A Little Too Late (Madigan Mountain #1)(13)

To our little brother Crew, that meant flinging his body off every cornice and terrain park in the known world. He’s a superstar of adrenaline sports. At least according to the latest TV coverage.

“I’ve got to go,” Weston says. “Is that all?”

“Basically. You’ve made it clear that you don’t care about this place,” I say. “But I thought you needed to know what’s happening.”

“Yeah that’s…wow.”

“Come join me here if you want to see this place again before it’s sold. Dad’s new wife makes excellent cookies.”

“You know I’m not doing that.”

“You could, though.” I kick at the snow with my toe. “The deal can’t go through for a few weeks. And I’m going to be here a few days longer than I planned.”

“Not my problem,” he grunts. “Not yours either. Go home if you want. Let him sell. What’s the difference?”

I gaze at the mountain peak against the blue sky, and I take in the scent of pine and wood smoke. “This deal doesn’t make sense to me. There’s something I’m missing. The property valuation, plus the franchise value… Maybe you’d get to twenty or thirty million dollars. So where are they getting eighty-two? Unless the lodge is on top of a diamond mine.”

Weston snorts. “So what? Let them have it. Makes no difference to me.”

I still need to understand. That’s just how I’m built. I hate the idea of someone taking advantage of us just because I can’t be bothered to show up.

Even though I often can’t be bothered to show up.

“It’s your funeral,” Weston adds.

“So you’ve said.” I turn around to take in the resort, the smattering of condos on the hill behind it, and the ski lifts. “The place looks great, though. There’s a new quad chair—the kind with heated seats.”

“Oh, we’re catering to wimps now?”

“Apparently. There’s a new spa, too. The kind where they rub scented oils into your body and massage your feet.”

“But no new condos, right? Or rental units? That would explain the fat price,” my brother points out.

“No, of course not.” Madigan Mountain reached its building capacity in the nineties. My parents ran into several roadblocks—including the road itself—when they considered expanding the hotel and growing the resort. “But everything looks shined up and perfect. Hey, Weston? Do you remember Ava?”

“Huh? Do you mean Ava who answers the phone when I call Dad? Or do you mean your college girlfriend?”

Well, that’s interesting. “What if I told you they’re the same person?”

“Wait, really?”

“Really,” I grunt.

“And you didn’t know?”

“Had no clue. Got the shock of my life yesterday when I walked into Dad’s office. Does she really answer the phone when you call? My calls go to voicemail every time.”

My brother bursts out laughing. “Jesus, Reed. I’ve been saying hello to Ava for years. Nice girl. I had no idea that was your Ava. How did that happen?”

“I don’t know. I was too surprised to ask her.”

“You better find out. That’s some bunny-boiling level weirdness right there.”

He laughs, but I don’t. Ava isn’t a stalker. And Weston has no idea what went down between us. It was a lot for two young people to handle, and I didn’t handle it well.

“Hey, Weston—have you heard from Crew? He didn’t reply to my text. I had a nice chat with his voicemail but I don’t think he even listens to it.” Our youngest brother doesn’t ever call Dad. Or us, unless we make him.

“Nah,” Weston says. “It’s been a while. I’ve got to run.”

Of course he does. It would kill him to stay on the phone with me for more than five minutes.

“Fine. I’ll let you know if I find that diamond mine.”

“Sure thing.”

“See you later,” I say. It’s our standard signoff. But we never actually see each other later.

Damn, I’m broody. Must be time for coffee.

I walk through the back door of the lodge, because it’s closest to the offices. But instead of heading for my father’s office, I turn in the other direction and enter the employee canteen. They serve coffee and pastries every morning. I used to eat breakfast here during ski season, especially if my mother was out on a snowcat somewhere grooming the mountain.

She loved that job. She loved to watch the sun rise from the South Slope with her thermos full of tea and her big, ugly work gloves on.

That’s how my parents met—she’d been working as a groomer for another ski mountain to pay the bills while she focused on her art. But my grandfather poached her to come and work at Madigan. “He got me for just fifty cents an hour more,” she used to say. “Plus his son. I was a cheap date.”

My father had married her within the year, and I was born ten months after their wedding day.

God, I used to hear that story a lot. If you looked up happy couple in the dictionary, you might have seen a photo of my mom and dad.

And then, when I was a senior in high school, my mother was diagnosed with a brain disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob. It’s kind of like the human version of mad cow disease, and it took months for the neurologist to figure out what was wrong with her. Nobody even knows how she got it. “I’ve never seen another case of it in my lifetime,” the doctor had said. “It’s too rare.”