Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six(13)

No. She wasn’t going to do this.

Hannah, if she was being honest, had been looking for reasons to bail on this trip. But it was too late. In a few hours they’d be on their way, and she was going to make the best of it, use it to remind her husband what it was like to be the center of her attention.

She’d make sure, in Mako’s words, that it was epic for both of them.

She closed her laptop and decided to get some sleep. First though, she looked in on Gigi who slept peacefully in her crib, dim night-light casting the room in a buttery yellow.

As she left Gigi’s room, Hannah heard a buzzing.

It was coming from Bruce’s office, where the door stood ajar.

His work phone.

She shouldn’t; she knew that.

But she opened the door anyway and went inside.





4


Liza

“My hot spot stopped working.”

Mako had been either on his computer or on his phone nearly the entire drive from their house. They’d left before the sun came up and Liza, who loved to drive, had driven pretty much straight through to Sleepy Ridge, a seven-hour stretch.

The call Mako had been on just ended abruptly.

“Hello, hello? Jess, can you hear me? Shit.”

Liza found a certain kind of peace behind the wheel, especially on the highway, where she felt at one with the road, the car. Her parents had always enjoyed road trips, had an old Jeep Wrangler. She and her brother saw most of the country bouncing around in the back of that thing. There hadn’t been much money, so they’d camped. It had been nothing less than magical—those starry nights in the desert or in the forest, the sounds of nature all around—babbling creeks and hooting owls. She missed that time, when things were quiet. Married to a tech mogul, things were never quiet now—unless she retreated to her yoga studio, which she often did.

“Maybe that’s a sign that it’s time to stop working for a while,” she said gently.

He put a hand on her leg. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You drove the whole way listening to me bitch and moan.”

She glanced over at him, casting him a quick smile then setting her eyes on the road. “I get it. This is a busy time for you,” she said. “But look, we’re almost there. And it’s so beautiful. You brought us here. Try to enjoy it, okay?”

The trees towered over the isolated and winding road. The host had said that the navigation computer would stop working at a certain point and it had. He’d given her good verbal directions, and her father had taught her to find her way without the help of technology.

She always felt like she had a sense of where she was on the map, how to get where she was headed.

Mako tapped on her phone that was mounted on the dash. “Is this not working?”

“No,” she said. “But I know the way.”

He gave her a knowing smile. “You’re using your magical yogi powers, communing with the universe.”

“Not exactly. I talked to the host yesterday.”

He gave an easy laugh.

His voice was soft. This was her Mako—not the man at the office, not the philanthropist, or even the man-baby he was with his dysfunctional family. Not the Mako of rumor and conjecture. The true man beneath all the other layers—kind, funny, thoughtful, romantic; this Mako was hers alone.

He moved his hand from her leg to the back of her neck. It was warm against her skin; she pressed into him, shot him a grin.

“What would I do without you?” he said, and for a moment he sounded sad. She felt a little flash of something—regret, apprehension. Like any couple, they’d had their issues.

“You’ll never have to find out.”

He would have to find out, of course. Someday. They’d all have to learn what it meant to lose everything. That was the way of it, though most people could scarcely acknowledge that truth.

But not today. Today, she was going to help her husband to find some serenity. At least for the weekend. She knew things weren’t going well at work—that the new game wasn’t performing the way they expected, and that there were other things keeping her husband up at night. She just wasn’t sure exactly what, or how bad. She’d asked of course, but all she got were the typical Mako answers: “It’s all good. Just some bumps in the road. We’ll get it all handled.”

She tried to stay out of his work, to be his safe place. She could get him to do yoga and to meditate some. But only sometimes. He was a live wire, giving off sparks. It was one of the things she had loved about him first, his raw energy and drive. If she was cool—river water over rocks—he was fire burning bright and hot. They balanced each other.

“Oh, wow,” said Mako. “Holy cow.”

They were rounding the final bend that Bracken had described and the house came into view over the trees. Finally they were in the circular drive. The pictures had not done the place justice—hardly a cabin. A towering wood and glass design dream, with a wraparound porch, three stories, surrounded by old growth trees—pine, maple, birch—landscaped with fecund azalea bushes bright and hot pink. She could see inside through the big windows the elegant and spacious interior—towering ceilings, leather and wood furniture.

Mako got out of the car as soon as she pulled it to a stop, let out a delighted whoop. This trip. Why was it so important to him? She knew him well enough to know there was always an agenda—either internal or external. He hadn’t shared it with her.