Page 30 of Wintering with George

“You’re a liar. You hate trivia.”

“And you know this how?”

He had to look away to keep his eyes on the road. “You’ve never taken any interest in my weekly trivia nights with my friends at the pub.”

“For starters,” I said with a grimace, “pub? What’re we, in Ireland? It’s a sports bar, and you and your friends wear those stupid bowling shirts and look ridiculous.”

Thomasin started chuckling, which was good to hear.

“And what is your team name, like the Head Shrinkers or something?”

He gasped. “I’ll have you know we’re the Brain Teasers.”

That did it. Brad started laughing, and it was infectious, and then Thomasin was giggling too. I knew she’d probably be crying in moments, but that was okay. Everything had to come out, so it would be cathartic and cleansing and they could both forgive.

“You’re a heathen,” Kurt pronounced, but he reached for my hand and held it for a long moment. I was thinking that maybe he really didn’t think that at all.

It was late when we reached our destination. Around two in the morning. To me, cabin in the woods conjured pictures of a tiny, creepy shack with floorboards you could see the dirt underneath. And if not that, then something that creaked in the wind that people on the frontier back in the 1800s would have been more than happy for.

I should have known better—what we walked up to was neither.

Kurt parked the SUV in the garage that opened with a fob he waved in front of a panel beside the stairs. That too had been in the zippered pouch.

Once we pulled into what was a three-car garage, when the door closed, lights came on. A door led to an elevator on one end, and on the other, an archway led to stairs. The boys were amazed. They’d never seen an elevator in a house before, and I let them take that, with their mother, all the luggage and the dogs, while Kurt, Brad, and I took the stairs, with Bubs taking the ride across my shoulders.

There was a steel door to get into the main house, and it slid open seamlessly with a touch of my palm, letting us off next to the kitchen. Walking to where the elevator was, I saw a panel there, like the one I’d just used, that would allow Thomasin and her sons to step into the living room. The elevator looked like one in an older building, the kind with the metal frame you had to yank open and close.

“George, can you reach in here and let us out?” Thomasin asked, standing next to the panel that needed a handprint to activate. Interesting that, just like the stairs, anyone could go up, but exiting was the tricky part. And the way the panel stuck out from the wall, the elevator had risen and come to a stop directly beside it. I was impressed with the design.

“Go ahead,” Kurt prodded me. “Let them out.”

But I shook my head and looked at Dennis. “You try, buddy.”

“No, it wouldn’t be his hand,” Thomasin said.

“Why do you think all our palms were scanned?”

“Oh, but that’s too fast,” she assured me.

I shrugged.

Dennis leaned around his mother and put his hand on the panel. It scanned, and the elevator gate popped open, the main latch releasing, which allowed Brad to move it to the side.

“Awesome,” Dennis said, rushing out of the elevator.

“How?” Brad asked as the boys, the dogs, and my cat, who jumped down onto a table, then to the floor, left us.

“Because I have super-thorough, scary-ass friends. Those scans were already uploaded because they wanted to make sure, like Jing said, that you can all access the cabin so that you’d be safe in case something happened to me.”

“Don’t say that,” Kurt said sharply.

“But it’s true.”

“And cabin is a loose term, don’t you think?” Thomasin said.

It was. Yes.

This was the most luxurious cabin I’d ever been in in my life. Ski lodge was a better term. The enormous windows went from the floor to the exposed-beams ceiling, easily thirty feet up, and everywhere you looked, there were chandeliers, built-in bookshelves, and antiques.