“We don’t know what the conditions are like out there,” Karo says.
Maeve wraps her coat a little more tightly around herself and ties the belt.
“So I’ll be careful. If it feels dangerous, I’ll come back and entertain Anna with my choreography.” She looks at Sadie when she says that; after last night, she’d like to have a moment alone with Anna, regardless.
Sadie seems unbothered, though, her coat swinging open now that she’s been given the order to stay put. Chin jutting a little. She slides into an armchair by the fire and leans in to talk to Sim, who has been playing with the flame.
But when Maeve turns to go, Sim rises and joins her. He’s got his cigarettes out. She cannot help but notice that Karo does not offer him the same look of reproof that Maeve herself attracts. Frustrating when women in power get stuck in the same old conventions.
They pass through the rear doors together and then Maeve stops. There’s no obvious avalanche damage here, nothing close to the main building. Dan has been out shoveling already, but farther on, she can see where the path has fully disappeared, buried in new snow.
“You’ll need a little trail of bread crumbs,” Sim says.
Maeve looks out at the white. There is no sound, nothing; not even birds. She turns to him.
“Look—”
He’s closer than she thought, his head dipping just slightly as he lights his smoke. She falters, and he’s careful to hold his cigarette away from her as he exhales.
“Maybe I’ll come with you, hey?”
“What do you mean?” Then, understanding him, she shakes her head. “Worker bee, remember?”
He surprises her by reaching out to wind a piece of her hair in his fingers. It’s an intimate gesture but also gentle. Affectionate. The way she herself might reach out to catch Talia’s hair, tuck it behind her ear.
Maeve thumbs the bear claw in her pocket; it’s possible, of course, that it wasn’t him at all. But then who? Justin, joking around? Sadie? Dan?
She stops. Dan. Of course.
Maybe not something she would have suspected before—he seemed so easygoing the first day or two. But the turn in him this morning, since the avalanche? It bothers her.
Dan, the local wildlife expert, whose job is managing the building—who must have a key to every room.
Sim catches her eye.
“Off you go, then,” he says. “Just be careful. Don’t get chased by wolves or you’ll have to call the woodcutter to save you.” He draws on his smoke, laughing a little.
In the outdoor light, she can see where the bruise on his cheek is already yellowing. She looks back at the snow and bites her lip.
Why is it that you can never go anywhere or do anything without some man fucking it up?
Maeve grips the claw in her pocket as though she could crack it in two. The lock on her door wasn’t broken, it was just open, and who else would have a key? She hadn’t pegged Dan for frat-house pranks, but maybe this is his army background coming to the surface. Maybe he thought it was funny.
Or he just thought he could get away with it. This morning, the way he clamped down, acting like he owned the place.
The snow is ridiculous. She’s wading in it, eventually pulling her hands out of her warm pockets and using her arms to pump through. It’s not a matter of snow getting down inside her boots: her jeans are soaked. There is snow inside her waistband.
At the studio, she finds the door blocked and jumps to pull the shovel down from where it sits in a rack over the transom—now she knows why it’s up there instead of leaning on a wall—and begins a rather violent shoveling-out. Her shoulder pings; she has to lift the snow above waist level and with almost no room to maneuver. She turns in circles as she goes, just trying to carve out a space wide enough for both her own body and the arc of the door.
She stops shoveling, breathing hard, and lets herself in with the key, kicking the last bricks of snow away from the entrance. The shovel comes inside with her for now. More snow is moving in and she wants to be sure she can get out later.
Inside, she can see her breath. She strips off her soaked jeans to reveal the damp dance tights underneath; she’s sorry now that she didn’t think to bring an extra pair. It’s cold and she’s wet and the whole thing feels like misery. The only light is what filters in from the skylight above, a dingy gray. There is no possibility of music: the stereo won’t work and she doesn’t want to waste her phone battery. Maeve turns the phone on briefly but there’s still no signal, and she switches it off again to start her warm-up.
