by KT Morrison
Please, come back to me.
And below, a faint impression of her lips pressed in a kiss. Not one for makeup, he traced the shape of those loving lips with the pad of his index finger, trying to determine the pale silvery shape her colorless lip gloss had pressed.
One week ago, if asked, he would’ve claimed though he knew it was a mistake, taking his ring back was still somehow the right thing. That vague determination waned the farther from the date. He was complicit. More guilty than Maggie even. And he was punishing her …?
His fiancée, the fucking love of his life, so bewildered by his silence, his hurtful treatment, flew to Michigan to make things right. He didn’t even deserve her.
It was all his mom could talk about. Maggie’s doing this, Maggie is doing that, you see these flowers? … Maggie brought them … we all had dinner in the dining room, and she helped; you should have seen her and your father, scaring those little kids; she let him dress her up as a scarecrow; I was pulling straw out of her shirt all night; she’s so pretty, she’s so smart, you know she’s going to law school?—why didn’t you tell us?
They could’ve offered Maggie the guest room for her to stay, but his dad told him Maggie wanted to sleep in his bed. Mom had washed and changed the sheets since, but Max imagined he could still smell her.
His phone, laying on his stomach next to her handwritten card, buzzed with his Maggie’s response.
Maggie: where are you?
Max: I’m at home
Maggie: home where?
Max: in Michigan
Max: with mom and dad
Maggie: you’re not in Vermont?
Max: I just got home from Chicago
Max: laying on my bed
Max: can’t believe I missed you
Maggie: when are you coming here?
Max: Friday
Max: will you talk with me?
Maggie: would you go away with me?
Max: away where?
Maggie: we need to talk
Max: tell me where and I’ll be there
6
Lodgers
Saturday, November 4th
He entered the grand lodge’s hallway, three stories high, another iron chandelier above them both. The floor was angular granite flagstones, and a staircase wound in a circuit, its bannister and railings in glossy wood with black metal moose antlers and branches. Maggie walked the door closed, and it sounded a doom, then the large space was eerily quiet in the absence of the wind’s high whistle. They stood face to face, those restrained smiles returning, his fiancée looking so goddamned adorable he couldn’t wait till this was over and he would sweep her up in his arms and make her laugh again.
The sound of shuffling feet on stone made him turn. Coming from the depths of the huge home, Cole walked, eyes turned down to regard a bottle of Scotch he held in his hand.
He was saying, “Is this the one?—because this is almost thirty years old and I can’t …”
Air punched from Max like he’d been thumped in the belly. His mouth fell open. He said to Maggie, “What’s he doing here?”
Cole stopped short, face darting up to see them both watching him from the front door. His features sagged, and he grew a look of pain. He said, “What’s he doing here?”
The three of them, together again, standing in the grand high entrance of the Becker lodge; polished logs stretching from floor to high ceiling, the gnarled roots of their trunks spreading and disappearing into the stone floor.
The look of profound disappointment on Cole’s face was probably very much like his own. Both of them under the assumption Maggie had invited them away to be alone with her.
Cole set down the bottle he held on an iron leg table next to the staircase. He covered his face in both hands, sighed a long inhale, rubbed his cheeks, pulling them down till crescents of bright pink flesh under his lids showed, raked his fingers through his long blonde hair, bunching it up in a ball behind his head, standing now holding it that way, eyeballing Maggie with a humorless face. “What are you doing?” he asked her.
Maggie shrugged, turned her palms out, caught red-handed. None of them smiled.
She said, “Sorry.”
“Goddamnit,” Cole sighed, he looked to the ceiling and stretched his neck.
There was a greater clarity to be seen here; the reason why she had brought them all together—but he didn’t care. There was a striking similarity to the way he’d last seen them, and the ignition that had prompted him to remove her ring, wanting to hurt her by severing the symbol of their bond. Yet again, he’d found them together, the woman he loved and his best friend.
He looked directly in her amber eyes and shook his head with admonishment. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” And with that he turned on his heel and yanked the enormous door open. Cold wind faced him, squinting his eyes and ruffling his hair. He went out.
Maggie’s voice behind him, thin and brittle pushing against the cold: “Max, wait!”
He disregarded her, punishing her again, but the sight was honestly too great to bear. She caught him at the top step, trotting behind in warm bare feet on cold stone, arms clutched around herself. He turned to face her, his scowl restrained yet still evident.
“Don’t you dare, Max. Don’t you dare leave.”
“You wanted me to find you two alone together again? Brought me all this way to stick it to me?”
“That’s not what you think, Max. You know what I’m doing.”
“No. What are you doing?”
“Come back inside, Max.”
He shook his head. Cole watched from the open door with an expressionless face.
She urged him again, “Come inside.” Hands tucked into the sleeves of her sweater, she shivered visibly.
He said, “Why would you do this to me?”
“For your own good. For our own good.”
He slumped, rolled his eyes, then his jaw returned to its hard line. “You’ve been fucking him?”
