Chapter 1 #2
Despite her need to clean the sweater, she slowed passing the skating rink. You paid double price for not even half the ice and yet taking a turn around this chopped and gouged surface while her mother shopped for presents had been something Hayleigh had looked forward to every year as a child.
There had simply been something enchanting about spinning around the base of the tree, reaching out in an effort to snag a branch and stumbling, just barely catching yourself before you face-planted (or not, she’d chipped a tooth one year while falling directly in front of her first crush).
You could order a hot drink and sip it as you skated, the warm liquid countering the radiant chill of the ice.
She’d taken Grayson to the rink on one of their earliest dates, but he’d spent the entire time complaining about how they should have just gone to the Kraken community ice complex instead. It was bigger, cleaner, and not full of children buzzed on cocoa.
His complaints had killed her desire to go back. Because he was right, of course. It was an objectively terrible ice rink. But for only a moment, she slipped back to the Hayleigh she’d once been, twirling around that rink with no obligations except to enjoy the magic of the season.
Her nostalgia hardened and left a bitter taste in her mouth.
She’d believed in holiday miracles back then, but now she understood that the only real holiday miracle was surviving to the next.
Whatever small sense of festive comfort she’d held on to had been stripped away last year.
Now candy canes and carols brought back vivid memories of business deals gone wrong and unexpected and thoroughly unwanted magic that had left her babbling like a fool in front of the people who held the keys to her future.
A little girl struggled her way across the ice rink.
A quick glance around confirmed that the child’s caretaker was more interested in his phone than offering pointers.
She almost walked on—this wasn’t her problem and she had a stain to tackle—but there was something about the little girl’s quiet struggle that wouldn’t let her pass.
“Hey,” Hayleigh called out, leaning over the barrier.
The girl looked up with a question in her eyes.
“Bend your knees a little. Also, you can stick your arms out for balance, and I know it’s tempting but don’t look at your feet; keep your eyes on where you’re going.”
The little girl nodded and launched off with eager confidence, but Hayleigh couldn’t wait to see if it would pay off. She pressed on, her rush bringing her toe-to-toe with a group of lunchers that chatted their way through the swinging doors of a Brazilian steakhouse.
Recognition hit with an unwelcome lurch.
The Goshen Group logo was plastered on every matching navy blue sweater vest. Only one member of the group stood out.
She was dressed in an ivory Max Mara jumpsuit—blemish-free despite the fact that they’d walked out of a restaurant where meat was served dripping from sticks.
Hayleigh had always vetoed Fogo de Ch?o, but it seemed this woman had no objections.
Her face was oddly familiar, and a moment later, Hayleigh placed it. Briley Marie—a well-known yoga and wellness influencer whose videos she’d had once pulled a hip flexor trying to keep up with. It seemed Briley now worked for the Goshen Group.
“Hayleigh.” Her old boss was looking directly at her, his eyes sliding up and down, clocking the stain on her sweater and the sloppiness of her hair.
He’d once dressed her down in front of the team for having a smudge of foundation on her collar during a client meeting.
She wished she could go back and point out that no one had been looking at her makeup, not with him sitting next to her in a shade of spray tan that shouldn’t be legal for men over fifty.
“So nice to see you,” Jack said, lying through his teeth.
“Mm, I could’ve done without.”
A frown flickered across his face. What did he expect? She’d stopped being obligated to play nice when he’d fired her, and she wasn’t about to hand over what little dignity she had left today.
Jack’s smile was all sharp incisors. “Have you met Briley? She’s our new CDM.”
Hayleigh’s attempt at stoicism cracked as she realized—this was her replacement.
The young woman perked at the sound of her name like an eager puppy. “Briley,” continued Jack, “this is Hayleigh Gray.”
“The Hayleigh Gray?” gasped the young woman. She couldn’t have been over twenty-three, the same age Hayleigh had been when she’d started at Goshen, fresh out of business school. “I’ve heard so much about you!”
“I’m sure,” said Hayleigh. Her eyes slid back to Jack. “So the job listing calls for ‘MBA or equivalent social media followers’ these days, huh? Or was it enough that she was willing to tolerate the smell of meat sweats and that Tom Ford knockoff you’re drenched in?”
“Briley’s an excellent development manager,” said Jack, settling his hand on the young woman’s bare shoulder in a way that was all too familiar. “She hasn’t let me down yet.”
“Good, because the second she does, you’ll cut her loose, right? No matter how many times she’s come through in the past.”
Briley looked like a record scratch in human form, and Hayleigh felt a pinch of guilt at sticking the other woman in the middle of their messy history.
Jack chuckled, taking a few steps closer, close enough that the familiar cloying scent of his cheap cologne—a sloppy chemical representation of the natural notes it was attempting to mimic—filled her nose.
“Hayleigh, Hayleigh,” he said with a chuckle that mimed nostalgic affection. Then he spoke low, leaning in close so only she could hear. “Jealousy is the one thing that looks uglier on you than failure.”
He pulled away with a stiff, manufactured smile. “Have a merry Christmas.”
When Hayleigh finally stepped into the parking garage, the shame she had been forcing down boiled over, burning hot beneath her skin and coiling like molten glass around her throat. Tears rolled down her face.
“Get it together, Gray,” she muttered, wiping her eyes and doing her best to will the tears to stop.
“Carol of the Bells” played from speakers overhead, eerily hypnotic in its minor tone and rhythmic chanting borrowed from Ukrainian folk music. A rustling of wings cut its way through the soundscape, drawing her attention up.
An enormous raven sat perched beside a small bird with mousy gray feathers streaked burnt umber.
Just beyond them was an entire flock: geese, swans, doves, hens, and blackbirds.
They had amassed on the garage beams and were looking directly at her with dark, beady eyes. Taking in her every movement.
She race-walked toward where she thought she’d left her car, tapping her fob in the hopes that the telltale chiming of locks would get her there faster.
But she hadn’t gone more than ten steps before the birds simultaneously swooped into the air, traveling toward her in a cloud as the music overhead crashed with dense chords.
“Oh God.” She broke into an all-out sprint, clicking the fob wildly. A prickling feeling traveled down her spine, and her nostrils filled with the clean, cold smell of dried pine and a hint of beeswax and smoke.
“Run if you like, but the clever ones always learn when to stop,” called an old voice, wispy but not feeble. The long shadow of a woman stretched across the concrete, but when Hayleigh followed it to its source, no one was there.
The birds enveloped her in a fog of many-colored bodies. She crouched with a shriek, covering her head while feathers fell like snowfall, tickling her skin as they tumbled past.
Suddenly the sound of beating wings cut out, and the air stilled. She ventured to open one eye and then the other. There was no sign of the birds, nor of the old woman—not even an errant feather on the ground.
Only an annoyed-looking family staring at her through the windows of an idling minivan, clearly waiting for her to get out of the way so they could proceed up the ramp.
Cursed.