Chapter 2
By the time the bacon was done, Alex had tried her phone four times, and four times it had given her the same single, mocking bar that flickered in and out like it couldn’t commit to an opinion.
“You’re not going to get anything.” Dani said it around a mouthful of eggs, because apparently swamp juice hadn’t ruled out taking Alex up on breakfast after all. “I tried on the drive up. Lost it about twenty minutes before the turnoff and never got it back.”
“There has to be a way to reach them.” Alex set the phone face down on the counter, more forcefully than the situation strictly called for. “This is insane. We can’t just sit here not knowing if this was a one-time mix-up or if there’s a third person showing up tomorrow.”
“Anything in this house actually work without a signal?” Dani asked, glancing around like the answer might be printed somewhere on the cabinets. “No landline or anything old-school?”
Alex was already moving before Dani finished the question.
“There’s a landline. Cass showed me years ago.
” She said it half over her shoulder, already headed for the back of the house, the memory surfacing whole and immediate, the way things Cass told her always did.
This is for emergencies, Alex, not for calling your mother.
Alex had filed it away carefully, permanently, the way she filed away everything Cass told her, in case it was ever useful.
It was useful now. The old wired phone sat mounted on the wall behind the mudroom door, beige and outdated and completely, wonderfully functional.
Alex picked up the receiver, got a dial tone, and felt something in her chest unclench for the first time since she’d woken up to a stranger doing yoga in the middle of her best friend’s living room.
She dialed Cass’s cell from memory. It rang twice.
“Alex?” Cass’s voice, tinny and half a world away, pitched up with immediate alarm. “Oh my god, is everything okay, why are you calling from a weird number, is the house on fire—”
“The house is not on fire.” Alex leaned against the doorframe, Dani drifting into the mudroom behind her, arms crossed, clearly not planning to miss this.
“But there’s a woman in your kitchen doing yoga who says her name is Dani and that she’s the house sitter. Would you like to explain that to me?”
There was a beat of silence, and then a very distant, very audible groan that Alex recognized as belonging to Marisol.
“Oh no,” Cass said, in the exact tone of someone watching a slow-motion car accident. “Oh, no, no, no. Marisol. Marisol, did you—”
“Did I what,” came Marisol’s voice, closer now, apparently having wrestled the phone or gotten within shouting distance of it. “I hired someone through that agency, the good one, the one Danielle used last year, I told you I had it handled so you wouldn’t have to worry—”
“I lined Alex up three weeks ago!” Cass’s voice cracked with something that might have been horror and might have been the beginning of laughter. “I told you I had it handled!”
There was a long pause, filled with the particular silence of two people realizing, in real time, exactly how badly they’d stepped on each other’s good intentions.
“Well,” Marisol said finally, and Alex could hear the grin in it even through the static. “Good thing we came on this trip to work on our communication.”
Cass made a strangled noise. Alex, despite herself, laughed, and caught Dani doing the same beside her, arms still crossed but her mouth twitching, clearly enjoying this far more than the situation warranted.
“I am so sorry,” Cass said, once she’d recovered enough to be coherent. “I am so, so sorry, Alex. Is Dani, is everything, are you both, is this a disaster?”
“We’re managing,” Alex said, glancing sideways at Dani, who raised her mug in a small, mocking toast. “There’s a storm rolling in. Might be a bigger problem than the sitter situation, honestly.”
“Oh, right, yes, we saw that in the forecast before we left, that’s actually why I’m glad you called.” Cass’s voice shifted, more practical now, the tone Alex recognized from a decade of Cass handling logistics for both of them. “If the power goes out, the backup generator kicks on automatically.”
“Got it.” Alex nodded. “Backup generator, automatic.”
“You’ll be fine,” Cass said, warmer now. “Call if you need anything. We’ll keep our phones close.” She paused for a moment and then continued. “Honestly, this might work out. You could use some new friends.”
“Cass.”
“I’m just saying.” There was a smile in it, the kind Alex had heard a thousand times before, usually right before Cass meddled in something Alex had very specifically asked her not to meddle in.
They said their goodbyes, Marisol shouting one more apology in the background that dissolved into laughter before Alex could catch all of it, and then the line went dead and Alex was left standing in the mudroom holding a phone that suddenly felt very heavy for how light it actually was.
“So,” Dani said, from where she’d propped herself against the doorframe. “Backup generator. That’s good news.”
“Very good news.”
“Well.” Dani pushed off the doorframe, apparently satisfied, and headed back toward the kitchen.
“Guess that just leaves logistics. Two weeks, one house, no landlord to break the tie. Mostly I’m here to keep an eye on the place anyway.
Heat, pipes, deliveries. Mountain houses get weird when you leave them alone in the winter. ”
“Right.” Alex followed her out, grateful for something practical to focus on. “I’m keeping the primary suite. I got here first, I unpacked, I’m not moving.”
“Didn’t ask you to.” Dani pulled open a hall closet at random, peering in at what turned out to be linens, and hummed approvingly. “There’s, what, three other bedrooms? I’ll take whichever one doesn’t have your stuff already exploded across it.”
“My stuff has not exploded.”
“I bet your suitcase is open on the floor and your shoes are somewhere between the suitcase and the bed on the floor.”
“That’s called unpacking efficiently.”
“Sure.” Dani grinned, already moving toward the stairs with the easy confidence of someone who had done this exact reconnaissance in a dozen strangers’ houses before. “I’ll take the one at the end. Good light for morning practice.”
“Of course you will.”
“Cooking?”
“I cook dinner, you’re on your own for whatever that was this morning.
” Alex gestured at the empty jar still sitting on the counter, and Dani laughed, actually laughed, bright and unbothered, and something about the sound of it landed somewhere in Alex’s chest she hadn’t given permission to be landed on.
“Deal,” Dani said, and headed upstairs to claim her room, leaving Alex alone in the kitchen with the first genuine quiet she’d had all morning to wonder exactly how two weeks of this were going to work.