She tries repeating a silent mantra: This is not an emergency, just a short-term situation.
Her muscles are stiff and uncooperative at first. In her hips especially, a tightness from the constant work of pushing through deep snow. When she’s warm enough, she gets down on the floor, crosses one knee over the other, and reaches forward in an effort to relieve some of the tension. The stretch makes her wince.
In the stillness of the posture, she can’t concentrate; her mind immediately flies back to Rudy and Talia. She hates that they’re not safe at home the way she planned. She hates that they’re at the cabin, the woods and their hidden dangers rising up dark on all sides.
More than that, Maeve knows how demanding her mother can be. Unforgiving, even. Her own childhood a blur of early-morning rehearsals and evening classes and her mother drilling her over her homework late into every night. No one could have higher expectations of a child.
Talia’s voice, shaking, on the phone.
Maeve squeezes her eyes shut and counts to fifteen, breathing, then switches legs and tries it again, with the same result. What do they think has happened to her? How much do they know? Assuming the avalanche has been on the news—
But this, of course, is the question. Can she assume that? Would it make the news back east? Certainly, the record snowfall in this part of the country would be broadcast—and maybe the avalanche where the center has lost contact?
Except they’re between terms here. It’s the off-season. Maybe no one has tried contacting them at all.
Maeve sticks out her tongue to release the tightness in her jaw, sighs out a big breath. Come on. Get back on track, girl.
A short-term situation. That’s all.
If she keeps moving, she’ll think less. The children are fine. Probably.
Maeve is probably fine too.
She breaks out of the stretch, stands, and rounds over, her head to her knees—then comes up clean, flat back, watching herself in the mirror all the time. She pulls in at her core and tries some isolated movement, hips, ribs, shoulders, but it takes a different kind of focus, a new effort.
A moment later, she’s back in the same anxious spin—
An avalanche is guaranteed to make the news only if someone dies. Here’s the real question: Is the town of High Water also cut off?
There’s a pop and a twinge at her left knee and Maeve pulls up quickly. Careful, now. She sighs out again, loud, and shakes out her legs. Frustrated with herself.
Okay.
New plan: Purposely focus on the kids. She steps to the barre and works her left side, pointing and lifting in time with the increasing speed of her own thoughts.
Let’s say it’s been on the news. There are two options: either her mother has told Talia and Rudy that Maeve is in an avalanche zone, or she has not. This is hard to guess. Maeve’s mother is not predictable. And Maeve herself is not sure what she would prefer—
Terrify them—two small children—with the idea that their mom might be in danger? Or shield them from the news and let them think she’s simply not calling, that Maeve has forgotten them altogether?
With this, she pushes from a deep squat to a lunge and a sudden, stabbing pain tears through her hamstring.
“Fuck!”
Maeve yells this out loud. It echoes around the room.
“And fuck this fucking snow!”
She crouches, rubbing the underside of her thigh and cursing fierce
ly. A hamstring pull, a bad one, can really limit your range of movement. It messes things up, easily leads to more injury if you’re not careful.
Maeve is not feeling particularly careful, although the irony of having to go outside and fashion a kind of snowpack to ice the muscle under her snow-soaked tights does not escape her. She opens the door, and a burst of white blows in at her.
Oh, good, more snow.
She’s standing there in the doorway, freezing in her bare feet, when she catches something—a flash—from the corner of her eye.
Then it’s there again: a light in the forest.
A light? Any kind of electric light would be remarkable, considering there’s no power, but this one swims back and forth before it finally settles, then stills. Muted. Some kind of heavy-duty utility beam. A flashlight. Maeve shoves her cold feet into her boots and takes a step out from the door, straining to get a better idea of it.
It’s not coming from the main building, but from the deeper woods to the south. Not within the trees proper; instead of spreading and thinning over the snow, it seems contained. A glow. A candle? She takes another step, curious.
