Page 8 of Christmas at the Ranch
I know what I want.
To be free.
If I give her the money, and I never ask her to pay it back, ever, will this absolve me in some way? The idea feels the same as driving north does: unreasonably appealing. A solution I can’t resist, even if it turns out to be a Band-Aid rather than a tourniquet.
“Okay,” I tell her, pulling over to the side of the road and clicking on my hazard lights. “Do you have a pen?” I find the files in my phone, recite account numbers and passcodes.
“Thank you. I’m so relieved,” my mother says when we’re done.
“Me, too,” I tell her as I pull back out onto the highway and press my foot on the gas again.
“You’ll come back for the Christmas party—”
“Wait, really, Mom? You’re still going to have your Christmas party this year?”
“I’m famous for that party, Emory!”
I pick up speed, trying to put even more miles between myself and my city, my family.
“But right now? Are you sure—”
“It’s more important than ever! What would people say if I didn’t have the party? It would practically be an admission of guilt for your father, and he is not guilty.”
“Mom,” I begin—but then, with a crackle, I loseboth the cell signal and the radio station I’ve been listening to.
Which is when I see the sign.
EVERGREEN, Population 1023. And then, the town slogan, still the same after all this time.
Feels like home.
I find myself blinking back sudden, confused, and lonely tears. “What am I doing?” I ask the empty car.
The only response is the hum of my engine. Then plump snowflakes begin to fall, fast and thick. I manage to slow down enough to keep my abruptly fishtailing car from veering into the ditch just as I realize I haven’t gotten around to putting on my snow tires yet.
Lani was right. This is no weather to be driving in, especially without a properly outfitted car. I’ve been trying to outrun something that already has me beat. And yet, in a moment of weakness and fear, I drove as fast as I could to the last place in the world I should be.
Evergreen, Ontario—the only place that has ever felt likehome.
Three
I’ll just drive past, I tell myself. I’ll just have a quick look at the place where I stayed with my family ten years ago. Then I’ll leave town and try to find a hotel somewhere before this blizzard gets too fierce.
Soon, I’m driving along Schafer’s Road. What feels like an internal compass directs me to turn left where the lake appears beside the road. The snow is falling on the frozen, glass-like surface of the water, covering its smoothness with a white blanket. I pass rolling hills, snow-covered trees on the banks of a roadside creek. My breath catches in my throat.It’s so beautiful here.
But the snowfall is getting thicker still. Near the bottom of a hill, my tires begin to slide—meaning I almost miss the driveway leading to the place my family rented that fateful Christmas. I regain control of my car just in time. There’s a sign there now, the letters glowing soft white against a forest-green background.EVERGREEN INN. Then, in smaller letters,Your home away from home.
The emotions I’m experiencing are all jostling for a spot at the front of the line—and then, relief pulls ahead. An inn is exactly what I need right now. Even an inn set squarely atop some of my most complicated memories. And it makes such perfect sense that the enormous cabin my parents rented would become what it was likely always meant to be: an actual hotel.
The long driveway is lined with gas lanterns that flicker in the fading afternoon light and the falling snow. There are only two cars parked in the small lot in front of the redbrick Victorian. The windows are lit up, turning the house into a welcoming beacon, shining through thick-trunked spruce with their huge, gray-blue needled branches, some of them so laden with snow they bend to touch the ground. The house is as large as I remember, and so are the trees. The hardwoods surrounding it still dwarf the structure, enclose it, make it feel as though this place is in the middle of a forest all its own, completely isolated from anywhere and anyone else.
But it isn’t, and I know it.
Do not look to your left,I tell myself as I pull into a parking spot. But the urge is too strong; I allow myself a glance. All I see are trees and more trees, snow and more snow.
Maybe Wilder Ranch isn’t even there anymore. I wonder what it would be like, to know that for sure—and just the thought makes it feel as if my heart is being driven through with splinters.
A tap at my driver’s side window startles me frommy thoughts. I release my grip on the steering wheel and hastily wipe at the tears that have pooled beneath my eyes. A girl of maybe nine or ten is standing outside in the snow-dappled late afternoon light. She’s adorably elf-like, with dancing brown eyes and dark corkscrew curls poking out from beneath a holly-berry-red hat topped with a forest-green pom-pom. Even though my mood is bleak, there’s something about her sweet, welcoming grin that makes me feel, for just a second, like everything will be okay.
