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Alice frowned. “How long could we be stuck here?”
“Depending on the amount of snow, a week, maybe? I’d hope. People know we’re here so I’d expect someone to try to get us off the mountain as fast as possible but we’re miles from the nearest town, on a road that would need to be cleared, and since there aren’t many residences out here, it would be low on the plowing priority list. Plus with those fallen rocks along the path between the parking lot and here, no car or truck would make it all the way.”
Alice picked her fork up again, pushing the rice and vegetables around on her plate. “The wood supplies for heat would be an issue. Not sure how long those would last, but I’d think that Brian could use the axe from the rage room and cut us up some wood if necessary. To stay warm, we’d all have to stay here though, in one central location, then try to stretch the food as much as possible. That big generator out back will run out of gas which would make cooking difficult but I’m sure we could just start a little campfire outside. All of our nighttime lanterns are solar-powered so if we just charge them during the day like we do now, they’ll be fine at night.”
Josie pushed the last piece of dinner roll into her mouth and chewed.
Alice added, “But Cooper will be back soon with news. If he thinks we all need to get off this mountain, then we will.”
Josie didn’t mention that at least two inches of snow had fallen since Cooper left. She wasn’t sure he’d even make it back to the camp with his news at this rate. Looking at the faces gathered round the table, she tried to imagine being stranded here in this building with these people. They’d achieved a tentative closeness during the week of oversharing about their personal traumas. With Sandrine’s gentle guidance, they had formed some bonds, but Josie wasn’t sure it was enough to sustain them under extreme stress.
Some of them were barely hanging on, like Brian’s wife, Nicola, who sat across the table. A waif of a woman, Josie estimated her to be in her early thirties. Pale skin, strawberry-blonde hair, long, willowy limbs that hung listlessly from her mostly inert frame. As she pushed her vegetables around her plate, her left elbow kept clashing with the right arm of the woman next to her, Meg Cleary. After accidentally knocking Meg’s fork out of her hand, Nicola suggested they switch seats. “Sorry,” she told Meg in a flat voice. “I’m left-handed. I always end up bumping right-handed people.”
Meg picked up her plate and stood. Nicola moved into her empty chair but that left the seat between Brian and Nicola open. Brian smiled and motioned for Meg to take it but Nicola said, “You move down, too. Let her have the seat on the other side of you.”
Brian’s cheeks glowed red but he did as Nicola told him. The three of them lapsed into silence.
Alice bumped Josie’s shoulder gently with her own. In a conspiratorial whisper, she said, “You’re wondering which one of them would break first, aren’t you?”
Josie lowered her head to hide her smile and used her fork to spear a piece of broccoli.
“My guess is Meg,” said Alice.
A polite smile was plastered across Meg’s face as Brian started talking to her. On his other side, Nicola watched him with annoyance. Josie couldn’t tell if it was because of what he was saying or because he was so focused on Meg. Unlike Nicola, everything about Meg was robust—from her curvy figure to her long, lustrous brown hair. Well, everything except her personality. Nicola was prone to lashing out, which Josie found completely understandable, given what had happened to her daughter. Meg, on the other hand, carried herself like an abused animal. Her brown eyes were usually wide and wary, as if she were waiting for something bad to happen.
“I can see why you would choose Meg,” Josie told Alice.
“Can you though?” Alice asked, leaning more closely toward Josie so that her words could not be overheard.
Matching Alice’s tone, Josie whispered, “After what she went through, of course I can.”
Josie was close enough to feel the shudder work its way through Alice’s body. Meg had been the victim of a stalker. Austin Cawley, a male coworker at a restaurant where she’d worked, had seemed sweet and harmless when he first took an interest in her. Meg didn’t view him in a romantic light and thought nothing of it when she turned him down for a date. Until he kept asking. After rejection number six, he’d subjected her to two years of terror that no restraining order could stop. She had changed jobs, apartments, and phone numbers multiple times but he still found her. Cawley always found a way to make her life hell, whether it was inundating her with calls and texts, breaking into her home and masturbating on her bed, or hiding cameras in her bathroom so that he could distribute the resulting photos to her neighbors and coworkers.
The criminal justice system didn’t take his offenses seriously enough, nor did it move quickly enough. Josie had always thought the anti-stalking laws in most places were too weak and her opinion was borne out in Meg’s case. Although the stalker was charged with a slew of criminal acts after the bathroom photos started showing up everywhere, he was let out of jail on bond. In a final desperate attempt to possess Meg, he had kidnapped her and her sister at gunpoint and held them in his apartment for three days. Meg’s sister never made it out. She died of a heart attack while being held captive, caused by a combination of a pre-existing heart condition and the stress of their ordeal.
This time, Cawley was charged with more serious offenses but again, he was let out on bond, pending trial. He immediately fled. It had been almost six months but no one had found him, according to Meg. She had moved several states away in an attempt to stay off his radar and evade him.
“Whenever I think I had it bad,” Alice said softly, “I think about Meg. I don’t mean to sound cold. I just don’t think that Meg would handle being stuck very well. It’s too soon after what she went through. The guy isn’t even in prison.”
Josie quickly shoved another piece of broccoli into her mouth. “I get it, but my money is on Nicola.”
Alice’s fork froze halfway between her mouth and the plate. “Really? Over Taryn?”
Josie followed Meg’s unwavering gaze which was fixed on Taryn Pederson. Taryn sat where she always did, right next to Sandrine. Like Josie, Brian, and Nicola, Taryn was in her mid- to late thirties. She acted more like Meg, who was ten years younger, but dressed similarly to Sandrine, in long, flowing maxi dresses over yoga pants, even in winter, using a worn UPenn hoody to keep warm. She even wore her long, dark hair parted in the middle like Sandrine’s though it lacked the curls and the threads of gray of Sandrine’s locks. Even though Taryn showed little interest in the rest of them, Josie had found her to be generally warm and pleasant. That didn’t keep Meg from watching her as if she were some kind of domesticated animal that might turn feral at any moment. Taryn had garnered more and more of Meg’s quiet stares as the week went on. Josie thought back through the various group sessions and other activities they’d done together but she couldn’t remember anything transpiring between the two women.
Josie said, “I feel like Taryn would see getting stuck here as an adventure rather than a catastrophe.”
“Hmmm, maybe you’re right,” Alice conceded. She lifted a piece of asparagus to her mouth, wrinkled her nose, and dumped it back onto her plate. “She lost her parents in a camping accident. Then her husband. What a weird way to go, too. How many people a year are killed from whales crashing into their fishing boats?”
“Not many, I’m sure,” Josie said.
“This is all in, what? A two-year period? She’d probably rather be trapped here with us than home alone.”
As usual, during mealtimes, Taryn was bending Sandrine’s ear about various sorts of therapy available to trauma survivors. Currently, they were discussing primal scream therapy, which Taryn thought might be of use, but which Sandrine advised had been debunked as having no actual benefit to patients.
Alice said, “What does it say about us that neither one of us has even considered Brian as the weakest link?”
“I’m not sure,” Josie said. “But I don’t think it would take much to get Brian to lose his composure.”
