Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six(21)

He knew, but he didn’t want her to know he’d been watching.

“A Tesla,” she said, a wrinkle in her brow. “It’s a looker, but I’m not sure it’s a match for swamped roads.”

“Well, worse comes to worse, I’ll come by in the truck as soon as it’s possible to check on you all. So just stay put. I wouldn’t want anyone getting stuck—or hurt.”

She nodded thoughtfully, looked outside. His GMC pickup—a machine built for hauling, plowing, getting through—was parked at the trailhead down the road. She must be wondering where his vehicle was, but she didn’t ask and he didn’t offer an explanation.

“We’ll do that if the weather turns, stay put. Thank you. For everything.”

She held out a folded bill, but he waved her away. “Happy to help.”

Tipping. People didn’t mean it to be reductive. But it was. He was the owner, not the help. What he did, he did because of a very personal code of hosting.

She slipped the money into the slim pocket of her leggings. He imagined that she’d forget it was there, maybe put it through the wash.

Sometimes, when people were chatty, he told them about the history of the land and the house that used to stand upon it. Some people were intrigued, but others were put off. So he’d stopped sharing the dark history of the place unless a person seemed like a ghost story around the campfire type.

Liza did not seem like that type of person. Liza seemed sensitive, tense, someone who took things seriously. She was rubbing at her temples again.

“This place,” she said, as if reading his mind. “It has an energy.”

He’d searched her online after she made the deposit and quickly discovered her Instagram, her YouTube. Yoga teacher and meditation instructor.

“Good or bad?” he asked with a smile.

She seemed to consider. “Unsettled,” she said finally.

“I imagine after the fire is roaring and you’ve had a glass of wine, you’ll all settle right in.”

She nodded, folded her arms around her middle. “I’m sure you’re right.”

He handed her a card, even though he knew she had his number. Sometimes it was just easier to have a piece of paper lying around so that any of the guests could call.

“Call for any reason, anytime,” he said. She took the card and gave him a smile.

“Thank you,” she said. “We will but I’m sure everything will be perfect.”

Nothing is ever perfect, he wanted to say. Wanting everything to be perfect is a recipe for misery. But he kept quiet. Her skin was so dewy, her body toned and lithe. He wondered what it would be like to hold her in his arms, to feel her lips on his. He lost himself a moment to imagining, watching the way the sunlight danced on her hair, how she touched nervous fingers to her collarbone.

Was there something there? Would she move toward him?

He felt himself lingering, and the energy between them shifted. He wasn’t ready to go, but she wrapped her arms around her middle and shifted away a bit. She glanced back at the staircase, then toward the door as if wondering how she would get away.

“Thank you again,” she said briskly. A dismissal. And this time, he took the hint.

He gave her a little bow, and left.

He’d see more of her later.





8


Cricket

“We’re lost,” Cricket said. She tried to quell the rise of anxiety. Honestly, it had started hours ago—okay maybe days ago—the anxiety. This trip. It probably wasn’t a good idea. But like so many bad ideas, it seemed to take on an unstoppable momentum and here they were. On the way. “Are we lost?”

“It’s literally impossible to be lost,” Joshua said. He was smoothly confident. “The modern infrastructure will not allow it.”

Weekend stubble, though it was only Thursday, a wrinkled but somehow still stylish blue gingham shirt, faded jeans, loafers. He was one of those men with his long, lean body, his floppy hair, heavily lidded eyes—he simply looked good all the time. When he just woke up, after his run, when he was taking out the trash. As if he’d fallen from the pages of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue and into her life. Cricket tried not to stare at him like a schoolgirl discovering boys for the first time.

“But the dot,” she said, looking at her phone instead. “Our dot. It’s just floating in—nothing.”

She resisted the urge to tap the screen, shake them loose from the void. Joshua glanced away from the road and at her phone quickly, then pulled the car over into the shoulder, tires crunching on dirt and gravel.

All around them fecund, electric green. Silence. The towering trees cast the road in shadow, a dappled light barely shining through the canopy. She didn’t know what kind of trees—pine, oak, maple, birch? Did it matter? Whatever normal kinds of woodsy trees.

Hannah would surely know. She’d know the trees and their medicinal properties, and which one would make the best firewood. She’d use one to build a shelter, splint a broken bone. Hannah was outdoorsy.

Cricket felt that her spiritual home might be Neiman Marcus.

She was far from the kind of place that made her feel comfortable—someplace gleaming and clean with lovely, expensive goods for sale. People were so into “nature,” weren’t they? Getting into it, back to it. Why? Nature just seemed spooky and unsafe to Cricket. There was that whole no-one-can-hear-you-screaming vibe. They hadn’t seen another car for ages. Ages.