Chapter 4
Zach tried to pluck the shining thing from where it was wedged, but it was stuck tight. After a moment’s thought he grabbed a narrow stick from the depleted kindling pile and carefully levered it between the floorboards and underneath the bright object until it popped out onto the floor.
It was an earring, a jewel the size of his pinkie nail.
Despite being dirty, it scattered oblong rainbows in the sunlight.
Could it be a diamond? Zach looked furtively around the empty room, picturing a pirate’s ghost snatching away this prize of buried treasure.
He laid his cheek on the floor to examine the floorboard seam, then the ones flanking it. No matching earring. Nothing but grime.
What if he took the stone into one of the jewelry shops in town?
Sold it for—something. Did they let kids buy plane tickets?
He and Bonnie could fly to Michigan, to Aunt Felicity.
Even though the last trip hadn’t gone well, and Bram didn’t like her, Zach found himself desperately wanting to see her; see a face that looked so much like his mother’s.
He placed the earring in his palm. Wrinkled his nose, distracted from his fantasy by the crusted tangle of hairs that came up from the floorboard crack with the earring, raveled scabby through its backing and thin gold post. A small chunk of something swung from them below his upturned hand.
Zach instinctively recoiled. But as it often did, as it had at seeing the elk on the hike up, revulsion bred curiosity.
He examined the dangling thing closer. What was it?
Some kind of dull brown matter about the size of the diamond, thin but tightly curled, and wrinkled in a way that made it seem organic.
A piece of old apple peel? A moldy wood shaving?
It all reminded Zach of a fishing lure; a sparkle of bait hiding something unknown, maybe deadly.
Ever since the world had broken, he’d skidded out of a groove he hadn’t even known existed, sensing a rot lurked below things. The way the earring interlaced with something repulsive was only more proof.
He drifted into memories of that other life.
His mother pulling a toddler Bonnie up the trail in a sled.
His mother jumping off the hut’s porch into powder screeching with joy, snow strung through her hair.
Her approving nod as he switched on the hut’s solar power.
Her earnest expression as she and the other mothers demonstrated building a snow shelter in case of emergency, how to light a one-match fire—survival drills he and the other kids participated in with the deep seriousness universal to children who understand they are learning important, grown-up things.
But looking back now, his eyes snagged on the darkness twisting through the bright past. His mother wearing earrings that looked similar to this one, and when he asked her what a diamond cost she said, “These? They’re fake.
It all is. You can’t tell unless you test.” A rounding of her shoulders, a folding into herself. “Or at least I couldn’t.”
Last year, Zach sitting hidden on the stairs, those ones right over there, eavesdropping as usual, as always. One of the other mothers asking, “How do you get Bram to all those school events, Grace? Mike never’ll come.”
His mother spitting out, “Anything to look like a good dad.”
An awkward clearing of throats, shifting in seats. His mother backtracking, voice sliding into a different tone, “Oh, ignore me. I’m cranky because we argued about how often I bring the kids up here.”
Zach didn’t know what price his mother had paid to take that trip, but he was sure there’d been one. Everything with Bram required an exchange, an offering.
Another mother chiming in. “Pete’s the same. ‘Why do you have to go, can’t someone else do it?’ But these trips are a godsend. So nice to get away. He’s more work than my kids, I swear.”
Sympathetic chuckles, then his mother again.
“I mean, Bram certainly likes bragging about how I’m part of the PTA crew that does these trips.
” A hum from the other mothers. Mountaineering prowess and a knowledge of the outdoors held a cachet in town, the prime reason Bram didn’t admit his low opinion of such things in front of others.
“But he’s particular. He expects the house, meals, all that kind of thing, to be a certain way.
So when I’m not there?” His mother trailed off, and when she spoke again her voice had a forced lightness.
“But, whatever. He has to deal with me constantly forgetting to do things. And if it’s not that, I’m blubbering over something.
Not to mention”—she swept a hand through the air from the top of her head to her waist, broke into a smile, and batted her eyes jokingly—“look at this body! Look at this hair. No one’s ever accused me of being low maintenance. ”
Knowing laughter, all the women perpetually eager to put themselves down, and to cheer each other on for doing the same.
All the women, too, ever ready to compare their latest surgeries, shots, laserings, things that Aunt Felicity called pricey, phony, pointless, but that his mother shrugged off as expected, even required.
