“Did Dad get my message?”
“All of my presents to you are at the bottom of a lake except for the ones I shipped from Amazon?—”
There were long pauses between what he was saying and the words he was listening to, and I could just about hear a woman at the other end of the line. Something about Christmas and home and family. And I love you. A lot of I love you.
Then Alex said to me, “You were headed to Steamboat, you said? Mom wants to know which hotel. You told me once, but now it’s slipped my mind.”
“The Anchorage,” I said, not sure what difference it would make for her to know. “Got a soak and stars package or whatever it’s called. First drink’ll be a G&T under the stars.”
Alex passed along the information, paused to listen, and then said, “Yes, I agree. He did save my life, after all.”
With a shake of my head, I parked the car in front of Cabin 7and watched for a minute as the snow gathered on the windshield once I turned the wipers off. The little brown cabin in front of the parking spot had snow on its roof, and a mist on the inside of the windows. The cabin looked old and would probably be a miserable hovel.
We got out and grabbed our stuff, with Alex going ahead to unlock the door. As he pulled it open, he handed me my phone back and said, “Thank you,” as polite as could be, though I could see he was stressed about missing Christmas with his family.
I had sympathy and all, even though Christmas to me was just a holiday to be gotten through. My experience with Christmas was strictly limited to the Mr. Magoo version of a Christmas Carol.
Once inside the cabin, I had to revise my initial thought that the cabin would be old and dumpy. It was not. Half of the walls were painted white, the others were covered with wood paneling painted a soft blue. Ship lap, I think Royce would call it.
There was a faded blue and white rug on the pinewood floorboards. Someone had come by and brought logs and kindling for a fire. The heat was on, too, which made me shiver as I warmed up.
“Why don’t you have gloves?” asked Alex as he prowled around, inspecting the small kitchen off the small living room with its river rock fireplace. As he headed down the short (really just a step or two) hallway to the bathroom and bedroom, I shouted after him, “Why don’t you have boots?”
I plopped myself on the couch in front of the unlit fire, throwing my old green army duffle on the floor. As long as I was warm and there was supposedly food nearby, I could weather any storm.
But before I could really relax, Alex came back, having left his leather suitcase collection in the bedroom. As he lookeddown at me, I couldn’t read his face, exactly, but he didn’t look happy.
“Why are you sitting on the couch in wet clothes?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” I said, matching his tone that seemed half-exasperation and half bossiness.
“No, you’re not, you’re shivering.”
“What do you care?” I asked, and yes, by golly, my whole body twitched with a massive shiver. All that tramping around in the snow had finally caught up to me. “Fine, fine,” I said, standing up, peeling off my blue fleece jacket. “I’m not going to catch cold and die, you know.”
I never caught colds, and I was about to go on and on about this, to distract him, when he sat on the arm of the couch, snow dripping from the shoulders of his fancy city coat, melted snow, tinged rose-colored, sliding down his temple.
He covered his face with his hands and I realized something was going on. Yeah, I can read the room when I try, but I’m not so good at small talk.
“Eh?” I said, more of a sound than a word, an invitation, I guess.
“She almost died,” he said, talking into his hands. His voice shook. More snow dripped from his hair, but I guess, along with the phone, he could afford a new city coat if he wanted one.
“Who?”
“Lottie. My sister Lottie and Baby Ginny. The birth took hours, and I couldn’t be there because I was in Tokyo and couldn’t get back fast enough.”
For some reason, this pulled at my insides, all the way up to my throat.
Old me would have laughed at him. New me wasn’t sure what I should do, besides which, he lifted his head and looked at me, utterly fetching, trying to hold his jaw still from quivering, his eyelashes sparkling with tears, exposing a vulnerability that I’m sure he was unaware of.
Yeah, both old me and new me wanted to hit that, but somewhere inside of me I found some manners.
“Maybe we should both change and get something to eat,” I said. “Dinner’s not for another hour or whatever, but we can go sit in the bar.”
“I don’t really drink,” he said.
“That’s bullshit,” I said without any heat. “You almost died and my stomach is about to attack itself. Why don’t we get some beer, some munchies? I’ll loan you my phone again if you say yes.”
