Manic in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Christmas River Cozy Book 6) (28 page)

I didn’t feel like thinking about any of that now. Not when the clock was nearing 10 and I still hadn’t eaten dinner yet.

I nodded silently, then dug into the pesto in front of me. Lou had served me up a portion that was worthy of her post-divorce appetite. It was too much, but as I got farther into eating it, I decided not to correct her.

“How is it?” she said, watching me chow down like a hungry mutt.

I looked up, smiling.

“Just as good as mom used to make it,” I said.

“I’ll say,” Lou said, patting her gut and giving me one of her knowing smiles.

Chapter 4

I woke up in a cold sweat, feeling like a dragon was working its way up my throat.

It was stuffy in my bedroom.

I sat up in bed, catching my breath while simultaneously trying to keep the heartburn down.

Heartburn had become an ever-increasingly familiar ailment at this hour.

In the past year, I hadn’t once slept all the way through the night. Part of that I knew was to do with the fact that I rarely ate dinner before 8 p.m. these days, as Lou liked to constantly remind me.

But the other reasons I couldn’t sleep a whole night through were a little harder to remedy.

Noticing that I was awake, and never one to miss an opportunity for attention, Buddy got up from his snoozing spot at the edge of my bed and stalked toward me, his wide, heavy paws making big tracks in the soft comforter.

“Meooowww.”

He looked at me with a slightly confused expression when I didn’t immediately start stroking his fur. He rubbed his mouth against my shoulder.

I gave in, petting his soft head, and stared out my bedroom window. The window was partially open, and the white lace curtains were fluttering in a soft breeze that smelled fresh, like it was coming off the McKenzie River a few blocks away. It was a warm night. I could tell by the sounds of the crickets outside. They only chirped like that on warm evenings.

I stood up, to Buddy’s dismay, and went over to the window. I pushed it farther open, sucking in a deep breath of the night air. I looked out at the front lawn and the sleepy neighborhood, shrouded in shadows cast by the large cherry moon that hung high in the inky sky.

I’d been dreaming about mom again. Though I didn’t remember any of the specifics of the dream, she’d been there. I could tell by the sad feeling in my heart as I awoke, remembering that she was no longer with us.

I let out a sigh.

Sometimes I wondered if moving back home to Dog Mountain had been a bad idea. Other times, I felt bad that I hadn’t moved home sooner. What was the point of being here now, now that she was gone? She would have been happy that Louise and I were under the same roof again. That much was true. But sometimes I wondered if I’d been a fool to listen to her when she told me not to move back home after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had told her that I would – that I planned to quit my job and be here with her. But she’d insisted that I stay exactly where I was. She didn’t want me quitting such a good job at the state’s biggest newspaper to come back home and take care of her. She hadn’t wanted that on her conscious, she’d said. And besides, Dog Mountain was only two hours away from Portland. It wasn’t like I was living across the country. On a good day with no traffic, you could shoot back home in an hour and a half.

That’s what she’d told me, and selfishly, I had respected her wishes to the tee.

Most days, I had come to terms with the way that had played out. I’d been here through most of it, after all. Through the very worst parts, holding her hand all the way.

But maybe in some ways, I hadn’t really been here. Not completely. There’d been distractions. Stories I’d been working on in between. Times when I had to go off into the extra bedroom downstairs and conduct phone interviews with sources. Other things, too. Maybe I’d been here while she was dying, but maybe I hadn’t been here all the way.

But I was here now. All the way. Having quit that good, career-launching job in Portland.

The only problem now was,
she
wasn’t here.

I sighed again, looking down at the quiet, empty street.

My mother was a strong, practical woman. One of those women cut from the cloth of the old pioneers who fought so hard to get to this valley over 150 years earlier. Her entire life she worked hard, never complained, and while she had a good deal of charity in her, she did not suffer fools gladly.

The woman was tough as nails.

I knew that if she was still alive, she would probably be disappointed in me, leaving
The Oregon Daily
the way I did and for the reason I had.

It hadn’t been because I was standing up for what I believed in, or because I wasn’t going to take the long hours and low pay anymore.

No.

I had left my job because of a man.

Because I could no longer take working with him day in and day out. I couldn’t take seeing him in board meetings or on assignments or at the paper’s holiday parties.

I had to get out of there. Even if it meant a pay cut and a much lesser job at a small paper.  

I bit my lower lip, thinking of what she would have said about me being back here in this house. Working at the paper I interned for ten years earlier at the age of 18. 

She always made it clear that she expected me to be the next Katie Couric.

Maybe it was a good thing she hadn’t lived to see that dream of hers die. But that thought sure didn’t make me feel better.

And it sure didn’t make me miss her any less.

A stiff wind rustled the leaves of the trees around the house and caused the curtains to flutter around me. They reminded me of tethered ghosts.

I sighed again.  

Sometimes I thought this house was haunted.

Sometimes, I thought it wasn’t just this house.

End of Sample

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