Page 43 of Meet Me at the Christmas Cottage
“Jane Austen? She’s been dead for two hundred years.”
“I want to see.”
“Where is she?”
Before Bronte could blink, there were twenty people pushing and shoving in front of her. “Jonah?” Bronte yelled, standing on her tiptoes to see if she could catch sight of where he’d disappeared to in the crowd.
She needed to get off the street. Away from the crowd, who didn’t even know it was her they were looking for. Someone just screamed “famous author,” and it was as if they’d turned into a mob.
Turning quickly before anyone realizedshewas the famous author, Bronte tried to figure out which shop was most familiar that she could duck into. Of course, at this point, she would take any shop.
To her left stood a dark, empty storefront, and to her right, the realty, which was close to the street that had led up from the ferry. Maybe if she could make it there, she could sneak around back and figure out the back way into Martha’s. At least, she assumed there would be a back way in.
Mind made up, Bronte headed in the direction of the street, hoping that it wasn’t too crowded since there didn’t look to be any booths set up that way. She could see the light at the end of the tunnel—or rather, the opening at the end of the overpacked street. Pushing past the last throng of people, Bronte stepped into the almost-empty street.
“Bronte!”
Bronte hated the relief she felt when she heard Jonah calling from behind her, but she’d unpack that later, when she was away from the crowds of people.
She spun on her heel, but instead of seeing Jonah, her feet slipped. Her arms swung like pinwheels as she tried catch her balance. The ground came up fast, and she put her hands up to break her fall, but all that accomplished was a scraped-up palm. When her forehead hit the concrete and she saw stars, the only thing she could think of was that the old cartoons had it right. Stars really did spin around one’s head if they hit it hard enough.
* * *
Everything stood still.
He heard the thunk as Bronte’s head hit the street, and he urged everyone to move out of his way. It felt like it was taking him forever to reach her.
Had anyone else seen her fall? He didn’t know how everyone didn’t hear it. It was a sickening sound, like a watermelon hitting a hard surface. He tried not to think about what happened when a watermelon hit the ground. Prayed that it wasn’t as bad as he knew it could be.
A small group of people had gathered around Bronte by the time he reached her, but Jonah let out a breath of air when he saw her sitting up. An older man Jonah didn’t recognize knelt beside her, a hand on her arm, trying to brush snow from her face.
“Just take it easy,” he told her. “You took quite a nasty fall.”
“Bronte?” Jonah slid next to her, bending over to see her face.
She spat snow and grime from her mouth before turning her head slowly to face Jonah. She winced. “Ouch.”
“You might want to get your girl to the med station,” the old man said, helping to steady Bronte. “I just sent my grandson to see if he could bring someone back this way.”
“I will. Thank you for helping her,” Jonah said, eyes still on Bronte, not bothering to correct his assumption that Bronte was his girl.
Pulling out his phone, Jonah toggled over to the flashlight. He held the phone’s light in front of Bronte’s face and moved it back and forth in front of her eyes. “It doesn’t seem like you have a concussion, but you have a massive goose egg.”
Bronte started giggling. That couldn’t be a good sign.
“What’s so funny?”
“You know in the old Saturday morning cartoons, how whenever a character hit its head really hard, they’d have stars circling around their heads?” She held up a finger and made a circling motion.
Why was she talking about cartoons at a time like this? “Yeah?”
“I can confirm that is real life. Hit your head hard enough and you’ll see stars.”
Shaking his head, Jonah carefully lifted Bronte’s beanie where it had slipped down over her forehead. A hematoma the size of a golf ball had formed on her forehead. Jonah winced, reaching up to gingerly touch it. “Our friend here is right. We need to get you to the med station.”
“A really good doctor just said I didn’t have a concussion,” Bronte teased. “I’ll be fine.” She tried to catch her breath, wincing instead.
Jonah didn’t like the look of the goose egg either. Just because he’d checked the dilation of her pupils didn’t mean there weren’t other things that needed to be checked out.
