30. Lacie
LACIE
Christmas morning’s dawn was anticlimactic. No surprise stockings hanging by the fireplace this time. No secret notes. No reindeer.
When I woke up, Jared was already gone—to the gym, probably.
Frustrated, waiting for news that the pass had opened, I skipped breakfast, bundled up, and strolled back outside to the snowman that Jared and I had built, grateful I could manage the walk on my sore ankle.
Snowmobile tracks scraped the snowy hillside. I remembered how angry Junie had gotten at whoever had ridden his snowmobile on the landscape the night before. Still, the tracks hadn’t reached our snowman.
He’d lost his top hat and one of his twig arms. A small inner chastisement stung me—we probably should have brought the hat back inside once we were done.
Whoops.
Had Junie come back out to retrieve it? With the sudden influx of snow, either the hat had been blown away or it had been returned inside. Whatever the case, the carrot had been chewed on by some kind of creature.
“You’re looking a little shabby,” I told the snowman.
He stared past me.
I planted my hands on my hips. “Not going to talk now? You’re the whole reason I’m in this mess. I thought maybe you could wake up and tell me how long this is supposed to last. What am I supposed to do when the whole world thinks I’m married to someone but that someone doesn’t? That sounds psychotic, doesn’t it?”
Again, the snowman didn’t answer.
I kicked a plod of snow and stared in the direction the snowman faced. The mountainside was breathtaking, sloping down toward the sleepy town we’d stopped in at on our way here. Trees spread through the snow, and the sky’s backdrop was crystalline blue.
Who would have known such an intense snowstorm had come and gone?
“It’s Christmas,” I said to the white mounds of snow, feeling like everything was falling from my grasp.
“Once the pass opens, we’re leaving. But my email, my driver’s license, my ticket—everything says Lacie Kingston. That’s Jared’s last name. I—I don’t know if I want that to change.”
I hugged my arms around me while a feverish despair tightened in my chest. I ducked my chin, closing in on myself, wishing it was enough to keep the wistful hopelessness from taking over.
Footsteps crunched on the snow toward me. My heart caught, and for a moment, I thought maybe Jared had seen me from the inn and was coming to join me.
But when I glanced up, it wasn’t Jared.
An older man with a coat zipped over his rotund middle and a well-trimmed white beard hugging his chin approached. His cheeks were rosy and red, kissed from cold, but his vibrant blue eyes glimmered with pleasure.
He beamed at me as if I were just the person he was hoping to see.
“Hello there,” he said by way of greeting. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
His breath leaked out in gentle puffs.
I wasn’t really in the mood to talk to anyone, let alone exchange empty remarks about the day’s appearance.
“Yeah, it is. Blinding,” I added, confused about who this man was and why he’d come over to talk to me. It wasn’t like I was directly in his path.
“Are you another guest here?” I’d rubbed shoulders with a few of the people staying here. And though I’d come to know a few by name, I couldn’t recall ever seeing this man before.
Maybe he’d just checked in.
“You could say that. I come and go.” His eyes twinkled before turning serious again. “Pardon me for asking, but are you okay? You look sad.”
Was it that obvious? Sad didn’t even come close to how I felt. More like a conflicted concoction of struggle and sorrow.
I had everything I wanted here, and the minute we left Harper’s Inn, the minute we boarded a plane and returned to Fort Worth, all of that would change.
I’d go back to my apartment. Jared would go back to his. He’d crawl back to Tia. He’d cut me out of his life for good.
If he was willing to do that, shouldn’t I let him? Wasn’t that a sign that I was desperate, inconsiderate, and he wasn’t worth my time?
“I’m at this crossroads in my life. I feel like everything is going to change, and I don’t know if I’ll like where it’s going.”
I wasn’t sure why I was opening up, but this stranger had the look of a man who was a good listener. Maybe it was the caring glint in his eyes, which were still so intent on me. Whatever it was, his presence was warm. Soothing. Safe.
“You don’t want things to change?” he asked, swiping a twig from the snowman’s shoulder and replacing it at a better angle.
“No. I mean, yes, I do, but I feel like the change is veering in a direction I don’t want it to, and the end result is out of my hands.”
The old man frowned and nodded, sifting through my words as though he understood everything I explained without having any details.
“You must be a woman who likes control of her situation.”
“I am,” I went on. “I like to plan everything. I run my life by schedules, and Jared is not penciled in. He’s on every page, arranged into every day, in the most permanent of permanent markers. Heck, he’s chiseled in wood like those burning pieces of art.