The light blinks out.
If Karo and Dan are down near the front gate trying to fire up a generator, they can’t also be wandering around here.
A candle in a window: she realizes where it’s come from. One of the other studio cabins. Where no one else is supposed to be. Only Maeve, Karo told her, would be out here. She waits another moment, the snow block melting in her hand, but the light doesn’t come back on.
Maybe it was only a reflection? She squints up at the sky, looking for a streak of sunlight. A pane of glass catching a random beam?
The clouds thin and part, then come back together, as though to prove her theory on the spot. Her leg throbs and she turns her attention to it instead.
It’s easy to feel watched when you’re alone in the woods.
She crouches down and gathers a new layer of snow. Rolls it, then packs it tight. Her hands are beyond cold now, white and stiff; she tucks her arms closer against her body to retain some heat and squeezes the pack to compress it. She’s down there, low to the ground, when something tugs at her again, some kind of sixth sense, and she pivots on the balls of her feet, expecting to see that same light blinking on through the trees. But the other cabin is dark.
Maeve rises, then backs up toward the studio door.
It’s not a light that’s bothering her. Something less tangible. A scent.
At first, she just wrinkles her nose, but then the smell suddenly hits home. Familiar. A dank smell. Strong, and strange in all this silence, all the clean snow.
Maeve freezes, holding her breath. Listening.
Somewhere to her left, she hears a snap of twigs, a low huff. A grunting.
A new chill runs up the back of her neck. She wavers, light-headed. She should get inside, where it’s safe.
Her legs feel like cement.
Maeve glances one last time to where she saw the light, back in the trees—this would be a good time to find she’s not alone.
But there’s nothing there. She backs slowly into the studio, shuts the door, and locks it.
Now she is inside, and the bear is out—somewhere. Because of the construction of the place, the only view is through the skylights, so there is no way for Maeve to see where the bear might be. How big it is, whether it’s black or grizzly, and—most important—when it decides to leave. Instead of looking out a window, she is looking only at her own reflection, repeated over and over in a house of mirrors: a stringy thing, she thinks now, in wet clothing. A woman with a limp, holding a snowball to the back of her thigh.
No match for a bear.
She gives it a good few hours. How long do bears usually stay in one place? This is not exactly Maeve’s sphere of expertise. It has to be looking for food, she thinks, or it’s disoriented by the avalanche. She ices her leg and stretches, ices and stretches again, until she feels like she could run if she really had to. Then she puts on her jeans, and her boots and jacket overtop. At the last minute, she remembers the shovel leaning against the wall. She grabs it to take along with her, half weapon, half shield.
But as she goes for the door, there’s a sound, and she pulls up short. A rough thump or a stamping noise. Something just outside.
Maeve waits, listening, her grip a little tighter around the shovel’s handle even though there is a door between her and whatever is out there.
Then the scrape of a key. She watches, one hand still on the doorknob, as it seems to turn all by itself.
Not something but someone. Someone outside coming in.
For a moment, she remembers her first walk back through the woods at night. And Sim, lighting her way in the dark.
The door pushes open and Maeve is thrust back a foot or two. But it’s not Sim who steps into the fading light.
It’s Dan.
There’s a moment of silence, each on their own side of the door, Maeve too genuinely surprised to know what to say. Dan pulls the key from the lock and sinks it slowly into his pocket. Behind him, the forest is already growing dark.
“What are you doing out here?” His voice is sharper than it needs to be. “I thought I made myself clear this morning: everyone stays together.”
Maeve feels her body contract. She was expecting him to apologize for walking in on her, to make some excuse. Instead, he frowns at the shovel in her hand.
She lets it drop to her side.
“There was—I think there was a bear,” she says by way of explanation. Trying to recover. “A couple of hours ago, just outside. I could hear it moving around, and, you know, they have that smell—”
She’s tripping over her words, her eyes falling to the tool belt he has strapped to his coat. A utility light dangles there, against his hip. Dan, she reminds herself again, has a key to every door on the property. Cabins too.
