She gives me a mischievous wink. “You haven’t seen me bossy yet.”
I smile… and regret my words at once. We’re flirting again. And bonding.Again.But I will not dally with her, knowing full well it’s a dead end. Formality is the way forward. Formality and distance. It’s theonlyway.
Armed with the skillets, Elise and I dig into the glittering snowpack. The person on the other side is digging, too, it seems. It’s a man.
“I’m almost there! Hang on!” the man on the other side calls as he digs toward us.
Another minute, and we come nose to nose.
A sturdy man in his fifties, he shrieks at the sight of me, shuffles backward, and trips over his dog. They both fall. The dog bounces back up, whimpering and licking his sore paw. But the man remains prone, his expression horror-stricken, like he saw a demon.
“Hi,” I say in my most friendly tone of voice. “My name is Theodor Delaroche, and this is my companion, Elise Pontet.”
He says nothing, just stares at me.
“Is this your cabin?” Elise asks.
“Y-yes.”
“I’m so sorry we broke in last night.” I extend a hand. “It saved our lives.”
After a moment’s hesitation, he takes my hand, and I pull him up.
“My name’s Walter Causse,” he says. “I live in Vosier-en-Bas, a village down in the valley. I can take you there.”
Elise grins. “Thank you so much!”
“It will be my pleasure to compensate you, Monsieur Causse, for the damage we did to your cabin and for our intrusion,” I add.
The man’s expression finally relaxes into a smile. “Please, call me Walter.”
Nodding, I look around. The snowfall has stopped. It’s still windy, but this wind is just a pale echo of last night’s hurricane. It’s strong enough to make the clouds in the sky cower away but too weak to bite my face. Chunks of snow slide and tumble down the mountain slope, swishing and accumulating mass. But their chute looks nothing like the unstoppable wall of an avalanche.
“Any risk of an avalanche?” I ask Walter.
He shakes his head.
“So beautiful!” Elise points out the sparkling white blanket around us.
“You were very lucky,” Walter says, shifting his eyes from her to me. “Given how bad things got last night.”
Elise nods eagerly.
“How did you get to this altitude in such bad weather?” Walter asks.
“Helicopter. We took off before the weather changed,” Elise says.
“It’s true that the snowstorm wasn’t on the forecast,” Walter remarks. “It took us all by surprise.”
I watch him. “Our helicopter crashed. Two of our companions are still out there, one of them badly wounded.”
A part of me is hoping he’ll inform us that they reached the village during the night and were taken to the nearest hospital.
But that hope fades away as he gives me a sympathetic look. “Unless they found shelter, I don’t see how they could have survived through the night.”
“Are there many other cabins like yours around here?” Elise asks.
“Most are much lower on the slope or in the woods around the village. Mine is the only one this high up.”
