“I hate that we’ll all be traveling in different directions on Christmas Eve. It feels wrong,” Niki said. “We’re family. We’re our own family.”
Dante’s eyebrows narrowed at her as he studied her face, and then he burst out laughing.
“Has anyone told you how much you look like the sad face emoticon when you frown?” he said. “Little, round, upside down smiley.”
“Oh, my God, she does,” Iris said, though instead of joining in on his loud fun, she shot him a scowl.
* * *
Niki understood the subtext of that conversation better now. The look her best friend had given her fiancé had to have been a warning, from one secret lover to another.
Stop it, Dante, Niki could imagine Iris thinking at the time. You’re pushing it.
Chapter 4
A sizeable contingent opted to leave Sapphire immediately, before light. They expressed sorrow for those caught in the tragedy, but, well… once they learned the building destroyed was rarely used to house guests any longer, and served as a dormitory for employees of the resort, their feelings about the tragedy eased just a little.
“At least there weren’t any children in there,” said the woman with three of her own waiting at registration. It never occurred to her why no one showed up to check her out of her timeshare.
Hundreds streamed from the various lodging facilities, packing up skis and luggage, lovers, kids and friends. Luckily, the avalanche hadn’t blocked the one road in and out of the Village. Help arrived from Tahoe within the hour, emergency vehicles after squadron of emergency vehicles. Among the new arrivals was a bright soul from Cal-Trans who took one look at the hulking, shifting glacier of snow, rock and wreckage hanging above the road, and closed the only route in and out of the resort, trapping anyone too slow on the uptake to have gotten out while the getting was good.
People complained when Christmas shut down unexpectedly. With the slopes off limits, all holiday events canceled, and many of the restaurants near the disaster zone closed, no one was happy to be trapped. When the power failed completely and the water cut out, the complainers became apoplectic.
Niki’s disgust with them grew proportionately as the mob surrounding the lone concierge brave enough to show up for work, swelled. None of this was why Niki had decided to return to Sapphire on the anniversary of Dante’s death. This was absolutely not what she’d hoped and needed to find among strangers.
When dawn came and her cell phone still hadn’t rung with a request to volunteer, she retreated upstairs. Though unable to take a shower, she used bottled water to brush her teeth and wash her face. She then changed into clothing more suitable for the outdoors.
Downstairs again, she saw the small group of her fellow volunteers had shrunk. None on the list had been called. She left the building through the emergency exit farthest from the slide. The storm had finished with them. The sun was out. The sky blue and empty. She wanted coffee.
Circling round the building toward the undamaged northern end of the resort, she passed the timeshare’s large covered portico where arriving and departing guests could transport luggage by a more direct route to and from their condos. She steeled herself for the sight of Dante and Iris, once again peopling her thoughts with vivid specters from the past, in this case the three saying their final good-byes from this spot. Niki saw herself behind the wheel of her car, the first to leave on that Christmas Eve morning, her window rolled down for one last hug from each of them.
* * *
Iris leaned in first and Niki did her best to return the hug despite the steering wheel getting in the way.
When they tried pulling apart their hair caught in each other’s clothing. Niki’s jacket zipper snared Iris’s dark, Greek ringlets, while Niki’s ice blonde hair got tangled around an old rhinestone owl pinned to Iris’s collar.
“Oww!” Niki said.
“Agh! Iris said.
They laughed, working to free themselves from each other.
“You’ve been standing too close to Dante,” Niki said.
Iris froze, fingers going still on the owl, which she’d unpinned to better release Niki’s hair. “What?” she said.
“You’ve been infected by that horrible aftershave his mother gave him,” Niki said. “I swear that stuff could cloud up the cabin of an entire 787.”
“I heard that,” Dante said. “A good Italian son honors his mother’s gifts.”
“Oh!” Iris laughed again, self-consciously this time.
Niki leaned forward to look around Iris at Dante. “Perhaps you could honor her by regifting the cologne to a needy lounge lizard at one of the nearby casinos?”
“Ha-Ha,” Dante said.
