Page 6

The road is wide and nearly empty. Above, the sky goes on and on and on. Not a soul within two thousand miles knows my name. It’s six thirty a.m., the dark is barely going gray, I haven’t slept a wink in twenty-four hours, and I have never been more awake.

Willow won’t be up for at least another hour, but I message her anyway to let her know I’m okay.

So I did a thing. I’ll explain everything later.

A cab pulls in, and a stocky man with a beard halfway down his belly comes around to help me load my suitcase into the trunk. The back seat is warm, heat blasting, and I slide across it gratefully.

“Where to?” He twists around.

“Haven’s Rest, please.” I buckle up as another man taps on the passenger window.

“Gary, you going to Theresa’s birthday at the Elks Lodge?” the man asks.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll see you there.”

Gary waves as we pull away from Fairbanks International Airport. We glide through streets lined with squat buildings, so different from the towering skyscrapers of New York. The sky is bigger here, making everything on the ground smaller by comparison. The empty sidewalks sparkle with a fine layer of frost.

“You on vacation?” Gary asks.

“Um, kind of. Maybe, more of a fresh start?”

He nods like he knows exactly what I mean. “I came up here to work a summer job during my final year of college.” He chuckles and catches me in the rearview. “That was thirty years ago. Never did get back for my sister’s wedding in ninety-eight.”

Thirty years. I’ve been here forty minutes, and I already get it. The warm air blasting from the vent threatens to pull me under, and I fight my drooping eyes, not wanting to miss a thing.

Before long, we’re zipping past single-family homes with lots that are farther and farther apart until we’re snaking our way along a road walled in by tall trees. Clumps of gold on thin pale trunks, cones clustered near the top of dark ones. I lower the window, letting the breeze whip my hair and numb my cheeks, gulping up big lungfuls of air that tastes like wet leaves and the rink at Rockefeller Center.

The trees have been blurring by for a long time now. Too long. The eco-lodge didn’t appear that far from town when I checked it on the map. I unlock my phone. No service.

“How much farther?” I ask Gary, who’s been humming along to Bruce Springsteen’s greatest hits.

“’Bout another twenty minutes.”

I don’t remember a mountain between the airport and the hotel, but I could be wrong. Gary knows these parts. Who am I to argue? The trees break and we cross a two-lane steel bridge over a wide creek, rust bleeding down the girders. The car thunks onto it and the tires hum. Maybe Haven’s Rest is in some outer suburb of Fairbanks?

We pass a bar and a busy cafe with customers sipping coffee behind the glass, a hardware store where an older man is pushing out a bin stacked with pots, and the local newspaper office. After the next bend, we cross a second bridge, this one barely wider than the car. Gary takes us up a long, pebbled driveway, coming to a stop outside a sprawling single-story stone lodge. It’s stunning. It’s also nothing like the photos on the hotel’s website.

“That’ll be $102.67.”

I nearly choke. That sounds like a lot, even for Alaska. I hand him most of the cash in my purse, leaving me with $7.33 in change, a Starbucks rewards card loaded with a full fifty dollars, and a checking account I’m trying not to think about. Too bad we didn’t pass a Starbucks.

Gary has my suitcase out of the trunk and deposited on the curb while I’m still fighting with the seat belt. By the time I get out he’s already back in the driver’s seat.

A stone path leads to two tall carved doors with almost Gothic wrought-iron handles. Every window dark, curtains drawn. I do a slow three-sixty.

“Be seeing you.” Gary waves and pulls away.

“Thanks?” I raise my hand, but he’s gone.

I start down the path, suitcase in tow, and I pull out my phone again. Two bars. With the booking email open, I tap the link and hold the photo up alongside the building before me. No glass wind chimes. No fairy lights in the eaves. Two taxidermied bears flank the entrance instead, mid-roar, teeth bared, like some kind of Stephen King horrorfest.

“Okay.” I look back toward the driveway, hoping Gary realizes his mistake. Not even a taillight in sight. “Okay. This is fine. I’ll figure out where I am, and⁠—”

My phone flashes low battery and dies, along with my optimism.

Not fine.

The only sound is water moving under the bridge behind me. No traffic. No sirens. Nothing. The wind whips up, tearing at my coat. I need a human. Preferably one who knows where I am.