by Ember Leigh
He tried to focus on the voices approaching. Wesley strode closer with the plumbing expert they’d brought in from Harrisburg. Rose demurely continued measuring the wall as the men approached. Garrett adjusted himself one last time before turning to face his coworkers.
“Emmy seems to like hanging out while you guys work.” Wes beamed at Rose. “I never thought a baby and a work zone would be compatible.”
“As long as we keep her in the safe zones, where there’s no dust and flying pieces, I think we’re fine,” Rose said.
“And the baby breaks are nice,” Garrett added. “Brightens up the regular work day a bit.”
Wes raised his eyebrows. “Well, I’m going to have to steal you from Rose. I’ve gotta show you these floorplans, then we’re gonna head to the east wing and knock some walls down.”
Garrett pumped his fist. “I’ve been waiting to hear these words for two weeks, brother. Let’s do it.” He turned to Rose and said, “But definitely not a baby-safe zone.”
She laughed and dropped the tape measurer. “That’s fine. I think we’ll go play around for a while. Maybe jump in the pool and give Emmy a swimming lesson.”
“You’re officially relieved of your duties until I’m ready to resume measuring with you,” Garrett said. They walked toward where Emmy was, and Rose scooped her up, tickling the baby’s belly as she did so.
“We’ll be around,” Rose said. “Don’t forget to come find us.”
****
Rose used the rest of the morning to her advantage. After countless games of airplane and Toss The Emmy In The Air, a little snack and plenty of one-sided conversation, Emmy was ready for a nap. Rose secured the girl in the car seat and kissed her on the forehead.
“Fake Mommy is going to try to call your real mommy.” She fingered a small curl. “Go to sleep. I’ll be right back, I promise.”
Rose left her with one of the stuffed animals located in the depths of somewhere, though nobody could say for sure whether it had been brought by one of the beefy construction workers.
She slipped out of the room, praying Emmy would drift off to sleep quickly. The plan was to try the landline again and then the cell phone. Provided both of those failed, as she was almost certain they would, the backup plan involved a CB radio she’d seen stowed beneath a work area. Though it looked abandoned, she could get it up and running again. There was no other choice.
Too much time had gone by in a false reverie of romance and sexual teasing. Today, it was guns out.
She zipped up her coat as she ran toward the landline, located outside the rec room the guys hung out in every night. Silence crackled back at her when she held it to her ear. She hung it up and tried again three more times—she wasn’t above using a bit of superstition at this point—but still nothing.
A string of curse words fluttered through her head, and she turned on her heels, preparing for another exit into the cold outside. It would be a cold day in hell before a cell signal made it up this mountain, but at this rate, she wasn’t sure if she wasn’t in hell already.
Every additional second of no-contact dragged along, an actual physical weight only alleviated by distractions like Emmy and Garrett and push-ups. Her stomach had graduated to a perpetual knot. An iron fist in her gut refused to unfurl no matter how much cajoling or distracting. Much more of this and she’d have acid reflux, or back spasms, or hair falling out. The stress of this situation couldn’t go on for much longer without something snapping.
The big door groaned as she pulled it open enough to slip outside. She hadn’t told anyone she would venture out today, and though leaving the safe space of the hotel unattended didn’t console her think-ahead Marine side, there was no other choice. If she told Garrett she was making this trip alone, he’d insist on accompanying her, or thwarting it altogether. Any logical person at this point would nay-say the possibility of a signal up here, in this weather. But Rose couldn’t sleep without knowing she’d exhausted every option.
She didn’t want the guys to find the front door open and close it, but she didn’t want an errant draft to send someone looking for her, either. She slipped a thin T-shirt over the doorjamb as the heavy door swung shut. It wouldn’t lock that way, and she’d be able to slip in much easier once her exploratory mission was over.
The blizzard had lessened but not by much. The brothers had thought ahead, they’d told her, with the snowplow attachment on the truck. But scraping themselves out of a blizzard like this could take several days at least.
Several extra days she couldn’t afford to wait without any contact with Emmy’s mother.
By now, the gruesome images of how the mother might be reacting had begun to plague her sleep. What might a distraught mother do? Rose could be arrested or lose her job. She could talk her way out of the tight spot with her employer, but if the consequences piled up to a certain extent, she’d have to be fired. Besides, discretion was part of the game here, and if this gig blew up a to national level? Another sick wave crossed her gut, timed with her first footstep into the porch area and the two feet of snow. Her calves froze, and she braced herself against the ensuing trip.
Today, she would go farther than the previous days. The boys had told her they could get a faint signal up here outside of storm time. She needed to exhaust every option short of teleportation out of there.
The wind stung cold and hot at the same time; freezing rain pelted her cheek, and she ducked her head to avoid the brunt of the weather. She trudged along, the inside of her skull rattling with screams as she plunged deeper into the accumulated snow. The wind had sculpted the snow drifts into impressive figures, arcing hills with defined edges off to one side, offset with low swooping snow valleys.
