Twenty-one #2
The machine lagged as she let off then lurched as she overcorrected. Light touch, she reminded herself. Not everything required force.
Ahead, Harper rode like she belonged there—standing slightly on the running board over bumps, shifting her weight into curves, her body moving as one with the machine. Effortless. Or close enough to it.
London stayed seated longer than she should have, gripping the handlebars tighter than necessary. She watched the distance between them stretch, then shorten, then stretch again.
Control. That was the goal.
She’d spent a month trying to relinquish her need for control, but in this moment, on this machine—control mattered. Not speed, not grace. She focused on not flipping and ending up in the ditch.
The trail narrowed as they climbed, packed snow giving way to soft edges, white spray kicking out the back of Harper’s machine and dousing her when she got too close.
The air sharpened as they gained elevation.
London could feel the air through the helmet vents like daggers against her skin.
It smelled like pine and exhaust. Not quite right—not quite wrong.
The valley began to open beside them as they climbed.
Leavenworth stretched out below in miniature, tiny rooftops dusted in white, roads plowed tidily, the Wenatchee River cutting a dark line through the center of it all.
The town looked contained. Manageable. Like something that could be held in a single glance.
Not at all like what she’d been carrying.
London pressed her thumb again, and the machine answered confidently, carrying her higher into the sky.
Ahead, Harper slowed, turning over her shoulder to silently check—was London still there? Was she okay?
She gave a thumbs up and kept climbing. Her small I’m fine sign seemed enough for Harper, who began up the trail again.
They were really gaining elevation now.
The top of Sugarloaf Mountain opened without warning. The trees simply stopped and the world arrived all at once. London pulled off the trail behind Harper and killed her engine. She’d been there before, plenty. Hell, they’d been there together.
But it was different this day, set against an indigo sky.
Town appeared again, even smaller. The river, a pencil line through a village of model-sized buildings, too small to register the thousands of lights that draped their edifices.
Icicle Canyon cut away to the southwest, a dark corridor full of peaks for which she didn’t know names.
And beyond all of it, the Stuart Range rose in a jagged line against a sky so blue it seemed artificial—the kind of blue that only existed up here, above the tree line, in winter.
“You good?” Harper asked from atop her snowmobile, breaking London’s trance.
She took off her helmet and let the truth escape. “Not sure.” Steam poured off her head.
“What’s up? You seemed fine once it all came back.”
“Hot flash.” London waved a hand in front of her face, bright pink and sprinkled with sweat droplets.
How ironic to be so hot in a place she knew was beyond cold.
It had been twenty-five degrees in the parking lot, so it was probably closer to ten up there.
Harper didn’t laugh. Didn’t make a face.
She just swung her leg over the machine with the ease of someone who’d been doing it her whole life and went straight to the cargo box on the back.
“I’ve got you,” she said, and walked toward London with two twist top cans of Coors Light, frost visible on the aluminum. She pressed one against London’s cheek before handing it over.
The cold was immediate and perfect.
“Thanks,” London said. She meant it for more than the beer.
Harper twisted hers open and leaned against her snowmobile. “Mine come at night, mostly. Three o’clock, like clockwork. I wake up drenched and pissed off.” She took a long sip. “I’ve been sleeping with the windows open.”
“In December?”
“In December.” She glanced over, something easy in her expression. “Doug thinks I’ve lost my mind.”
London opened her own beer.
“Who’s Doug?”
“Oh, the old guy staying next door at Sleeping Lady. He’s a retired forest ranger who guides snowshoe tours in winter. He says the cold from my room sneaks into his and make his sciatica flare, but I can’t stand it otherwise.”
“Why did no one tell us about this?” London held the can to her other cheek.
“The patriarchy wouldn’t have it.” Harper laughed but London knew she was serious. And probably closer to right than wrong.
It was peaceful up there, on top of Sugarloaf Mountain, the whine of snowmobiles well below them.
No one had made the summit yet—most people would spend hours on the lower trails and not even realize they could go to the top.
London sipped beer and watched Harper do the same, quiet settling over them as they took in the view.
“Want a sandwich?” Harper eventually asked, reaching back into the cargo box. “Pear and prosciutto? Turkey pesto?”
“Whichever you don’t want,” London said.
When Harper handed her pear and prosciutto, she knew it had been made intentionally for her.
How many hikes had they been on that culminated in a stunning vista and a pear and prosciutto sandwich?
Too many to count. Her body relaxed as she bit into a taste of the past. She hadn’t had one of these since the last time Harper had made her one. Which was—she couldn’t remember.
“So good,” London said between bites. “You’ve always been so good at the little details. I never appreciated it enough and I’m sorry.”
Harper dismissed her with a palm down wave, just as Harper would.
“I’m serious. It’s more than cold beer and sandwiches. It’s the bath tray—which I love, by the way. It’s showing up for me for weeks and not doing a half-assed job. You gave The Colchuck everything, Harper. You didn’t have to.”
Harper looked out at the valley.
“I didn’t have to,” she said. “I wanted to.”
Those three words cost her something. London could hear it.
“Why?” London asked, because she needed to hear it out loud. Because she’d been afraid to ask.
Harper was quiet long enough that London thought she might not answer.
“Because it’s yours. It matters to you. And that still matters to me.” She said it like it wasn’t a confession, though it was.
“I’m sorry,” London said. “For how I was when my dad died—I know that’s not—it doesn’t cover it. But I am.”
“I know.”
Acknowledgement that didn’t absolve anything, but didn’t dismiss anything, either. Harper dug a boot into the snow, stamping out a cigarette that didn’t exist and let the silence speak.
“I never meant to hurt you—”
“I know.”
Again.
The valley spread out below them, indifferent and gorgeous.
“But you did,” Harper said. “And I hurt you back. It felt like the only thing I could do. Nothing else worked. I couldn’t get your attention.”
“Right.”
She didn’t understand back then.
Neither of them was to blame.
And they were both to blame.
She’d disappeared into grief and called it surviving. And Harper’d hung on as long as she could, reaching into the dark for someone who kept moving further away.
“I’ve been thinking.” London took another sip. “I didn’t know how to let you in. After he died. I didn’t know how to let anyone in.”
“I know that, too,” Harper said, in her earnest way. No knife in it. No told you so undertone. “That was never the question.”
“What was the question?”
“Whether you ever would.”
“I wanted to,” London said as a pair of snowmobiles cruised past, kicking up snow as they made big U-turns at the top. She waited for the noise to die down before adding, “I didn’t know how.”
“Do you know how, now?”
A beat passed, then two.