That Old Emerald Mountain Magic

by Cara Malone

  Carmen resisted the urge to roll her eyes as she asked Brigid, low enough that Bentley couldn’t hear, “He’s coming with you?”

  “Yeah,” Brigid said. “He’s never been at Christmas time.”

  It felt like the final domino in a line, all falling toward the conclusion that she was losing her best friend to this idiot who was apparently so charming that she couldn’t see how self-absorbed he was. There was nothing Carmen could do at nearly midnight the night before she was leaving the state, though, so she just smiled weakly and said, “I hope you have a great trip, and a Merry Christmas.”

  “You too, honey,” Brigid said, pulling Carmen into a hug. “We’re exchanging gifts after we get back, right?”

  “Yeah,” Carmen said. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Me too,” Brigid said with a broad smile, but then Bentley snagged her arm and pulled her back into the booth. She landed with a giggle on his lap and before Carmen was subjected to whatever was going to follow that, she turned and wove her way out of the club.

  December 17

  Three

  Carmen

  The plane ride was a quick four and a half hours into Denver. Carmen had stayed up late the night before packing all of the new clothes she’d bought for the trip, carefully removing tags and folding them into her suitcases, so she fell asleep shortly after take-off. She slipped her favorite lavender sleep mask over her eyes and put in a pair of ear plugs to drown out the noise of the other passengers – particularly her kid sisters, who spent most of the trip watching movies on an iPad that they propped on the tray table directly behind Carmen’s seat.

  The next time she opened her eyes, it was because Carmen felt someone nudging her arm. She lifted her sleep mask and saw her dad pointing at the window beside her, and when she took out her ear plugs, he said, “Check it out. We’re flying over the mountain.”

  She leaned over to look out the window and he stood looking over her shoulder, trying to get the twins to pause their movie for a moment to enjoy the view.

  “Marisol, Maria, look before you miss it,” he said, and Carmen’s mom gave a little laugh from her seat. The twins clearly took after her because she was just as absorbed in her own tablet.

  “They’re mountains, honey,” she said. “I think they’ll be there for a while.”

  “Wow,” Carmen said as she took in the view. The sky was clear with no clouds to obscure their view and the earth below them was a long stretch of perfectly untouched, snow-capped mountains. She laughed and said, “It looks like someone dumped a big box of baking soda on the earth.”

  “A few tons of baking soda,” Marisol said behind her. Dad must have convinced them to look up from their movie after all.

  “We’re going to have so much fun this week,” he said, sitting back down in his seat across the aisle from Carmen after they had passed the majority of the snow caps. “We’ve got less than half an hour before we reach the airport. You guys want to go over the itinerary now?”

  He dug a packet out of his carry-on bag and it was at least twenty pages thick. Carmen’s dad was nothing if not thorough, and he’d only lightened up on the itineraries last year because they’d been to Cancun so many times that there was nothing left to plan that they hadn’t already done. Carmen suspected it was a large part of why he’d decided they were going to change their destination this year – a vacation wasn’t fun for Dad unless he got to plan it.

  “You and your itineraries,” their mom said. “Honey, everybody just wants to go shopping and hang out at the lodge.”

  The twins’ eyes lit up at the mention of shopping, and Dad said, “Don’t worry, dear, shopping is definitely on the itinerary. I know my girls like to shop.”

  “What else do you have planned, Dad?” Carmen asked, taking pity on him.

  The twins and Mom had a way of ganging up on him sometimes – the three of them had embraced the luxury lifestyle more than Carmen and Dad, and a lot of the time she felt like it was her responsibility to stand by him as one of the members of the family who remembered what it was like before his lucky break. She couldn’t blame Marisol and Maria for their tendency toward materialism – they were born into money in a way that Carmen could never understand – but sometimes she did wish her mother had a better memory of the little run-down house they’d started from.

