Chapter 1
Tessa
This cabin is what’s left of my marriage.
My not-so-holy matrimony with Jack was short-lived, and also a very long time ago. Those two years are the asterisk on my otherwise focused life, a dalliance I usually leave out of my biography when I meet new people.
What I do tell them: I finished grad school, then earned my chops at a baby nonprofit in Albuquerque before heading to California for my PhD. I’m a distinguished professor of political science and an on-demand political commentator for cable TV.
What I don’t usually share: Memories of the funny dark-haired guy I met at a New Mexico bar, and how we spent that night together under the stars, taking breaks from pointing out constellations to make out like teenagers.
I keep those details to myself—how we rarely separated after that first meeting, staying up late to watch old horror flicks and waking up early to make love before work.
No one hears about how we got matching swallow tattoos on our lower backs one night after stumbling out of a punk show, sweaty and high on the thrill of each other.
Or how Jack told me he loved me after just two weeks, and I echoed the sentiment five days later as we watched hot air balloons drift across the flawless sky.
Not that anyone would believe me anyway.
I’m known for my starched button-up shirts and well-kept hair the studio prefers, or for studiously learning each student’s name in my Political Culture 101 class.
I’m the professor with the 20-page syllabus, the friend who brings salad to the potluck, the woman on TV trying to tell everyone how royally fucked we are with a smile on my face.
If my life were a color, I would be a solid beige.
Jack wouldn’t even be a color, just brightness. The shimmer of sun on water.
The glitter of freshly fallen snow, like what blankets the ground now.
I tighten my scarf against the cold wind and heft my backpack over one shoulder before shutting my car’s trunk.
Oaks and junipers shake in the breeze around the squat cabin, a small A-frame made of timber and red brick.
The dark green eaves I repainted a few years ago have faded, the wildflowers sprinkling the tall grasses with color this July long gone.
It’s all so familiar. The gravel driveway, the call of pesky Mexican jays alighting from the trees at my intrusion, the creak of the wooden steps as I approach the front door.
And I know what I’ll find inside: a queen bed with a red and blue quilt, the antique wood-burning stove, a bookshelf of paperbacks I’ve read a dozen times.
The wood floor will groan under my weight, and the view out of the window will show the layered peaks of the Gila Wilderness looking just like they did the first time I peered out, 25 years old and madly in love, my husband’s arms wrapped around my waist.
Most everything around me has changed since then, but this cabin has stayed the same. It’s the most constant thing in my entire life.
As I twist the key, jiggling it just right, dark clouds continue to creep across the sky, an early winter storm snarling holiday traffic all over New Mexico. I made it just in time.
But the roads better be cleared again in a few days, because my time is up here on January first.
Our divorce was fast and simple. We didn’t have kids or any joint accounts to split. But we did have this—the cabin at the edge of the Gila, with its one queen bed and four acres of scrub forest—and neither of us had wanted to give it up.
We’d bought it together on a whim after a backpacking trip.
Not ready to return to the real world, we’d been exploring back roads in the mountains when we found it, grasses overgrown and a hand-written For Sale sign out front.
It was cheap—the recession was in full swing then, everybody upside down in their mortgages—and together, Jack and I had just enough savings to make it work.
It wasn’t a smart decision, but we weren’t in the smart decision time of our lives. We were living on love and lust and optimism, this cabin seemed dropped on the planet for us and us alone.
I push inside, thrown back to that first time we entered as owners.
Other than a beater car my dad helped me buy after college, I’d never owned anything, and I couldn’t believe it was ours.
Jack bundled me in his arms, laughing, and carried me over the threshold like a newlywed, which technically we were.
Just four months earlier, we’d been having sex in my cramped shower when he popped the question, and the next day we drove to Reno with our fanciest clothes in the back seat.
But now I’m alone, and 20 years older, on the cusp of 45.
The echoes of my former selves tuck themselves into corners here, always ready to step out and face me in a memory so clear my legs go soft.
