Page 27 of Christmas Charms
Fruitcake shuffles toward the kitchen table, turns three circles and plops down with his chin on my dad’s foot. Honestly, whose side is he on?
The rental car place is right on Main Street, close enough to walk. When I get there, it seems as if I’m the only person in Owl Lake interested in renting a car. I decide this is a good thing. Surely that means that there are plenty of cars available and my magic bracelet hasn’t somehow orchestrated events to keep me stuck here in Owl Lake.
I shake my head. It’s abracelet, not a magic wand.
“Here you go,” the clerk says, handing me a set of keys. “We don’t have any utility vehicles left, but the car has all-wheel drive, so you should be good to go. Just be careful out there. We’re expecting a lot snow today.”
I peel off my mitten and take the keys. “Thanks so much.”
Snowflakes swirl lightly against the windshield as I crank the engine. By the time I travel the length of Main Street and turn onto the highway, the snow is beating against the windows in thick white clumps.
Admittedly, the roads are a little treacherous in this kind of weather. Conditions are always more severe upstate in the mountains, though. Once I get to Albany, the halfway point, I’ll be home free.
I lean closer to the windshield, squint hard at the horizon and try to lift my spirits by visualizing myself as a manager at Windsor Fine Jewelry. The windshield wipers are working overtime as I approach the town line.Swish swish swish. Still, it’s starting to feel like I’m heading straight into a wall of white. The car is crawling forward at barely ten miles per hour. At this rate, I can forget about arriving in time to plead for the promotion—I’ll get back to Windsor when it’s time for me to retire.
I can do this…Ineedto do this.
TheNow Leaving Owl Lake, Owl Capital of the Adirondackssign is just ahead, barely visible through the swirl of snow. Somehow, I feel if I can only get past it, everything will be fine. My foot presses just a little bit harder on the gas, and the next thing I know, the car is drifting sideways, sliding off the road.
No!
Following my dad’s rulebook for what to do when you hit an icy patch on the road, I take my foot off the accelerator and allow the car to slow. Again, I tell myself that everything isfine, and it totally is…
Until the car drifts slowly into a snowbank with a muffled thud.
Snow is piled up on the side of the road in a mound nearly as tall as my rented vehicle, and within an instant, I’m a part of it. The windshield is packed with snow, and I can’t see a thing. But somehow, I’ve yet to actually make it past the Owl Lake’s town limits.
Don’t panic.At the moment, getting back to Windsor seems less important than getting out of this car, so I push the door open to make sure I’m not about to be buried alive.
It opens just fine. Only the front part of the car is stuck. But when I get back inside and crank the engine again, the wheels spin and spin against the snowy ground without actually going anywhere.
I’m officially stranded.
I reach for my cell phone, but there’s not even a hint of bars in the upper left-hand corner. No service whatsoever. Maybe it’s the weather, but somehow I doubt it. Was I really just waxing poetic about small-town life earlier? This would never happen in Manhattan.
My eyes drift shut and I rest my forehead against the steering wheel. What am I going to do? The wind outside sounds like an entire chorus of owls, eerily beautiful. I’m too far from Main Street to try to walk home, especially in the snow. And I can’t exactly stay here until the salt trucks come out to clear the roads.
But just as the first flutter of panic begins to stir deep in my belly, I hear a familiar noise in the distance, coming closer and closer.
And closer.
I groan, torn between dread and relief, because it’s the unmistakable wail of a fire engine.
I squeeze my eyes closed tight.
Not him, please.
Anybody but him.
Okay, yes—I’ve been feeling a bit fluttery lately in Aidan’s presence. There, I’ve admitted it. But butterflies aside, I really don’t want him to be behind the wheel of the red truck making its way toward me, lights flashing through a dizzying twirl of snowflakes.
For starters, there’s the whole damsel in distress thing. I don’t want to look like the big city girl who doesn’t know how to take care of herself once she’s away from concrete and Starbucks. And Ireallydon’t want to seem like I need a Prince Charming on a shining red firetruck to come save me.
Mostly, I don’t want to see the disapproving look on Aidan’s face when he sees that I’m trying to escape Owl Lake again when I’m supposed to be enjoying the holidays with my family. Last time, his scowl spoke a thousand words, and I’m really not in the mood to hear any of them again.
Never mind that any and all of the accusations he could choose to throw at me are technically true—I am out of practice at driving in the snow, I very much need saving at the moment and I’m indeed mid-flight back to Manhattan. It would just be really great if Aidan didn’t have a front-row seat to my most recent humiliation, especially after he’d already gallantly saved me from public embarrassment the previous day by force-feeding himself my sad attempt at homemade gingerbread men.
Making those cookies had been fun, though. My mom was right. The end result didn’t matter as much as spending time with her in the kitchen and seeing how happy we made the firefighters. Life is messy, so it only makes sense that baking gets messy too. And who am I kidding? Aidan choking down those terrible cookies meant far more to me than if they’d been perfect and delicious. Jeremy would have never done such a thing. Not many men would, I suppose.