When Zach asked why she, why the other mothers, did such things, the only explanation she ever offered was a cryptic, “Beauty is pain.”
“But you’re already beautiful.”
“Aren’t you sweet. But every son thinks his mother’s beautiful,” she’d say, smiling a thin smile that showed no teeth, a smile that said he meant well, but didn’t really understand her world.
But she didn’t understand his world, either. Nearly every boy he knew saw mothers as useful but dull backdrops to daily life, requiring Zach to curb talking about what his own mother taught him, the things she’d done, what they did together, in order to avoid pitying looks, or being called names.
“Speaking of PTA duties,” someone said, “that new avalanche path? We have to report that before they bring the kids up. It’s hairy.”
As the women broke down the danger, if perhaps the school outdoor education trip should be moved to a different hut altogether, Zach snuck a look around the corner to see his mother’s eyes gone distant.
Watched her take a long sip of wine. She wasn’t part of the conversation now.
She’d vanished into her glass, her head.
Zach stared down at the earring. Could it have been his mother’s, one of the other mothers’, lost last year? They all wore beautiful, shining things, even out here. The remote possibility this little fragment was proof of a time that existed before caused him to squeeze the earring tight.
He pictured his mother’s hands holding a compass, pointing at the topo map on her GPS device, teaching him to read and understand, the pull of a needle to north an invisible magic.
It all helps you stay safe.
His teeth grit tight.
Hypocrite. How could she.
The loud bang of the door startled Zach into the present. He dropped the earring and hurried to his feet, readying an excuse for Bram about why he wasn’t working.
A stubble-bearded stranger stood in the doorway.
Zach’s relief at his father not finding him idle was replaced with nervousness that this might be the guide he was supposed to banish to the hallway bunk. The new man lifted his goggles to rest on his helmet. “Oh. Hey there, bud.”
“Hi.”
“Um, anyone else around?”
Zach shook his head. “Nah. My dad’s—out.”
“Shit,” the man said, then grimaced. “Sorry, probably shouldn’t swear, huh?
” Zach saw a flash of how he must look from the outside, a boy whose huge blue eyes and light brown curls made him look younger than twelve.
Even though, he thought with some pride, he was the fastest skier in his grade, almost the tallest kid, the only one who could climb the rope to the gym ceiling.
He stood a little straighter, tried to look old enough to be someone it was okay to swear in front of.
“It’s fine,” Zach said.
“Right. It’s just my buddy and I took a run down Mariah and got separated. I figured he’d come back here.”
“You don’t have radios?” Zach cringed. He shouldn’t scold a grown-up. “I mean, um, don’t you normally have radios skiing out here?”
“Yeah, but I guess Jon doesn’t have his on. Idiot was pretty out of it, I told him to stop smok—” The man interrupted himself, again realizing he was talking to a boy. “You know what? Never mind. I’m Shane.”
Shane. Arlo Oliver’s son. Not the guide.
“I’m Zach.”
“Are you—Bram’s kid?”
“Yeah.”
All adults fell into a vague, indeterminate state of “old” to Zach.
But certainly Shane looked younger than Zach’s father.
His too-small eyes made him far less handsome than Bram, but they had similar dark, thick hair.
Though he had to be close to six feet tall, Shane was shorter than Bram, and as he removed his coat Zach saw Shane was thinner limbed and had an obvious softness around the middle Bram would never allow himself.
Zach recognized the high-end brand of Shane’s coat, nodding in approval without meaning to at seeing that, unlike his father’s gear, Shane’s was creased and worn.
Clearly familiar with the norms of the hut, Shane hung his wet outerwear and helmet in the entry. When he took off his boots he made sure to pull their tongues wide to dry efficiently, then neatly set them next to Zach’s before walking into the room.
Zach’s eyes skipped over the bits of snow and ice his father had tracked along the floor, already melting, already making a mess of things, before spotting the earring next to his foot and snapping his eyes back to Shane to make sure he hadn’t noticed it.
Shane peered out the window facing Mount Mariah, presumably looking for his friend.
Zach grabbed the earring and hid it behind his back.
Edged toward the bookshelf built into the wall of the dining area a few feet away, and surreptitiously hid the diamond and its attached mess out of sight behind a line of paperbacks.