22. Lacie
LACIE
I stuffed my beanie over my head, loaded into my coat and gloves, and followed Jared out with a strange kind of hollowness in my chest. I didn’t bother trying to keep pace with him as he stormed down the path leading from the front of Harper’s Inn to the barn several hundred feet up the hill.
If I knew anything about him, I knew he needed some time to himself, to process and come to grips with whatever had him so distracted during our very late lunch.
He always was better able to keep his temper than I was—which was evidenced by how he handled the surprise of our room/key debacle.
This must really be bending him out of shape.
He was so distracted, he didn’t even realize I wasn’t by his side until he was almost to the candy canes marking both sides of the fence’s open gate surrounding the barnyard.
Jared halted. Stared to either side. Turned. The most defeated kind of sag overtook his shoulders when he saw how far back I was.
He trudged over the path he’d taken, returning to my side.
“Sorry,” he said, cheeks pink with cold. “I just feel like I’ve lost control of my own life and I’m not quite sure what to do about it.”
“I get it. And I’m sorry, too. This is all my?—”
“Don’t say this is your fault. It’s not. I saw how thrown you were when this all exploded.”
“Yeah. ‘Thrown’ is an understatement. I feel kind of foolish about it now.”
I really hadn’t handled the mix-up well. Good thing Junie was sweet enough to forgive me and let it go.
My breath, made visible by the frigid air, left my mouth. It was bone-cold out here.
Jared sidled in and offered me his arm. “Forgive my rudeness, my lady. Would you care to join me for a stroll to yonder barn? Meheard there was to be a gaggle of reindeer a-roving.”
I chuckled, the hardness over my heart thawing. “If selling security systems doesn’t pan out, I wouldn’t try acting next.”
I slid my arm through his and both of us tucked our hands into our coat pockets and made the snowy trek together.
“I guess that’s proof I wasn’t the one who wrote that note,” he said, earning himself another laugh.
We passed by the huge candy canes hanging on the fence and into the enclosed, snowy yard. A man wearing a coat and a cowboy hat walked a gray horse from a paddock toward the open barn door where a small, red sleigh was visible.
“I think he’s the one who picked us up down in West Hills the day we arrived,” I muttered to Jared.
“Could be. I didn’t really pay much attention.”
Sleigh rides were offered by the inn, but that wasn’t really something I was interested in booking since we’d already had the experience during our arrival.
“Hey, there,” the man called as we approached. I tucked my nose into my coat for warmth. The cowboy was handsome in a rugged kind of way, with dark hair and brown eyes. “Something I can help you folks with?”
“Hi,” I said. “Do you run the sleigh rides here?”
“I do.” He jutted out a hand. “Name’s Boone Harper. Just rigging Hazelnut here up for my final ride for the night.”
“Harper?” Jared shook Boone’s hand next. “Any relation to Junie at the reception desk?”
“That I am,” Boone said. “We’re cousins. Junie and I have lived here at the inn practically our whole lives. What can I do for you?”
His name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t remember why. In any case, if he lived at the inn, maybe he knew something Junie didn’t.
The same thought seemed to have crossed Jared’s mind because he gave me a little nod. I dug the note from my pocket and handed it to Boone.
“We found this in our room,” I said.
Boone inspected the fancy script with a frown. I got the feeling he didn’t smile much.
He examined the note a few more seconds. His gaze flicked first to me, then Jared, then to the note again.
“I haven’t been around all day, but I can’t say I’ve seen any reindeer around here,” he said, handing the note back to her.
“Do you know who might have sent the note?” I asked.
Boone frowned at the note again. “Sounds like Junie decided to be festive.”
My chest tightened. Had it been Junie after all?
I wasn’t sure whether I was relieved or bothered. Junie had said she didn’t know where the note came from, but she could be lying.
“Does she do things like this often?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” Boone said. “Though nothing ever this elaborate. Most of the time she’ll just offer perks to guests directly. She loves Christmas, though. Must just be something new she’s trying out.”
“Hiding random notes in socks in guests’ rooms?” Jared’s tone was decidedly skeptical.
Boone said nothing. From the crease between his eyes, I wasn’t sure he would add anything else.
Silence longer than the road leading back to West Hills extended between the three of us.
“Do you mind if we have a look around?” Jared asked, gesturing to the snowy barnyard when it was clear Boone wasn’t going to offer any other helpful suggestions.
“Not at all. I’ve got one more run before the sun goes down, so I’ll be hooking up the sleigh. You’re welcome to wander and check things out.” He tipped a finger to the brim of his cowboy hat, offered a nod, and then clicked his teeth for the horse to follow him into the barn.
“That was promising,” I said sarcastically.
“So he thinks the note was from Junie?”
“I could believe that, except Junie told me she didn’t send the note.” If it wasn’t from Junie, then who had planted it in our room?
I gave the note a final glance before pocketing it.
Jared’s attention was on the barn door Boone had led the horse through. His breath escaped from his open lips in short puffs, and he stared at the barn as though he’d never seen one before.
“He’s obviously not the one in charge.”
“Then, who is?” I peered around in hopes of finding another associate more helpful than Boone Harper had been.
Bells jingled from within the barn, reminding me of the jingle bell harness that had been secured to the horse during our sleigh ride to the inn. Meanwhile, a guest wearing a red coat made her way from the inn’s porch steps down the path to the barn, and I harrumphed.
“Should we call it? Head back?” I suggested. “We never got our soak in the hot tub—that might be a better use of our time before we head home tomorrow. We still need to reschedule our flight and make arrangements to get to the airport.”
The next day was Christmas Eve. Would it be difficult to rearrange our travel plans now?