  “Tonight once we get settled in, we’ve got reservations at the Indigo Steakhouse,” he said. “They’ve got the best Kobe beef in Colorado, and their dessert menu is supposed to be out of this world. I know you girls are going to enjoy that.”

  “What do they have?” Maria asked, perking up and leaning over Marisol. Dad handed her a menu that he’d printed out.

  “Anything you can imagine, baby girl,” he said, then went back to his packet while the twins drooled over the dessert menu together. “Tomorrow we’ll go into town and get some shopping done – I know that’s all you care about, Lucia.”

  “That’s right,” Mom said with a small laugh. “I appreciate you remembering my priorities, honey.”

  “I also booked a sled dog excursion that sounds like a lot of fun, and the resort has some festivities planned that we can check out,” he continued. He had another half-page of activities listed, with corresponding brochures, menus, and reservation details which would keep them all occupied until it was time to fasten their seatbelts and prepare for the descent into Denver International Airport.

  Carmen popped a stick of gum into her mouth to keep her ears from popping, passing the pack around to the rest of her family and then chewing away. She didn’t mind flying – she’d been on at least a half-dozen planes every year for the last decade – but the descent was something she would skip if she could.

  The airport was crowded with people and filled with an excited energy. Most of them were either flying in for a mountain vacation like the Castillos, or flying out to visit family, and everyone was quite a bit more cheerful than Carmen usually found travelers at airports to be.

  The main terminal of the airport was wide, with uniquely peaked ceilings that Carmen’s dad was enamored with the moment they stepped out of the concourse. As they made their way to the transportation counter to call the limousine Dad had arranged for, they passed a half-dozen Christmas trees lined up in the center of the terminal, the smell of cinnamon and pine mixing to give Carmen a sudden case of the same sentimentality that must have beckoned her dad to Emerald Hill.

  “Look, the mountains aren’t far away,” she said to her sisters, putting her hands on their shoulders and physically turning them to face the large windows that pointed toward the mountains. Marisol and Maria reluctantly slipped their phones into their pockets and looked at the mountain range rising up in the distance, snow streaked across it.

  “It is pretty,” Mom admitted. “Nothing like that first blast of warm air when you step outside in Cancun, though. I’m shivering just looking out there.”

  “You’re exaggerating, dear,” Dad said as he rejoined the group. “Besides, I seem to remember that a certain someone usually only makes it a few hours down there before she starts griping about the heat.”

  “Maybe so,” Mom admitted.

  “The limo is going to meet us at the pick-up spot out front,” he said. “We should head over there.”

  It took a little while to get all of their luggage loaded into the trunk, and a few of their suitcases had to ride in the back with the family. Mom and the twins always liked to bring extra luggage whenever they went on vacation because it was easier than arranging to have the things that they purchased on vacation shipped back to New York. For them, most of the fun was in shopping at stores that they didn’t have in the city and bringing back unique wardrobe pieces and décor items for the house.

  Carmen had brought her fair share of luggage, too. She didn’t care as much about vacation shopping as her mom and sisters, but she did like to have an overabundance of wardrobe choices and that always necessitated a minimum of two large bags. Dad was the onl
y one among them who could be classified as a light packer, and he stood around mildly bored and irritated after his single suitcase was neatly loaded into the trunk and he still had to wait for six or seven more bags to be fitted into the limo like a Tetris game.

  Finally, the Castillos and all their luggage piled into the limousine and they were headed out of Denver. It was about an hour’s drive from the airport to the small town of Emerald Hill where the resort was located, and the twins had gone right back to their iPad to finish up the movie they’d been watching on the plane. Mom immersed herself in the book she’d been reading – some murder mystery that she’d picked up at LaGuardia on a whim – and Carmen and her dad both watched the scenery change outside the window.

  The land immediately around the airport was flat, optimal for landing planes, but after a while the prairie-like scenery gave way to pine trees dotting the side of the road, growing larger and more forested.