“Do I reek that much?” Iris said.
“Mmn, might I suggest a gentle airing before you board the shuttle?” Niki said and winked. “Unless you want to make the other passengers’ eyes water for an hour and a half?”
Iris nodded, uncharacteristically tense, and backed away, allowing Dante to lean in next for a kiss.
Dante was a tactile driven man. Even in the cramped confines of the front seat, he managed to turn a simple good-bye kiss intensely erotic, slipping his hand down inside Niki’s sweater to stroke her breast as his tongue slid along the edge of Niki’s tongue in perfect, languorous sync with the caress. His lips pulled away, and then returned to hers almost instantly, reluctant to release her. His words, when the kiss ended and he whispered in her ear, warmed her skin in the freezing air.
“How will I live without you for the next week?”
Niki had never felt closer to someone else in her life. No one touched her the way he did, moved her the way he did, made her feel truly wanted for herself as Dante did.
Sighing heavily, he stepped back at last.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to drive the two you to the airport?” Niki asked. “Save you the boring shuttle ride?”
“What? Take us all the long way to Reno?” Dante said. “That’s the other way from your way.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Well, I would, bella,” Dante said. “I worry enough about you on the slick roads. To descend to Reno and then have to scale the mountain again to get home to San Francisco? No. We take the shuttle.”
* * *
Unlike her building where the holiday Musak pervading all public spaces had been silenced, here on the undamaged side of the Village, A Holly Jolly Christmas blared from speakers hidden in lamppost bases and pergolas made of stacked stone and peeled logs. Niki entered a coffee shop that smelled of eggnog and peppermint. A Holly Jolly followed her indoors.
Two couples sat at a table by the shop’s front window. Through it, the panoramic view encompassed the full scope of the avalanche wreckage Niki had avoided looking at on the way here.
“They’re going to need a crane for that bullwheel.” One of the men at the table speculated excitedly. “That’s the one from the Moonfire lift. Five tons at least.”
Niki tracked his gaze toward where a giant wheel, more like a thick, steel pulley the size of a minivan, stuck up out of the ruins of the lodge.
“How many people do you think are under that?” one of the girls asked.
“I heard they think there’s a little boy crushed under it,” the other girl said.
“A kid. But aren’t those the employee dorms? What’s a kid doing there?” the fourth member of the party said.
The girls shrugged in unison.
Niki turned to the barista at the counter. The woman had the usual customer service smile plastered on her face. Niki could see it was forced. Did she know someone who had been living at the lodge?
“What can I get for you?” the barista asked.
“Just coffee. A trenta.”
“Sure. We’ve got–”
Niki cut her off with a sad smile and an understanding nod of her head. “It’s okay. You choose. Just nothing too dark.”
“You got it,” the woman said.
Niki paid, took h
er coffee and left. She searched for a place far from others to sit, ending up at an ice-rimed table out front of a snack bar that would have serviced the bottom of the resort’s second busiest lift, had it been operating. Thankfully, since the restaurant was closed, the music hadn’t been turned on this morning here either. She was alone with the whop-whop-whop of news helicopters and the life flights landing and lifting off with critically injured.
A bright flash of light from her own condo complex blinded her briefly, a man with binoculars. About every third balcony had watchers, following the scene the way they might have the night skiing spectacle once scheduled for that evening, but now canceled. Down at ground level, Niki could see a wave of snow had indeed slammed into her building, but done little damage in comparison to the destroyed lodge, just some broken-in windows and doors, minor debris piled up against it, including trash receptacles and tables similar to the one at which she sat.
Niki ran a finger along the edge of the ice-coated glass table.
It was a road covered in this. Just a film of ice like this that killed Dante and Iris.
Her finger moved away from the table’s edge and absently began to draw shapes on the ice, holly, poinsettia, and snowflakes, large flakes with ribbons and vines winding in and out. So involved was she with her drawing, she lost track of time. When she checked her cell phone again, afraid the rescue team had called and her phone hadn’t rung, she was surprised to find she’d wasted an hour doodling, an hour she’d never get back.
