“I was supposed to stay with my friend Holly while I was here. She’s getting married—or, I guess, it’s called a ‘Joining Ceremony’ because there’s more than one groom? I’m not sure if that’s a poly or indigenous custom….”
I stopped myself. I was dangerously close to going off on a ramble, and there was only one clerk and a long line behind me.
“Anyway, main point. I forgot that I forgot to RSVP until I was on the bus. I tried to email her, but she hasn’t answered. And Holly never gave me her new number, which wouldn’t have mattered anyway since there’s no reception up here.”
Another mini-ramble, but Sarah Baerlow’s expression softened. “You’re here for Holly Winter’s Joining Ceremony?”
“Yes, she’s my best friend. But due to my oversight, there’s been a breakdown in communication,” I admitted. “So I was hoping you could maybe do one of three things for me….”
I laid out the options I’d brainstormed during my forty-three minutes in line: “Tell me Holly’s number. Give me the lodge’s Wi-Fi password so I can try emailing her again. Or maybe just tell me where she lives so I can go there?”
The clerk hesitated. “I can give you the hotel’s Wi-Fi password,” she hedged.
“I promise I am who I say I am. I even have a passport I can show you.” Anxiety made me give in to my glasses-adjustmentstim. “Also, if I don’t get in contact with her, I won’t have anywhere to stay tonight.”
“I believe you, but…” She looked over the line again.
“Even if I had Holly’s number, she’s not in town right now. She and her sister had a… personal issue to deal with in the outer limits. So, I’m not sure when she’ll be back.”
I adjusted my glasses again. This time to buy a few seconds to suppress my cry reflex.
Low frustration tolerance was already an issue on a good day. And this was turning into a terrible one.
The driver had warned us there wouldn’t be another bus until Christmas in July Eve.Today was the twenty-third.
I carefully modulated my voice, so as not to sound as desperate as I felt, having just found out that I was stuck in a crowded, receptionless town with no return transport and no place to stay.
“Is there any way—any way at all—I could rent a room for the night?”
I hated to dip into my IVF savings. But if I had to?—
“Sorry, we really are all booked up,” she said before I could finish that thought.
“Mom! Mom! Hey, Mom!” A little kid with darker hair and skin than the clerk appeared behind the counter and tugged at her sleeve. “Can you help me figure out these long division problems for school?”
I frowned. School was still in session here, even though it was late July?
“Mom’s working,” the clerk answered, smoothing a hand over the boy’s mop of black hair. “Can you go ask one of your three dads, who aren’t manning a long line by themselves right now?”
Wait, this woman’s married to three guys as well? How many...?
“They’re working, too, and they’re bad at math," the clerk's son answered before I could finish that question--with the kind of frankness I always appreciated in kids. "They always just try to do it for me,”
His eyes pooled with tears. “And Mr. Zion says he’s going to put me back in the fourth grade if I don’t pass tomorrow’s test.”
Ugh!I couldn’t stand when teachers used shame-based consequences instead of helping kids figure out where they got lost on the way to fully understanding the learning target.
“Hey, I’m a fifth and sixth grade teacher,” I told him, switching to my gentle classroom voice. “I can help you out.”
I turned to his mom. “Is that okay?”
“More than okay, thank you!” she said, already waving the next person in line forward with an upturned palm.
“Great,” I said, turning back to the little boy. “Just join me over here on the couch.”
Without a second thought, I ceded my place in line. Maybe I could try again for a room after the crowd died down. But this little boy clearly needed help now.
“Hi, I’m Lark,” I told him, parking my carry-on suitcase and taking a seat on the lodge’s couch. The video on the bus ride up had made it clear that while there was no skiing on Bear Mountain, the lodge had been designed by a famous architect of ski chalets. So the space had the same kind of vaulted ceilings, open-concept layout, and tiered room balconies visible from the ground floor.
