“Amy!” Her mother sounded a little frantic and tried to laugh. “Please don’t leave like this. I’m sorry if we’ve bothered you. That was certainly never our intent. We were just saying this morning that it seemed to be working out well, what with you in the studio and us in here.”
“I know it was not your intent, Mom,” Amy said. It was never any of their intent to bother her when they came to her. She had invited their calls, had invited them into her life. She had been their rock, the one who Got Things Done. But she needed a change, and it was too late to stop her now. “I’m going now.” And go she did, walking out the door with Duchess.
Harrison was behind the wheel of her minivan, already had the engine revved.
The moment she strapped in, he threw the minivan into gear and hit the gas. They rocketed up the drive to the gate, and once they turned onto the road, they looked at each other. They burst out laughing.
“Did we really just do that?” Amy asked between gasps of laughter.
“Girl, we just made a break from the asylum,” Harrison said. He took her hand and held it against his thigh as he drove down the road, toward the lake. They laughed about the elves, about the insanity of having Christmas music piped in every waking hour. They laughed about the giant nutcrackers. At the shoreline, he turned onto a dirt road. Her minivan, which they called “the Buffalo,” took the pits in the road like a champ. He turned onto another, rockier drive, up a cliff, then coasted into a single carport where icicles had begun to form. Amy figured they couldn’t be more than a couple of miles from the house.
Harrison killed the engine. “Okay. Don’t freak out.”
“Why would I freak out?”
“I couldn’t get us luxury accommodations.”
She laughed. “That’s okay,” she said, and put her hand on the door handle. “I like rustic.”
“Wait. It’s a little rougher than rustic.”
Amy’s smile faded just a little. “How rough are we talking?”
“Rough. But it defies description. You’ll have to see for yourself. Ready?”
“Ready.” She got out of the car with Duchess and turned around to get a good look at the cabin.
The first thing she noticed was that it was beginning to snow. Fat little flakes drifted silently down, surrounding a small, Craftsman-style cabin with a wide front porch. Two rocking chairs, with pads that looked suspiciously flat and stained, were facing the lake. The roof looked like a good hailstorm would obliterate it, and the chimney was crumbling at the top. One of the stairs to the porch was missing a slat. The paint was faded, and one window on the side of the house had been boarded up.
“Are you disappointed?” Harrison asked.
Amy looked at him, then at the sad little cabin again. The perfect, cozy, crazy old cabin. “Are you kidding? I think this might be the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.” She smiled. “It’s perfect.”
Harrison grinned with relief. He took Duchess from her and tucked her under his arm. Then he took Amy’s hand. “That is exactly what I said.”
Together, they went into the cabin to make sure there were no snakes, rats, or unwanted campers in their perfectly imperfect getaway.
25
As threatened, the snowtastrophe happened, but the snow was neither as deep as predicted nor as destructive. Mostly, it was pretty. And cozy. They donned their ugly Christmas sweaters for warmth, and Harrison built a fire in the hearth. Someone had left a huge pile of wood just outside the back door, so they were able to keep the fire going through the worst part of the snow.
They had a cozy little retreat, helped in large part by the fact that the cabin wasn’t as bad as first glance might have suggested. There was a musty smell that was remedied by prying open all the windows and letting the place air out for a few hours. The linoleum in the kitchen was peeling, and the laminate countertops were stained. The full bed sank in the middle, and the couch had a rip that made it impossible to sit on one of the cushions, so they sat next to each other on one side. But it was cozy and secluded and perfect for two people falling in love while it snowed around them.
That’s what was happening, wasn’t it? Two people in the middle of their lives, finding each other in a strange vacation rental mix-up. This was a Netflix movie (minus the intruding family and the Bossy Posse. And minus Hillary. And minus the giant nutcrackers. But the rest of the Christmas decor was nice).
The week Amy and Harrison spent in that run-down little cabin was one of the best weeks of Amy’s life. Not that she could remember many whole weeks from her life, but she was sure she would remember if she’d felt this blissful for several days in a row. While she had a vague recollection of happy summers, she also had a vague recollection of feeling entitled to fun and happiness because she was young and beautiful and hadn’t lived life yet.
What she felt now was much different than that. This was a happy winter, and this week felt like the prize she’d earned from having lived a long time. Like she’d spent all her decades in the trenches and was crawling out, emerging ready for a cocktail, good sex, and a proper assignation.
Harrison set up Amy’s easel in front of the windows, but facing the room, so she could look out the window for inspiration, and without feeling like he was breathing over her shoulder. He wasn’t—he spent his days practicing his swing on the covered porch while Duchess sunbathed on the top step of the stairs as the snow slowly melted. Midweek, they were hit with another dump of snow.
The first night in their humble abode, they watched the Christmas flotilla go by. No snowstorm was going to stop boats that had been strung with Christmas lights and blow-up Santas and snowmen and Grinches. The faint sound of more Christmas carols reached them from the water. They sat bundled in blankets, two hot toddies between them.
“Do you miss the constant Christmas carols?” Amy asked.
“No. Do you?” Harrison asked.
“Nope.” They smiled at each other in that way couples had of understanding each other completely. They were in sync. Entirely compatible. At least Amy thought so. She didn’t ask him what was next because she didn’t want to come off as insecure, or as if she was pressuring him into speaking his mind. She wanted to enjoy this interlude. They had five days, and she didn’t want to ruin a single moment.
