Headlights(83)

“Great,” I say. “Thanks.”

“You can go get yourselves a bite at the restaurant or a drink at the bar, I’ll send housekeeping up right away and get you in within the hour. I think you two might just be our luckiest guests yet!”



* * *



We step into the gift shop and buy another fishing hat for Hannah—hers got lost somewhere in the shuffle in Yampa—and a baseball cap for me, scarves for both of us. There are horror souvenirs everywhere for this haunted hotel. The book it inspired. I don’t look at them. I don’t look at the shadows milling around the lobby either. The one leaning against the shiny green car. I do not look at the mirrors.

The Cascades restaurant, with its dark carved wooden bar, glowing amber stone bar top, backlit liquor bottles, and copper tin ceiling, gives the sense of stepping into a place out of time. The snow outside the windows is so thick we can’t see anything besides white, and the TVs are off. I don’t see any cameras in here, but surely they’ll have them all throughout the hotel. Still, if the storm can hold and the Wi-Fi can stay out, we might be okay. On the other hand, we might be stuck here until the storm lets up, so there’s that too.

Not sure how to deal with my racing heart and the woman in front of me.

Hannah, the center of my thoughts since the moment I saw her. And still I couldn’t see. Wouldn’t see.

We sit behind a long carved piece of glass shaped to look like mountains, at a two-person table. The glass shields us from anyone walking in or at the bar, but not from the two tables beside us, which mercifully are currently empty. Two shadows sit at the bar, and one at a corner table near the window walls. Music plays, low enough I can’t quite make it out.

The waitress comes and reads us the daily specials. We don’t listen. My eyes don’t leave Hannah’s face. Those intense green eyes, that wildness I’ve been so drawn to. The way she’s watching me back …

“We’ll have the ribs,” I say. “And a steak.”

Hannah’s look, accusation, fear, distrust, rage. Hannah with half a canine in her hand.

“That’s all we’ll have,” I say, and the waitress disappears.

After she goes, Hannah says quietly, “I don’t eat meat.”

I lean back in my chair, lean forward, don’t know what to do with myself.

“I don’t think that’s true,” I say.

She goes very still. So still that I think I am looking at a completely different person. Like a mountain lion. Powerful and silent and deadly. For a terrible split second, seeing her across this table, I think that she is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. How fucking ridiculous that that was all it took to distract me.

“What does that mean?” she says.

I don’t say anything, just try to understand. Try to really see.

“How did you know about the motel?” I ask.

She leans forward, lowers her voice, and whispers, “How dare you. How dare you accuse me of anything when you broke into my home and stole something, you lied about it, and you completely fucked us. You told them where we were. Because of you we almost both—”

“Because of me? I did this?”

“How am I supposed to believe you didn’t do all this? They want to arrest you too, don’t they? My life was completely fine and normal before I was taken from—”

“Who are you?”

“All righty!” the waitress says, pouring ice water into our glasses. “Did we decide on some drinks to go with the food?”

“I’ll take a scotch,” I say, never letting my eyes stray from Hannah for a second. Hers that distracted me from everything. “Neat.”

“I’m fine,” Hannah says.

“She’ll have one too,” I say.

“I’m fine,” Hannah says. “I don’t drink.”

“Okay,” I say. “Then bring me two. Please.”

The waitress hovers for a moment, probably checking to make sure Hannah’s okay. That I’m not some abusive or controlling husband. Clocking the bruises on Hannah’s face, the faint outline of them. If only she knew who the woman before me truly is. What she’s capable of.

“I’m fine,” Hannah says to her, not taking her eyes off me.

The waitress hesitates, then says, “You just let me know if you need anything.”

“Who are you?” I ask again when she’s gone. And I feel, looking at Hannah’s face in the dim light, the glow of the table candle reflecting against her skin, her eyes, her nose. Her mouth. I feel it is the single most important question of my entire life.

“You know who I am,” she says in that lethal quiet calm. And I don’t know why, but my chest hurts at that. A feeling pushing up from somewhere.

“No,” I say. “I don’t.”

We sit. The music plays. I can now hear it’s “Pancho and Lefty.”

Hannah’s chest rising and falling. Her focus narrowed in on me.

The waitress brings the food and sets it down between us, along with the glasses of scotch.

The second the food passes in front of Hannah’s face, she leans back from the chair, that expression of pain again, rage in her eyes. She locks them on me. The waitress disappears.

Hannah’s hands on the table, knuckles white. Her nostrils flare, and she swears, adjusts the nose plug. She reaches across the table and takes one of my drinks, knocks it back with her eyes on me. “Fuck you,” she says.