“But we’re at this life-defining juncture. We can no longer continue on as we were; we have to pick one direction or another. I feel like one or both of us is choosing the wrong way. Our relationship isn’t going to last, and I can’t stand that.”
“Crossroads are hard,” the old man said with understanding. “Crossroads mean transformation. In fact, they’re worse because when we’re at a crossroads, we’re being forced to choose which direction that transformation should go.”
Smiling at the snowman, the bearded man delved a hand into his pocket as though rifling something from it.
“You may feel I have interfered in your lives, but I believe we make better choices when these crossroads you mentioned are thrust in our path. You have both had to make a choice. One way or another. My radio gives people the chance to make that choice.”
“Your— your radio?”
A rock dropped in the pit of my stomach, and I gaped at him. He didn’t stray from my inspection. Pulling his hand from his pocket, his hand found mine. His fingers were warm.
I startled at the touch but didn’t pull away. That single touch somehow made me more aware of my entire frame, of every beat in my pulse, of every hair follicle currently standing on end.
Gawking, I allowed him to turn my palm upward and watched as he placed a familiar, small package on it.
“What’s this?”
“Don’t be misled by the journal entry. The mistake mentioned was sorted out; that wasn’t why I sent Jolly to bring it to you. There’s more to that entry that I wanted you to see. You and Junie.”
“More to it?” The mistake wasn’t the focal point?
I checked my memories, but I couldn’t remember anything else that journal entry had mentioned. What did he mean there was more to it?
“Merry Christmas, Lacie.” He winked.
Reeling, my fingers closed over the gift I’d wrapped for Wyatt. The gift I’d attempted to leave on the pile of presents in the inn’s living room.
A series of chills dusted down my forearms. I peered at the snowman as though it had some kind of explanation. Only a blink, a breath.
Questions that should have flooded my mind scattered, and I grasped helplessly for them. When I turned back to the old man, he was gone.
The mountainside was vacant, as though he’d never been there.
“No way. No flipping way.” I brought my fists to my forehead.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. First, talking snowmen, and then Santa Claus?
Had I really just spoken to Santa Claus ?
Impulsively, I tore at the familiar, purple wrapping paper. The pocket watch I’d gotten for my conniving ex-fiancé was still inside, beautiful and embellished just as I remembered it.
But something else was inside the box, something I hadn’t placed in there.
It was a small note with familiar handwriting, the same handwriting that had been on the note we’d found in the stocking in their room. And it read a single sentence:
There is still time.
Time? Time for what?
My thoughts swirled thicker than the snowstorm Jared and I had been caught in. Santa—Santa was real?
My heart kicked into full throttle. My blood seared through my veins.
“Come back,” I whispered to the snow, praying he would hear, that he would reappear and answer the questions now raging within me. I ran a few steps as if I knew in which direction he’d gone. “Come back!”
I had to find Jared. I had to tell him.
Santa was real, and not only that, he’d just confirmed everything.
We were really married now. We could love each other. We could accept this new reality and be together the way we both wanted.
The radio hadn’t made a mistake. This was all real !
Cursing my hurt ankle, I ran as hard as I could, needing grounding, needing to talk to someone reliable, someone who wasn’t made of snow, someone who would believe what had just happened.
With my hand fisted over the pocket watch, I lumbered into the inn, kicked snow from my boots, and nearly collided with Junie.
“Whoa,” the receptionist said, stepping back. Her arms were full of towels. “Everything okay?”
Heat bloomed in my cheeks. I peered around the inn, waiting for the scene to blur and flurry away, the way dreams sometimes do. I waited to wake up, to get some other kind of inclination that this was all a fantasy, but no such realization came.
My earlier epiphany was still in full force.
“It’s real,” I breathed.
“What’s real?”
I grabbed Junie by the arms. “This. All of this. It’s so real!”
Santa had said the radio had presented us with a choice. With a crossroads.
The fact that it had played for us, and all of these things happened as a result, were no accident, just like my feelings for Jared were no rebound.
That meant the—what had Jared called it, snow-globe reality?—we’d been so confused by for days had all happened .
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw him,” I said breathlessly.
“Saw who?”
“Santa!” I couldn’t help the grin that split my face in two.
I was like a kid again. I’d made it through the line at the mall. Sat on the jolly man’s lap. Told him everything I wanted, and now all that remained was to wait.
Except I hadn’t really told Santa what I wanted, had I? Who was I kidding—I hadn’t believed in Santa Claus in years. But now? After that?
Who else could that man have been?
Actually, I’d told him what I didn’t want: I didn’t want to lose Jared.
I had said that, right?
Without answering Junie’s flabbergasted look, I dashed to the room Jared and I shared and turned the knob.