Sometimes it’s those early days with Jack, setting up birdfeeders outside only to have him loop his arms around my waist and haul me back to bed, urging me to let myself scream as he buried his head between my legs because no one was around for miles.
Other times it’s the dark days (months, years) after our split, when I took the long solo drive to stubbornly claim my cabin time only to cry for the weekend as I thought of him.
But there are other versions of me here, after.
After I sewed my heart back up, staying for days without distractions and working on my dissertation, or when I brought my Phoebe here as our sister bachelorette weekend full of cheap wine and hikes through the woods.
This cabin saw me through my thirties and my start on TV; and it was here, alone, that I turned 40 with a bottle of whiskey, a good book, and no one around to tell me I was now over the hill.
This little cabin has seen me through it all.
For the first few years after our divorce, cabin time was the topic of numerous awkward conversations to coordinate its use and upkeep. And because Jack had remained closer, staying in Albuquerque when I went to California, I always felt like I was asking his permission to come.
So after a few years I suggested a new arrangement: He’d have full use January 1 to June 30, and I’d get the other six months.
Any basic repairs or maintenance would be done by whoever happened to have cabin time when something broke down, and bigger items—like the new wood stove—we’d agree on via email.
I’ve only been able to come a few times this year.
It takes me a very long day to drive, or the expense of an airplane ticket and rental car to come otherwise.
My sister Phoebe thinks it’s dumb that I still own and use the place.
There are about a million vacation homes way closer, she’ll remind me.
And she’s absolutely right. But she also doesn’t get it.
This place is more me than anywhere else.
It’s seen me through my entire adulthood, offering up a place to think and read and cry and detox from a world that’s falling apart at the seams.
And I’d never tell Phoebe, but this cabin also gives me signs of Jack, little handholds I can’t let go of.
A book left on the side table (once summer it was a terrifying Stephen King I read under the covers with my phone light, another autumn a pensive memoir all told in verse), or a new set of towels, huge and soft like in a luxury hotel.
I’d emerge from the little clawfoot tub in the corner, wrap myself up, and wonder where Jack got them, how he chose the color, and if anyone had been with him when he did it.
I shouldn’t crave these signs. We’ve been divorced for 20 years, and have only exchanged curt emails for the last 10.
But when I left Jack here and fled to California, overflowing with sadness and rage that he let me go so easily, I comforted myself that he’d soon be an ancient memory.
I’d meet people, I told myself—incredible, brilliant, gorgeous people—who would override memories of the wiley-smiled guy I’d married on a whim.
And I’ve met plenty of people—people who have made me laugh and orgasm, people who've challenged my intellect and stroked my ego—but no one’s ever quite made me spark like he did, and I’m beginning to think no one ever will.
Which is why I’ll be out of here December 31 like always, so I don’t risk seeing him in the flesh and facing… all of that.
But as I turn to shut the front door, there’s the crunch of gravel outside. The sky is darker now, the first flurries filling the air like so many dandelion puffs. And a red truck is pulling to a stop, parking just behind mine.
I tell myself it’s a lost tourist, or maybe a forest ranger making their standard checks. But all it takes is one step of a denimed leg outside the truck, and I know.
I know the way his leg stretches, how his foot hits the ground, how his body unfolds from his truck. I know the breeze in his hair, the width of his shoulders, the sway of his arm. And I know his eyes—dark brown and flecked with gold—blinking at me as snow lands in his thick eyelashes.
After all these years, I recognize him like no time has passed since we sat on this porch, my legs thrown over his as we made plans. So many plans.
It’s Jack McLeod, my ex-husband, and he’s here three days early.
Jack
This woman is perfect.
It was my first thought when I laid eyes on her 27 years ago.
She was sitting on a barstool, head tipped back in laughter with her slender fingers wrapped around a beer bottle.
The bar lighting was typical—a few swinging overheads keeping everything dim enough for customers to ignore the stains on the floor and chipping of the ancient wooden booths lining the walls.
But it made Tessa even more intriguing. I couldn’t tell the color of her nearly-buzzed hair, didn’t know if the glint near her smile was a nose ring or just a trick of light.