She said, “Not at all, Max. Not even once.” She looked directly in his eyes.
“Have you been hanging out with him?”
She hugged herself tighter against the cold. “No.” She shook her head, correcting herself, saying, “Yes, but only since Thursday. A day and a half.”
“Did you sleep with him?”
“Max, I told you—”
“No, I mean in bed. Sleep next to him, hug him or cuddle with him?”
Her face softened briefly, then her lips trembled again as a gust of wind hurled up the stone steps at them. “No, Max, I swear. We just talked. One hug. Brief.”
He grimaced at the thought. A hug, even brief, hurt his heart to imagine.
Next to them, the metal that supported the enormous chandelier groaned, the wind setting it swaying again, dangling precariously over the Rogue she had rented him.
Maggie looked into his eyes pleadingly. “Would you hug me?”
They stared at one another, Maggie making the gesture he longed to make, saying the words he longed to say, a hurting in his heart looking to reject her again. The hope in her eyes never diminished, staying connected to his, growing wet with tears. She blinked them away as the cold stung at them as he imagined it stung his own.
She said, “I want to hug you so bad, Max.”
He nodded rapidly, his heart bursting against his ribs like they were too small a cage.
They came together in a collision that grunted their breaths away. She whispered in his ear, “I’m so sorry, Max, I swear, I’m so sorry.”
He squeezed her as tightly as he could, his hands forming fists on the center of her back. He lifted her feet off the ground. “Maggie, I’m so sorry, too. I’m so sorry …”
“Please, come back inside with me. Take me in where it’s warm. It’s cold out here, Max.”
The seizing compunction that had gripped her for ten sorrowful days had begun to ease. It was like a tangible energy that slipped out of her in low-voltage waves, her embrace with Max the connection needed for its rele
ase, a circuit completed, their pain dissipating into the cold stone at their feet.
Max arriving and finding her with Cole wasn’t the best way for a reintroduction but its occurrence was mostly unavoidable. Had she told either of them the other would be present this weekend they would have begged off. Or worse, been infuriated. So it had to be done this way.
Before coming in with her, holding her in his arms on the wintry doorstep, Max had whispered, “Why didn’t you just tell me what this was about?” and she’d said, “You wouldn’t have come.” And it wasn’t just about Max and Cole, it was her as well. Something they all shared, something of tremendous value, had been rent and the only thing that would knit it was truth and presence. What they had between them all was worth the hardship.
Now she was alone in the kitchen, and her boys, as Carol had called them, were together without her. There was a power she still held over them, and as mad as they both were about the other’s presence, ultimately they each wanted to be with her. She would use that to get what she wanted, and it was for the noble benefit of them all.
The Schroon house, or lodge more accurately, was one of father’s investments; one that he only occasionally used for his own enjoyment. She’d never visited, only remembered seeing pictures when it was purchased. The lodge had a schedule of use, when it was being used and when it was vacant, and she’d boldly called father’s property manager to see if it was free this weekend. The keys were requested, granted, and she supposed they would inform Martin. Neither Carol nor Martin had called to prevent it, and the keys had been arranged for pickup at a real estate rental office in the Schroon Lake hamlet. The absence of interference from her mother and father could be hopefully attributed to their belief she sought closure with one of them, Max or Cole, especially given the visit home last weekend.
Which brought another harsh element to this weekend’s agenda: she would have to let Max know the wedding had been called off. Whether the revocation of his ring had been real or not, his antics and ensuing silence came with real repercussions.
Max’s silent treatment, whether masterfully contrived or simply an honest reaction to the hurt she’d callously wrought, had another (perhaps intended) effect: it worked a hex on her beneficial to her fiancé, sure; gone from her thoughts on Cole was the broiling lust that had been there. However, even with the dirty-sex depleted from their burgeoning relationship, in its absence she was aware of what had been growing in its center: a small seed of love and compassion. And, truthfully, it may have always been imbedded in their friendship, just never receiving light or water or nourishment until that evening on the cold black beach, under Max’s own reluctantly encouraging stare.
Across the street from the real estate office where she and Cole had retrieved the keys to the lodge, they’d gone to a Stewart’s Shop and stocked up on cans of beer, ice cream, snacks, hard rolls, and frozen pizzas. The promise had been they would eat out this weekend, maybe even get some proper groceries, but with this sudden weather they might be better off holing up in the lodge until it was over or until they had to go back to school. So, for now she prepared her boys something to eat, putting a shop-baked pepperoni pizza into the massive stainless Viking stove set inside the square-chiseled stone hearth of a twelve-foot tall fireplace. She turned the red knob, sat down on a stool, elbows planted on polished black marble. It would be fifteen minutes.
7
Winning
Saturday, November 4th
At the back of the house, in a grand room with towering Yellowstone windows that looked out over a choppy pond whipped up by the winter wind, Max watched out the window with his arms folded; beyond, through a haze of drifting, flickering white, he caught glimpses of the mountains in shades of dying lavender.