  “That’s Emerald Mountain, straight ahead,” Dad said as the earth rose up directly in front of them, growing larger and more breath-taking the closer they got. When they got to a part of the road that began to incline and follow the curve of the mountain, Carmen leaned her forehead against the window, feeling the cold glass against her skin as she craned her head to see the mountains rising up all around her.

  “That’s really something, isn’t it, kiddo?” her dad asked, and he looked at his wife and younger daughters with a slightly frustrated sigh.

  They were completely unimpressed with this view, and Carmen didn’t see how that was possible. She’d been to the mountains before, and one summer when she was still in high school she’d convinced Brigid to hike a part of the Appalachian Trail for a day, but she’d never seen anything like this before. From the ground, the snow-covered mountains no longer reminded Carmen of baking soda. They were steep and dotted with pine trees, and they made her feel small in a very humbling way.

  After a few minutes of silence from inside the limo, Carmen and Dad watching the scenery, Mom and the twins absorbed in their own worlds, Carmen took her carry-on bag out of the pile of luggage and dug out her phone. She wanted to capture the beauty of the mountains so that she could show Brigid – and Bentley too, she thought grudgingly – the benefits of a snowy Christmas vacation. Besides, she thought as she put down her window and shivered at the cold air, they would be sending her shot after shot of sunny beaches and Mexican cuisine. She wanted to have something impressive to send back.

  The cold air coming through the open window roused the rest of her family, and Dad watched with satisfaction as Mom and the twins finally had no choice but to acknowledge the beauty surrounding them. Mom pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders and snuggled into Dad’s side for the sake of his body heat while Marisol and Maria rolled down their own window and attempted to master the art of the moving-vehicle selfie, using the mountain as the backsplash.

  “Now is everyone happy we came here?” Dad asked. “I’m telling you, we’re going to have a great time. Nothing beats snow at Christmas.”

  “Maybe a margarita at a swim-up bar,” Mom said, giving him a wink.

  Everyone closed their windows and Carmen shivered for a minute or two, waiting for the limo to warm back up again. The mountains outside were getting taller, looming so high over the top of the car that Carmen couldn’t see all of their peaks anymore. The snow was getting denser, covering the ground and the pine trees that dotted the side of the road. They must be getting close to the resort.

  Four

  Joy

  It was only early afternoon and to Joy, it already felt like one of the longest days she’d ever weathered. The resort was fully booked with holiday guests – all three hundred rooms of the hotel and the twenty luxury cabins lined up in a row at the base of the ski slopes – and they were all doing their best to keep her busy.

  Up until last year she’d been nothing more than a front desk clerk, and then the front desk supervisor when the job opened up and she was surprised to find that she had the most seniority of all the clerks. This year, though, her boss had a crazy idea that she was capable of taking on more responsibility and he made her a shift supervisor, which she quickly realized meant that she should invest in a good pair of shoes. For the last six months, her days consisted of running all over the resort, putting out fires and managing problems for both guests and employees. She enjoyed it, but the closer the holiday season came, the more frantic her days were.

  On this day in particular, she thought it was probably a blessing to be this busy. She hadn’t heard from Danny since she dropped him off at the airport, and even though she knew he was probably getting ready for the band’s next tour stop, she’d hoped that he would have found a few minutes to call and fill her in on the Hero’s Journey gossip. Even a text would have been nice, to know he got into Memphis okay.

  Joy would call him just as soon as her shift was over, but in the meantime she found herself temporarily stuck in the lobby. They’d had a call-off for the afternoon shift, and Joy would have to return to her old front desk role until she could find someone to cover it.

  That was okay, too, because there was little she loved more than watching people’s eyes light up the first time they set foot inside the resort. There were a lot of people who liked it here so much that they came every year, but their expressions were nothing compared to the brand new visitors, who Joy could spot at a glance. They always looked like they had just found themselves in a strange land, their eyes wide at the majesty of the mountains. Most of them had never spent a Christmas in the mountains before, and Joy always liked making it extra special for them because she was used to this setting and the holiday rush gave her an opportunity to experience the season through fresh eyes.

