The burger in my stomach turned to lead as I drove to my cabin. When I got inside, there was no sweet-strawberry-sunshine scent hanging in the air.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Summer
I tapped through the weather app. I’d looked at it a million times, as if the trajectory of the storm the weather center had forecasted would change despite days of warnings. Phrases likeunprecedented levelsandstock up with provisionswere getting thrown around.
I sat cross-legged on the living room couch at Mama’s house in thick flannel sweats and a heavy Copper Summit sweater. Teller had run me out of the distillery and told me to help Mama get ready for the storm. Mama could be stuck in the house for months and still be able to feed the entire family. She wasn’t the one I worried about.
Jonah was old enough to know what had to be done. He’d been living in his cabin for almost twenty years, and he’d endured terrible thunderstorms and snowstorms and wind events. I’d thought about him out there all alone through the years.
I clicked out of the app. If the tracker was correct, we had a couple hours before the first flurries started.
Hell with it. I got up and grabbed my coat hanging by the back door. I shrugged into it as I stuffed my feet inside my Ugg Adirondack boots. The bottoms of my sweats piled up around the fluffy wool liner at the tops. I should change, but now that I’d decided, I was committed.
Mama shuffled into the kitchen. “Going somewhere?”
She was in mother-hen mode. She was calling Tenor, telling him to give Cruz plenty of time to grab what he wanted from town. Lane was almost back from running errands in Bozeman. She wanted all her duckies under her roof when the first flake dropped.
“I’m going to bring Jonah some supplies.” I took his winter coat and ski pants off the hooks by the back door. “I need to return his clothing too.”
She paused and pulled her maroon cardigan around her. Since Daddy had died, she could look startlingly older, but moments like now, I was transported back to high school when she was tasting my words for a lie. “You think he doesn’t have enough?”
“I’m not sure if he’s made it to town since I was there and I ate some of his supplies.”
There was that steady gaze again, her expression laying down valid points like what I’d just been thinking. He’d been surviving in that cabin—and expanding—for almost two decades. She was silently tallying how much of Jonah’s winter stores I could’ve possibly eaten in three days. She might think four, but I hadn’t eaten that first evening after he’d rescued me. The question ofWhy are you really going there?lingered in her eyes.
She brushed the salt-and-pepper curls out of her face. “Better get going, then. You have your kit in your car?”
“Always.” She and Daddy hadn’t raised any of us to travel without survival gear. I could make a fire, shoot a flare, and feed myself if I got stranded. I could shovel a trench, bed myself down, or write HELP in the snow or grass—with flames or a bottle of dye, whatever the situation called for.
“You got a change of clothes?”
“I’ll be back by then.” I opened the back door.
“Summer, these storms don’t watch our apps. They do what they damn well please. Pack a bag.”
“I don’t have time, Mama.” I left the door and rushed across the kitchen to give her a kiss on her soft, warm cheek. “I’ll be fast. He’s got plenty of canned goods, but if he wants to stay scurvy-free, he needs some orange juice.”
She gave me a flat look. “Get some oranges, then,” she said dryly.
I was using Daddy’s argument as an excuse. His dad had had scurvy as a kid in the middle of Montana, and Daddy and his brothers had gone around talking like a pirate when they’d heard the story as kids. For International Talk Like a Pirate Day, they’d made a cake in the shape of a parrot. And we’d grown up with orange juice and fresh produce always stocked in the house because of it.
I rushed out to my car. The chill in the air bit deeper, but the wind was nonexistent. When the snow started, it’d free-fall like the day of my wedding.
I drove to town, pushing the speed as much as my conscience would allow. I’d be no good to Jonah if Iskidded off the highway. In the grocery store, I picked through the remnants. Much of town had already been through, buying food and toiletries like we were in Florida and there’d been a Jim Cantore sighting.
I picked out oranges, the validity of my excuse taking hold. Jonah didn’t eat the variety he should, and he’d be stuck for days, maybe even a week without a way to replenish.
I needed to do this. For his own good.
After checking out, I was in my car and taking a different road out of town, a small county road that turned to gravel and skirted around the back edge of my family’s land. Jonah had driven this route with me after my non-wedding, and I’d been assaulted by memories of taking the same route with his brother, going to pester Jonah because Eli had hero-worshipped him.
He hadn’t been the only one.
Now, it was just me. I passed the area of the accident. I’d seen pictures of the wreckage. I wasn’t supposed to have, but small town and confidentiality didn’t always go hand in hand.
Eli’s old pickup had tipped into the shallow ditch. Any farther and he might’ve rammed a tree, not that it mattered. The outcome had been the same. He hadn’t buckled up, and he hadn’t survived the impact with the steering wheel.
