Envious Moon(44)

“You’re sick,” she said to me, practically spitting the words at me over the phone.

“I have to go,” I told her, aware that I had already been on too long. I had seen the movies. No doubt there were men in a van in front of my house running a trace on this very call, trying to narrow in on this roadside spot in Vermont. “I love you, Mama,” I said, and then I hung up.

For a while as we drove, her voice echoed in my head and it made me sad to hear it. Berta didn’t deserve any of this, I knew that. She only wanted good things for me, she only wanted me to be a good man, like her husband, my father, had been. She didn’t understand the things that drove me, and she may have loved like this once, but it had been a long time. It was too much to expect her to understand.

Soon the road began to climb and we were into the mountains, coming around turns to see valleys and rolling hills opening up before us. The pine forest had given way to oaks, birch, and maples, and in the now steady afternoon sunlight, some of them showed the first red of fall. It was beautiful. My spirits lifted to see it and I put my hand on Hannah’s thigh and I squeezed.

We came onto Stratton Mountain just as the light was failing. There wasn’t much to it. More of a big hill, with a ski lift you could see cutting up either side of it. Some restaurants and a few hotels. Lots of condos. We drove past all of it and when we were coming down the other side, I saw a green sign that said, Mountainside homes. Underneath it said, starting at $500,000. I smiled at Hannah. “This is us,” I said.

She shook her head. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ll show you.”

We drove up an unpaved tree-lined road and when we reached the top, the land leveled and there were no trees. The sun had fallen behind the distant hills but in the last of the light we could see for miles. Foothills and ridges leading to where we were. There were all these houses up here and all of them were dark. The A-frames from the pictures, chalets with big porches that looked down over the mountain. Not one of them had a car in front of it. They were new enough that there was no yard to speak of around them. Just dirt piled here and there. I stopped in front of one and got out and climbed up the porch and looked through the sliding glass doors into the house. It was hard to see in the light, but I saw that it was empty.

“What do you see?” Hannah called up to me.

“It’s empty,” I said. “Let’s try another.”

We tried two more and they were also bare inside. But the third one I looked into, slightly back from the road, had what appeared to be furniture. I looked around the doors and the windows for signs of some alarm. But I didn’t see anything, and I told Hannah to wait out front and I walked around the back. There was wood stacked underneath another porch and next to it was a door. I tried it and it was locked. I picked up a big square piece of the firewood and I stepped back. I threw it at the window on the door and it went right through, almost cleanly, it seemed, the glass falling to the floor inside. I reached through and unlocked the door.

I was in a basement. In the dark I made out a wooden staircase and I went to this and climbed the stairs. I opened the door and I was in a great room, and in front of me were the sliding glass doors that led to the high porch in the front. I felt around the wall for a light switch and I found one, and when I clicked it the room flooded with light. The ceiling had to have been forty feet high. There was a stone fireplace against one wall, and a stone chimney that went all the way to the ceiling. Leather furniture and bookcases filled with books and board games. A big kitchen and a staircase that led to a second-floor balcony that looked over the room.

I went to the sliding doors and unlocked them and stepped out.

“Come on,” I said to Hannah, who stood outside the truck now.

“It’s someone’s house,” Hannah said.

“No one’s here,” I said.

She looked reluctant but she came up the stairs. The first thing I did was look in the fridge. It was empty save for a couple of bottles of champagne and fifteen or so bottles of beer. The freezer was full of frozen meat. Steaks and whole chickens and all kinds of things I didn’t recognize. This was better than I thought.

Hannah said, “What if they come back?”

“They won’t,” I said. “Not for a while.”

“How do you know?”

“There’s no snow,” I said. “That’s what they come here for, right? Snow?”

I parked the truck around back, in the dirt yard, where it couldn’t be seen from the road. While I was at it, I brought a handful of the cordwood upstairs and I built us a fire in that huge fireplace. I closed the heavy drapes in front of the sliding glass doors and we only used one light in the kitchen and a standing one in the living room. No reason to take any chances. I took two big steaks out of the freezer and put them in a pan of water to thaw.

“Have a beer,” I said to Hannah where she sat on one of the overstuffed leather chairs in front of the fire.

“I don’t want a beer.”

I smiled. “Champagne it is then.”

I held one of the bottles over the sink and took off the wrapping and then twisted the cork until it popped. A little of the champagne cascaded out. There were wineglasses in one of the cupboards and I filled two of the glasses and brought one over to Hannah. I sat down in the chair next to her. The fire was going good and it kicked orange-and-red shadows around the room. I reached my glass to Hannah’s and we clinked the two of them together.