“You shouldn’t be out here in the first place.” It’s such a change from the Dan she met only a couple of days ago. His voice is clipped, forceful. “Freaking yourself out.”
“No, I mean—it’s true, I was outside and—”
He doesn’t wait for her to finish.
“Let’s go,” he says, already turning away. “This is an emergency situation and I want the whole group together. Where it’s safe.”
“I was leaving anyway. You didn’t need to come out here and—”
He spins back to face her.
“I want the whole group together. What part of that do you not understand? I’m the one in charge here. I’m the one who’s responsible for your ass. So I will go door to door if I have to and make sure you All. Stay. In. One. Place. Get it?”
Maeve just stares.
He steps out of the cabin and gestures for her to do the same, then he locks her door himself and follows behind her as she struggles back through the white.
It’s a strange way to collect someone you’re worried about. His stride is longer than hers, and she can feel him on her heels as she tries to break her own path, plunging and sliding with every step. Yet more snow coming down.
When she sinks her hands into her pockets to warm them, she finds the claw still there, curved and sharp, and she tries to walk faster.
A bear would leave a trail, and she scans back and forth for signs of it—signs that it’s long gone—but once they’re out of the clearing and back in the trees, there are too many shadows. Everything looks suspicious, every dip in the snowbank a potential hiding place, every hollow, every tree trunk another dark shape rising to meet her.
“The good news,” Justin says, “is that there’s no shortage of ice.” He drops what looks like a chunk of icicle into a glass and adds a few splashes of bourbon on top.
The fire is still going in the lobby, tended by the others all day. A kettle sits at one edge of the stone hearth, a pot with a lid on it at the other. Anna hands Maeve a steaming cup of tea.
“The good news is they found a radio,” she says,
glaring at Justin.
“Yes, and if the radio doesn’t work, we can drink ourselves to death before we freeze.” Justin is wearing last night’s heavy robe, now over his clothes, tied at the waist with a belt. Also what appears to be many pairs of socks. Layers. He raises his mug to Maeve, cheerful. “Win-win,” he says.
Maeve, cross-legged by the fire, doesn’t raise her own cup in return. She arrived back at the center cold and soaking wet and tired of the feeling of Dan’s eyes on her. She still has her hat on, although she’s stripped off her jeans again in the hopes that they’ll dry, the bear claw from her pocket now tight in her fist. She squeezes at it, a compulsive motion. When she opens her hand, she can see the mark it’s left there.
Sim is the only one missing. No one has mentioned him, but his absence is something Maeve noted in the moment before she unzipped her pants. Her tights are warm against her legs now. The hamstring still throbs in the background, but it’s muted. Anna has fortified the tea with a single shot of whiskey.
She’s already heard the bad news: The automatic generator failed to kick in. This may have something to do with negligence on the part of the company man who inspects it every year, Karo says, or it may just be bad luck. What is certainly bad luck is that the manual generator—the fail-safe—is stored in an equipment shed near the western border, and this shed was buried in the second avalanche. She and Dan hauled themselves out there on an ancient snowmobile to try and retrieve it but found the shed lost to snow and debris. The snowmobile’s engine quit halfway back, the track too short for deep powder, and they were left to walk the rest of the way home.
But the radio. The radio is good news.
While Maeve gets warm, Sadie is behind the front desk, working to get the thing set up. It’s on a crank charge, like a camp radio, and she pumps the handle around and around—but it sticks and her hands slip when she tries to go faster. She pushes away, frustrated.
“It’s just a matter of finding a clear channel,” Karo says, standing over her. She looks up, and Maeve can see her baseline confidence is still there, although by now her eyes are tired. She wants to get through to someone in town—anyone, really, she says. Someone who can give them a timeline on the power restoration.
The Retreat Page 9