Page 4 of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
“I’m on deadline.” Maggie held the words like a shield.
“I’m your editor, and I just decided to move your deadline.”
“But I...”
“Have nothing planned for Christmas, do you?” Deborah glanced toward her open door. The sounds of the partywere a low din in the distance, but she inched forward, arms on the desk. It was a posture that screamedyou didn’t hear this from me. “Look, I don’t want to get your hopes up, but something is coming next year. Very big. Very hush-hush. And I think you’re the person for the job. But I need you toget on that plane.”
Maggie fingered the wax seal on the back of the envelope. “What kind of fan flies their favorite author to another country for the holidays?”
“The kind with money and good taste in books.”
“This can’t be safe.”
“It is.”
“This can’t be smart.”
“Oh.” Deborah laughed. “It is.”
“This can’t be—”
“Maggie. Dearest. Most prolific and professional writer I know, I say this with love. I say this with kindness. I say this in the truest spirit of holiday cheer: you need to get a life.”
Deborah had never steered her wrong—not once in nine years and dozens of books. Deborah believed in her. Deborah wanted the best for her. Deborah was the closest thing Maggie had to family, which was perhaps the only thing sadder than having no family at all. And all Maggie could do was look at her mentor who would never be her mother and draw a tired breath.
“Maybe. But that doesn’t mean I have to get a Christmas.”
“Okay.” Deborah sat back. “Then what does the next week and a half look like for you? Sitting around, thinking about your former husband and your former best friend unwrapping presents in your former house?”
Some might have thought the words were cruel, but Maggie recognized them for what they were: a challenge and a dare. That was her cue to start fighting, but all she could do was eke out a half smile and the words, “Presents they bought with my former money. Don’t forget that part.”
She eyed the envelope again, imagining snowy fields and garland-laden banisters, carol singers and horse-drawn sleighs because, evidently, to Maggie, English Christmasestake place entirely in BBC adaptations. “No. I... I shouldn’t.”
“What you should do, Margaret, is trust me.”
What Maggie didn’t say was that she had no intention of trusting anyone ever again. Especially herself.
Chapter Three
Twelve Years Ago
It wasn’t that Maggie’s parents hadn’t wanted a big family. It was more like they’d never really learned how to have one. They’d been older when Maggie was born, and sometimes she got the feeling they were like the staff of a restaurant, ready to close up and go home when she’d stumbled in five minutes before closing.
So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when, two weeks after moving into a dorm in upstate New York, Maggie’s parents put their little Texas house on the market. They bought a condo in Florida and two matching golf carts that neither one of them knew how to drive, and that year, Maggie spent Thanksgiving eating dry turkey sandwiches and sleeping on an air mattress surrounded by unpacked boxes.
She was already back on campus when she got the call, alone in her dorm room when a stranger told her about the accident.
She was alone when she went back to Florida to pack up the condo and sell the golf carts and ship a half-dozen boxes to a storage unit not far from campus.
She was alone when the boy from the Office of Residential Life explained, “I’m sorry, but students aren’t allowed to stay in the dorms over winter break.”
Because Christmas was coming. Of course it was. Christmas wasalwayscoming, but Maggie couldn’t go back to Florida; and she couldn’t go back to Texas. And she probably couldn’t stay in the storage unit where she’d placed her family photos, the good dishes, and seventy-seven novels by Eleanor Ashley.
“But I have to stay here,” she’d pleaded with the RA who was looking at her over the top of a giant box labeledGarland and Shit.
“You can’t,” the boy said, like maybe the universityhad admitted her by mistake. Like no one could be that stupid.
“No. They can’t kick me out just because it’s Christmas. I live here. This is where I live.”
