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By the time they turned off at the Marble Lake sign, it was as if Meg had rolled into another world. Les and Mary Albright’s lodge was a veritable fort of outbuildings, living and dining halls with river-stone chimneys, and log cabins flanked by mountains of evergreen and granite that looked like they belonged in a watercolor painting.
She was entranced. And irritated, too, because Silas had been right. Of course.
Danny misinterpreted her expression. “It’s kind of basic, but it’s super fun up here. You’ll see.”
“‘Charmingly rustic,’ not basic,” Silas corrected with mock refinement. “That’s what Aunt Mary puts on the brochures.”
She greeted them on the wide front porch, one long gray braid swaying back and forth as she enthusiastically waved them inside.“Danny boy! So good to see you again.” She hugged him to her, then pulled Meg in, too, with a “Welcome to Marble Lake, my girl.”
Meg startled in her embrace, unaccustomed to such a greeting at her own home, let alone from a stranger. She smelled woodsmoke and cigarettes and lemon Pledge before she was released with a hearty pat on the back. “Don’t mind the mess,” Mary said, wiping her hands on her flannel shirt. “Someoneneglected his dusting duties this week.” She eyed Silas with what was clearly meant to be stern disapproval, but didn’t fool anyone.
“Uncle Les kept me late splitting wood,” he called over his shoulder.
“Well, get on out of here before I give youallwork.”
Silas’s bedroom sat at the very top of the lodge’s main building. He led them through the downstairs dining area and industrial kitchen with its hanging pots and pans, through a hallway lined with old-timey black-and-white photographs depicting miners with grimy faces, women in Victorian dress posing by picnic baskets, and railroad crews working a line, and up a set of wooden stairs.
Past a wide landing storing a jumble of boxes and fly-fishing gear, a narrower, more rudimentary stairway led to a single attic dormer room. The walls had been left unfinished maple, and Silas had covered them in topographical maps and astronomy posters, his dueling passions of terra and cosmos facing off in silent challenge. An oversize bookcase stretched the length of one wall, and outdoor gear, from backpacks to trekking poles to boots, sat piled in the corner. The slanted wooden ceiling was so low that when Meg entered the room, she promptly hit her head.
“Watch it,” Silas said, grinning, way too late.
Danny laughed, giving him a shove that sent him tumbling toward his desk.
Meg watched the two of them, still not sure what to make of this side of Danny that Silas seemed to coax out, this side that relaxed and didn’t take things so seriously and didn’t have the weight of the whole world on its shoulders all the time. Which didn’t sound so terrible, really, until sheremembered that it had been ages since she and Danny had been alone together. And then there was the issue of his homework. Silas seemed to get As effortlessly, but the rest of them had to actually crack open a book or two. She really did sound like Danny’s mother, and she didn’t appreciate it.
They spent the late afternoon ducking the threat of Aunt Mary’s chores as Silas showed them around for Meg’s benefit, the boys slamming ping-pong balls at one another in the rec hall, Meg climbing to the loft in the maintenance shed to get a glimpse of the owl Silas said roosted there, all three of them gathering around the lodge kitchen table when Mary proffered snacks. It was a ruse—they had to fold and stack the dining-room linens after that—but Meg didn’t mind. She already felt at home here, with Mary’s gravelly laugh punctuating the boys’ loud bantering, with the great-room fireplace lit once Silas’s uncle Les crashed through the door with an armful of firewood, tracking wood chips all over the floor.
And so when night fell, and Danny promised Silas they would return, Meg heard herself agreeing. Pretty soon, the three of them fell into a routine, retreating to Marble Lake every weekend, so Danny wouldn’t miss too many weekday trainings.
Most days, the three of them hiked over the mountains, or else they all hid out in Silas’s attic bedroom, because now it was the season for Les to put them to work scraping paint off cabin paneling or winterizing doors and windows. When hiding out proved successful, they lounged on Silas’s bed to study or watch TV or just stare up at the stars on his ceiling until they blurred and shifted under their half-closed eyelids. When it didn’t, they climbed ladders to clear out gutters, insulated pipes in anticipation of freezing weather, and swept out cabins.
On a Saturday afternoon in mid-November, rain drummed on the roof—so close it felt to Meg as though she’d feel the drops on her head at any moment—making Silas’s room the perfect place to curl up and hibernate. Silas, however, had other plans. A Bureau of Land Management map lay unfurled on the bed before them.
“I want to hike the Lakes Loop trail,” he declared, pointing to the thin dashed line that snaked up the ridge just past the lodge meadow.
“We’ve done that loads of times,” Danny interjected.
Silas leveled him with a look. “I wasn’t finished. There’s supposed to be a few old mine shafts still intact on the slope above Long Lake. From my calculations, they’re only about a mile off trail, around the three-mile mark on the loop.”
“What’s so special about them?” Danny asked, but Meg already guessed the answer.
“Only that Silas hasn’t conquered them yet,” she supplied, which earned her a grin.
“That’s right. We’ll plant our flag once we explore them.”
Danny set down an old Etch A Sketch he’d been toying around with. “You know they’re not going to name them after you, right?”
Silas didn’t look totally convinced of this. Outside, the rain pummeled the window with continued vengeance, but his eyes shone with their usual unrestrained enthusiasm.
“Anyway, it’s too wet to go today,” Danny decided, and he was right of course, so why did this send an unexpected jolt of disappointment through Meg? This was the Danny she knew. Cautious. Reasonable. Responsible. Wasn’t it good to have him back?
“Silas didn’t mean today,” she heard herself say.
“Maybe I did mean today,” he countered, “until Dan here decided to be such a pussy.” He tugged the Etch A Sketch away from Danny and held it up in the air, out of reach.
“Silas,” Meg said. “Stop it.” He was goofing off, but it hurt Danny’s feelings. She could tell.
But Danny just jumped up and snatched the toy back. “Whatever, man. Sorry I don’t want to get soaked to the bone.” He resumed his tinkering while Silas went back to his map with a shrug, leaving Meg to wonder at the way guys could have a spat, shake it off, and resume where they left off, all in a matter of seconds.
