5. Lacey
LACEY
The first thing I do when I open the door to Jasper’s cabin is scream.
I was sure I’d seen a huge spider run up the side of the door frame.
Unfortunately, it’s just a daddy long-legs, which doesn’t bode well for how I’m going to manage out here.
Even as I wound my way further up the road, the trees on either side started to look more and more ominous, deep shadows stretching through the woods, almost like they were reaching out toward me.
“Why do you look so scary if you’re harmless?” I mutter, flattening my back against the door to give him plenty of room as I slide into the cabin.
It’s dark and cool inside, which is surprising, given how hot it was today, but the mountain air seems to have a quality about it that chills quickly, like it just can’t hold onto heat. The cabin also smells slightly musty, and I wonder when Jasper came up here last.
In his final months, it had felt like he was spending more time in San Francisco. The thought makes my heart squeeze, especially when I know he would have been so much happier out here.
And especially when I think about all the times I blew him off for work, even at the end. Once more, anger rises up in me, and I wish Jasper had told me.
“Not going to think about it,” I mutter to myself, then I realize I’ve only been alone for ten minutes up here and I’m already talking to myself.
That must be what was wrong with that neighbor. Max. The way he went from being, if not friendly, at least amenable to a conversation, to looking like he couldn’t stomach the sight of me. It was like whiplash, like something I did or said really put him off.
It’s Montana, not a different country. I didn’t think about differences in culture before beginning my road trip out here.
As I move through the cabin, I try to flick on some of the lights, but nothing comes on. That’s fine; it makes sense. Jasper would have turned off the electricity, surely.
I couldn’t really make out the cabin in the dark, and I’ll have to wait until the morning to get a sense of what the exterior looks like.
It was hard to make out in just the glow of my headlights, but I can already tell I’ll need to make some updates if I want this to work as a rental.
Jasper might have been a great builder, but he was never into interior decorating.
His house in San Francisco was a testament to that.
All cobbled-together furniture or stuff he picked up from the curb, swearing it was fine and didn’t have to match.
When Mom or I tried to prompt him into buying his own furniture — which he certainly could have afforded, or we could have bought as a gift — he’d shake his head. You gotta focus on function more than fashion, Bug.
I laugh to myself now, then stub my toe on a dresser and swear under my breath, almost feeling like it’s a message from Jasper. Don’t make fun of me. And that makes me sad, and lonely, in this big, dark cabin.
Three rooms, but just me staying.
When I get to the bedroom, I’m glad to find passably clean sheets and a warm quilt in the closet. I quickly put the bed together, starting to shiver, and climb under the covers, opening my phone to scroll on it like I normally do before bed.
Except now, when I pull up Instagram, then TikTok, nothing loads. Sighing, I set the phone down and roll onto my back, realizing this is the longest I’ve ever gone without checking my Gaia email.
Then, before I really realize what’s happening, I drift off into a strange, almost weightless dream.
“Come on, come on!” I urge, pressing my foot down as hard as it will go on the pedal.
This morning, I woke up to the feeling of the sun shining in through the windows onto my face, and the fact that I wasn’t jolting awake to the sound of my alarm or the hiss of the espresso machine instantly made me panic.
I’ve gotten so used to nearly being late to work that it took me a full five minutes to remember that I couldn’t go to work today.
Then I tried to check my email, remembered the thing about not having service, set my phone down, and immediately picked it up again, opening the email app. I did that twice more, before deciding to take a shower.
But when I got into the bathroom and cranked the handle for the spigot, I got a few sputters, then a blasting stream of freezing water. So, I dug out some dry shampoo, wiped down with a washcloth, and decided getting hot water would be the very first item on my to-do list.
I also realized that though the cabinets were full of plates and bowls, cups and mugs, coffee tools, and some boring cans and rice in the pantry, no real food was to be found anywhere.
No milk, nothing in the empty, warm refrigerator.
Which is probably a good thing, or I’d have a bunch of spoiled food to contend with.
So, stomach growling and head starting to pound with a demand for caffeine, I hopped in the car, already feeling better at the thought of heading into the nearest ‘town’ — not False Summit or Summit, but the little village at the base of the mountain — to get coffee and something to eat.
