This last hypothesis sends a flare of very real worry up my spine. Guest safety is my responsibility now that my dad’s been forced into early retirement. Moreover, while I’m not technically a practicing physician (at least in the traditional sense), I did go to med school. I have a license and recited the Hippocratic Oath, whichtechnicallyrequires me to help those in need. Even those who can’t tell a moose from a bear. Maybe especially those.
I knock one last time, loudly, and after more silence, I open the door. “Hello?” I call out, scanning the room. I see with relief that there’s no fire, but I’m still prepared to dress a head wound with one of the eight thousand articles of clothing she packed. And then I register the sound of running water.
“Hey! I’m in the shower!” she calls back. “Can you bring everything to the bedroom, please?”
I take a slow breath, willing my heart to climb down out of my throat. Ever since my dad’s accident, it’s been hard not to expect the worst. But she’s fine. Just showering.
After a moment of letting that sink in, I quickly find myself wishing I had the inability to form mental images. The simple fact that she’s beautiful is just another alarm bell clanging between my ears, warning me to keep my distance. Reminding me that the last time I was lured in by a pretty face and a cold night, the aftermath nearly cost North Star Lodge a whole season’s worth of business. Not that Margot is trying to do any luring. After the initial shock of our meeting, she’s made it clear she couldn’t be less interested, which suits me just fine. I have an ironclad rule about not getting too close with guests—even if this one already has my mind running laps.
I clear my throat. “No problem,” I say over the water, grabbing the handles of the first two bags. I’m about to roll them into the bedroom but stop on the threshold. The in-suite bathroom door is cracked open, presumably so she’d hear me when I came in. But leading to it in a messy trail are the clothes I saw her inearlier. My eyes drag helplessly to her yoga pants, where a small piece of light blue lace peeks out of the black Lycra. Farther on past her sweater is a strappy bra in the same color.Jesus H. Christ.If it could, my dry spell would send a tumbleweed rolling through the room.I need to get a grip. She just wants help with her luggage, and here I am staring like I’ve never seen a woman’s underwear before.
“Thanks,” she calls offhandedly.
Averting my eyes, I roll the bags in before turning on my heel to grab the others. The many others. When I come back, her tuneless humming drifts from the open door on languorous curls of steam, and I’m hit by the distinct scent of gardenias. It stops me mid-step. Reflexively, I inhale deeply, and in an instant, I’m back on my old balcony. My eyes close, and I can practically feel the California sun warming my face and hear the bumblebees droning past me. I can taste my favorite coffee after my morning workout and feel the soil between my fingers as I check my plants for water.
But then Margot hits a particularly flat note, and my eyes snap open, bringing me rudely back to reality, where all of that’s gone. My gardenias, the bees, my coffee, my home, and most painful of all, the career that made them possible. Instead of making strides in what I’d believed was my life’s work, I’m right back in the place I thought I’d escaped for good. I run a hand through my hair and exhale quietly, refusing to regret my choices. I need to get the hell out of here. Stop daydreaming in a stranger’s cabin while she showers not ten paces away from me, and go check on my father—the only reason I’m here in the first place.
After all her bags are finally in the room and I’m done organizing them according to size because I can’t help myself, I look toward the bathroom door. “Okay, that’s everything,” I call out over what I can only guess is the world’s worst rendition of “Uptown Girl.” Or “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Impossible to tell. “Dinner’s atsix in the lodge,” I tack on, hoping I don’t sound eager to see her again. Because I’m not.
“Great, thanks,” Margot calls back. “I left something on the bureau for you.”
I’m ashamed by how quickly my head snaps around. I’m not sure what I hoped for—a clue to explain her presence here? Another hastily discarded undergarment? But all I see is a giant Stanley thermos.
“I’d love some ice water, if you don’t mind,” she calls out, and humiliation dive-bombs through my entire body. So this is why she feels comfortable with me wandering around her bedroom while she showers. I’m the hired help. She probably expects me to pick up her towels and leave goddamn mints on her pillow too.