She reached for her coffee. Still hot, steaming. Coffee never grew cold in Niki’s hands. It was possibly the only good thing about who she was. She took a swallow and then set down her cup, leaned over the prettiest of the snowflakes and touched it.
Seconds later, the ice melted and rose from the table as steam. A perfectly formed snowflake floated upward into the air. Rotating upright, the design evolved, taking on exquisite complexity, while the steam turned to a cooler mist and then, shedding the heat with which she had gifted it, turned back to crystalline form. With a faint tinkling of ice, the snowflake shattered in the air and drifted away on the wind, like so much powdery snow.
She lifted the huge trenta cup to her lips.
“You’re wearing snow boots and a sensible parka. Good.”
She choked on her coffee.
Chapter 5
“Excuse me?” Niki got out between fits of coughing, and lowered the cup.
A tall stranger stood at her table on the side nearest the slopes. In his early thirties, he was dressed in navy snow clothing so dark it could have been mistaken for black. Arctic blue trim lined the inside of his collar and outlined a distinctive logo on his parka. His thick blonde hair was windblown and tangled with shadows, his judgmental brow studying her hands around the coffee cup. If she wasn’t mistaken, he’d zeroed in on her right index finger, the one she’d used to trigger the snowflake.
Fear sliced at the nape of her neck, a blade so sharp and quick you didn’t realize it had cut until moments later.
Did he see? I was alone. I know I was alone. Where did he come from? Did he see me do it?
“I didn’t hear you come up,” she said. Obvious and lame, but what else was there to say?
“Do you have insulated gloves?” he said. “Waterproof ones?”
“What?”
“I asked, do you have gloves to protect your hands?”
Her first thought when she’d seen him was, not handsome. Now, however, she started to reassess. He wasn’t American and his accent confused her. Not Australian, not exactly. Was it British? Not exactly. Yet the accent intrigued her and it fit him. He was a man’s man, but not in the oversized, everything is bigger and badder American way. Rugged, his musculature looked real, like it was made for doing real things, not just for showing off at the gym. One glance at the adamant set of his jaw and she knew he wasn’t a talker. He spoke when speech was necessary. This was someone who lived an internal life; emotions stowed and buttoned up inside cool steel walls guarded by a security system with an unbreakable passcode.
He was the polar opposite of her expressive, exuberant Dante, who, as a chef, had been so full of joie de vivre.
She didn’t think she liked him.
“You don’t have gloves,” he said, as if disappointed in her personally.
Reaching into her right pocket, and then her left, Niki tugged out one glove and its mate, holding them up for him to examine.
His assessment was quick and critical. “Those will work. Come on.”
He turned and headed off. When she didn’t rise to join him, he stopped, impatient, but didn’t look back.
Niki didn’t so much protest as utter a sound expressing incredulity.
Who was this guy? Who did he think she was? He had to have mistaken her for someone else. Otherwise, what made him think she would automatically follow him?
“Who–” she started to ask the first of several questions.
“Look, we don’t have time for this. He doesn’t have time for this.”
“Who is he? What are you talking about?”
“The victim buried in the avalanche,” the man said. “He needs your help. I can’t get him out alone.”
Niki wasn’t sure what was going on. She’d jotted down her cell phone number on the volunteer’s list, but they sent someone to get her personally? How had they even known where she was? This guy really wanted her to dig? Not that she minded, she would do whatever it took to help, but she’d expected to be asked to help with victim support, hot meals, phone calls made for survivors to family, not physical labor. Why not round up a hulking male or two or three? Or better yet, call for help from the many people already swarming over the ruins?
“All right,” she said and got up from the table.
“Good,” he said. “We need to hurry.”
