I let out a laugh and felt choked up. My emotions were always very close together, and that day, I felt one sneeze away from a nervous breakdown. “What if I can’t?” I whispered.
Anna sat in silence, letting me wallow in my pity for a few seconds, before a friendly but defiant rebuttal. “What if you can?”
*****
Out in the parking lot of Anna’s riverfront office building, there was a sampling of luxury cars. This was a very wealthy community, though it didn’t use to be. Because of their wealth, the residents had every choice under the sun for services, so a person had to bepretty goodat making it there. Anna was the lone Christian counselor who practiced in the town of Sage Mountain, Wyoming, and just being a half of a mile from the ski resort, I knew she was a skier herself,though she hadn’t revealed that to me… yet.She probably didn’t want to rub it in.But the roof rack of her car was a dead giveaway.
My car might as well have been neon yellow amongst the flashy assortment for as much as it stuck out. It was from the 1900s, after all—one of the few remaining relics of what used to be the normal occurrence here, not that I cared. I sighed as I climbed into my Ford Explorer; it used to be a very different place. Growing up in Sage Mountain brought many warm memories that accompanied an idyllic small-town life: ice skating on a frozen lake; sledding down steep hills and warming huts filled to the brim with neighborly warmth; and sharing wishes for the new year over cups of hot cocoa. So much had changed in Sage Mountain.
It all happened so fast. First, it was the developers who showed up like thieves in the night. They went around town, spreading the word of their fancy Town Hall meeting, where they offered huge dollar amounts for land and homes near the ski hill that promised financial security for a lifetime. Nearly half the town disappeared after that; the ones left behind called them “sell outs” and tried to fight against what was happening to our home.
There was only one problem: money. The residents didn’t have it, and the developers did, meaning they had fancy lawyers and contracts waiting just in case someone wanted to say something. “I dare you to do something about it,” I overheard one developer say harshly one night to a third-generation family who had homesteaded near the mountain.
Since the mine shut down, our economy took a hit, and things had been strained there. The goal for our town had been to transition into tourism, but with such slim margins to do so, the future had seemed bleak. For some, myself included, the developers were an answer to prayer, a way to keep living in Sage Mountain since they brought hundreds of new jobs in virtually all industries.
Nothing, however, could have prepared me for the change that happened before my eyes. In a matter of weeks, numerous houses were demolished. It didn’t take long before they started breaking ground on new luxury hotels. Within two years, the ski place had quadrupled in size with a promise to make Sage Mountain the top resort in North America.A promise they followed through on.
The shadowy figure in all of this was one man whom I’d never met, but only knew that his name was James Walker.While I didn’t vilify him, as I knew change was inevitable, many of our locals did. He was the brains behind the development. It was a single stroke of his pen that essentially bought our entire town and rolled it into his ski town monopoly. He was the CEO of the company who now owned the town of Sage Mountain, its resort, and its new state-of-the-art regional airport that was currently being built. Because of that man, many of our town’s families had to move because of crippling property taxes. My friends moved away, and my hometown was unrecognizable. But also because of that man, I had new job opportunities that never would have been possible otherwise. They held opening ceremonies to honor my father, recognizing him as a Sage Mountain Olympian athlete, and I found great enjoyment in some of the new amenities in town.
The only reason I could still afford to live there was because I inherited my grandmother’s condo in one of the two buildings that weren’t torn down, since the property was next to an “undesirable” train station. Though it had been out of service since the coal mine fire over twenty-five years ago, it was owned by a corporation that was even bigger than the skiresort developers and wisely, they knew they couldn’t win that fight.
Turning over my ignition, I thought about what Anna said about my first ski ticket.“Everyone can ski but you.”The voice of Theo rang through my mind, inflicting doubt and shame.“Look at those kids. They don’t even need poles!”I shut down the memories of his painful words, putting my head in my hands.
God, are You there? It’s Claire. Anna says I’m better off without Theo. I want nothing that isn’t in Your plan, Lord. I don’t want a man who doesn’t love me. But please take the pain away. In your name, Amen.
After several minutes of silence in my prayer, I looked up to see that my window had been defrosted. I backed out of my spot and mentally returned to my workday.
Working from home gave me more flexibility than going into an office, such as the ability to attend therapy in the middle of the day, but it seemed to only add to my loneliness at that time. Upon arriving home, I checked my inbox and found three new messages from my boss.
“Can we have a phone meeting in an hour? I need to go over this design proof for the Sage Mountain airport faux beams you put in.”
“Hello? Are you working today?”
“Where are you, Claire?”
Yikes. All of them transpired over the course of an hour, and I was only absent for ninety minutes. I swiftly replied. “Hello Patricia. Forgive me for missing your email. I had an appointment, but I’m back and ready to help you. Please let me know how, at your convenience.”
In what seemed like an instant later, she replied, “Seems like you have a lot of those these days. Never mind; I got it handled.”
Double yikes.After Theo dumped me, and I called out for a full week, I had realized I was on thin ice, especially because it was during our finalization of the airport plans. Suddenly, the ice seemed to be fracturing. It wasn’t like I had planned for this to happen.
I hesitantly replied to her email in the most respective fashion I could. “Yes, I had a personal crisis this month, and I apologize for letting that impede my ability to work. I have reflected on the absence on my timecard, and Ido not expect compensation for those days or the hours I have missed since.”
A handful of minutes passed, and her reply dinged out of my computer speakers. “I’ve taken it out of your vacation time for the year. Once your vacation time is exhausted, any days missed without a doctor’s note and hospital admission slip will result in your not being welcomed back. You have one remaining day left for the fiscal year that just started October 1st, since we go with the mountain operating timeline. That means for the next 11 months, you will not be allowed paid time off, past one day.”
Triple yikes.The ice was caving in.I was about to fall through and drown.How was I supposed to make it through the rest of the fiscal year with no… rest? The thoughts of my therapist suggesting a vacation were laughable now. I closed my email and logged onto my bank.
Checking account: $6,279.78
Savings account: $9,246.35
Average monthly spend: $1,788.92
I was in better shape than I thought, but only because of my summer bonus for all the work I did on the new Sage Mountain airport design. The design that, when approved and put into motion, would wipe out anything that remained of my once muted town in the mountains—a town that used to be so remote, the rest of our state forgot it. Even residents who only lived an hour or two away would travel to larger ski hills in opposite directions. Everything changed when the lords of snow bought our Sage Mountain Resort.
Long gone were the days the mountain functioned only Friday–Sunday, operated by volunteers who relied on a rope tow that tore up their gloves. Taking their place and deciding for our town were conglomerates who had no prior skiing knowledge. Gondolas and bubble chairs, resort-owned shops and restaurants filled the base, and with my help, a new airport would soon expand access to the masses.
I sighed, knowing my part in wiping out the last of the locals would eventually send me packing, too. I looked around. At the time, covering the taxes on my condo required half a year’s wages. In my building of four units, I was the last one who hadn’t sold to the highest bidder who remodeled and made them into a nightly rental. Though I had hoped to stay inSage Mountain, the only home I’d ever known, that apartment was my safety net because I knew one day I could sell it and make enough to buy a house somewhere else if I lost my job. I just hoped it wouldn’t be so soon. It wasn’t time for me to let go of it. I pulled myself out of my work funk and walked over to the window that overlooked the newly constructed tram.
