Page 34 of Wind Valley

After making sure the firewood was stocked and Maura wasn’t going to freeze, Pinky had put on his snowshoes and told her he was going to check on Solomon. “Might not be back for a couple days,” he’d warned her. “He likes to shut himself in with a buttload of whisky when it snows. Someone’s gotta keep an eye on him. He might wander into a snowbank to take a piss and fall asleep. It’s happened before.”

“You’re leaving me here on my own?”

“If you get into trouble, use my CB radio. It’s tuned to a channel that Bear monitors. Everyone uses it for emergencies.” He showed her how to use it, and made sure the batteries were fresh. “I’ve been watching you, you can handle yourself. You’ll be fine. Solomon, I’m not too sure about.”

This was Firelight Ridge watching out for each other.

Also, she appreciated his vote of confidence that she could handle a few days on her own. She felt safe here, in this little house nestled among the trees, covered in its safety blanket of snow. Every day, she would go for a quiet ski through the forest and check on the magpies and the snowshoe hares. She skied over to Lasse Ulstrom’s and watched him work with his rambunctious Siberian Laika dogs, who could tolerate temperatures up to a hundred degrees below zero. She breathed deeply of the pure air scented by spruce and snow, and every day, her fear subsided a little bit more.

But when a knock sounded at the door while she was in the kitchen, sorting Pinky’s extensive collection of glass jars, she nearly jumped out of her skin. Who on earth would have skied all the way out to Pinky’s? His road wasn’t plowed yet, so they had to have come on foot, and she hadn’t heard a snowmobile.

Just in case, she picked up a cast-iron frying pan and tiptoed through the arctic entry to the front door.

“Who is it?” she called.

“It’s Lila,” said a bright voice in response.

“And Molly and Ani and Charlie,” added a wry one. “Surprise!”

Astonished, Maura opened the door, only to watch the four women recoil. Right—she was still holding that frying pan, poised for attack. She set it on the bench next to the door, where Pinky sat to take off his outdoor gear. “Sorry about that. Nothing personal. Come on in. I mean, if you still want to. Why are you…” She sucked in a breath, commanding herself to be normal. “Come on in.”

All four of them were on cross-country skis, though Lila had already stepped out of hers. She bent to pick them up and stick them in the snow. “We heard you were on your own for a bit and thought you could use some company.”

“Can you?” Charlie asked bluntly. “This is entirely optional.”

Maura thought about it for a split-second and decided she did. “Sure, it’d be nice to talk to some other human beings instead of the occasional moose. Come in.”

After a bustle of stashing their skis and taking off their boots and hats and gloves, they all crowded into the living room.

“How did you know I was on my own?” she asked curiously as she dumped Swiss Miss into a pan and added milk. She placed it on the burner of the woodstove, which she’d gotten in the habit of using because it made the living room smell like chocolate.

“Lachlan. He’s holding things down at The Fang. I guess Pinky came by and reported in about Solomon,” Molly explained. Her extravagantly red hair glowed in the firelight.

“What he actually said was that you could use more friends here,” said Charlie bluntly. She sat on the floor, her long legs crossed at the ankle, elbows resting on the couch behind her.

Ani, who was curled up on the couch just above Charlie, gave her a little rap on the head. “You weren’t supposed to say that.”

“Well, I’m sorry if I offended anyone. It seems pretty normal to me that someone who just got here might need more friends.”

“It’s all right,” Maura said as she stirred the pot. To be honest, it touched her that Lachlan had heard her complaint about him being her only friend. “It was nice of him to send you, and nice of you to come. I’m not offended. Mostly I’m anxious to know if there’s any hot gossip from town.”

Lila clapped her hands together. She wore fingerless gloves that went all the way up her forearms, like leg warmers for hands. “Have you heard about the outhouse contest?”

“Oh crap. Did I miss that?”

“She said ‘crap,’” Charlie pointed out with a grin, making everyone laugh. “Very appropriate.”

After that, Maura relaxed and they all settled in for a wide-ranging conversation that went from the fact that the outhouse competition had been postponed (phew, she hadn’t missed it) to the worries Charlie had about maintaining a good relationship with Hailey and her mother.

“I mean, being a stepmother, there’s no manual for that, and I don’t much believe in manuals anyway. But the relationship between a child’s biological mother and their stepmother, there isn’t even a word for that. No Hallmark card, nothing.”

“Mortal enemies,” Molly suggested dryly.

“I refuse to see it that way. I was thinking I could hack into her e-mails and—” She was drowned out by a chorus of “no’s” and “don’t do it’s” from her friends.

Maura smiled into her hot chocolate. She liked these women. They were very…real.

“It’s all right.” Charlie held up her hands in surrender. “I’ve left my sketchy past behind. No more criming for me. Speaking of criming, Nick and I have been looking into this cell phone situation. It’s odd, let me tell you. We sorted through multiple layers of LLCs until we located the parent company. Have any of you heard of TNG Incorporated?”

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