Page 4 of Clued in to Love
She tugged a piece of a cracker from her ponytail. “I don’t have time to do this. I need to clean this up and figure out what I’m going to do about the charcuterie board you destroyed.”
He held his hands out to pacify her. “It’s not a big deal. One of the staff members can help clean up. I’m sure there are extra crackers in the kitchen. What?” He paused and frowned. “You don’t need to glare at me like your head is about to explode. It’s just appetizers, right? We’re not doing brain surgery here.”
Marissa dabbed pesto from the side of her cheek. She clenched her jaw. Blood rushed through her ears. Who was this guy? “I don’t need your help. You’ve done enough. I’ll take care of cleaning up, but first, I need to find one of the Graffs to explain that the grazing table is going to be one board short.”
“Lucky you.” A smug smile tugged at his lips. “You’re looking at one of them.”
“At who?”
“A Graff.” He offered his hand for a third time. “William Graff. Nice to meet you, Grazing Table.”
TWO
DARBY
Darby shuffled into the teachers’ lounge, tightening her oversized cardigan over her shoulders. She didn’t make eye contact with any of her colleagues, who were busy gossiping about the new Spanish teacher and chatting happily about plans for the annual Secret Santa gift exchange. Instead, she grabbed her lunch from the fridge and found a table far away from everyone.
“Hey, Darby, do you want in on this year’s Secret Santa?” one of the younger health teachers called, holding up a red felt hat and scraps of construction paper with everyone’s name.
“No thanks.” She forced a smile and unpacked her lunch. She knew they didn’t expect her to answer “yes.” Asking her was a token, an ongoing gesture of unbearable kindness. The truth was that her fellow teachers invited her to their parties and baby showers because they knew she would decline. They didn’t want a sad, bereaved widow bringing down the mood while they drank cheap wine and exchanged snowman socks any more than Darby wished to go.
Bereaved, Darby thought as she tried to tune out the radio station playing the same twenty Christmas carols on repeat twenty-four seven. As head of the English department forSummit High, she wondered if she could start a petition to ban the word from the dictionary permanently.
“A period of mourning after a loss, especially after the death of a loved one.” That was the dictionary definition of bereavement. Darby had the passage memorized word for word. In the first few weeks, then months after Jim’s death, she anticipated the “period of mourning” to subside until she realized the definition was completely wrong.
Fluorescent lighting occasionally flickered, making Darby wonder if she was having a stroke. She unwrapped a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and smiled faintly at the sight of the Christmas decorations that some of the younger teachers had put up to make the staff room feel magical for the holidays—paper snowflakes designed by the art classes.
She was having a hard time finding her holiday spirit since Jim died.
Not even her annual holiday prank could drag her from her funk, at least not completely. Every year since she’d started teaching, she enlisted her seniors for a prank day. They spent the first part of December plotting harmless yet fun and practical jokes to play on the staff. This year, one of her favorite students, Olivia, had come up with the idea to remove everything from teachers’ desks, fill their drawers with candy canes, and wrap each desk in holiday paper.
The prank would involve some careful planning and sneaking her students into the building after hours. Darby was always game for any way to brighten her co-workers’ days and loved how enthusiastic her class was about “Project Candy Cane,” as they’d deemed their mission. She just wished Jim were here to share in the antics. He would have loved it and would have showed up at midnight with pizzas and sodas—sustenance for their late-night mischief.
Oh, Jim.
Darby sighed softly, sank her teeth into her sandwich, pulled out her phone, and hit play on her voicemail.
She’d been waiting for three class periods to listen to the message. When she’d seen the call come in, it had taken every ounce of self-control not to answer, but she’d been teaching long enough to know the fallout that would come from stopping a lesson midway throughMacbethto take a personal call. How could she lecture her students on keeping their phones silenced and tucked away in class if she didn’t do the same?
A dull, heavy weight spread across her chest as she pressed her phone to her ear.
“Hi, Darby, sorry to keep pestering you about this, but we really think it could be such a special way to honor Jim’s memory to have you as the guest of honor at this year’s Passport to the Holidays events. We’d love to have you at the kickoff and hand out the check to the winner and whatever else you’re willing to be a part of. As I mentioned in my last voicemail, since this is the tenth anniversary, we have some big things planned—like giving one lucky winner a check for fifty thousand dollars. Passport to the Holidays was Jim’s baby. We want his legacy to live on, and we’d love to have you be part of it. You won’t need to do any work. Just show up, and we’ll do the rest. Hope you’re doing okay.”
Darby’s finger quaked. Peanut butter coated her mouth like thick sludge. She couldn’t swallow. The same feeling of panic pulsed through every cell of her body as she reached for her water bottle and forced sips down. Her therapist had told her it was a natural reaction to grief and that the anxiety attacks and sadness would improve with time.
It had been two years, and if anything, Darby felt worse.
She gulped more water.
Hilary Baldwin, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, who took on the role after Jim’s death, had called her four timeslast week. Thus far, she had managed to dodge her calls, but she was going to have to give her an answer soon. If not for anything else, then to make her stop calling.
She peeled an orange as memories bubbled to the surface, threatening to overwhelm her. Passport to the Holidays had been Jim’s favorite event of the year. They used to stay up late for the entire month of November, drinking hot chocolate, sometimes spiked with peppermint schnapps, and plotting out the map and which spots should be featured on the popular scavenger hunt. Jim’s brainchild for helping breathe new life into the core shopping district had quickly caught fire.
The first year of Passport to the Holidays included six businesses and a hand-drawn map Jim sketched out in their living room. Participants had so much fun that the second year, the Chamber tossed a small budget his way. Every year since, the event had grown. Small business owners within a fifty-mile radius of the city (and some even farther out) would call Jim in September, asking to be included in the passport and offering to donate prizes.
Jim had been like a kid on Christmas Eve the night before Passport to the Holidays kicked off. He tracked participants’ progress and even went so far as to create a leaderboard to see which stamps were the easiest to get versus which restaurants and pubs were making people solve riddles and clues to earn a coveted stamp in their holiday passports. He used to call Darby at work, leaving her voicemails while she was in class, letting her know about the unique things participating businesses were doing, like Smith Rock Wines hiding their stamp in the basement cellars and quizzing everyone on the history of Bend as a growing region for grapes before agreeing to place a snowflake stamp on a passport.
The holidays used to be a time of joy. She and Jim shared the same childlike wonder for the season and everything that camealong with it, from her school pranks and the scavenger hunt to long leisurely nights curled up in front of a roaring fire, watching old movies and sipping Christmas wine.
