terribly decorated manor, a reminder of his failures, but tomorrow he would depart for Dallas and send an assistant in his stead. His direct involvement in the Miller’s Point branch of Woodward Enterprises could easily be handled by anyone on earth besides him. He’d never come back to this place. They didn’t deserve each other.
“And you just said everything you said to use me. If I hurt you, well. I guess we’re even now.”
He imagined she would follow him. Stay persistent. Turn him around and kiss him full on the mouth because she really did love him and he was being too stubborn or too blind to see it. He imagined a last-minute reprieve from the pain of losing her this way. It didn’t come. A little voice almost got lost in the wind, and the crack of her boots against stray twigs and leaves signaled her departure from the scene and from his life. A fact he should have been glad for.
“Fine.”
This time, when she went into the deep, dark forest of the back forty, Clark did not follow her. She and her stupid holiday could jump into a hundred icy rivers for all he cared. He was going home. He was going to take down the decorations. And he was going to go back to his lonely life. He would be alone, but at least he would be safe.
Being alone meant never having to open up to anyone. Being alone meant never having to take care of anyone. Being alone meant security. Tranquility. Ease.
Being alone meant no one could see tears trickling down his face.
Chapter Sixteen
Kate didn’t get very far into the forest. The flimsy light on her cell phone couldn’t contend with the creeping darkness and generally left her feeling like the first victim in a direct-to-video horror movie. Of all the ways she conceived of dying, she never dreamed it would happen in the middle of the Woodward family’s back forty while crying over a stupid man.
A stupid, beautiful man whose heart she’d broken.
She paused in the middle of a circle of trees long enough to consider her options. All of her things sat back in Woodward House. Her wet clothes and toothbrush and the now ill-advised present she’d left for Clark under the tree.
Oh, the present. She’d give anything to be able to slip in through a crack in a window and steal that back before he got a chance to open it. Would he even open it at all? Or would he toss it in the nearest fireplace and watch it burn to ash? Her gift joining the embers broke her heart, but her gift would no doubt insult him. She couldn’t decide which outcome she dreaded more.
No, she couldn’t go back for her stuff. If he was any kind of man, he’d send it into town or send her an Amazon shipment of new clothes and toothbrushes. Any further encounter between them would be pointless. But she couldn’t keep randomly walking through the woods in the dark. The mental Rolodex in her mind spun, searching for the least embarrassing person she could call to help her out of these woods—physical and emotional. Michael would be glib and make too many jokes about it. Emily would probably drive straight for Clark’s house and beat the daylights out of him. In a town of less than ten thousand people, Kate knew there was only one woman she could call on for help.
“Hello?”
Miss Carolyn answered on the first ring.
“Miss Carolyn?” Try as she might, Kate couldn’t keep the miserable sob from cracking the words. In the background of the other woman’s side of the call, Kate could make out the general merriment of the town square. Like an ironic fairground soundtrack playing in the background of a melodrama, the carol singing and laughter creeping through the phone mocked her, underscoring her pain. “I think I need you to come pick me up.”
Michael would’ve asked what was wrong. Emily would’ve asked who hurt her and what they were going to do about it. Miss Carolyn?
“Send me your location. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
True to her word, no less than ten minutes later, Miss Carolyn’s red pickup truck screeched into the muddy field where only a few minutes ago Kate and Clark watched the sing-along down in the valley. As she walked out from the forest towards the glow of the headlights, Kate reeled. To get this far from town that fast, she probably didn’t even pause for stop signs.
Miss Carolyn ran to meet her, scooping her into one of her world-famous hugs. For the first time in her life, the woman’s warm embrace did nothing to soothe Kate’s cracked heart.
“You’re gonna freeze to death out here,” Miss Carolyn said. “Let’s get you in the car.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Kate followed the older woman’s lead. Her swishing silver hair glowed in the moonlight, leaving a distinctly witchy vibe in her wake. As grateful as Kate was for Miss Carolyn’s rescue from the forest, the worry lines creasing her face dropped a pile of lead into the pit of her stomach. A pair of reindeer antlers sat crown-like upon her silver hair and a tacky Christmas sweater replaced her usual red flannel, a uniform Kate probably would have replicated if she hadn’t spent the entire day falling head over heels for the perfectly wrong man. The initial appeal of calling Miss Carolyn was her sage advice, the wisdom she’d always offered Kate through her life. Now, Kate didn’t want advice. She wanted to shut herself off from the world and forget everyone else existed.
They settled into the cab and took off into the night. The Woodward House was private, fenced-in land, but if anyone knew the way to sneak in and out through a broken or missing stretch of fence line, it was Miss Carolyn. That woman knew everything.
