Tav grinned then. "Here’s hoping the driveway isn't snowed in. I can’t imagine living in a place like this, a person might as well be in the Arctic.”
I let his words hang as the road narrowed and continued to twist and climb up a mountain. We turned an almost jack-knife sharp corner near a stand of towering evergreens and a dark shape darted out in front of the headlights.
I shrieked. Tav tapped on the brakes. "It’s only a deer, Freya. I need to get you out of the house more if a deer strikes terror in you.”
I laughed. "I’ve been a hermit, even the squirrels in the backyard scare me at this point."
“You should come with me to Virginia Beach for a few days, you can work from the townhouse all day or there’s a ton of great coffee shops in the neighborhood.”
I shook my head, already not keen on the idea of leaving my home office setup. "You’re pushing it with a long weekend, Garrison.”
“What are you gonna do when we get married? I thought we talked about a destination wedding to Tahiti?" His hand rested on my knee for a moment and squeezed.
“Maybe." I fingered the engagement ring on my left hand. I remembered the night we’d talked about it. After gin and tonics and two rounds of making love, he’d begged me to marry him while his lips were pressed to mine.
I hadn’t answered then, but by the time he’d brought it up the next morning at breakfast, I’d started to open to the idea of him and I forever. From the moment Tav and I had met at the art gallery two years ago, we’d been inseparable. I’d stayed with him at his bungalow that first weekend, and outside of a few trips back to my tiny apartment for clothes, I’d never really left. Our lives fit easily together, our flow always fluid and seamless. We were meant to be, he’d whispered in my ear. I believed him.
But then why were Bradley’s texts burning like a flame in my back pocket?
I’d known Bradley since we were kids—we’d grown up side by side in our tiny Pennsylvania coal town. He’d stayed when I went to Durham for college and we’d lost touch as our lives took different directions. I’d never really planned to go home again, especially when I was offered an internship at a prestigious advertising company in the graphic design department. One quick summer and I was hired full-time after graduation. Within six months I was handing in my resignation though, determined never to work under a boss again.
Everything about my time with that firm left a bad taste in my mouth. It was then I vowed to work from home, even if I had to work harder than every other freelance graphic designer. I hit the internet and then the streets of Philadelphia dropping off business cards and setting up meetings with any firm looking for freelance artists.
Business had boomed ever since, and when Tav was offered the full-time contract with the Department of Defense, I’d been willing to move wherever was needed. But he already had his first surprise for me then—he was keeping the house in Lancaster and adding my name to his deed. One less hoop to jump through when we got married, he’d pledged.
Plus, his new defense contract gave him a living stipend in the city, and so it was that he worked four days a week in Virginia Beach, and then drove home each long weekend to be with me. Our lives found a new natural rhythm, and we slowly began to talk about when we would get married.
And then everything fell apart.
Three
I thought of the first moment mom told me she was moving across the country to California. I'd smiled and nodded through the phone line as tears filled my eyes. She was all I had. I may have been freshly graduated from college, but it’d been only her and I for nearly two and a half decades. The fact that she wanted to move across the country and follow her dreams after giving me all of mine was brave. I just wasn't sure I was brave enough to live a life without her in it every day.
I was lucky. She called everyday and I helped her pick out paint and curtains for her new condominium in Monterey. Her happy artist soul had finally found a home. My father had crushed her spirit early on, but just like the strong stubborn woman she was, she carried on for me. She raised a baby alone and she worked everyday including weekends if that's what it took to put food on our table.
But Mom didn't talk much about my dad. Only that he was a drifter in college that she had only known for a summer. He moved on and she was left with me at the age of seventeen. When she brought him up she always smiled wistfully and closed her eyes and told me that I was just like him. One night after my bedtime story I’d asked her if she’d ever looked for him, if she ever tried to tell him about me. She waved me off and said only that wild things die in captivity.
It’s hard to miss something you’ve never had and mom made life so carefree and fun I never felt like I missed out on anything.
Until the week after I graduated from Duke and she told me she was moving. I offered to help move her across the country but she'd only laughed and said that she'd already sold everything. Then she drove often into the Appalachian mist, me in her rearview.
It was after that that I began working obsessively.
And not long later Tav and I moved to Lancaster. I was so happy and things were moving so quickly that I lost myself for a while in all that happiness. And then the worst had happened. I'd gotten the call that changed everything.
My phone rumbled to life in my bag then, pulling me back into reality. I pulled the phone from the dark depths of my purse, the screen lit with Bradley's name. Tav glanced at me across the cab. I swiped, ignoring the call and letting it fall back into my purse thinking maybe now was the time I would have to block Bradley. No matter what he wanted, it was always too often, and what Bradley didn't understand was that Tav was so well connected that in one breath he could ruin Bradley's new life.
"Who is calling you so late?"
"Telemarketer. I've been getting them all hours of the day lately," I answered him.
Tav tapped his finger on the steering wheel, his jaw working back-and-forth quietly as his eyes laser-focused on the snowy road ahead of us. The car suddenly felt too small, the stagnated air left me choking for oxygen.
Silence hung between us as the narrow road turned curvy. Evergreen limbs hung heavy with wet ice and snow and it dripped on the windshield in fat raindrops. I wrapped my arms around my torso, rubbing my palms against them for warmth. It wasn’t just the outside temperature that felt frigid.
Tav’s mood swings gave me whiplash some days, but I had a way of feeling things too much too—we were the same that way.
“I hope you enjoy this weekend, I’m never driving into the mountains again." Tav grit as he slowed the vehicle. We approached a narrow suspension bridge, the headlights lighting the sign as we approached read: Deception Gorge Overlook.
