Page 74 of Mistletoe & Magic
My heart skips and then pounds hard enough to make my fingers tremble. I circle the counter. “Junie, sweetie. Come out. You are scaring me.”
Nothing.
I yank open the office door. Empty. I check the little bathroom. Empty. The back hall. Empty. I lean over the counter and look under it, because sometimes she curls up with Lola like a puppy. No sign of Lola, either.
“Remy!” I shout, my voice higher than I want it to be.
He is out by the bailing machine with Tate, but he hears me. I know it because he drops the strap in his hands and is already moving. Tate looks up, alarm flashing across his face, and starts toward the shop.
“What is it?” Remy asks, breath fogging as he hits the door.
“I can’t find her,” I say, and the words scrape my throat on the way out. “She was here. She was coloring. I looked everywhere. She is not here.”
For one beat his face empties. The kind of empty that looks like a cliff edge. Then he is past me, checking the office, the bathroom, the back hall. I follow, listing places she could be, things she could be doing, cures to panic that don’t work on anything real.
He comes back to the counter, eyes too bright. “How could you lose her?”
“She was right here.” My voice is thin. I taste metal. I hate that I let myself lose sign of her for even a minute.
He stalks to the door and bellows her name across the lot. The sound rolls over the whole property and hits me in the chest like a shove. Tate is already in motion, jogging toward the tree rows. I grab my coat and run after Remy.
He turns and yells, “You were never supposed to work the tree farm. You are the nanny!”
I feel gutted with his words. Shredded. But I push it aside and just worry about Junie. I need to find her. I need to know that she’s okay.
Snow dusts the ground, thin and glittering, packed down in tracks from the rush this morning. There are too many prints. Too many directions. People have been everywhere looking at trees today. So many people have been in and out of here. My breath comes short and white.
“Junie!” I call, my voice breaking. “Bug, where are you?”
We do a quick sweep of the obvious. The cocoa stand, the wreath table, the truck bed where she sometimes climbs with permission. Nothing. Remy hits the barn at a run and flicks on every light. The goats lift their heads, curious. The tack room is empty. The office is empty. The hay loft is empty. He is breathing like he has been sprinting for miles.
“Pete,” I say, half pleading as I reach the back corner. He is in his chair with a blanket over his knees, eyes sharp with worry. “Have you seen her?”
“No,” he says, and his face is full of worry, which I hate. “I’ll call Donna and Lilith.”
Remy pushes past me again. “I can’t believe this!” He yells, his face full of worry.
“I’m so sorry, Remy,” I say, and the truth of it makes me shake.
He turns on me, and his eyes are wild. “Sorry doesn’t make her come back right now. She could be anywhere.”
The words crack through me. I feel them, clean and cruel, like stepping on glass. I open my mouth, and nothing comes out at first. My vision swims. My cheeks burn.
“I turned to fold the shirts,” I finally manage. “She was right there. I looked up and she was gone. I am sorry. I am so sorry.”
He flinches like the wordsorryis gasoline on a fire. “Folding shirts wasn’t your job, Ivy.”
I nod, because if I argue I will fall apart. And he’s not wrong. I did this. I lost her. This is my fault. I grab for anything steady. “We will find her.”
Word spreads fast. Finn’s truck fishtails into the lot, door flying open before the engine is off. He takes one look at my face and does not waste a breath on questions. He heads for the creek at a dead sprint. Rowan and Willa pull in a minute later, still in coats, flashlights in hand even though it is daylight. Tate loops around the fence line and calls out that he will check the road to the old dock. Donna and Lilith arrive, bundled, grim, focused.
“Call the neighbors,” Donna says to no one in particular, already scanning the tree rows with a mother’s courage. “Tell them to check sheds and porches.”
I keep moving. I check behind every stack of pallets, under every table, between every row. I call until my voice frays.
Time becomes mud. It is only an hour, they tell me later, but in my body, it stretches long and thin until it feels like it will snap. I run the same paths twice, three times, because what if I missed her hat under a branch, what if I did not call loud enough, what if she answered and I did not hear?
At the edge of the field, I stop and bend at the waist, palms on my knees, gagging on air. Panic rises hard and oily in my throat. I swallow it down. I keep moving.