“You warm enough?”
“Yes ma’am.”
Snuggling into the familiar tobacco and air freshener scented seats, her shivering finally subsided. Though she’d stopped crying a while ago, her face was caked with the salt from her teardrops, as if she’d been swimming in the ocean all day and forgotten to shower. Kate no longer wanted to sob and weep over Clark Woodward, but the salt cracking on her skin almost reminded her of armor.
She marveled, in the beginning, at Clark’s ability to feel nothing. It frightened her more than anything; she swore she’d never let herself get to that point, where she so spurned the idea of feeling that she simply chose to avoid it all together. Tucked in the cab of Miss Carolyn’s car, Kate realized the choice wasn’t a conscious one. She hadn’t decided to die inside. It just happened. Somewhere between hanging up the phone and finding her way into this truck, she just stopped caring. About everything.
What had caring gotten her? What had caring gotten Clark? A big, fat nothing.
“Want to tell me what happened?” Miss Carolyn asked.
“No ma’am.”
“You sure?”
Kate squirmed. The day’s events weighed squarely on her shoulders, pressing down until she feared they might flatten her altogether. Her heart—like the flat line of her voice—remained placid and unbothered, but the pressure on her back increased.
“No. I’m not sure,” she confessed.
“Tell you what. Why don’t we go to the square and get some hot chocolate and some songs into you—”
“No.” Kate barked. Off of Miss Carolyn’s shocked look, she attempted to recover. Just because she no longer cared didn’t mean she had to forget her manners. She corrected herself. “No, thank you. Just take me to my apartment, please.”
“Your apartment?” Miss Carolyn spluttered.
“Yes ma’am.”
“By yourself? On Christmas?”
“Yes ma’am.”
Eyes trained forward, hands folded in her lap, Kate didn’t dignify Miss Carolyn with a response to her clear shock. She would not be deterred, even if the older woman gripped the steering wheel as if she drove the escape car from a botched bank robbery instead of through the empty streets of Miller’s Point. Going to the town square to feign happiness as she sang lying songs about all of creation singing gloria appealed to her about as much as diving into a pit of live, starving snakes.
Her initial assessment proved incorrect. She wasn’t actually empty or dead to the little voices interpreting her body’s reactions into categories like sadness or rage. All of those things existed within her, they just couldn’t be heard over the one dominating force controlling her entire view of the world at present.
Bitterness.
She was, plain and simply put, bitter.
“Are you feeling all right?”
“I failed,” she said, twisting her hands together. Her voice was black coffee. Her eyes were probably darker.
“Oh, honey. You didn’t fail.”
Miss Carolyn’s pity burned her, hot acid on her skin.
“I let everyone down. I tried to get the festival back and I failed.”
“Michael and Emily told me about your plan.”
“But that wasn’t all. He was so broken.” She placed a hand over her own icy heart. “Frozen. I thought maybe if he understood what I saw in this holiday—”
“He’d understand why we love our festival so much.”
“No!” What had she done in her life to make everyone think she couldn’t possibly really care about this man? Or did everyone, including Clark himself, think him so beyond redemption the idea of her trying to rescue him from a life of loss and misery was completely outside of the realm of possibility? “I thought maybe I could save him. I thought maybe he was just a Scrooge, you know? He needed to see the value in people. And himself. And he’d just open himself up.”
To love. To me.
“What happened?”
Kate snorted. The more she encountered the memories she made today, the more childish she saw herself. She really thought she could protect a man’s soul by putting up some Christmas lights and serving some turkey? What a dumb, naive girl she was.
“I was almost right. It almost worked. But I messed it up. He thought I was just using him. And it undid everything.”
“Did you explain yourself?”
“Yes ma’am.”
Miss Carolyn, in her capacity as Director of Festival Operations, always asked three questions in any dispute. What happened? Did you explain yourself? Did you apologize? For reasons unknown to her, the third question went unasked as they crept closer and closer to Kate’s apartment. She readjusted her hands on the steering wheel. From the corner of her eye, Kate peeked long enough to see her press her lips into a thin line.
“I really think you should come to town and be with all of us. You shouldn’t be alone tonight.”
“Why? Because I’m a pathetic mess?” Kate bit questions with the irrational force of a rabid dog. Miss Carolyn scooped her out of the freezing forest and brought her home. She wasn’t her enemy. But Kate wanted to push her away; she wanted to forget her own foolish attempts to change her small slice of the world.
“No, because no one should be alone on Christmas Eve,” Miss Carolyn echoed Kate’s own words back to her just in time for Kate to say something she’d never before said. Not in her entire life.
“I want to be alone.”
“A little company and a little cheer will do you good.”