Locked.
Giddy with anticipation, nearly dropping the key, I fumbled it into the lock.
Nothing.
I stared at the key while a sense of alarm settled over me. “It’s not working,” I said. “Why—why isn’t it working?”
On a whim, I meandered across the hall to Room 11. I inserted the key into its lock, and the prongs slid right in.
“No.”
I turned the key. The door unlocked.
My senses heightened. A rolling feeling overtook my stomach.
“No, no, no.”
This room had been Grace Eastland’s. But adding insult to injury, there was my suitcase. Rather than being in Jared’s room, it was on the edge of the bed. My shoes were by the bathroom—right where I’d left them in Jared’s room.
In a panic, I dug my phone from my pocket. I opened social media, praying the images would be the same.
But my heart sank. My name was back to Lacie Sorensen. My pictures involved those from work and girls’ nights out and goofy pictures of Jared.
Not the two of us together. Not married. No wedding pictures or happily kissing.
Just Jared.
And there were pictures of Wyatt and me, the good-for-nothing jerk-face fiancé who’d dumped me the day of our romantic getaway.
My knees buckled. My mouth went dry, and an ache built behind my eyes.
The key was still in my hand. I fisted the key it tightly enough to get a response.
It’s prongs dug into my skin. Yep. Real. This was real.
I was here.
And I was no longer Jared’s wife.
A small, defiant cry eked out with the realization.
Someone knocked on a door down the hall. Or, I could have sworn it came from down the hall—until Jared popped his head into my door.
“Hey, there,” he said.
No sweeping gaze around the room. No mention or question of why my things were in here now instead of in the room with him.
He didn’t look nearly as tired as he had before he’d gone to the gym, either.
“Ready to go? I guess the pass is open now. That Boone guy is going to take us down the mountain in one of his sleighs. Thought you’d like that.”
He was acting way too happy-go-lucky right now. Did he not remember being snowed in? Our marriage? Had it never happened?
I placed my hands on my cheeks. What was going on? I’d just met Santa. He’d told me the entire escapade we’d been enduring and fighting against was something we didn’t need to fight anymore.
And now, it was over?
In one last, desperate attempt to find sense, I dove for my purse. I wrenched my wallet free and checked.
“No,” I said under my breath so only I could hear.
Lacie Sorensen. My driver’s license was back to dreary old Lacie Sorensen.
I let my hands hang at my sides. No. No, no, no, why had things changed? I wanted them to stay!
What about the crossroads? The time Santa’s little note had mentioned we still had?
I wanted Jared’s last name. I wanted the shared room, and the assumption when running into people that we were together, and the pictures of us smattering social media. I wasn’t ready to let that go.
Jared stepped into the room, leaving the door open. His suitcase remained in the hall where he’d been standing.
“Why are you acting weird?” he asked. “We rescheduled the flight to leave today, remember? I know it’s Christmas, but we can open presents when we get back.”
I lost the ability to stand and settled onto the chair, staring at my suitcase. “Don’t you remember what happened? The snowman?”
“We built one,” he said with a shrug.
“And?” I wasn’t going to say it.
Did he not remember? We’d been married for a handful of days! We’d heard the radio; my identity had changed just for that short amount of time. Social media had pictures of us married and kissing.
I wanted to stomp my foot. We’d been married , dang it. And we’d spent the whole time bickering.
What a tragic waste.
We should have made better use of our time together. Feeling like I was drifting, I pocketed the watch and its chain.
There is still time.
Jared stalked to the bed. He released a whistle. “Are you sure this stuff is yours?”
I bolted to my feet. “What? It’s not mine?”
A little surge sprang in my blood. Maybe the key had been a fluke. Maybe I had waltzed into someone else’s room by accident. Maybe…
My momentary hope collapsed. Nope. Everything in the suitcase was mine.
I just hadn’t had the chance to fold and organize things as I usually did.
Jared smirked knowingly at me, and I wanted to punch that look off his face. I wanted to throw a teasing remark back at him.
Instead, I sank onto the bed, feeling as though everything was slipping through my fingers all over again.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, concern folding his brow.
This was my stuff. My room.
Was I insane? Maybe I’d made it all up.
Santa Claus had appeared to me—that had to have been imaginary. I was loony, that’s all there was to it.
It’d been a while since I’d gone to therapy for help with my frustration and organization, but it looked like I might have to reinstate my sessions after this.
I gave everything a final, disparaging glance, and—not bothering to fold or sort anything—I closed the lid on my suitcase and zipped it shut.
“Nothing,” I said resignedly.