The mountain man returned a moment later, faded green scrap of paper folded in his palm. He passed it to me when he was near enough and I opened it, fingers shaking. He watched as I scanned the front side, confirming that it was the title to the car Tav drove, but instead of his townhome in Virginia Beach listed as the address, it listed an unfamiliar address in Alexandria. I flipped the paper over, eager to see his signature as if it would confirm his survival.
“‘S’that your husband’s name?”
I nodded, a chilly tear cutting down my cheek. “That’s his signature.”
“Figured so.” He slipped the paper out of my hands and folded it neatly before putting it back in his top pocket.
“But that’s not his address.”
The man shrugged, walking back into the house without another word.
So now what?
I took a few steps closer to the car, peering through the darkened windows. I laughed at just the thought of the burly mountain man behind the wheel of this little two-wheel drive, hardly any horsepower sporty vehicle. “Can I look inside?”
He stood at the doorway, jacket off and another piece of jerky in his paw. “Sure, but you won’t find anything. Cleaned it out before he left, said I could keep the rest. Wasn’t much. Few emergency flares and a box of receipts and pictures and junk.”
“Receipts?” I perked up. “Can I see them?”
“Threw them out.”
“Where’s your garbage?”
His guffaw echoed off the snowbanks around us. “Burned it.”
Deflated, I unbuckled my snowshoes, then propped myself on the front step of the cabin.
“Guess you’re stayin’ for dinner then.”
I didn’t reply, mind trying to work out why Tav had signed over his nearly brand new car to this stranger just to bring me a box of jerky on Sundays. For the price of the car he could have hired an entire search team to come find me on this mountain, so why hadn’t he?
“Thought you might want to hold onto this, though.” He dropped another folded paper in my lap. When I opened it, the letterhead of a real estate title company greeted me.
“He put the chalet in my name?” My brain struggled to understand why andhow.He’d said this was owned by the department, a smart house in the beta testing phases that we could spend a long weekend at…
“Don’t know if it matters, but he told me what happened between you.”
Frustration laced my quiet syllables. “Excuse me?”
“The baby. Losing your mom. He said you needed some time.”
“Some time?” My heart hammered wildly. “What does that mean?”
“I asked the same question.” He uttered. “Said he didn’t know, only that when it was right, you'd be ready to come down off the mountain. Said until then, you wanted peace and solitude to heal from all that loss you’d suffered.”
My palms itchy and my vision blinked black.
My head hammered in my ears and the soft snowflakes that’d started falling now twisted and cascaded in a confused kaleidoscope.
“No.” My throat was cracked, my voice jagged. “No, that’s not…”
But was it?
Did this stranger know more about what had really happened than I did? He cleared his voice once. “He also said you’d run out of your pills and the doctor refused to refill them because he thought you were…” he cleared his voice again,“an addict.”
I shook my head, trying to chase his words away like annoying flies. I slipped a hand to my head, pushing my knit hat off and using it to dry the tears on my cheeks. “I don’t think that’s what happened.”
He nodded, then silently turned back into his cabin.