It shouldn’t be a surprise after the way she spoke to me earlier, but like it was snagged on a hangnail, my mind catches on the memory of her jumping into my arms. How, for just a minute, she stared into my eyes like I was the only person in the world who existed for her. How, in the space of that suspended moment, explanations for her presence here didn’t matter because I was holding all the warmth, light, and beauty of Los Angeles that I’ve been aching for. Guess we were both hallucinating.
I leave the bedroom but not before snatching the Stanley mug off the dresser at the last second. If she sees me as a bellhop, that just makes things easier. I’ve got a job to do, and it doesn’t involve getting hung up on guests who are going to be gone in a blink anyway.
“Hand me one of those onions, would ya?”
An hour from dinner being served to the guests, I’m moving at a fast clip in the lodge’s kitchen. At my dad’s request, I toss an onion his way without thinking. The moment it leaves my hand, I realize my mistake. “Shit.”
The onion flies through the air in a slow, graceful arc, but my dad’s newly impaired left hand isn’t fast enough. The onion hits him square in the chest with a soft thud, rolls down to his lap, off his wheelchair, and beneath a table. Scout, the big black-and-white malamute who isn’t a service dog but rarely leaves his side, lifts his wolfish head off the floor and gives me a disapproving stare. I swallow down another curse. For a millisecond, a lifetime of memories watching my dad deftly toss and catch whatever object happened to be in his grasp overrode the new reality we’re both adjusting to.
“Sorry, I—”
Dad cuts me off with a forced laugh. “Who the hell do you think I am, Joe DiMaggio? Go on and grab it. It rolled under there.”
Relieved to have a mission, I crouch down and hunt for the errant onion. As I search, pausing to give Scout’s thick, soft ear a placating scratch, I hear the kitchen door swing open with a squeak that needs fixing.
“Hey there, boys. Did you start without me?”
I surface with the onion to see Jo walk in, carrying a large crate of vegetables from the greenhouse. Tall, strong, with striking black and silver hair that reaches her waist in a perpetual braid, she’s the lodge’s manager, chef, and full-time resident, and the closest thing to a mother I’ve had since I lost my own eight years ago.
“Woulda, but Forrest was hell-bent on playing catch with me,” my dad says, smiling.
I walk over and place the onion on the low work surface I built for him during the long back-and-forth months of attending his physical and occupational therapy in Anchorage and retrofitting the lodge for accessibility. “Someday,” I promise quietly, grabbing his shoulder with an encouraging squeeze.
Dad nods, pursing his lips beneath his thick Burt Reynolds mustache while I cram down my regularly scheduled sense of failure. I know, logically, that it isn’t my fault his hemiparesishasn’t improved since the accident. I also know my dad doesn’t expect me to perform a miracle during the daily PT exercises I insist on. Despite having nearly two decade’s worth of medical education and experience, there isn’t much I can offer him beyond basic PT assistance, pain management, and emotional support. But it’s so goddamn hard to reconcile the self-sufficient, adventure-obsessed father I was raised by with this shell of a man sitting before me. It’s why I’m here. Why I can’t go back to California for the foreseeable future. My dad isn’t well, and the last time I left home when one of my parents wasn’t well, I only had one to come back to.
“Well, it’s time to stop horsing around,” Jo says, rolling flannel shirtsleeves up her forearms with crisp efficiency. “I think we should make something special for our new guest tonight. Seems like a very nice young lady.”
If my ears could prick up like Scout’s, they would. “You met her?” I ask, despite my efforts to squash all curiosity about her. I know asking questions and thinking about her more than absolutely necessary will lead to the one thing I don’t need: distraction from my father’s care.
Jo nods, peeling the onion my dad cut the ends from. “Sure did,” she says, setting it down between the stabilizing pegs of the one-handed cutting board I got him. “Dropped by to introduce myself.”
“Glad someone’s being friendly to her,” Dad says with a chuckle, methodically chopping the onion with his functional hand while I finish washing my own. “Forrest seems to think she won’t last a week here. What did you think of her, Josephine?”
