Page 76 of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year

“When I was fourteen, my whole family got food poisoning from eggnog.”

“When I was twelve, two of my brothers had a fight with a Nativity set and one of them choked on the baby Jesus and had to have an emergency tracheotomy.”

She smiled into his chest. “When I was twenty-one, my fiancé and my best friend sent me toget more wine, but the cellar door slammed shut behind me and I got locked in for a day and a half.”

Suddenly, his chest was too still beneath her cheek. He wasn’t laughing. She wasn’t even entirely sure he was breathing.

“Maggie...”

“It wasn’t a big deal. They just thought I went to bed, I think.”

“Youthink?”

“I mean, I was always going to bed before them or reading by myself. It was my fault—”

“Says who?”

“What?” She pushed up a little just to look at him.

“Who said it was your fault?” His voice was dark and low and colder than the wind.

“It wasn’t a big deal. The worst part was that the lights were on a timer and...” Sometimes Maggie could still hear the sound of the waves breaking on the rocky shore that was just beyond a window that was far too high and far too small to crawl through. She’d screamed herself hoarse and then she’d screamed so hard she didn’t make any sound at all. And, it turned out, panic attacks weren’t something a person got better at with practice.

Ethan moved slowly as he looked at her. The room wasn’t totally dark, not with the fire. It was plenty bright enough to see him—to watch a coldness fill his eyes as he realized—

“That’s why you don’t like small spaces.”

“It wasn’t a big deal.” Maggie was furious. Not with Ethan or even Colin. Maggie was mad at herself. It was a slip she knew better than to make, so she tried to pull away, to turn, to change the subject or the day of the year or anything. “It wasn’t that bad. I got dehydrated or something and passed out eventually so—”

“What do you mean ‘or something’? Didn’t they take you to the hospital?”

“Of course not.” She had to laugh. “Ethan, I was a twenty-one-year-old aspiring author. I didn’t exactly have insurance.”

“Any douchebag rich enough to have a wine cellar can cover the hospital bills of the girl who got locked insideit and almost died.”

“I didn’t almost die.”

But shecouldhave, and that’s the part Maggie never let herself think about. She could have died—not because she got locked in but because no one had bothered to come looking.

“Maggie—”

But she couldn’t face him anymore. He saw too much, knew too much. She wanted to go back to being Marcie to him. Because that was so much better than having him see her as she really was.

“Listen to me.” He was rolling toward her, eyes burning through the dark. “It wasn’t your fault. They should have come looking for you. They should have taken you to the hospital. They should have... cared. They shouldn’t have blamed you, and they sure as hell shouldn’t have let you blame yourself. If you were missing, I’d find you. I’d tear the house down stone by stone. I’d rip apart every room and scour every field and I wouldn’t stop. I wouldneverstop.”

He closed his eyes and rolled away, and she couldn’t decide if he was hating himself because he’d gone too far or because he hadn’t gone nearly far enough.

“So yeah.” He blew out a tired breath. “This isn’t my worst Christmas either.”

And then Maggie remembered—the tunnel and the story and the scar. She was the idiot who was lying with her head on his bad shoulder, and instantly, she pulled away.

“I’m so sorry. Did I hurt your arm or—”

“Oh, no, you don’t.”

He pulled her back, and for a moment there was silence beneath the howling wind and crackling fire. She could almost hear his thoughts and would have given anything to know what they were saying. But the fingers were back in her hair and her limbs were heavy and finally warm, and Maggie thought she might actually drift off to sleep. And maybe she did because when the words came they were almost from a dream.

“When I was thirteen, my momleft for wrapping paper and didn’t come back.”