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“I wish I knew if Blondie was Charlotte.” Slowly her eyes adjusted to the dark winter night. “But she was wearing a mask and trying to disguise her voice. Not to mention it’s been six years since Charlotte crashed through here like a tornado.”
“I’m not sure I’m clear on what happened between you and her back then,” Benjamin said.
Fair enough. For that matter neither was she.
“I did most of my college by correspondence, so I could be here to help my uncle and aunt. When I was twenty, I did one semester in Ottawa to finish up my degree. Charlotte had a two-bedroom apartment and had listed a room for rent online. I’d hoped we’d become friends, but we really weren’t. She was the kind of person who kept to herself and never made eye contact. Her life revolved around her history degree and her boyfriend, Alpha. Sometimes I’d catch bruises on her arms and I wondered if he was hurting her. But she wouldn’t talk to me. I was always planning on moving out at Christmas and coming home. So, I was really surprised when she asked if she could come here for the holidays.”
She glanced at the dark sky above. A flurry of falling ice filled her eyes. “She was on her phone with Alpha the whole car ride here. Sounded like he was yelling at her. We arrived and went to a church party with my old youth group. I barely saw her over the next couple of days. She kept slipping out and going places. I’d wake up in the night and her bed would be empty. Uncle Des just told me that he caught her kissing someone in the woods and chased the guy off. Described him as young, tall and broad-shouldered. I assume it was Alpha. I guess Alpha’s in his late twenties now. While there are a whole lot of things about this whole Charlotte-Alpha-Kodiak-Blondie situation that I don’t know, I am convinced that Blondie knows Alpha. You should have seen her panicked reaction when I mentioned his name. She’s terrified of him.”
Which could mean Blondie was Charlotte and the man with the bear tattoo was Alpha. Except that Blondie didn’t react at all when Piper had asked her about a man with a bear tattoo. She closed her eyes for a moment and listened to the storm pushing through the trees. Just when she thought the terrifying picture of what had happened these past few hours was swimming into some kind of focus, everything stopped making sense again.
Their footsteps crunched through the snow. Benjamin’s arm tightened around her shoulder. “You said she robbed you?”
“She did, Christmas Eve.” Piper opened her eyes. “While we were all down in the barn, singing carols and eating potluck, she snuck through the woods to The Downs and trashed the place.”
“When you say trashed the place—”
“She went through every room and all the guests’ things looking for stuff to steal. She ripped open presents. She knocked our Christmas tree through the front window and even smashed the nativity my aunt had on the fireplace mantel.”
They stepped out from under the shelter of the tree canopy into the storm, which seemed to have intensified. Benjamin pulled the cloak over their heads as they jogged to a small shed behind the garage. The shed was windowless, smelled like gasoline and was every bit as cold as the outside air. Harry slipped in ahead of them and curled up by the wall. Piper slipped out from under the cloak and let its full weight fall on Benjamin.
“We never had a lot of money.” She set down the hockey stick and reached for a small battery-powered lamp hanging just inside the door. “So almost all the decorations she destroyed were homemade, mostly by me, including the nativity she broke into bits. A lot of the handmade garlands she ripped into pieces I’d made when I was five or six. The star on the top of the tree was something I’d made out of vintage newspaper when I was about eight, and I couldn’t even find it in the wreckage. It was all too mean and petty for words.”
She ran her hand over her face. And I’m not even telling you the part about how she, or an accomplice, hit me over the head, knocked me out and locked me in the kindling box. Because even the memory of that makes me feel too pathetic and vulnerable for words.
Holding out the lantern, she made her way over to the generator that sat in the corner, silent and cold. She bent down beside it, pushed the button and held it. It didn’t start.
“I’m sorry. It must have been pretty hard to forgive her for all that.” Benjamin’s voice floated behind her in the darkness.
Was it even possible to forgive someone who’d never come back to ask for forgiveness?
She looked back up at Benjamin. “The generator’s not working. Any suggestions?”
“If it’s a motor problem I might be able to fix it. I’ve tinkered around with a lot of boat motors and vehicle engines.” He moved passed her and knelt by her feet. He reached up, took her hand and moved the light over the generator. “Just hold that there, please, and don’t move.”
Thick snow dotted his hair and beard. His eyes were gray-blue in the lamplight. Oddly, she hadn’t noticed the gray in them last summer. When he’d been standing outside waiting for her that last night on the dock by the pavilion, his eyes had seemed as dark and fathomless as the water spreading out behind him.
“Don’t ever marry a sweetheart until you’ve both summered and wintered your romance...” Something Aunt Cass had said flickered in the back of her mind. It had been her aunt’s way of trying to explain in the gentlest way possible why Piper’s mother’s whirlwind marriages never seemed to work.
But why was she remembering that now? She had no future with Benjamin. He wasn’t her sweetheart and this wasn’t a romance. He was just a friend and would be leaving as soon as his truck was repaired.
Benjamin muttered something under his breath. He stood.
“I’m sorry, Piper.” His hands brushed her shoulders. “But it looks like someone sabotaged your generator.”
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