He shrugs. “Right here. My, uh…” He frowns at his fork and nudges it into perfect alignment. “My mom was a chef back in the day. Taught me and my dad everything she knew. We’ve been cooking for guests ever since.”
In the quiet that follows, I have the sudden sensation that the heavy inner workings of a lock have turned open, but I can’t quite see what he’s set loose between us. He mentioned his mom on the walk down, but this time it feels different. He isn’t looking at me, and I’m afraid to say anything that might make his intangible vulnerability more solid. I don’t want things to get more personal between us. Things felt personal enough while I was pinned to his body on the mountain. While he was knocking down my fortress walls with every small stroke of his thumb before dinner.
“Anyway,” he says, and the unspoken thing between us is chased away, “I’m guessing you want your letter.”
“My letter!” I exclaim, all other thoughts banished. “Where is it? Do we need to go to the lodge?”
“No, I’ve got it here,” he says, standing to collect our plates.
“You said you were putting them in your dad’s underwear drawer!”
He shrugs. “Didn’t seem safe enough. You could’ve just asked for them nicely, and he probably would’ve given them to you.”
My mouth drops open in outrage. “So you let me sit there with my foot in a torture bucket without handing it over?”
“You didn’t ask.”
“I was starving and injured!”And distracted, I privately scold myself.
“Well, you’re getting it now,” he says, setting the plates in the sink. “Hold on.”
When Forrest returns from his bedroom, he puts the envelope in my outstretched palm. I tear it open, hands shaking all over again, while he tactfully walks off to clean up the kitchen.
Inside is the letter, along with an old Polaroid photo. I pull it out to see Savannah and me, ages eight and eleven, respectfully. I know our ages because we’re in Halloween costumes, and it was the year Savannah wanted to be the princess from her favorite Grimm’s fairy tale,The Frog Prince, and please-please-pleased me into being the frog. I stifle an emotional laugh as my eyes move over my own gangly limbs and Savannah’s missing-tooth smile. It was the best night of that whole terrible year. With difficulty, I rip my eyes from the photo and unfold my letter.
Dear Margot,
If you’re reading this, it means you’re a badass. It means that you pushed yourself way (and I mean ALL the way) out of your comfort zone. And maybe it didn’t go perfectly. If I had to guess, I bet you probably earned a few bumps and bruises (and no, I’m not psychic, I’m just one of the many people who saw you slip and fall in horseshit that time I begged you to hike with me up to the Hollywood sign, sorry not sorry). But even if you are hurting andcovered in poop right now, I also know there’s got to be a small part of you that’s feeling proud too. I know I am. You just did somethingreallyhard, andreallyscary, but managed to push through it. Just like you did when I first got sick.
Do you remember how quickly everything fell apart that year? How one second, it seemed like we could have been the family in a Wonder Bread commercial, and the next, I was practically living in the children’s hospital? How Mom and Dad stopped being able to walk past each other without fighting, and she took that second job to put a dent in my medical bills? Honestly, life before that yeardoesfeel like a Wonder Bread commercial to me. The memories are there, but they don’t feel like mine. I used to think it was because I was just too young to hold on to them. Or that maybe getting sick made all the pre-illness times feel like a fantasy. And maybe both of those reasons are a little bit true, but what I really think now is that our family had stress fractures all along, and my getting sick simply cracked them wide fucking open.
But just because everything was coming apart at the seams didn’t mean there weren’t silver linings. For one, I was allowed to consume all the TV and Kool Pops I wanted. Basically kid heaven. Mostly, though, I remember it being the year my impossibly cool older sister who never gave me the time of day suddenly became my best friend. How she’d sneak me copies of her Betty and Veronica comics, even though Mom said I was too young for them. How she’d turn down sleepovers to stay home and make me burnt toast and alphabet soup dinners when Mom was working late and Dad was too caught up in a painting to remember. How she started writing me bedtime stories about the perilous adventures of Super Savannah, the crime-fightinggirl wonder, that made me believe—even if only while reading—that I was strong enough to do anything.
I guess the whole point of this letter is to return the favor. To remind you that you were strong enough not only to survive that completely shit year but to make it magical for me. That you were also strong enough to get through whatever wilderness excursion you just survived, and you’ll be strong enough to get through the next ones too. I know it’s asking a lot. I know. But I also know that doing hard things fires up creativity like nothing else, and for that reason alone, this manuscript is going to be your best yet—I just feel it.
Stay safe, but not too safe,
Savannah
There’s a softpatsound as a drop of water lands on Savannah’s letter. It soaks into the paper, and with surprise, I realize it’s fallen from my face. Embarrassed, I glance at Forrest, whom I find absent-mindedly drying his hands and staring at me like I’ve confirmed something he didn’t necessarily want to know.
He puts the towel down. “Well?” he asks quietly. “Was it worth a sprained ankle?”
I look down at the letter and Polaroid and can only nod. It would have been worth a whole-body cast. Reading my sister’s perspective on that awful year was like going back in time and receiving a hug as my eleven-year-old self. But even with her reassuring words, all the old pain and anger linger, surfacing like a bruise as my eyes repeatedly catch on the word “Dad.”
“Want a drink?” Forrest asks. His tone is different. Softer, but careful too.
I look up at him from across the room. His posture isdeceptive—I’d call it relaxed if it weren’t for his utter stillness. He’s holding himself like a man who’s waiting to see if I’ll come and join him over the line he’s just crossed, or yank him back toward good judgment. My eyes cut to the front door. I’m emotional. Lonely. Both excellent reasons to ask him to take me back to my cabin this instant.
“Sure” is what comes out instead. “But only if you have one too.”
He nods, opens a kitchen cabinet, and a few moments later, he’s beside me, filling two short tumblers with Scotch, neat. He sits down next to me so we’re sharing a corner of the table, and the light of the fire catches on all his outlines—his messy hair, the architecture of his nose, the blunt corner of his square jaw. He’s looking at the Polaroid out of the corner of his eye, and after taking a burning sip that tastes like a campfire, I set my glass down and push the picture over to him. “Go ahead,” I wheeze as the alcohol starts a cozy fire in my belly. “Laugh. My pride’s somewhere back on Eagle’s Point, anyway.”
A closed-mouth chuckle. “So this is the evil mastermind behind the letters.” He frowns. “Didn’t think she’d be so tiny.”
Despite myself, I smile. “They said the same thing about Napoleon.”
“Which is why she’s the princess and you got stuck as a warty amphibian?” he asks, taking a drink. His tongue brushes the whiskey from his lips as he lowers his glass, and my stomach drops like a yo-yo.
