4. Aspen #2
I nod, not trusting myself to speak. I’m so fucking stupid. I didn’t cry at my dad’s funeral, but being told that what I do matters has my throat closing over and my eyes burning.
I round the vehicle to the passenger side and climb in the seat.
“It’s a few hours’ drive,” Blake says, jumping back behind the wheel and slamming the door. “You want to stop for anything else before we leave?”
I shake my head. “No, let’s just go.”
I’m not sure how I feel about leaving my hometown so far behind. Maybe for the first time in a long time I’ll be able to breathe again. I find myself looking forward to the space of the mountains. The clean air. Surrounded by nature. It might do me good.
Growing up in a small town hasn’t been easy, especially with my background.
Everyone knows who I am—the sister of the teenager who went missing all those years ago.
Speculation has always been rife. Emilia was seventeen at the time, so it wouldn’t have been unusual for her to have met someone inappropriate online and run off with him.
Seventeen-year-olds do stupid shit all the time.
But when I became the sister of the girl who disappeared, I lost any identity of my own.
At eleven years old, that was hard to take.
Plus, I’d missed her like hell, my cool big sister.
I’d annoyed the shit out of her, bursting into her room when she was talking online to her friends, stealing her makeup and clothes, generally being an annoying little sister.
But we’d loved each other. She was one person I’d been able to relax and be myself around.
Sometimes, she’d take me out to the mall, and it would just be the two of us.
She’d make me feel so special and grown up.
I picture how we would have been now, with her at twenty-four and me at eighteen.
Would we have been close? Best friends, even?
I grieve for something I never got to experience.
I’ve gone through so much loss. My grief for each of my family members jostles for space inside my heart. I have no one now. It’s a strange feeling, a sense of being untethered, like I might just drift off into space, and no one will even notice.
Blake flicks on the radio, a local station playing something country. He concentrates on the road as he drives.
I glance down at the thickness of his thigh, the suit material of his pants tight around the muscles. I know it’s not the normal sort of thing he would wear. He’s more of a faded blue jeans kind of guy, and I appreciate that he made the effort for the funeral.
“You’ll meet Levi when we get there,” he announces.
“Who?”
He gives me a strange look. “Levi. My son.”
“Oh, sure.”
So, he’s living with his son—the son he and Dad fell out over. The one who was supposed to be wild.
How old had Levi been back then? I’m assuming a teenager for him to be described as wild.
Surely Dad wouldn’t have made such judgment about a small boy.
That would mean Levi is a grown man now, and I assume he’ll have grown out of his ‘wildness.’ Even so, uneasiness jars inside me.
It changes the dynamics, doesn’t it, if there are two of them and one of me?
Could it be a good thing? He might act as a buffer, diffuse the strange tension between me and Blake.
“How old is he?” I dare to ask.
“A little older than you. More around your sister’s age—” He catches himself. “I mean, what she would be now. He’s twenty-three.”
“Right. How come I never met him before?”
“He was living with his mom when you were younger. When he was sixteen, he started acting out, and his mom decided she couldn’t handle him anymore and packed him off to live with me.”
“Where is she now?” I ask. “His mom, I mean?”
“No idea. Haven’t heard from her for years.”
I clear my throat. “Does he have a stepmom?”
Blake glances over at me and laughs. “No, no stepmom either.”
I relax a fraction though I’m not really sure why. “So, it’s just you and your son living at Windridge Hall?”
“Depends on the time of the year. Parts of the hotel are renovated well enough to allow me to rent rooms out to hikers over the spring and summer months. It’s not much, but it keeps the place afloat.”
That’s why he was so quick to offer me a place to stay. He’s used to having people around.
I’m relieved he’s not married, but I don’t want to delve too deeply as to why I feel that way. Shouldn’t I prefer hearing that there would be another woman in the place? Perhaps a motherly figure who could nurture me while I’m grieving?
But I can’t picture Blake with a motherly kind of woman, even though I know there must be one out there somewhere on account of him having a son.
But then I remember she threw her sixteen-year-old boy out of the house because she couldn’t cope with him, so again, I doubt she’s the motherly kind.
I know I’m being judgmental, but who throws their own child out?
I wonder what Blake’s son does with his time.
Is he helping Blake with the renovations?
Or taking care of the guests who rent out the rooms?
I feel like a guy in his twenties should want to be out partying, or at least be around other people.
Being stuck all the way in the mountains with only his dad and a few hotels guests for company is hardly going to be fun.
It dawns on me that I’m only eighteen, and it’s not like I’m out partying either. I’m also more than happy to be away from other people. Most of my life, all they’ve ever meant is pain and disappointment.