David Handler - The Snow White Christmas Cookie

He fetched his gloves and stocking cap, grinning at her. “I don’t either.”

It was a fluffy, pure-white snow and there was almost no wind. Just a dreamy, wonderful silence. Mitch loved how quiet the world got when it snowed this way. He and Josie tromped their way down the narrow pathway in the thigh-high drifts that their own footsteps had made on previous mornings. Mitch still could not believe how much snow there was. It was as if somebody had buried the whole island beneath three feet of shaving cream. There was no trace of recognizable landscape anywhere. The shuttered summer houses looked like igloos.

The tide was going out, exposing a smooth, firm strip of beach. They ran side by side, their pace slow but steady, snowflakes smacking them in the face. They’d taken to running an hour’s worth of laps around the island. Mitch had no idea how many miles that was. Didn’t really care. It was how much time you put in that mattered, not how far you went. Josie ran very erect and was never out of breath. She was five-feet-seven, tops. Mitch’s legs were definitely longer. Yet he always sensed that Dorset’s life coach was dialing down for his benefit. If she wanted to she could take off on him like the Road Runner.

“How did Bryce do at the party?” she asked as they jogged past a trio of gulls searching for their breakfast at the water’s edge.

“He seemed okay,” Mitch puffed. “Why are you asking?”

“Because he’s not okay. He’s not even within shouting distance of okay. He really, really didn’t want to go. And he would only stay for a half hour. We came home and watched one of your Budd Boetticher westerns with Randolph Scott. Bryce loves those movies. So do I. There’s something so intensely real about them. And Randolph Scott is just so calm and sure. Bryce isn’t calm or sure. He’s still trying to figure out how to live with himself when he’s sober. That’s not easy, Mitch. He’s been self-medicating since he was thirteen-alcohol, pot, coke, ludes. Hell, when he first came to me he was still getting Sheened every night. And wasn’t taking care of himself at all. Would you believe he hadn’t had his teeth cleaned for twelve whole years?”

“And I’m guessing he didn’t floss daily.”

“He didn’t want to be that guy anymore. And we’ve made a lot of progress. He’s learning how to hold himself responsible for the choices he makes. We’ve broken his pattern of dependency on Vicodin and Xanax. We practice yoga twice a day for his back pain, perform breathing exercises for his anxiety. His nutrition is much, much better. And it’s good for him to have work to do out here. It keeps his mind occupied and his hands busy.” She wrinkled her pink snub of a nose. “Gosh knows he doesn’t use them for anything else.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. We just had a bit of a tiff this morning, that’s all.” She let out a laugh as they ran past the old lighthouse. “This situation is rich with irony.”

“What situation?”

“I spend all day long trying to help people with their problems, and I have no one to talk to about my own.”

“Sure you do. You have me. That’s what running buddies are for.”

“Our love life has…” Josie glanced over at him, her mouth tightening. “It’s become nonexistent. He has no interest in me at all anymore.”

“Have you talked to him about it?”

“I just tried. That’s what our tiff was about. He said, and I quote, ‘You have no idea what it’s like to be me.’ I said, ‘Hey, mister, let’s you and me climb out of that pity pit, preferably while we’re both naked.’ And he said, ‘This is the real me. Get used to it or get lost.’ He got really withdrawn and quiet after that. And then I left to run with you. I honestly don’t know what’s happened, Mitch. Things were so great between us that way. Now we lie in bed night after night and he never so much as touches me.”

“That’s pretty hard to imagine.”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “Meaning?…”

“You’re a good-looking woman, naybs.”

“I appreciate the compliment, but I haven’t felt like one lately. I watched you and Des standing there together last night, glowing with so much love for each other, and it made me ache inside. I wish Bryce and I had that. I–I thought we did. But he’s pulling away from me and I don’t know how to hold on to him. Bryce is someone who has never experienced any kind of love. He’s never belonged to a family. Never belonged anywhere. And he’s really a very sensitive man. He told me once that he used to be angry at the world. He isn’t angry anymore. But he still doesn’t trust anyone. And he for damned sure won’t let anyone in. He’s a project. I knew that going in. He has his good days and his bad days. Today’s a bad day. He was seeing a shrink up in Essex before I took him on as a client. He decided to stop seeing him a few weeks ago. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe he needs to talk out his underlying problems some more. I’m going to suggest that real gently when I get back.” She flashed a faint smile at Mitch. “Sorry to dump all of this on you.”

“Don’t be sorry. I told you-that’s what running buddies are for.”

The snow was falling even harder by the time Mitch parted company with Josie and trudged back to his cottage, exhausted but invigorated. He brushed his snow-caked hoodie off on the front porch before he went inside and peeled off his thermal layers one by one by one en route to a hot shower, which felt pretty damned good. He lingered in there for a few minutes, letting the hot water beat down on him. By now his stomach was growling. He was thinking about those Cocoa Puffs that Josie had tossed in the trash. Thinking that maybe he could fish them out, wash them one puff at a time and dry them in the toaster oven. But then it occurred to him that doing this would signify that he was a truly diseased person. No, those Cocoa Puffs were history, he decided as he toweled himself dry. He’d have to settle for the same dee-licious kibble that he fed the cats, repackaged under its human brand name-Grape-Nuts.

He was getting dressed when someone pounded on his front door. Josie came bursting in, still wearing her snow-caked running clothes. Her blue eyes were bulging and she was speechless.

“What is it, naybs? What’s wrong?”

“Bryce is … he’s lying in bed with a bunch of empty pill bottles and a bottle of Cuervo,” she gulped. “He’s gone, Mitch.”

“Gone? What do you mean he’s gone?”

“He OD’d. He left a suicide note and everything. Bryce is dead.”

At least four inches of fresh snow had fallen since Des drove home from Mitch’s place to put in some time on her portrait of Titus Smart, age nine, whose aunt Marcella, age sixteen, had smashed him in the face with a crowbar approximately twenty-seven times. When Des had asked the blood-spattered Marcella why she’d done it she calmly replied, “I didn’t care for the way he was looking at me.” And so Des not-so-calmly drew and drew. Sleep was not an option, she reflected as she drove her way back out to Big Sister, the Crown Vic’s wipers shoving the flakes aside. It was not quite 8:00 A.M. But, happily, the town plowman had made an early pass through the Peck Point Nature Preserve. She used her key card to raise the barricade and inched her way out onto the narrow wooden causeway, following the Jewett girls’ tire tracks through the deepening snow with great care. It was easy to fishtail on the causeway and sideswipe the railing. Easy to go through the railing and right down into the angry surf below.

Mitch’s bulbous 1956 kidney-colored Studebaker pickup was sitting in his driveway under the fresh blanket of snow. Des drove on past it to Preston Peck’s mammoth, natural-shingled beach house and pulled up next to the Jewett girls’ volunteer ambulance van, which they’d parked outside of the house’s attached four-car garage. Both double-wide garage doors were up. Bryce’s Jeep Wrangler and Josie’s Subaru Forester were parked inside along with a rider mower and a snow thrower. There was a cluttered handyman’s workbench. A chainsaw, weed whacker and other assorted power-driven yard gear hung from hooks on the walls. Lawn furniture and window screens had been stored in the rafters along with the net from the island’s tennis court.