Kate didn’t know what Michael put in that hot chocolate, but it must have been stronger than morphine and tasteless as water. One minute, she shivered under the covers and warmed her hands against the walls of the steaming mug; the next, she woke from a dream (where she starred as an animated Who in one of those Grinch movies) with a slight start. As she blinked against the darkness, it took her a moment to remember where she was and what had happened. The bedroom, with its crackling fireplace and slightly dusty fixtures—no one had been in here but the caretaker for almost a year now—engulfed her with its largeness. Kate cocooned herself in the warm covers, feeling more than a bit like Alice in Wonderland after downing the shrinking potion. Her entire apartment could fit in this one bedroom.
Against her better judgment, she had to wonder: how could a guy with a house like this be worried about money? Clark was, to put it mildly, a complete and total miser. A penny-pincher. The festival was just the visible tip of the iceberg. She’d even caught a glimpse into his car’s trunk during their trip to bring food to the families on the outskirts of town. He claimed he intended to spend one week in town, but only packed one backpack’s worth of clothes. Everything about him proclaimed his truth: money mattered, and he wasn’t going to waste a penny of it, even if those pennies might make an entire community happy.
He had everything. But more than everything, he had nothing. Nothing of any value. Kate didn’t have a lot—she worked for the festival because she loved it, not because the festival was paying her well—but even though she counted pennies and cut coupons so she could work in her dream job, richness filled her life. Emptiness filled Clark’s.
Her heart bled for him.
“No,” she muttered. “No more sitting around.”
Admittedly, she struggled to make her heavy limbs rip the covers away and expose her body to the cold air of the old house, but she couldn’t stay in bed any longer. Her eyes flickered to the clock above the mantel. 8 o’clock. 8 o’clock gave her… She counted on her fingers… Twenty-eight hours until the end of Christmas altogether. Twenty-eight hours to change a life, to fill it to the brim with magic.
Slipping out of bed, she marveled at the soft slouch of the pajama material against her skin. It served as a good distraction against the cold floor beneath her feet. It should figure Clark would have a massive, historical house with every modern luxury only to ignore the modern amenities like under-floor heating in favor of lighting a sooty fireplace.
As Kate crossed the room, she caught her own reflection in the mirror. Her makeup came off in the wash, her hair remained damp after her shower, and the pajamas Emily dug up from one of the wardrobes weren’t the traditional Christmas pajamas she always wore because those were tucked in her overnight bag, which was subsequently shoved into a random closet on the first floor as Emily was in a rush to get her into bed.
Emily. Kate paused at the door. Before slipping into the oblivion of a Seuss-themed dream, Emily gave her explicit instructions not to get out of bed until Christmas morning, citing Kate-cicle’s need to warm her bones and recover with some sleep. Kate cracked the oaken bedroom door slightly.
“Emily?” she called.
The house breathed in response, but no answer made its way through the halls. She cleared her throat, raising her voice lightly.
“Emily? Are you out there?”
Kate wanted to pretend her friend’s protective, fiery nature didn’t scare her, but that would have been a lie. This quiet, cautious check if the coast was clear was the only thing separating her from Emily’s anger at being disobeyed. Kate counted to five. Then, to ten. When no voice or heavy footsteps answered, she took her first brave steps into the belly of the darkened house.
The darkness chilled Kate at first; it chilled her almost as deep as the frozen water. It pierced her skin. It amplified every creaking floorboard beneath her feet. Like a heroine in a gothic romance, she pressed on. Clark Woodward was somewhere in this house. She only needed to find him.
But finding him meant first finding a light. Any light. Kate groped around the pitch-black hallway, searching for a cord. Just this morning she did all of the wiring for the strung lights down this hallway. If she could only find the plug…
“There!”
Kate pressed the metal tongs into the outlet and the hallway burst back to carnival-like life. A sigh of relief escaped her. Clark had been miserly enough to turn off all the lights before 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve, but at least he hadn’t taken them all down.
Guided by her new light, Kate pressed onward. Clark would be around here somewhere…she just had to find him.
The voices in Clark’s head—the normal angel and demon ones, not crazy person ones—wouldn’t stop yammering. For the past two hours, they argued and debated, sparred and grappled like two prize fighters trying to go the distance.
You should go check on her.
Emily said to leave her alone.
But it’s Christmas and she’s missing it.
You don’t care about Christmas.
No, but she does… Maybe she’ll be upset if you let her sleep through it.
If you wake her up, she’ll probably be sick and then you’ll have to put up with her making you do all of her tradition stuff all night.
…That might not be so bad.
Who are you and what have you done with Clark Woodward?
Christmas is pointless, sure. Wasteful and stupid, of course. But today’s been the best Christmas I’ve had in a long time.
A woman almost died on your watch.
My comment still stands. Best Christmas since I was a kid.
That’s an awfully low bar to clear.
I should go check on her.
She doesn’t want to see you.
For two hours, it went on like that, all while he attempted to get some semblance of work done. With the office in Dallas closed after 5 o’clock and everyone home for the holiday here in Miller’s Point, he had no one to do business with, but he still found paperwork to read and files to sort through. About an hour into his mental torture, he’d shifted from a secretarial office to his uncle’s actual office, hoping to find more busywork there. It was eerie, being in a dead man’s office, almost as strange as being in a dead family’s house. Except for a few distant cousins, only Clark remained of the Woodward clan. He was the last of his kind, in a way. It made the wall of family photos lining his uncle’s office all the more difficult to bear. Burying his head in the nearest drawer to avoid looking at them, Clark picked up stacks of paper at random and began sorting them. Busywork though it was, at least it was distracting busywork. His uncle had been many things, but a brilliant organizational mind, he most certainly was not.