Now, I press even harder against the pedal, feeling the tires spinning uselessly behind my car.
It must have rained last night because the road is a lot softer than I remember, and I’m getting the feeling that I might be making the situation worse by trying to muscle out of it.
I have no idea. This is the first time in my life I’ve taken this car — or any car, actually — onto something other than pavement.
When Jasper and I went on our trips to the national forests, I was too young to drive, and we took his 4Runner anyway.
So maybe there’s some sort of technique I should be using—
“Let up on the accelerator,” a deep, male voice says out of nowhere.
I scream, throwing my hands up in the air, which makes the neighbor — Max — curse under his breath and reach in through the open driver’s side window, punching the button to turn my car off.
“Hey!” I turn, indignant, frowning at him… and frowning even more at the fact that he looks like this. Rugged, his brow drawn down over dark eyes, a sharp face made softer by the beard that looks completely wild.
In a crazy, unexpected turn of fate, I want to run my hands over it. I have never been interested in a man’s beard before this exact moment. In fact, back in San Francisco, Vanessa and I have spent many hours trash-talking the guys at work with man buns and wispy facial hair.
But Max’s beard isn’t wispy. In fact, it gives the impression that he’s kind of forgotten it’s there, like other guys wouldn’t be dying for the ability to grow something like that.
“You took your hands off the wheel,” he says, pointing at the steering wheel, as though there will be evidence there of me being a reckless driver.
“You scared me,” I counter. I hadn’t even realized I was stuck outside his place. Without him standing in the front yard, it was kind of easy to miss, what with the drive nearly concealed by the thick brush and trees enveloping the property.
I peer over his shoulder, wondering if I might be able to make out his house through the trees.
“You should be aware of your surroundings while driving,” he says, leaning in closer to the window. “There are deer in these parts.”
I ignore how that sounds like a line out of a movie and throw my hands up again, exasperated with this man. “Seriously, do you have nothing better to do than stand outside your house and play traffic cop?”
“Yeah, I do actually, since someone wasted my time last night, all my wood went bad,” he says, swinging his arm in the direction of the lumber piled up in the yard, looking damp. Turning back to me, he refocuses. “Where are you going, anyway? Did you already give up?”
I bristle instantly at his tone — and at the fact that a second before this, I was wondering about how bad it would actually be to cut my losses and go back to San Francisco.
Maybe I could hire someone to take care of the cabin or renovate it as they saw fit.
Jasper could be pissed at me from heaven if he wanted. He probably already is.
“No,” I say, instead of admitting that’s exactly what I was thinking about doing.
I cross my arms and nearly hit the horn on the steering wheel, which reminds me that for all his road safety talk, we are having this conversation in the middle of one, where my car is currently stuck.
“For your information, I was going into town for supplies. It’s not my fault my car got stuck. ”
“I’m shocked this thing made it up the mountain,” he says, shaking his head, “and that you didn’t manage to go off the side of it getting to this point. While you’re here, you should take Jasper’s 4Runner.”
I ignore the instant and reverberating pang of grief that rolls through my body at the sound of my uncle’s name, and shake my head, trying to keep my tone from showing how the mention of him affected me. “I don’t know how to drive a stick shift.”
Max blinks at me like, of course you don’t.
Then, with a monumental sigh that could probably blow my car off the road, he scrubs his hand over his hair and looks up to the sky, as though some god might smite him right now and save him from his misery.
“Fine,” he says, as though I was down on my knees and begging for his help, and now he’s finally giving in. “I’ll take you.”
I want to scoff, to tell him to buzz off, that I can handle it perfectly myself. That I’ll walk down the side of the mountain, if I have to.
But I want a shower. And cell service, and coffee, and something to eat. And, if I’m being honest with myself, even with how grumpy he is, there’s something appealing to me about Max.
Maybe it’s the fact that he knew Jasper, and specifically that he knew this version of my uncle — the guy who came out to the cabin on his own. Who was his happiest in nature. Who built an entire home with his own two hands.
So, I don’t tell him to buzz off. Instead, I smile up at him, grab my purse, and say with a winning smile my mother would have been proud of, “That would be wonderful.”