All to say, maybe the Shaws didn’t mean to, but they really got my hopes up.
And then, inevitably, when Walker broke my heart ... it wasn’t just a heartbreak.
It was kind of my whole universe collapsing into rubble.
And now, all these years later, in the wake of that devastation, Walker wanted to fondly reminisce?
Nope. I wasn’t reminiscing. Not with him. And it sure as hell wouldn’t be fondly. And I almost told him so.
But that’s when it started snowing.
Does it snow in the Rocky Mountains in March?
Of course.
People go skiing for spring break all the time.
But our little town of Fort Dunraven wasn’t a ski town. It was at a lower elevation. And even though Turnaround Pass, which was hiking distance from the cabin, had a peak-like quality ... it was a rocky peak, not a snowy peak.
Plus the weather forecast had been for the mid-80s. “Unseasonably warm,” my mom kept pointing out. The warmest thing I’d brought was a sweater.
“Is that snow?” I demanded, peering through the windshield as Walker turned on the wipers.
“I guess it must be.”
“Is it supposed to snow today?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Because we checked the weather like ten times and it was supposed to be”—and here I quoted my mom—“unseasonably warm.”
“And I bet there’s no snow gear in that tiny little suitcase of yours.”
“Are you kidding? I brought abathing suit! I was gonna gotubing.”
“Not today,” Walker said, squinting into the flurry.
“No joke.”
The drive from the foothills snaked around quite a bit before you reached the cabin. As a kid, I used to routinely get so nauseated with all the switchbacks that I threw up. The last mile or so was just a bumpy dirt road, adding insult to injury.
“Do you think this rental car has snow tires?”
“Nope.”
“It won’t accumulate, right?” I asked, frowning at the sky.
“Definitely not,” Walker said.
But it did.
By the time we turned off the highway for the final mile, we couldn’t even see the dirt road. Walker navigated by judging the distance between the trees—and they were getting harder and harder to see in the gray air. Between the turns, and the bumps, and the whole being-strapped-into-whatever-journey-fate-needed-to-take-you-on thing, it felt a bit like a roller coaster.
A very slow roller coaster.
I swear we were going maybe three miles an hour.
“Maybe we should get there?” I suggested. “At some point?”
