Fuck me six times over.
My door’s open.
My fucking car door is open.
Which means?—
“Why is your door already open?” Aspen calls behind me.
“Get back in the house.”
“I can’t be inside when I can’t see you through the window. The snow’s too thick. What if you slip? What if a tree falls on you? What if aliens attack?”
I stare at my open car door.
It’s my brother’s Subaru. I could’ve borrowed my other brother’s Porsche, but I wanted something suited for mountain roads.
And now I’m feeling like the biggest dumbass in the history of dumbasses.
Don’t leave food in your car in the mountains.
“Cash?” Aspen says.
“Get back inside,” I repeat. “I think a bear went through the car last night.”
“A bear?”
“It’s fine. It’s gone.”
“Are you sure?”
I angle a look inside the back seat, where I had piles of gingerbread house kits and bulk store bags of truffles and hot chocolate and more, and yeah.
Yeah, there was definitely a bear here.
Everything’s scattered and ripped open, chocolate smearing the seats, ripped cardboard and half-pieces of gingerbread houses littering the footwell along with the snow gathering as it blows into the car’s interior. The other door’s open too, like the bear climbed through.
Shit shit shit.
I trudge through the thickening layer of snow to Aspen’s rental.
No bear damage to her car, at least.
But it’s iced over, which means it takes work to get the trunk open because I’m fighting a sheet of frozen water.
Once I’m in though, it takes no more than a few seconds to grab the water jug and her backpack. No extra bags of food in her car. No extra blankets. Not even a roadside emergency kit. It’s the brand-new kind of clean and empty you get with a rental car.
“Aren’t bears supposed to be hibernating?” Aspen calls.
“Would youpleaseget back in the house?”
“Not if a bear’s coming back to eat you.”
“The bear had a feast in my back seat. He’s not coming back to eat anything.Get inside.”
“If the bear’s supposed to be hibernating and went through your car, then a bear could come back to eat you.”
She has her arms wrapped around herself and her hood pulled up and cinched tight around her face so that all I can see are her eyeballs, nose, and half her mouth. And it’s hard to see that much through the swirling snow.