Rose turned around, could see she’d trudged some distance from the hotel but not quite far enough. Visibility was extremely low, and for being only a couple hundred yards away, she could barely make out the roof of the place. At the far edge of the hotel sat the truck responsible for wrecking her car; she studied the tree line beyond the hotel, made a mental marker of other small indicators from where she stood, and continued her high-legged, slow trudge down what she assumed was the driveway.
From the general positioning of the trees, Rose guessed to be on the one road leading up to the hotel. Pines and firs towered above her, creating a strange open-air tunnel as she trekked farther from the property. The road curved downward as well, and she could see the tree line took a nose dive past the next curve.
Her breath came out in short gasps, heart pounding as she fought both freezing limbs and pelting snow. She gripped the cellphone in her right fist but could barely muster the courage to bring it out of her coat pocket. The footsteps leading back to the hotel had begun to fill in already. At less than a quarter mile from the hotel, it might as well be a hundred miles away from civilization.
Panic seized her, and she ripped her fist from the coat pocket, her hand bright red and sluggish when she opened her fingers. She pressed a button, and the screen came to life.
One bar.
Rose sucked in with excitement, barely able to express anything against the driving wind and cold. Her heart flailed in her chest as she opened her contacts list, searching for the one entry that always changed according to the current gig. Her thumb swiped through the list jerkily.
The Client. She selected the entry, watching as the one bar continued steadfast in the upper left corner of her screen.
The phone switched to calling mode. Rose pressed the phone to her ear, hesitant to take her eyes off the screen, or move too quickly, or do anything else that might somehow destroy the signal.
The connection crackled more than a bag of popcorn on overdrive, but it rang. It’s motherfucking ringing. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but neither were possible from her face right now, so she stood in the thigh-deep snow and waited, listening.
One ring. The connection wavered, crackled, then another ring.
More crackling.
A thi
rd ring.
“Hello?” A female voice answered; Rose looked toward the heavens and nearly fainted.
“Hello, is this Emmy’s mother?” She prayed the other end could hear her. “My name is Rose, and I want to tell you Emmy is—”
The line went dead. Rose stared at the screen, her heart in midair as she grappled to understand what had happened. The bar had disappeared; the phone screen read call dropped.
Fingers shaking and completely numb, she cleared the screen, opened the contacts list, and tried again. The phone beeped dully at her. She waited a few more moments, watching to see if the bar would reappear, struggling to ignore the searing pain of her wet and freezing feet.
“Come on, goddamnit.” She shook the phone, as though this could somehow help.
The screen didn’t change; the bars remained persistently absent, and Rose stared as hard as she could at the phone hoping the intensity of her gaze might somehow convince the phone signal to meander back this way.
But nothing came.
The motions for tears began but nothing emerged; perhaps the tears had frozen midway through the duct. The pain in her feet crept through her calves and thighs. She wobbled on her feet, balance shaky since her feet had gone completely numb.
Shoving the phone back into her pocket, she reoriented herself to the tree line. Although she mentally was prepared to stay out here as long as necessary until the signal reappeared, she had about three more minutes of standing time left if she stayed buried in the snow. Three more minutes before something had to be surgically amputated on a mountain where no surgeon could ever arrive.
Limbs heavy and heart heavier, Rose trudged in the direction of the hotel.
With each step, she imagined more tears collecting in the frozen tear duct, sparkling like melancholy trophies of disappointment.
In her entire professional career, never had she failed so spectacularly as this day.
Chapter Ten
If only she’d been able to get out the words your daughter is safe before the signal dropped. She’d been given the opportunity from the heavens, and she’d screwed it up.
The fiasco of the phone call outside had both muted and shredded her heart, sending her straight into a hot bath to thaw and secretly cry. She needed the time to process, so her interactions with others wouldn’t betray anything suspicious. Blowing her cover now would only lead to bad things. Besides, it wasn’t like she could waltz up to the brothers now and say, Guess what, I’m not actually Emmy’s mom. I forgot to mention that.
So she definitely couldn’t face anyone until the disappointment of the failed phone call had completely disappeared from her mood.
She couldn’t help thinking this too was somehow her fault. Rose laid her head against the side of the bathtub, sighing heavily. The sound of Emmy’s mother’s voice rattled between her ears for the hundredth time.
At this rate, she might never get out of the bathtub. The picture reel of fuckups going through her head blasted on repeat, and the longer she mulled over the missed opportunity, the harder it was to convince herself to stand up.
“Rose?”
She lifted her head at the sound of Garrett’s voice and wiped away the few tear tracks escaping from her eyes. “Yes?”
“Can I come in?” The door opened slightly, his fingers wrapped around the side.
“Sure.”
Garrett stuck his head in.
“Just taking a bath.” Rose smiled up at him.
His eyes flashed and lingered on her. A small portion of her malaise disappeared, replaced by a distinct explosion of warmth between her legs. One look from him and this happens? The guy must be a magician.
“Lunch is ready. We’re about to eat.” He paused. “Unless you’d like me to join you immediately in the bathtub.”
She cracked a grin. “It sounds like a fine idea…but maybe after lunch? I’m starved, and Emmy needs to eat ASAP.”
“Well, get out of the bath tub immediately.”
Her grin widened. “Could you lend me some clothes? A T-shirt and some shorts, or whatever.”