“It didn’t do Clark any good.”
“Then he’s not worth your time.”
Not worth her time? What happened to the find the good in everyone lessons their A Christmas Carol festival taught throngs of people every year? If Scrooge was meant to be redeemable, so too was Clark.
And if Clark couldn’t be saved… If Kate failed… It meant everything she believed was a lie. Christmas. Love. Salvation. The fragments of her deeply held convictions crunched into dust beneath the weight of her newfound cynicism.
“We tell people things that aren’t true, Miss Carolyn. We tell them this holiday has magical powers that can save anyone, but that’s a lie. I don’t want to go into town, okay? I don’t want any cheer or any uplifting stories. I don’t want to hear any more garbage about how people can change through the power of love. I want to go home and I want to sleep until January second.”
“This isn’t like you,” Miss Carolyn said, her eyes as sad as Kate ever saw them. She ignored their sting and repaid their compassion with a stab of her own.
“We all have to grow up. Thanks for the ride.”
The car hauled to a stop in front of Kate’s building, and she practically threw herself out of the cab without saying goodbye. She lived in a tiny, closet-sized attic above the local bookstore, a fact she never minded and certainly didn’t now. The room barely fit her and all her furniture; it certainly had no room to fit all of her fears and worries and memories and disillusions. In a place as small as hers, she could dive under her bed covers and forget the rest of the world.
Kate entered through a side door and climbed the rickety set of stairs up to her apartment. The attic had been divided into three sections by thin walls, separating out a kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. Even with the limited space—her bedroom, after all, had enough space for a mattress, a side table made out of a milk crate and a lamp—she’d gone all-out decorating for Christmas. Lights. Tinsel. Wreaths. The room reeked of pine and cinnamon. Kate’s stomach turned, and she knew what she had to do.
With her foot, she opened the empty kitchen garbage can. Time to work. She started with the tinsel. Then the lights. Wreaths. Paper flowers. Finally, the miniature tree. They all met their fate in the bottom of the bin. After a minute of struggle with the lid, she succeeded in closing it.
Her apartment was clear. Clean of all Christmas foolishness and frippery. Now, instead of a sad apartment made merry by decorations, it was simply a sad apartment.
Too lazy to get undressed and into pajamas, she dragged herself into bed, peeling off only her coat before tucking herself between the covers. The place had no heat, which meant she never went to sleep with less than two layers on anyway.
Laying on her side, she found herself face-to-face with The Book atop her makeshift bedside table. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens waited there, begging her to open it and read it as she had done every year since she turned ten and saved up her pennies for this very copy. Its frayed edges and taped-over spine whispered to her, begging her to breathe in its tale.
Kate got out of bed. Picked up the book. And put it where it belonged. In the can with the rest of the trash. She was done with Christmas. She no longer had any use for its lies. Its betrayals.
Only then, with the last evidence of her belief in humanity safely discarded and the town outside her window still singing those blasted carols, did she return to her bed for a long, dreamless sleep.
Clark Woodward would curse the name Kate Buckner until the day he died for making him feel this way. No, scratch that. For making him feel anything. As he drove back to his family’s cold and empty home, he could think of nothing else than the new parameters of his existence. She’d opened up his heart and demanded he let everything flow freely both in and out of it, leaving him completely vulnerable to the pains of existence. Now that he’d broken through the dam, nothing could stop the flow.
It all rushed past him and around him and through him until all he could see was the road before him painted with projected colors of rage and pain and longing and sadness. Trying to push it away worked, but only for a few seconds at a time before it pinned him to the mat once again.
It only got worse when he arrived at the house and found the facade still covered in the remnants of Kate Buckner’s invasion. He could no longer think of her as Kate, the girl he thought he fancied himself in love with. He could only think of her in formal terms, with a full, unbreakable name like a super villain. Lex Luthor. Inspector Javert. The Wicked Witch. To hold her personally and remember her humanity only broke him further because it was all fake, and he was a fool.
She and her team of scheming townsfolk rigged the Victorian-style manor with hundreds of flood lights and millions of tiny stringed lights, which brought out each painstaking holiday detail they’d hung outside. Giant wreaths, wrapped and bowed with red ribbons, hung between each of the fifty north-facing windows. Two proud Christmas trees—decorated with identical gold baubles and red toppers—flanked the front doorway.
It was as beautiful as it was welcoming. As welcoming as it was sickening.
Clark yanked the car into park and jumped out. He wouldn’t stay in a house like this. With the temperature rapidly dropping, he couldn’t stay in the car either, but he could not stay in a house covered in the fingerprints of the woman who ripped out his heart, lit it on fire and roasted chestnuts over it.
Great, now he was describing things like she would have.