Even though I’d denied it, a small part of me still wanted to hang back and see the Harper’s Inn Event Center located higher up on the mountaintop. The guests would be heading up Christmas Eve night.
But even as I thought it, I shook it away. It seemed like the longer we stayed, the weirder things got.
“He said we could wander. Let’s walk around the barn.” Jared plodded off through the snow without waiting for me to reply.
Curbing my frustration, I tagged along, sinking into his footsteps. His stride was much wider than mine, his feet several sizes larger, so eventually I gave up trying to fit into his steps exactly and made my own in the snow instead.
The back of the barn was enclosed by more fence line and hid several smaller stalls and a paddock for horses. Currently, each was vacant of any occupants.
The sky blazed more orange than blue in preparation for the coming sunset. I roved to the fence separating the barn from the surrounding forest and gripped the top board, resting my boot on the bottommost one.
The usual urgency I felt prodded me to get moving, to be about, to be doing—we still had a lot to accomplish if we were changing our plans—but I tamped it down.
It could wait.
Within moments, more jingling sounded, this time outside of the barn. I turned to find Boone leading out the brunette woman in her red coat in his sleigh. The horse trotted out of the yard and plunged into the trees.
“Over the river and through the woods,” I said.
“Do you think they’re going to grandmother’s house?” Jared joked.
It didn’t take long before the jingling sounds faded. I waited to speak until Boone and his rider disappeared into the thick brush of surrounding trees.
“It really is beautiful here,” I said in a wistful kind of way.
I could see how a person’s cares and worries could evaporate in a place like this. Life seemed to move at a slower pace here. In that moment, I was glad the tasks in my planner had vanished—mysterious as the instance had been.
I was glad for the excuse to do nothing more than bask.
Jared and I were leaving. Soon, the madness would end. I might as well appreciate the more enjoyable parts of this while I could.
“Yes, it is.” He slung an arm over the fence and stared out at the trees. “I guess we have our answer.”
“What answer is that?”
“No reindeer.” He pointed out across the barnyard and to the forest beyond.
Sure enough, no reindeer.
My hand went to my pocket, feeling the paper inside. “How do you explain the card that appeared, then?”
“I have no explanation.”
I began to shiver in the constant cold, and Jared and I stood together several moments longer.
I didn’t have an explanation, either. In fact, part of me was beginning to wonder whether this trip was an extended dream, and I was going to wake up later. Like Alice’s jaunt down the rabbit hole or Dorothy’s trip to Oz.
Stories had basis in reality, didn’t they? Maybe we’d wake at any moment and find this all a bizarre fantasy.
“Look,” Jared said with a gasp.
He patted my arm a couple of times and then extended his arm across the top of the fence.
I followed the direction he pointed and gasped as well. A handful of animals were meandering through the break in the trees. They were no bigger than cows and much thinner, with speckled white coats of fur and ashen gray noses and legs, which were slender and hoofed.
In spite of my coat’s warmth, the hairs on my arms stood on end. I rubbed them away and lowered both feet to the snowy ground.
“No way,” I said. “Are those?—”
“Yeah.”
“They’re actually?—”
“Looks like it to me.”
Reindeer. Caribou. Whatever a person wanted to call them.
The note had been legit.
The sight was a pungent aroma, a shard of broken glass, stark and sharp and crisp and too real to deny.
They were actually here. I shot a quick peek at my phone.
“Right on time,” I said with a startled blink.
“Seriously?” Jared peered down to affirm the fact himself before his eyes trailed to catch mine. “I’m not sure how to feel about this right now,” he admitted. “If this was staged, who has reindeer at their disposal to stage things like this?”
“Without telling any of the Harper’s Inn staff,” I added.
Junie didn’t seem like the kind of person who lied easily. Yet, how was it that no one knew the reindeer were here?
Why us? Why had the note alerted us about this appearance?
“Uncanny,” Jared murmured.
“Yes. I keep wondering if this is a dream we’re experiencing; one that we’ll wake from at any time.”
“We didn’t make up the room thing. Or my social media feed. Or our parents’ reactions.”
True.
The reindeer moseyed closer. One on the right had darker coloring than the others, appearing almost gray rather than white. His jaw worked over a twig or a leaf or something in his mouth. He looked almost directly at me as he drew nearer, and I got the sense from the gleam in his dark marble eyes that he knew more about what was going on than I did.
How was that possible?
Either they’ll be there, or they won’t. Maybe you’ll get some answers.
I failed to see how reindeer could answer anything about what was going on, but at least I wasn’t going crazy. They were here. This was really happening.
“Have you ever seen reindeer before?” I asked.
“Not in real life.”
I hadn’t, either. My only experiences with these particular animals had been in cheesy Christmas movies or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer books.
“Come on.” Jared climbed the fence and hurtled himself over, landing in the soft snow on the tree-side.
Too bad we hadn’t stopped by the kitchen for more carrots after all. As it was, I scrambled up after him, pivoted over the side, and leaped down, landing close to him.
Jared peered at me and put a finger to his lips. Then he took a few steps toward the reindeer.
“Just what are you planning on doing?” I whispered, as though loudness might spook the creatures and send them running.
“We were invited here,” he said. “Might as well go check them out.”
“Hang on.” I tugged his hand, pulling him to a stop. Jared quirked a bushy brow. “You can’t tell me you believe these are really Santa’s reindeer.”
Granted, I was starting to give in and accept the fact that the magic at Harper’s Inn actually existed, but Santa? No way. No flipping way could Santa be real.
Yet, I couldn’t deny my own eyes.
“I came today to get some questions answered,” he said.
“And you think reindeer will give you some answers?”
His lips tugged upward. “If they’re really Santa’s reindeer, then they will.”