I smiled. “Fine.” I had twenty-four hours to come up with some details. And then lock myself in my cabin.
When I got off the phone, I sat on my bed in a stupefied silence. It was weird thinking about Miles like that, even if he would never find out. This was a lie. And lying was wrong. But this was also a lie that wouldn’t hurt anybody else. If anything, it would save me. I’d lean into this idea of a boyfriend back at home to get me through the next six days and get everybody off my back. I’d wait a couple weeks and then tell Chloe. She’d forgive me because she really did owe me one. Then we’d all move on.
Miles would never find out.
FOUR
“My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.”
L.M. Montgomery - Anne of Green Gables
The next morning, the spotless trunk of my gray Honda Civic held my luggage, books, and an extra pair of winter boots. I slammed the trunk closed and ran back toward my house to lock the front door, with my hood covering my face as the snow pelted down. The next house I bought in upstate New York WOULD have a garage. That was the only downfall to my otherwise steal of a house deal. Once everything was locked and secured for the week, I tucked myself inside my car and slowly made my way toward the highway.
My phone rang as my tires trudged through the slushy mess of snow on the road. I briefly glanced at the ID on my phone and debated answering. Eventually, I flipped the phone on speaker.
“Hey, Mom.”
“You’re dating someone?!” her voice demanded into the phone.
Well done, Chloe.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she continued. “Chloe said it’s been going on for weeks.”
A bolt of regret struck me as my mom obviously seemed crushed by the news. Since she had gotten remarried, the frequency of our calls had dwindled in number, which was a far cry from speaking two to three times a day the past year.
“To be fair, I didn’t tell anyone.” Including myself.
She made a noise that sounded like my excuse did nothing to alleviate the hurt I’d caused.
I checked the rearview mirror for cars as I inched my way through the tiny town of Peru just north of Stanton on my way up to the northeastern tip of the state before I could cross the snow-covered Lake Champlain and enter Vermont.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I just wanted to test it out a bit before I said something.”
Guilt seeped into the cracks of my resolve to see this through. Just because I could talk myself into thinking I owed Chloe a lie, that didn’t mean I owed my mom one. The last time I lied to her was in the sixth grade when we watched an R-rated movie at a friend’s house. The guilt had run so rampant in my mind that I ended up confessing the whole of the misdeed two days later. I reminded myself again that this was different. Mom thought my dating life was non-existent in Stanton. Mom loved Glenn Foster. I did not. Glenn and I would be thrown together all week long, under the mistletoe and on horse-drawn carriage rides, unless my heart was promised to another.
“How about I bring him home for a weekend sometime in January so you can all meet him?” Unless of course, our relationship experienced an unfortunate explosive demise before then.
“Fine. But promise me you’ll at least be nice to Glenn. You’ll both be there with no families of your own.”
“Mom. Please call off Virginia Foster and any plans you two have regarding us. Our relationship didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.”
“But I still don’t understand what happened between you two. You never told anybody. He’s such a nice boy. And he has a great job.”
I didn’t want to get into it about Glenn. Even I had a hard time putting into words what exactly went wrong. The thing I did know for certain was that Glenn had two very different personalities. One for public and one for private. He wasn’t a bad guy, but he wasn’t for me, and I would not be coerced into spending time with him.
“I’d better go. It’s getting foggy, and I should focus on the road.” The roads were at that questionable icy stage, where I wasn’t sure if they were just wet or if I was driving on black ice. “I’ll be nice to Glenn, but I’m not hanging out with him alone. I have a boyfriend,” I said firmly, clinging to that lifeline now. “Are you and Russ already there?”
“Yes, we just unpacked our things. It’s so beautiful here. Seems like we jumped right into a Christmas card. Russ wants to take me cross-country skiing here in a bit.”
Cross-country skiing? Who was this woman?
“Drive safe, honey. Take it slow if you need to.”
“No problem there,” I said, inching along the highway.
After I hung up the phone, I began to wonder how much weight I should give this fake-boyfriend thing to be sure Glenn and our moms would get the hint. Should I get a fake ring? A promise ring?
No. Too soon.
Three long hours later, my GPS led me to a long driveway. I stopped my car just underneath the wooden archway that held a sign saying, The Lodge in the Hills. I peered down the snow-covered drive for a moment, wondering if my Civic could make it all the way. My mom was right. It was like something out of a postcard. Snow-topped maple trees lined both sides of the driveway, but since it was the middle of winter, they did almost nothing to block the snow from piling up into a slushy mess.
The drive from Stanton to Montpelier had been slow going. There were some patches that I had to grip the wheel to keep my car on the road. Now that I was so close to my destination, my limbs felt heavy, and I was impatient to just get there, which is how I found myself plunging forward down the driveway with snow slushing around my tires. I instantly regretted my decision. The car swiveled while the tires tried to find their grip on the slushy snow, then it began slowing down. I rammed my foot into the gas, hoping a quick burst of speed would save me. After fishtailing grandly for a couple yards, the car came to a complete stop.
I tried reversing, but the tires only spun. I couldn’t see the lodge from where I sat on the road, and I suddenly wanted to cry. The perfect start to this week in purgatory. I was about to call my mom when the sound of a motor caught my attention. A big, red tractor with a plow was coming in the direction of the lodge, right toward me. Looked like if I would have waited one extra minute, I could have avoided the whole thing. A few moments later, the tractor pulled to a stop in front of me. The door swung open, and a tall, lanky man dressed in a red-and-green flannel shirt, a black vest, a baseball hat, and knee-high rubber boots jumped to the ground and made his way to my car.
I rolled down the window, almost sheepishly, as I met the gaze of a handsome man who looked to be in his mid-fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair sticking out from under his hat and wrinkles around his eyes—no doubt due to laughter, I noted, as he grinned at me widely.
“Well, dang. Not bad for a Civic. You should be impressed with your driving skills, young lady.”
A smile broke out across my face, deeply appreciative of the fact that he wasn’t going to pull a jerky male card and try and make me feel stupid about what just happened.
“I’m so sorry, I thought I could make it.”
“Oh, no, it’s our fault. The tractor broke down before we could clear the road. But…it’s fixed now. Do you mind if I finish clearing to the end of the road, and then I’ll come around and pick you up? So the whole driveway gets cleared? It’ll just take me a minute.”