“No problem. I’ll grab them right now.”
Garrett disappeared with a smile and something else hurt inside of her, though in a very different way from earlier.
He was so nice. Nice as in kind, but also nice in a way that came as a relief, a warm blanket arriving when she had never realized she’d been shivering. It wasn’t like he offered her clothes or a place to stay—Wesley had done the same, and she didn’t think about him like she did Garrett. It was much deeper than simple niceness.
Which frustrated her even more. What did she think, this was some sort of inalienable soul mate? That he’s meant to be? It was absurd. Partnerships happened or they didn’t—all of the predetermined junk, well, it was fancy bullshit. An actual pile of poop with a bowtie on.
So get over it and move on.
But why did a part of her love the idea Garrett might be somehow right for her, when she had never even fully believed a person like him existed?
She heard Garrett come back into the room. He poked his head inside. “I left the clothes on the bed. Want me to take Emmy so I can start feeding her?”
The suggestion froze the breath in her throat. She nodded, unable to add anything more while rooted in his gaze.
“Thank you,” she finally said.
He winked before he left and took Emmy into his arms, talking to her in that way she loved, like she were any other adult of his age and comprehension level. “It’s time for dinner again, buddy, and I’ll tell you one thing, Wesley manned the wheel today, and I hope you’ve got a solid stomach for this one.” The door clicked shut behind them.
Tears welled in her eyes again. It had to be the combination of failure and tenderness provoking the waterworks. Plus the baby made her hormonal—had to be it. Kids probably affected hormone levels, at least for women of child-bearing age. It sounded preposterous and reeked of rationalization, but there had to be some way to justify this moment of weakness, to pretend like it wasn’t a bullet in her airtight façade.
The disappointment of the failed mission circled back to her. She had never been so down in the dumps before, and she had a few ideas why this gig was different from the others. Rose’s M.O. involved careful optimism and full detachment, but this gig had spiraled into territory of abject uncertainty, not to mention full dependency on others.
This failure rattled her to her core. And Garrett wasn’t helping with the emotions, either.
So this is what a partner is like. She’d never made it to true partnership status with anyone and hadn’t ever expected to find it. Especially not with someone she’d known for three days.
Fitting, then, she’d be sideswiped by the happily-ever-after fantasy with a literal stranger while trapped in God-knows-where. Her loneliness wasn’t content just being lonely—it wanted to make her feel psychotic at the same time.
Had to be a hormonal one-off. Please let it be so. Lunch is ready, and Garrett probably has no idea what to do with a baby who wants to eat. Get…up.
With another sigh, she pulled herself out of the bathtub and dried herself off. Once she ate, she’d go back to normal. Only needed a half hour to wallow in pity in the bathroom, and she’d be back to her old self.
The shorts and shirt Garrett left for her were perfect, her favorite brand of lounging gear. Soft mesh sports shorts with a university T-shirt blasting the mascot of perhaps his alma mater, a ferocious-looking bulldog bursting through a circle with CMU inside. Where had this T-shirt been? Maybe it had been his favorite during his fraternity years; maybe it had seen a slew of lovers and girlfriends and one-night stands. Not to mention beer stains and late-night food smears.
She grinned as she trotted barefoot to the dining room, loving the thought of a college-age Garrett. He had to be as goofy then as he was now—probably a tell-tale trait his old school buddies loved, recalled fondly, still slinging jokes around like they were brand new.
The T-shirt
brought up a lot of questions. Had he played the field in college? With looks like his, he had to have been a girl magnet. Tall and broad-shouldered, a swimmer, impeccable good looks, a kindness wrapped up in silliness…what girl could keep herself away?
Certainly not Rose. Though it reminded her, he probably had a line a mile long of aspiring fiancées. Maybe the winter lockup was pure luck, and any other time she’d have to take a number to get so near to him.
In the dining room, crew members flanked the long table, forks moving plate-to-mouth with a fluidity so mesmerizing it looked synchronized. Emmy struggled in Wesley’s lap as Garrett attempted to airplane a spoon of food into her mouth. She bit back a grin as she watched the display; the brothers hunched over Emmy like they were trying to repair a motor. Emmy looked both suspicious and uncomfortable, a captive for her feeding.
“Hey, guys.” Rose sidled up to them. She estimated a hand-off in under three seconds.
“Hey, Rose.” Wesley smiled up at her, but Garrett didn’t look away as he tried to get a spoonful of mashed potatoes into Emmy’s mouth. She wiggled in Wes’s arms and turned her head every time the spoon neared.
“She won’t eat it,” Garrett said, sounding defeated. Emmy reached for Rose and whimpered. She scooped her into her arms, and Wesley crumpled in relief.
“She might be afraid because there are so many men here and no mom.” Rose eased into a seat next to Garrett. “Let’s be real, I’d be scared to eat at this table alone too.”
“Come on. Half the guys at the table are still kids themselves.” Garrett’s comments garnered a few glares.
He passed the serving plate, and she dished out a big portion of grilled chicken with mixed veggies.
“Do you guys have enough food to keep weathering this storm?” She helped Emmy direct a few peas into her mouth.