Page 2 of Off the Beaten Path

A wry smile tugs at the corners of my mouth. “Also the most time-consuming.”

She holds my gaze for a long moment before a reluctant grin splits her mouth. “Fine, I’ll heckle bachelors, if you insist.”

A laugh punches out of me, echoing across the barren walls of the empty cabin. “That didn’t take much convincing.”

Her shoulder lifts in a shrug. “Beats doing puzzles in my Airstream for the next two months.”

“I’m having a planning session with the volunteers tomorrow. Why don’t you come, and we can work on a list of bachelors to approach?”

Stevie’s amber eyes narrow. “Will the biddies be there?”

By the biddies, she means two middle-age best friends, Myra and Melissa, who single-handedly keep the town gossip mill running. I find them charming. Stevie calls them intrusive.

At the smile I’m holding back, Stevie lets out a sigh, shoulders slumping. “Fine, but if they ask me about my love life even once, I’m leaving.”

Better to just not come, then, but I don’t tell her that.

“We’re meeting at Smokey the Beans at nine,” I say, screwing the cap back on the wine bottle and stuffing it into my bag. I’ll finish it off tonight, snuggled in a nest of pillows and chunky knit blankets on my couch.

I follow Stevie out the front door, avoiding the porch step that snapped in half on our way in, and glance over my shoulder at the cabin. I’ve got my work cut out for me, for sure. Especially if I want to have this place finished by tourist season.

What I haven’t mentioned to Stevie or my parents, who are always concerned for my perpetual tendency to jump into things without thinking them through, is that Ihaveto have the place finished by April. I sank all my meager savings into purchasing and renovating the place. If I don’t get visitors in by the start of tourist season, I won’t be able to afford the mortgage.

In the hazy grayness of the falling snow, the cabin looks even more dilapidated. A storm cloud inches into my line of sight, and as icy snowflakes kiss my skin, I pray it’s not an omen of things to come.

The cabin is on the very edge of Fontana Ridge, deep in the woods, but my home is a little cottage nestled between towering maples on a quiet street in the middle of town. It takes nine minutes to trek from one place to the other, even if I hit all four stoplights. The pale winter sunshine is already dipping below the horizon, blanketing the world in shades of gray, as I make my way through town.

Fontana Ridge, a pit stop on the Appalachian Trail and nestled in the heart of the Smoky Mountains, is vastly different during the winter months than it is in spring, summer, and fall. And despite only being a quarter of the year, those months can feel the longest. The town comes alive when the seasons change, when there are new blooms in the fields and hikers and tourists in the streets, when the inns are full and the restaurants stay open late. Everything in Fontana Ridge was made for those fleeting months when the air is warm and the sun shines longer.

But there’s a special place in my heart for the slow months. It’s quiet, peaceful. There’s not the constant bustle of tourists or the pressure to make the town seem perfect. It’s just us, the ones who are here even when the hikers and tourists return home.

Now, the shops are closed for the night, the shutters pulled tight and the lights flicked off until late tomorrow morning. The barest wisps of snow fall in lazy flakes, leaving drops of condensation on my windshield and glowing in the headlights shining from my car.

My street is all but shut down for the night, my neighbors already warming inside their old houses, golden light seeping through the gaps in the curtains. It’s the kind of cozy quietness that comes with the post-holiday rush, when people haven’t gone stir crazy yet from the cold and dark and all our town responsibilities are on hold for another two months.

As I steer my car down the street, my headlights beam across the lawns, dry and dead, until my house is illuminated, a speck of white with a bright yellow door among the bare trees of stick season.

I smile when I see the package on my neighbor’s porch as I’m letting myself into my cottage. In the spring and summer, the window boxes are full of flowers, and there’s always the faint sound of buzzing bees and chirping cicadas, but tonight, everything is quiet.

Mail crunches under my feet, dropped through the slot in my front door at some point today. I grab it, wincing when I see they’re all bills. I’d kill for a catalog right now, even if I can’t afford to buy anything. The constant reminder of my financial state is starting to wear me down.

Honestly, I probably shouldn’t have spent my savings on the little cabin in the woods. I probably shouldn’t have been investing in real estate at all, but I was looking for other avenues of income since my job at the orchard pays…enough, and that’s it. If I were to ask Stevie’s parents for a raise, they’d give it to me, but that means they’d lower their own salary to compensate, so I’ve never even considered it.

I’m toeing off my boots when my phone rings. My lips curve in a smile when I see the grainy, aged photo of a gap-toothed girl on the screen.

“Hi, Rae,” I say, swiping to accept the video call.

My older sister is seated at her desk in her tiny Chicago apartment, a mound of copper curls piled atop her head. Dim lamplight bathes her skin in gold and reflects off the lenses of her huge, wire-rimmed glasses.

“I needed a writing break,” Rae says without preamble.

I grin at her directness, moving through the darkness of my cottage to collapse on my couch. The room fills with soft light a moment later when I stretch to flip on the lamp on the end table.

“What are you working on?” I ask, tucking my chilled feet under a wadded-up blanket at the opposite end of my sofa.

“A piece on a nonprofit that’s revamping a city park.” She drags her hands over her face, pulling her skin taut. I don’t miss the dark half moons under her eyes, a sure sign that she’s been working more than sleeping lately.

Rae is a reporter for theChicago Daily, and although she swears she takes breaks and has time off, I’ve yet to see it.

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