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Cascade Mountains, Oregon
Now
“I’m freezing,” Renee complained as night settled over the old house.
She was sitting cross-legged on the blankets in front of the fire, its golden shadows shifting across her face.
Lucy, who had been heating soup on one of the two burners of the kitchen stove that worked, nodded. “I know. Me too.”
Five days on the mountain, sometimes with near whiteout conditions and the firewood almost gone. The old furnace was rumbling, and though it had started out smelling as if something dry was burning, it was now somewhat working, though never raising the temperature of the rooms above the midsixties. Not that it mattered. She and Renee camped out in the main room of the house, the doors to the wings shut tight and locked because she didn’t like the idea of anyone slipping in through a window or creeping along a back hallway unnoticed.
She’d made this central area their fortress, barricading themselves inside.
Do you know how paranoid that sounds?
“I’m bored,” Renee announced as Lucy returned to the living room and placed one of the mugs she was carrying on the scarred coffee table they used as their dining area, game table, and footstool. “Here ya go.” She sat on the floor and braced her back against the sagging couch. “You’re just mad because you lost at Battleship.” She’d brought several pocket-size games along with a deck of cards, but they’d played them all over and over again.
“I hate that game.” Renee turned her head and leveled a steady gaze at her mother. They’d played cards, made snow angels, and dug a snow fort outside, where Renee had insisted they leave a flashlight to shine onto the icy ceiling and walls, which now, with the continued blizzard, had become a cave, buried in the powder. They had also counted the icicles hanging from the eaves and explored the extra bedrooms of one wing of the house, with its connecting closets. The second wing was little more than a storage area, a rabbit warren complete with skis and snowboards and hiking and hunting gear. In one of the cupboards she’d discovered the hunting rifle with a scope, a bayonet, and ammunition, all of which Lucy had confiscated and kept with her at all times. The rifle was now, unloaded, on the mantel.
Ready.
Just in case she needed it.
Please, God, that she didn’t.
“When are we leaving?” Renee asked as she stirred her soup, the spoon clinking against the sides of the cup.
“Soon.”
“You said that yesterday.”
“Yeah, I know. But I mean it.”
San Francisco, California
Now
Ian tossed his jacket over the back of the desk chair in his bedroom and stretched. He didn’t know what he’d expected when he’d visited Tina Champagne, but something more than what he’d gotten. He sensed that all of Lucy’s family—Tina, Marilyn, and Clark—knew more about his ex-wife’s whereabouts than they were admitting. But that was par for the course. They’d never liked him. And Tina, bless her twisted heart, had cautioned him about her daughter.
“She’s not your normal girl, Ian,” she’d said, warning him off by phone after he and Lucy had eloped. Of course it had been too late, and with Renee on the way, the point was moot. “She’s been through a lot. Trauma.”
“We’ll be okay,” he’d assured his new mother-in-law.
Tina’s response to their quickie marriage had been echoed by her older children. Skepticism? Yes. Resentment? Maybe. Suspicion? For certain.
They’d met Marilyn for lunch in Newport Beach, at a café with outdoor tables scattered beneath wide umbrellas. Marilyn, already seated and sipping a mimosa, the stemmed glass glistening in the sunlight, had surveyed Ian from behind oversize sunglasses. “So we’re family now, I guess.” She’d shaken her head. “You met at a seminar?”
“He spoke at my college. Criminal law,” said Lucy.
“Huh. Criminal law. And you’re going to be a teacher?”
“An interest of mine. You know that.”
“Yeah, you like criminal anything. It’s weird, Lucy,” Marilyn had muttered, then, when Lucy didn’t rise to the bait, asked, “And so what happened with you two?” She waved her glass back and forth to indicate both of them. “Love at first sight and bing, bang, boom, you get pregnant and married? I hope you know what you’re doing.” She’d said it to Lucy, but somehow he’d felt the words had been meant for him.
Clark had been stationed overseas at the time and they hadn’t met until the next year, after Renee was born, but the attitude was the same. Befuddled at the marriage, not all that interested in the baby.
Yeah, theirs had been a strange marriage, but he had trouble believing it was over. And now . . .