Clark stacked papers into piles by subject matter, then date. When he’d accomplished that, he sorted by last name of the signatory partner, then date. He shuffled and re-shuffled and tried to get it into an appropriate filing system until finally realizing the filing system wasn’t the problem.
He was worried about Kate. Not in the “she’s a woman in my house and I need to make sure she’s safe because that’s what a good host does” way. Not in a detached gentlemanly way.
The longer she remained out of sight, the more wrong he realized he was when he said “I don’t care about you.” He hardly knew her, but he cared about her. There was no getting around it or denying it.
Only one thing remained unclear: what to do about it. Caring meant investment. Caring meant friendship. For all he knew…if he spent more time here…caring could mean even more than friendship. Caring meant giving her things he didn’t know he could give.
No. No. He couldn’t do it. He’d just have to…lock himself in here until she gave up and abandoned him. It was the only way to move on. Maybe he was getting ill. Being sick always made him think crazy things. Maybe she bewitched him or something. Small towns usually had a witch, if made-for-TV movies had any truth to them. In any case, he couldn’t be allowed to care for her. He’d just have to hide himself away until she shrunk and took up less and less room in his small, used-up heart.
After a day spent in this massive mansion, Kate assumed her hold on the geography of the place was pretty strong. Unfortunately, the house took on a life of its own after dark. Every gothic romance she read said as much, but she didn’t believe it until she wandered the halls of Woodward House without a clue how to get around. This house needed a “You Are Here” map…or a logical layout. Whenever Kate thought she’d figured out where she was, she turned into what she thought was the living room, only to find she’d stumbled upon an indoor squash court or a stadium-sized library. Like a real-life episode of Scooby-Doo, she would enter a door and seem to come out halfway across the house. She didn’t believe in curses or hauntings or anything so ridiculous, but if any house in the world was going to be under a spell, the old house on the hill of Miller’s Point was probably the most likely of candidates.
It seemed to go on like that for hours, until she finally stumbled upon the staircase leading down to the first floor. Tripping down the stairs in her excitement, Kate rushed for the living room, practically slipping in her socks as she slid towards the living room and tossed open the doors.
“Hey, Clark!”
…she said, to an entirely empty, darkened room. A flick of the light switch revealed this was no prank. He just wasn’t there.
Kate’s stomach grumbled. Going to the kitchen would kill two birds with one stone; she’d have her fill of whatever she could find in the fridge, and the resonant noise from her singing against the tile floors and backsplash would carry easily to wherever Clark hid in this massive manor.
She waltzed through the swinging door. The kitchen was not as she left it this morning, hustling and bustling with overflowing platters and saucepans. Its tidiness smacked of Clark’s presence. He’d been in here recently, and he’d cleaned the house of any trace of her guests and their feast. Kate’s stomach grumbled, more insistently this time.
“Yeah, yeah. I hear you,” she muttered, patting her own gut.
To her great relief, cobwebs and canned chickens were not the only thing lining the pantry. Leftover sundries and dishes from the luncheon—left behind by eager-to-leave guests—littered the cupboards and the refrigerator. Sating her hunger temporarily, Kate picked at a honey-roasted ham from the fridge as she explored the rest of her options. Sweet potato biscuits… Apple pie… Garlic mashed potatoes… Roasted cauliflower… Turkey legs… Stuffed artichokes.
When she opened the fridge, all debate ceased. Trays of frozen sugar cookie dough waited to be cut out and baked to golden, sugary perfection. A devious smile painted itself across Kate’s hungry lips.
“Come to Mama…”
Clark’s mental takedown of his errant flicker of emotion for Kate effectively ceased the worried voice in his head, finally giving him the clarity to properly order his files. First by department, then by date.
He continued on this way for too long before a distraction slithered under the door of the office, infiltrating his space and filling every corner. He couldn’t escape it. He couldn’t hide from it.
Cookies. Sugar cookies. His one weakness. The one redeeming quality of Christmas, as far as Clark was concerned, was the packets of frozen cookies with the Santa faces and trees pressed colorfully into the top. The smell of those cookies haunted him now, wafting through the walls of this old house like the ghost of a long-forgotten dream.
Leaping to his feet, Clark made it halfway to the door before realizing the dilemma he now found himself in: he could pursue his goal of falling out of like with Kate, or he could see her and have cookies. The voice speaking for his hidden emotions jumped at the first opportunity to speak again.
If you go downstairs, you can check to see if she’s okay and you can have cookies. Kill two birds with one stone.
You’ll regret it if you go down there. Wait until she leaves or falls asleep, then go down and get those sweet, sweet cookies.
If you wait, they’ll be cold.
Put them in the microwave for ten seconds. Bam! Good as new.
It’s not good as new, and you know it.
Is too.
Is-
“God rest ye Merry Gentlemen, let nothing you dismay…”
The voices silenced when one very particular voice reached Clark’s ears. The confident tune joined the cookie-scented air in tying a knot around his stomach and pulling him exactly where they wanted him to go. Trapped in the hypnotic pull of her voice and his love of sweets, he left behind his doubts and followed them down into the kitchen.
After all, what was the worst that could happen? It’s not like cookies would make him fall in love with her or anything.