He started off in the opposite direction from the disaster. She didn’t know Sapphire Ridge’s layout by heart, though, so perhaps he’d had to park on the other side of the snack bar. She rushed to catch up with him, circling around the restaurant and then dogging his trail through the north end of the Village, past shops, more restaurants, ski rental places, and lift ticket booths. Here, too, people were sparse, almost every business shuttered. Niki dodged mounds and drifts of snow that had yet to be cleared in the wake of last night’s storm, testament to the grave need the disaster had placed on snow crews. Plows, landscape tractors with blades, commercial blowers, every piece of available equipment had been summoned to the south end of Sapphire Ridge.
“Hey,” she called to the man. He moved fast and it was difficult to keep up. “What’s your name?”
“Bryce.”
“Bryce,” she repeated his name and added a rhyme to it, Bryce-rice, so she’d remember, a trick she’d learned long ago from her mother, who never forgot the name of any man she’d ever met, powerful or powerless, rock star or janitor.
When Niki started to offer her name, however, she hesitated. Had he seen her goofing around with her doodle at the table earlier? While he hadn’t said anything, if he had seen her, he’d know what she’d done wasn’t normal.
Duh. Normal people can’t touch ice and turn it into steam.
Or manipulate that steam into fanciful shapes that reverted to ice and poofed apart in a cascade of powdery crystals. If he had seen, he knew her secret and she couldn’t let that get out. She wouldn’t let it get out. Not for anything. She should be grateful he hadn’t been standing there with a cell phone taking video and uploading it to YouTube. Most would believe such footage to be pure special effects, but Niki knew one person who would realize the truth the moment she saw it. That person could never know her secret. Ever.
“Iris. I’m Iris.” She lied, giving him her dead friend’s name because it was the only one her rattled brain could muster.
“Iris?” He quirked an eyebrow.
“Yes. Iris.”
“Funny.”
“What’s funny about it?”
“Nothing. I
t’s just–”
“You were expecting Matilda?”
“What? No,” he said. Paused. “You don’t look like an Iris.”
And the conversation was over. Just like that. He moved on.
Niki didn’t immediately follow. She gazed into the bookstore through its front window. Though probably built sometime within the last five years, the architect had injected whimsy and historic charm into the narrow, two-story structure so that it resembled something out of a fairytale, or maybe a Harry Potter movie. Crowded shelves and chairs shabby yet comfy beckoned. Already she wished she could take back her decision to join Bryce’s rescue. She wanted nothing more on this anniversary of Christmas deaths than to exit the world, for a day at least, or two, until the holiday was over and she could think clearly again. Loss rode her harder than ever a year later, weighed her down like a too heavy cloak, shrouding her spirit in its hooded darkness. She closed her eyes and prayed for her heart’s ghosts to leave her alone.
* * *
“How about here? This looks cute,” Iris suggested and pulled open the door to the bookstore cafe without waiting for Niki’s reply.
Iris had the wallet of a New York socialite, yet dressed like a Portland eco freak, and Niki meant that in the kindest way. Iris loved searching out and re-imagining clothing discarded by others at thrift stores. She sewed. She knitted. She patched and re-purposed. She could take a ratty old raincoat and an afternoon later turn it into the most fashion-forward of jackets, cutting, re-draping, taking buttons away and adding zippers, new seams and the odd piece of extra fabric. She’d rip out the lining and create a sleeveless tank to go underneath, hand-dyed in colors inspired by a field of Sonoma Valley lavender.
Iris was that exact way with people. They’d met during one of Niki’s mother’s parties, where she’d rescued Niki from a chronic talker, a B-list director her mother expected her to entertain because she didn’t want to be bothered herself. Soon after, Niki had become Iris’s main project. Whereas Dante had showed Niki she could be attractive to a man despite her mother’s invasive aura of influence, it was Iris who convinced her she should live for herself. While she might not have her mother’s unique power over others—and who would want that any way—Niki had gifts of her own. She possessed a one-of-a-kind heart and a one-of-a-kind soul, and that was really all it took to be a whole, complete person. Iris didn’t exactly fill up the vast craters in her psyche left by her aborted childhood, but Niki couldn’t have sought a better friend to help her find the stuff to backfill the holes.
Spirits of the Season: Eight Haunting Holiday Romances Page 23