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“I’d appreciate it,” I said wearily.

I was very tired. Emotionally, physically, mentally. I took the Gang of Four for a long run in the field behind the estate. When I got back, I called Dax and asked if I could spend the night with him.

I spent Sunday night with Dax. Monday was a flurry of phone calls to Bredahl management to assure them their jobs were safe and the company would continue. I had endless phone calls with lawyers, including Malcolm’s lawyer—who wanted me to use my clout with LCPD to get Malcolm out on bail. I declined.

I slept at Dax’s again on Monday, but on Tuesday, Christmas Eve, I returned home to the Gingerbread Cottage. The Big House had been searched twice, but no one at LCPD was keeping me up to date on what had been found or not found.

I hadn’t seen or heard from Raleigh since Saturday night.

I can’t pretend it didn’t hurt, but I wasn’t surprised. When he’d cut me off the last time, after he’d visited me in County, that had been that. There had been no follow-up then. What would there be to follow-up on now?

Just calling to say we’re still never going to be together!

Why wasn’t I the one who felt like that? Ihadfelt like that, but then he’d seemed so genuinely horrified and sorry, so hopeful that we could still find a way to be together. Like a goddamned lunatic, I’d let down my guard. With predictable results. I really needed to work on developing that skill: the ability to cut people off and never again think of them. It would be so useful in my situation.

Anyway.

After I took the Gang of Four for another long, wet romp in the fields, I hiked up to the Big House to wish Sammie a Merry Christmas and tell her I was giving her the next two weeks as paid vacation.

She didn’t seem as thrilled with this Christmas present as I’d expected. “Do you plan to stay in the Gingerbread House?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Not permanently. I don’t have enough room for the dogs down there.”

“Miss Astrid would have wanted you here.”

“I know. It’s a lot of house for me and four dogs. But I know.”

It had been a lot of house for me and Astrid, too, in those early days. We’d been happy. It was not unreasonable I’d find a way to be happy again. Every day I was little better. A little calmer, a little clearer in thought.

I still occasionally wanted to phone Raleigh. Wanted to reach out just to sayhey. He’d been a fixture in my life for so long—even before he became an actual fixture. But no. Raleigh was the one who’d walked away on Saturday. Driven away, technically, and twice. I didn’t see an opening in the wall he’d constructed between us. Or maybe I’d been hurt so many times, I just didn’t have the courage to risk it again. Not even to salvage a friendship out of the wreckage.

It was less painful to think that maybe when things had calmed down, when some of the wounds had healed, we might, oh, maybe casually run into each other one night at Cutter’s Mill, and have a drink for old times’ sake?

Luckily, there had been a lot to do, a lot to occupy my mind. I wasn’t brooding. Well, maybe at night when the silence made it hard to sleep, when the memories kept me tossing and turning, reliving every word, every moment.

I walked through the lovely, festive rooms of the Big House. There were so many prettily presents beneath the giant tree. Presents for Malcolm. Presents with my name on them too. Astrid would have bought them early in the season, when she’d still thought she’d be delivering them to me at County.

I stared at her handwriting on the tags for a long time. I’d have given almost anything to be able to talk to her again for even five minutes.

Maybe I would walk up here on Christmas Day, light the tree, and open my gifts. It would be a way of honoring Astrid’s memory.

It sounded pretty damn lonely, too.

It was snowing lightly as I left the Big House and hiked back through the garden. I was just about to the Gingerbread House when I heard a dog barking hysterically in the distance. For a moment I thought the Gang of Four had broken out, but then my heart jumped. I knew that bark. That was Freyja’s bark.

I knew it couldn’t be, but…

I put my fingers to my lips, whistled, nearly slipping twice on the flagstones as I hurried down the walk.

As I reached the bottom, a golden retriever burst of the pyramid of shrubbery, and knocked me down into the snow.

“Freyja?”I gasped between wet-rough retriever kisses. I sat up, grabbed her face, stared into her soft-brown eyes. She pulled free and continued her frantic licking. She had a collar, but it wasn’t Freyja’s. She didn’t have any tags. She was a lot skinnier. But it was definitely Freyja. I knew my own dog. She knew me.

“Christ, Freyja.” Raleigh strode up the path, lifted Freyja off me. She transferred her attentions briefly to him, then wriggled free and tried to crawl on top of me. “Freyja.” Raleigh said to me, “This isn’t quite how I planned it. She had a bow. Are you okay?”

I sat up, wrapped my arms around Freyja, buried my face in her fur. She was silky-soft and she smelled of dog shampoo, so…

“Where did you find her?” My voice was muffled in Freyja’s neck.