Beyond the glass there was a wraparound deck, its railing in narrow timbers, the gaps crossed in Xs, a twenty foot drop to the woods below. Cole returned, coming in off that deck, arm holding a bundle of firewood, slamming the door behind him, stomping his feet amidst a torrent of dry rasping snow that danced around his boots. “Jesus, this Goddamned wind,” he said to himself, shaking away the cold, kicking off his untied boots and walking to the fireplace where he tossed the wood onto the stone mantle. He turned to almost face Max, not quite committing, shaking his shirt, pinching it in his fingers and whisking away the slivers of wood and tattered bits of bark that clung to him.
Max watched him for a moment, broke the ice with: “I know. It’s only November.”
Cole said, “Alberta clipper.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know. Snow squall or something. That’s what Maggie called it. Alberta clipper.”
“Sounds fitting,” Max said.
He left Cole now, walking with his arms folded still, retrieved from a low table in front of the couch the bottle Cole had held when Max arrived. Maggie gave it to him in the kitchen, urging him to go into the living room and talk to the guy that had been at one time his best friend. He presented it to Cole without expression, holding it in two hands like a sommelier at a table side. Two quick nods from Cole were his breaking of the ice.
While the fire cracked and popped in the hearth, Max moved to a glossy, honey-stained cellarette where a mirrored tray held an arrangement of whisky glasses. The cork on the bottle came off with a squeaking pop and he splashed some of the peaty beverage into them. He took a sniff before turning, tilting the glass to his nose and looking above at a boar’s head mounted to the log wall, its tusks a bony ivory, long and curved.
When he returned, the two of them standing face to face by the fire, he handed Cole a glass and he went through the same ritual of smelling. Although they didn’t look at each other, choosing to watch the buttons on each other’s shirts, they touched the rims of the glasses before finally imbibing. Then, with nothing to say, they both turned away and sat down on the plump and comfortable leather furniture; Cole in an arm chair and Max at the corner of a couch, facing him.
He took another sip. “I didn’t see any tracks coming up the drive … wouldn’t have thought anyone was home except I saw the smoke.” He pointed with a middle finger, the hand that held the whisky glass bobbing toward the flames that burned in the mouth of the massive stone fireplace.
“We got here earlier. In the morning,” Cole said.
“You’ve been here all day?”
Cole nodded, looking at the fire and not at Max. “We came in the Jeep. It’s in the garage.”
“Where’s that?”
“Around the back.”
Now he was stuck on the idea that his Maggie and Cole came up here together, could picture them doing it. Laughing in the car, Maggie playing music from her iPhone placed in the cupholder, saying When are you going to fix your stereo? giggling and road-tripping. Alone in the lodge, too, all morning, his friend and Best Man looking for ways the whole time to get her in bed, knowing he would …
Max said shakily, “Should I put the rental there?”
“Do it later,” he grunted. “We should talk first.”
“Right.”
Sipping at his drink he continued to stare into the fire, just as Cole did. Head rolling on his shoulders, looking up at the towering hand-scribed logs, he finally said, “This is some house.”
“I know, huh?” Cole grunted with a chuckle. “There’s a huge pool table downstairs, a cigar room, uh, humidor. Home theater with red velvet curtains that, like, part to reveal the screen.”
“Like a real theater.”
“Yeah, crazy.” After a long pause, both of them listening to each other’s breathing, Cole said, “Maybe we could have a cigar later.”
“Yeah, cool,” Max grunted and nodded.
Cole said, “Maggie’s never even been here before. Her parents’ own place ...”
“I know,” Max said.
“Should’ve brought an Xbox,” Cole muttered solemnly. Yes, plans had changed, and this weekend was going to be different than anticipated.
Max said, “Does she kn
ow if there are cameras?”
“We checked when we got here. There aren’t any. Martin’s hardly ever here, she said. He rents it out mostly to guys who hunt. From Germany and Holland. They come here and stay. He wouldn’t put cameras on them, you know? He doesn’t have any artwork here. Plus, she said, he hires a company to watch the place, make sure its safe—that’s instead of cameras, right?”
“Probably.”
“I don’t know.”
“Fuck it, anyway.”
They both set their empty glasses down on the table in front of the couch at the same time, leaned back to sit and watch the fire. Max’s attention drifted to watch his friend. Slumped in the deep seat of the leather chair, elbows on the armrests, fingers interwoven, long hair tied in a bun, chiseled features set seriously as the light from the flickering flames reflected in his eyes.
Max said, “Am I ruining your weekend?”
Cole said, “A little.”
“You came all this way this weekend thinking you were going to be alone with her; fuck her brains out.”
“It’s not like that, Max.”
“Right, it’s not.”
Cole turned his head to face Max, brow set low. “Hey, Max, did you come here this weekend thinking you were going to fuck her brains out?”
Max stared back at him blankly.
Cole said, “That’s not why you came, is it?”
“No.”
“Not so crazy I might think the same.”