  She didn’t have to wait long for one of these moments. Joy had only been standing behind the desk for about fifteen minutes when a family of five came into the lobby. There were two young girls, maybe around ten years old if Joy’s calculations were correct, and they were both glued to their phones as they walked until their father plucked the devices out of their hands.

  “Look,” he said, pointing at the enormous Christmas fir that was the centerpiece of the lobby. “When’s the last time you’ve seen a tree that big?”

  Joy smiled, watching their eyes go wide as they took in the enormity of the tree sparkling with white lights and glittery ornaments. After a minute she called, her voice echoing slightly in the large lobby, “It’s eighteen feet tall. I know because I was the brave soul who put the star on top.”

  “It’s lovely,” the matriarch of the family said, approaching the desk, and following lazily behind her was a girl who looked to be in her early twenties – the family’s eldest daughter, perhaps. She had long, nearly-black hair with soft curls, eyes of a matching dark brown, and plump lips that she swiped her tongue over as she followed her mother to the front desk. She was beautiful, and Joy had to look quickly away before the girl noticed her gaze.

  “Welcome to the Emerald Mountain Ski Resort,” Joy said in her most professional tone. “Are you checking in?”

  “Yes,” the older woman said. She was pretty in her own right, her hair meticulously straightened and beginning to go gray, but there was no doubt where the younger woman had inherited her beauty. “The reservation is under Antonio Castillo.”

  Joy pulled up their information in the computer and wasn’t the slightest bit surprised to find that they had reserved one of the luxury cabins for a ten-day stay. They went for about a thousand dollars a night, and Joy could tell by the meticulous manicure, the designer clothes, and the perfectly groomed look of the matriarch that the expense would be inconsequential to them. It had been one of the hardest things to get used to when she started working at the resort – the disparity between her own standard of living and that of a lot of their guests. She’d allowed herself to be intimidated by people like the Castillos in the past, and while she’d gotten over that particular hang-up, she did find it difficult to meet the eyes of
the eldest daughter.

  That was more about beauty than wealth, though. Joy had always had a weakness for smoldering, dark eyes.

  “Umm,” she said, “your cabin is ready. I’ll accompany you to give you the tour and make sure you have everything you need.”

  She passed a few key cards to Mrs. Castillo and then made a couple of quick calls – to get a bellhop to help the family with their luggage, and then to get one of the concierges to come over and watch the desk for a few minutes. Then she followed the family outside, where a black limousine was waiting with the engine running.

  “You’re in cabin number four,” Joy told them. “I’ll lead and your driver can follow me.”

  She and the bellhop – his name was Aaron, and he was new this year – got into one of the resort transportation vans parked not far away and she led the way down a slightly icy road into a valley. The resort, the luxury cabins, and the ski lodge were all nestled in a dip between two mountain ranges, the snow-covered slopes running down the sides of the mountains on three sides of the resort. Joy made a mental note to order the salt trucks to make another pass on this road before fresh snow came down tonight. Then they pulled up in front of cabin number four and she hopped out. The limousine pulled in behind them and Joy walked the Castillos into their accommodation while Aaron handled the luggage.

  They went up the short pathway to the door, which had been meticulously shoveled and salted that morning, and every morning. Joy stepped aside for the Castillos to enter, adopting the tour guide persona that she’d gotten so good at in the last five years. “Here we are. Your home away from home.”

  The cabin, identical to the other nineteen all lined up in a row, was the size of a small house – and at least three times the size of Joy and Danny’s apartment – and she always enjoyed this particular tour. The view was breathtaking, large windows in almost every room offering a nearly three hundred and sixty-degree view of the mountains on every side of them. Joy still hadn’t quite gotten used to this view, even after five years of seeing it almost daily.