Morrie called a rideshare and we rushed Buster over to the vet clinic. Jonie broke down in the waiting room, sobbing into Morrie’s shoulder while I sat in on the consultation. As I suspected, Buster had hypothermia, probably from being hidden in that freezing secret tunnel.
The vet wrapped Buster in warm blankets and placed him on a heating pad. He set up an IV to help warm Buster recover. “You’re lucky you caught this when you did,” he told me. “Hypothermia can be as dangerous for dogs as it is in people. I’m going to do some blood tests to make sure there’s no long-term damage, but I believe Buster is going to be just fine.”
While we waited with Jonie for the tests, I called DS Wilson and told her where she could find the presents. “Mrs. Ellis is either at her knitting circle or her BDSM for seniors group… I hope for your sake it’s the former. Get her to help you collect them all from Jonie’s room. If you drop them back at the bookshop, I’ll see that they’re re-wrapped and a replacement tree located.”
“Will do.” DS Wilson paused. “Mina, I should apologize to Heathcliff, and to you. I made assumptions—”
“I know,” I said. “Me, too.”
I hung up the phone. DS Wilson wasn’t the only one who needed to apologize. My stomach twisted in knots – I hated that Heathcliff was out there thinking I doubted him. It would do no good to call him, since the lovable curmudgeon didn’t even own a mobile phone. I’d already tried the shop. Quoth picked up and said Heathcliff wasn’t there.
Where can he be?
Ah, of course. He’s gone to King’s Copse.
Heathcliff may spend most of his time cooped up in the bookshop, but he was still a wild man at heart. The moors ran in his veins. There were no moors near Argleton, but therewasa hidden stream in the King’s Copse wood where we had our first real date. If Heathcliff was upset, he’d go there.
I yanked my coat off the seat and raced for the door, already punching in a request on my rideshare app. I could still get to the wood and back before the vet was finished with Buster and—
My body crashed into something hard.
A wall?
Walls weren’t warm. Or wearing coats with torn black fur fringe.
Heathcliff.
My breath caught in my throat.
“I heard about the puppy,” he said, his voice gruff. “Is he all right?”
That did it. I fell into his arms, letting him sweep me up into one of those hugs that drove the air from my lungs. “I’m so sorry. I never should have doubted you. I believed you until I saw you hiding those presents and I… I let the detective in me take over, instead of listening to the girlfriend.”
“It’s okay,” he said gruffly, his huge hands running circles on my back.
“It’s not okay,” I sniffed. “You’re my boyfriend and I love you. Your word should have been enough for me to trust you.”
“Why? I gave you every reason to mistrust me.” Heathcliff stroked my hair. “If things had been reversed, I might’ve wrestled with the same questions.”
I pulled back. “Heathcliff, why do you hate Christmas so much?”
He stiffened. “It’s because of… before.”
“In your fiction life?”
He nodded. “Cathy stayed at Thrushcross Grange until Christmas. When I left her, she was my wild woman, but when she returned she had all these airs and manners and fine clothes and a haughty attitude. While she’d been gone, there was no one to shield me from the family’s neglect and tortures. Nobody but Nelly even did me the kindness to speak to me during that wretched time. I lived mostly outdoors, foraging for my food and sleeping with the horses, and so when she returned, I was befouled with mire and dust – a forbidding blackguard next to her bright and graceful beauty. Hindley relished my discomfort. When the Lintons called on Cathy, Nelly helped me to make myself presentable and I swore to be good, but Hindley’s scorn and my own nature betrayed me. Hindley and that goat Linton mocked me, and for defending myself from their insults I was banished from the room.”
I nodded. I remembered well that chapter ofWuthering Heights. Catherine at the table, cutting her goose wing and engaging in lively talk with the Lintons, with no thought to Heathcliff confined to the garret. Later, she snuck in to see him, and when she dragged him back to the kitchen, he’d told Nelly that the only time he didn’t feel pain was when he was thinking of the satisfaction he would feel upon punishing those who wronged him.
“Christmas became an ill omen – it had changed Cathy forever. She’d been stolen away by the fairies and returned as one of them. She was forever remote and beyond my reach, and she knew it. She tormented me with it, for she alone could love me and hurt me like no one else. All these songs about Christmas being magical – they’re right. But it’s a dark and foul magic. Christmas changes people – it makes them forget who they are. I swore it would never change me – I would never succumb to its spell.”
“But youhavechanged.” I wiped a tear from the corner of my eye. “Maybe it’s not Christmas magic at all, but something inside you has been broken open and remade anew. You’re not that same cold and bitter boy anymore.”
“That’s not Christmas magic.” Heathcliff pressed his lips to mine. “It’s you, Mina. Cathy made me want to burn the world. You make me want to be a better person.”
My chest swelled at his words, only to be crushed by the fury of his lips. Heathcliff’s kiss consumed me utterly, for with his lips and tongue he expressed a longing deep and fearsome and beautiful – he gave himself to me utterly, a promise that if all else perished and he remained, I would continue to be. To be loved by Heathcliff, to be kissed by him, was to have our souls become one.
Everything made sense now – Heathcliff’s sullen mood, his resistance to having anything Christmassy in the shop, his refusal to exchange gifts. But then… “What about those presents you were hiding?”
