Chapter Twelve #2
“I don’t think it works that way,” Johnny said.
But hell, maybe it did. This was his grandmother’s property—his property now, he reminded himself.
He took a last look at the Jeep, unable to make peace with its presence.
Maybe mountain folk left their keys in the ignition, but no one else Johnny knew did. Why hadn’t the driver come back?
But fuck it. They were here now.
Johnny drove his family through the gate of Bear Creek Lodge.
Rolling across the driveway of his grandmother’s lodge was the closest sensation Johnny had experienced to folding back time.
His firstvisit also had followed heavy snow, and although it wasn’t identical, so much seemed the same.
One of the cabins was gone, the other in ruins, but the lodge looked like his memories except for the ancient paint job.
Mount Shasta’s peaks appeared above the lodge through the RAV’s windows, twinkling in brighter sunlight, wreathed with thin clouds.
Johnny’s breath caught. How did he so easily forget how beautiful this was?
“Do you see that, girls?” Tasha said. “Look at the mountain view!”
Tasha and Imani squealed. For the first time—and one of the last—Johnny was glad he had brought his family to share his memories here.
Tasha was right: This was their legacy. Maybe their previous trips to closer mountain resorts had been his way of trying to make up for depriving his children of their rightful inheritance, which had been here all along.
He had paid enough for it. His mother and Uncle Ricky had paid enough.
Don’t forget Mazelle. She paid plenty too.
Bear Creek Lodge might be Mazelle Washington’s greatest creation.
Imani gasped. “Wait—are we rich?” she asked, as if it had never dawned on her.
“Yes,” Johnny and Tasha said together, and Johnny laughed.
Johnny’s mother had worked two jobs to keep the lights on for them in Miami’s Liberty City, since Mom had been determined to take care of herself after she left home at seventeen.
He and Tasha earned more a year than his mother ever dreamed of while living in a house they could sell for two million dollars.
The lodge’s property was easily worth a couple million too, if not more.
They often talked about how their daughters took their lives of ease for granted.
“Now they get it,” Tasha muttered, chuckling.
Johnny eased into the driveway and spoke to the rhythm of the clinking chains.
“The first time I came here, I didn’t want to come without my mom,” he said.
“But she said Diahann Carroll would be here, so that was all it took to get my butt on a plane. It was my first plane ride by myself. And man, I was so upset when my uncle Ricky told me that Diahann Carroll couldn’t make it that I didn’t pay any attention to the guy who was here—Joe Louis.
Had a beautiful Caddy parked right over there. ”
“Who?” Imani and Sharise said together, but Tasha eagerly followed his pointing finger to a garage door where the carport had stood. In that spot, the driveway forked in two directions: one to the front door, one to the kitchen on the side of the house facing the cabins.
“Johnny Richard Washington, I can’t believe you’ve never told me that story,” Tasha said. “You met Joe Louis right here?”
“I still have a few secrets left. I’ve got a Polaroid with him somewhere.”
“What’s a Polaroid?” Imani asked.
Johnny only caught a glimpse of the steps to the kitchen as he drove, but the sight was enough to tear the smile from his face.
Gooseflesh rose on his arms as he realized he’d dreamed about those kitchen steps just last night: a nightmare he’d buried until he saw the steps capturing his dream so thoroughly that he might still be asleep.
The only difference was that in his dream, his grandmother had been sitting on those steps in her bathrobe.
The feeling of displacement in time was so strong that he expected her to open the front door as he rolled to a stop in front of the covered porch.
“Some lady’s inside,” Imani said. “The window—see?”
Alarmed, Johnny leaned over to check the living room window that looked out to the porch. A slender feminine figure was standing behind the pane. Shadowed but familiar. His throat sealed itself. He fought to swallow, and couldn’t.
“Do you think it’s somebody from the Jeep—?
” Tasha started to say, but Johnny flung his door open to leap out.
He didn’t think about his pen this time, only vaguely aware of his family calling to him as he ran toward the window.
He was sure the apparition might vanish, but the figure became more solid as he climbed the four steps.
He knew the furred sleeve of the woman’s bathrobe. The same robe from his dream. His grandmother’s robe. Johnny’s mouth fell open, all moisture gone. It couldn’t be. He was so startled that he had to grab the banister to keep his balance on the icy wooden step.
“Be careful!” Tasha called from the RAV. “Who is it?”
Johnny’s mind fixated on his huffing clouds of breath in front of the impossible sight in the window.
His need to make sense of the world forced him to lean closer—and what he saw through his reflection on the pane made his heart pummel his throat.
He couldn’t mistake this red robe with fur sleeves and collar she wore in his nightmares.
He blinked, refocusing a blurry contact lens, and noticed that the hand raised in a lifelike pose was too pale a shade of brown. Too smooth to be true skin.
“A mannequin,” he said aloud just to hear the words.
His knees went weak with relief. Hollman had asked permission to create a small exhibition on Mazelle Washington from items in the house.
He hadn’t sent photos, so he must have wanted to surprise Johnny with the display of her favorite bathrobe, which had been hanging in her bedroom when she died.
Hollman had gotten his hands on a beige-skinned mannequin somehow.
Jesus. Johnny wished Hollman had told him what to expect and saved him a potential heart attack.
Maybe he knew more about the Jeep by the road too.
“Can we get out now?” Imani called.
Johnny waved, gesturing that it was okay. “Just a mannequin!” he said more loudly. Too loudly. His voice was laced with residual panic from believing his nightmare had come to life.
Johnny felt winded. He wanted to lean over with his hands on his knees to catch his breath, but he didn’t want Tasha and the kids to worry about him as much as he was worried about himself.
First panic attack already. This would be a long weekend. Get it together, old man.
Johnny immersed himself in the excited cascade of conversation from Tasha and the girls, with Tasha eager to get inside to use the bathroom and Imani and Sharise begging him to point out the ski slope.
They reached a compromise: Johnny would unlock the door to let Tasha inside and then he would walk the girls over to look at the backyard slope, not letting them go out unsupervised.
Their smiles helped him remember to smile too, although it wasn’t heartfelt yet.
But maybe it would be soon, especially if there weren’t any more surprises.
The rest of the arrival was smooth. The front door stuck a bit from new paint, but the key worked.
The lodge smelled fresh, not musty and damp the way it had smelled when he first hired Hollman.
When he hit the light switch, the chandelier over the white baby grand glared on with bright, mottled light that made Tasha, Sharise, and Imani oooohh and aaaaahh like the living room was a fireworks show.
No sign of intruders. All good. And Hollman had done a hell of a job decorating the lodge.
In the light, the mannequin in the robe display by the window brought the hostess to blank-faced life, arms open in welcome.
Johnny’s stomach dropped when he saw the gray-brown fur on the collar up close, remembering when his grandmother had stood so close to him in this very robe. But the feeling quickly passed.
Sharise began narrating video on her phone again. “We’re at the Bear Creek Lodge, once owned by actress Mazelle Washington, a forgotten Black movie star from the 1940s—”
“Actually, she first became a star in the 1920s,” Tasha said, scurrying down the hallway, where Johnny had pointed out the bathroom. “Make sure you get the history right.”
“Mom, I was shooting—”
“Can you do that later?” Imani complained to Sharise. “We’re going to the slope!”
Johnny’s cheeks twitched. His smile was spreading on its own.
They had made it. They were off the road.
Wherever his family was, he was at home.