Page 33 of Mazywood

Quietly, Johnny knocked on the bathroom door, which displayed a rusting unisex sign, probably more for lack of space than a modern sensibility. Inside, Tasha was retching.

“Hon?” Johnny said. “You sure you’ll be okay on that twisty mountain road?”

He held his breath, hopeful. It still wasn’t too late to go back to Redding and find a Hyatt.

“I’m fine,” Tasha said through the door. “I’ll rest when we get there.”

She flushed the toilet, so maybe her wave of nausea had passed. Today’s spell was worse than usual, as if Tasha were channeling his dread. He felt like an asshole for hoping she felt bad enough to want to turn back, even now.

Tasha emerged from the bathroom, wiping her damp hands on her jeans. “Whoever called it ‘morning sickness,’ I’m kicking their ass,” she said quietly. “Morning has been over.”

He squeezed Tasha’s forearms, a silent apology for literally wishing her ill. “Chains are on. Do we need anything else before we get back on the road?”

“I left that to y’all,” Tasha said. “You tell me.”

At a grocery store in Redding, Johnny and the girls had stuffed a cart with groceries, while Tasha dozed in the car. Imani had the greatest say, since she’d been the most enthusiastic shopper. Tasha probably would have chosen salmon and veggies instead of burgers, hot dogs, chips, and cookies, but the food supply would get them through the weekend. Sharise had been lucky to find frozen spinach saag, an Indian dish she loved. She’d bought all six packages.

“Gas.” He remembered the caretaker’s warning that sometimes the power went out if it snowed hard enough, and the gas supply at the lodge was low. As the radio at the front counter had reminded him as soon as he walked through the mini-mart’s door, snow was in the weekend forecast. “We need a few cans. For her generator, in case the power goes out.”

Tasha scowled at him. She was soldiering on, but she didn’t like that. “Excuse me?”

“I don’t think it will,” he said. “But the caretaker thought it would be a good idea to bring extra. Just in case.”

“He’s meeting us at the lodge, right?”

“Nope,” Johnny said. “He left town yesterday morning. Funeral down south. We’re on our own this weekend.”

He’d hired a local retired schoolteacher named Dick Hollman, one of the few brothers in town, to take care of the lodge. He’d met Hollman in Joltz Coffee down the street from the mini-mart two years ago while he was putting up flyers for a caretaker, since he was prepping it as a rental cabin. Hollman knew who Mazelle Washington was—had met her once or twice when she still lived there, he’d told Johnny—and he was starry-eyed about the idea of preserving her legacy, just like Tasha. Hollman was a good hire.

For the first couple of months, Hollman had just stopped by a few times a week to clear out trash and make sure the pipes didn’t freeze. Miraculously, he’d told Johnny he didn’t think the place ever had a break-in, although local kids sometimes used the ski trail to learn before hitting the bigger slopes. Then he kept an eye on the remodeling project, sending Johnny daily photos of the contractor’s progress, reporting them for delays and overcharging. That project had set Johnny back forty grand, maybe more, money he dearly wished he could get back. He’d been too busy to come inspect the work personally after it was done, before now. He hoped Hollman and the workers had followed his instructions not to touch anything in his grandmother’s powder room, where he had stayed when he was thirteen.

Johnny trusted Hollman, but it was hard to put his full faith in a man he’d met only once in person over coffee and pecan pie. He hoped the lodge was as ready as it should be.

Worry tugged the sides of Tasha’s mouth. Johnny knew he could inflame her worry by hinting that they might get snowed in like in The Shining, but his better angels prevailed. They would be only twenty minutes from McCloud, if it ever mattered. Hiking distance. It was fine.

“It’s all ready for us,” Johnny assured Tasha. “There’s a new fridge and stove in the kitchen. The fireplace works great. Central heat. Generator. Five-star rental, he said.”

“And we’ll be the first guests,” she said, smiling. Worries gone. Tasha had learned the superpower of flipping every anxiety over to search for a bright side.

Johnny grabbed Tasha an extra box of Pepto-Bismol tablets and her other nausea remedies: two liters of ginger ale and a box of saltine crackers. He would have gotten her ginger tea if he’d seen any. He wished he’d thought of the tea back in Redding, but he’d been too busy retrieving personal staples he’d forgotten, like contact lens solution and razors. Any romanticization of a last-minute trip he’d mustered had died back in the bigger city, which had felt like his last chance to have a good weekend.

Your last chance, period, the inner voice he loathed goaded him again.

Johnny blocked out the inner voice by listening to the radio broadcast as he and Tasha moved toward the counter to join Sharise and Imani. “… Up to eight inches this weekend, so good news for skiers who like fresh powder…” the broadcaster was saying.

The clerk was so preoccupied with eyeing Sharise and Imani that she had slid a few steps away from the register, closer to the far end of the counter, as the girls pretended to be fascinated by her twirling display of cheap plastic sunglasses. They were definitely trolling her.

“They’re with me,” Johnny said, a little too loudly. The clerk jumped at the deep timbre of his voice, an issue that had dogged Johnny since he was seventeen. He reflexively smiled, which he’d also learned at seventeen, since he tried never to antagonize people who likely had a shotgun hidden at arm’s reach.

She mirrored his smile. “Oh, you’re back for more,” she said. She noticed their array of goods spread on the counter. “Got the chains on all right? If not, Rex gets here at three.”

“I think I managed, thanks.”

“You picked a good weekend for snow.” Now she was chatty, since she knew he’d caught her profiling his children. Her graying blond hair was wound in a long braid down her back, hippie style. Unless he imagined it, her earlobes were turning pink. Must be tough to realize you were a bigot, Johnny thought. Her name tag identified her as SUE.

“Gotta be honest, Sue: I’m from Miami and I’m not crazy about snow, but the kids love it,” he said, mirroring her chattiness. He almost didn’t say the last part, wasn’t sure why he did: “I had enough snow at my grandmother’s.”

Sue’s eyes brightened, artifice melting away. “Mazywood? That was hers?”