They settled into the cab and took off into the night. The Woodward House was private, fenced-in land, but if anyone knew the way to sneak in and out through a broken or missing stretch of fence line, it was Miss Carolyn. That woman knew everything.
“You warm enough?”
“Yes ma’am.”
Snuggling into the familiar tobacco and air freshener scented seats, her shivering finally subsided. Though she’d stopped crying a while ago, her face was caked with the salt from her teardrops, as if she’d been swimming in the ocean all day and forgotten to shower. Kate no longer wanted to sob and weep over Clark Woodward, but the salt cracking on her skin almost reminded her of armor.
She marveled, in the beginning, at Clark’s ability to feel nothing. It frightened her more than anything; she swore she’d never let herself get to that point, where she so spurned the idea of feeling that she simply chose to avoid it all together. Tucked in the cab of Miss Carolyn’s car, Kate realized the choice wasn’t a conscious one. She hadn’t decided to die inside. It just happened. Somewhere between hanging up the phone and finding her way into this truck, she just stopped caring. About everything.
What had caring gotten her? What had caring gotten Clark? A big, fat nothing.
“Want to tell me what happened?” Miss Carolyn asked.
“No ma’am.”
“You sure?”
Kate squirmed. The day’s events weighed squarely on her shoulders, pressing down until she feared they might flatten her altogether. Her heart—like the flat line of her voice—remained placid and unbothered, but the pressure on her back increased.
“No. I’m not sure,” she confessed.
“Tell you what. Why don’t we go to the square and get some hot chocolate and some songs into you—”
“No.” Kate barked. Off of Miss Carolyn’s shocked look, she attempted to recover. Just because she no longer cared didn’t mean she had to forget her manners. She corrected herself. “No, thank you. Just take me to my apartment, please.”
“Your apartment?” Miss Carolyn spluttered.
“Yes ma’am.”
“By yourself? On Christmas?”
“Yes ma’am.”
Eyes trained forward, hands folded in her lap, Kate didn’t dignify Miss Carolyn with a response to her clear shock. She would not be deterred, even if the older woman gripped the steering wheel as if she drove the escape car from a botched bank robbery instead of through the empty streets of Miller’s Point. Going to the town square to feign happiness as she sang lying songs about all of creation singing gloria appealed to her about as much as diving into a pit of live, starving snakes.
Her initial assessment proved incorrect. She wasn’t actually empty or dead to the little voices interpreting her body’s reactions into categories like sadness or rage. All of those things existed within her, they just couldn’t be heard over the one dominating force controlling her entire view of the world at present.
Bitterness.
She was, plain and simply put, bitter.
“Are you feeling all right?”
“I failed,” she said, twisting her hands together. Her voice was black coffee. Her eyes were probably darker.
“Oh, honey. You didn’t fail.”
Miss Carolyn’s pity burned her, hot acid on her skin.
“I let everyone down. I tried to get the festival back and I failed.”
“Michael and Emily told me about your plan.”
“But that wasn’t all. He was so broken.” She placed a hand over her own icy heart. “Frozen. I thought maybe if he understood what I saw in this holiday—”
“He’d understand why we love our festival so much.”
“No!” What had she done in her life to make everyone think she couldn’t possibly really care about this man? Or did everyone, including Clark himself, think him so beyond redemption the idea of her trying to rescue him from a life of loss and misery was completely outside of the realm of possibility? “I thought maybe I could save him. I thought maybe he was just a Scrooge, you know? He needed to see the value in people. And himself. And he’d just open himself up.”
To love. To me.
“What happened?”
Kate snorted. The more she encountered the memories she made today, the more childish she saw herself. She really thought she could protect a man’s soul by putting up some Christmas lights and serving some turkey? What a dumb, naive girl she was.
“I was almost right. It almost worked. But I messed it up. He thought I was just using him. And it undid everything.”
“Did you explain yourself?”
“Yes ma’am.”
Miss Carolyn, in her capacity as Director of Festival Operations, always asked three questions in any dispute. What happened? Did you explain yourself? Did you apologize? For reasons unknown to her, the third question went unasked as they crept closer and closer to Kate’s apartment. She readjusted her hands on the steering wheel. From the corner of her eye, Kate peeked long enough to see her press her lips into a thin line.
“I really think you should come to town and be with all of us. You shouldn’t be alone tonight.”
“Why? Because I’m a pathetic mess?” Kate bit questions with the irrational force of a rabid dog. Miss Carolyn scooped her out of the freezing forest and brought her home. She wasn’t her enemy. But Kate wanted to push her away; she wanted to forget her own foolish attempts to change her small slice of the world.
“No, because no one should be alone on Christmas Eve,” Miss Carolyn echoed Kate’s own words back to her just in time for Kate to say something she’d never before said. Not in her entire life.
“I want to be alone.”
“A little company and a little cheer will do you good.”
“It didn’t do Clark any good.”
“Then he’s not worth your time.”
Not worth her time? What happened to the find the good in everyone lessons their A Christmas Carol festival taught throngs of people every year? If Scrooge was meant to be redeemable, so too was Clark.
And if Clark couldn’t be saved… If Kate failed… It
