3

Julia McCray was sick of snow. She was sick of looking at snow, and driving in snow,

and especially shoveling snow. She was sick of the need for snow boots, and thick

gloves, and enough outerwear to effectively double a person's girth when they were fully

bundled against the Montana cold.

On the bright side, it was near the end of February, and March would bring warmer

temperatures—if only an increase from the midthirties to the midforties. Any little

improvement would be welcome.

For now, though, it was still damned cold.

And there was still the damned snow.

This was one of those days when she was grateful that she owned her own business

and could work from home. Here it was, ten a.m., and she was still in her flannel pajamas

—a cheerful pink pattern with tiny corgis romping around on them. Her hair was up in a

messy ponytail, and she had thick socks on her feet. Who was going to care? Who was

going to see?

Nobody, she thought bitterly. Certainly nobody hot and male. And what good was it

to be in your pajamas at ten a.m. if there wasn't anybody there to try to take them off of

you?

Julia sighed and padded into her kitchen to make a cup of hot cocoa. When you were

still in your pajamas at ten a.m., it was snowy outside, and you had a fire in the fireplace,

you really needed hot cocoa.

Once the cocoa was ready, with mini marshmallows floating on the surface like

icebergs in a dark sea, she went to her dining room table, where her laptop sat open

beside a notebook filled with various doodles, notes, and pencil sketches.

As a landscape designer, she couldn't do a great deal of work locally during the

wintertime, when the earth was shrouded in a deep layer of snow. But that didn't mean

she could just sit idle, waiting for spring.

She was set to begin work for a new hotel in Bozeman as soon as weather—and the

spring thaw—permitted. For now, she had blueprints of the hotel and a topographical

map of the grounds, and she was beginning to create a design that she could implement

once the temperatures warmed.

The hotel's owners had requested landscaping that would be eco-friendly and in

harmony with the natural environment. With that in mind, she was drawing up her plans

to include native plants, a reclaimed-water irrigation system, solar-powered lighting, and

strategically planted trees that would provide a wind break in the winter and shade in

summer.

A creek ran through the hotel's property, and she wanted to use it to maximum effect

while maintaining the integrity of the waterway. She brought up a clean page on her

sketch pad, drew the basic outlines of the building and the property lines, and began

sketching hardscape, flower beds, a lawn that could be used for weddings and other

special events, and an array of other outdoor zones for uses ranging from quiet relaxation

to after-dinner strolls.

She was so involved in her work that she startled slightly when her cell phone rang.

Julia checked the screen. Mom.

She picked up the phone, rolled her shoulders to ease out the tension, and put on her

game face. Talking to her mother was challenging under the best of circumstances, but

even more so lately. She picked up the phone and answered it.

"Hey, Mom." Her voice sounded warm, friendly, and maybe even a little perky. It

should—she'd had years of practice at cultivating just that voice, specifically for her

mother's phone calls. "What's up?"

"Julia? Is this a good time?"

"Of course. How are you?"

"I can call back if you were in the middle of something."

Julia sighed and rolled her eyes. Step one in talking to Isabelle McCray was always

to reassure her that you didn't mind talking to her. Which, by the time you were done,

you did.

"Mom. I'm not in the middle of anything. This is fine. In fact, it's the perfect time

for you to call. It absolutely could not be better."

"Well, now you sound irritated. I can call back."

Julia made a gun with her thumb and finger and mimed shooting herself in the head

with it, complete with tongue lolling out of her mouth in a portrayal of sudden, violent

death.

"Hey, Mom? Now that you mention it, I was in the middle of a thing for work. Why

don't we just—"

"I'm worried about your brother," Isabelle said, finally spitting out the purpose of

her call. "I was wondering if you'd heard from him."

"Drew?" she said stupidly, as though she had more than one brother.

"It's just … another one of those debt collectors called me this morning looking for

him. I never know what to say."

"Ah." Julia felt the press of tension at the center of her breastbone. She knew the

feeling well, especially in reference to her brother. "Just tell them what I tell them: 'No

one by that name resides at this address.' It's true."

"Well, I suppose."

Drew, who was younger than Julia by about a year, had been hounded by collections

agencies ever since his wife had maxed out their credit cards, emptied their bank

accounts, and removed approximately three-quarters of their belongings from their

apartment, leaving him to come home from work one evening to find a goodbye note and

gaping, blank spaces where their bed, large-screen TV, refrigerator, and sofa used to be.

She'd left the book collection, an old dresser from Ikea, and the kitchen table behind

—but no forwarding address.

"Could you call him and see if he's okay?" Isabelle said.

"You could call him yourself."

Isabelle let out a sigh. "You know I can't do that."

Julia began pacing over the hardwood floors, her socks making a swishing sound as

she went.

"Mom. When are you going to tell me what's going on between the two of you? I

can't help if I don't know what's happening."

Isabelle hesitated. "It's not my place to tell you, honey. And … I don't think you

could help even if you knew."

"God, Mom. This is so ridiculous."

Something had happened between Drew and their mother three years before, shortly

before their father had died of injuries suffered in a car accident. Whatever it was, it had

damaged their relationship to the point that Drew no longer spoke to their mother. When

Tessa, his wife, had left him a year and a half later, he had vanished from Bozeman

without even telling his mother where he'd gone.

Julia knew where he was living—they stayed in touch via phone and text—but he'd

forbidden her to tell their mother.

She resented the position that put her in. Drew asked her about their mother's wellbeing

but refused to communicate with her himself. And Isabelle used her to pass

messages to Drew, urging her to divulge his whereabouts.

Neither of them would budge on the subject of their falling-out, leaving Julia to

wonder what in the world had happened and how it could possibly have been bad enough

to keep a son from talking to his only surviving parent.

"Just … would you call him? There's something … I really think he might need your

support right now."

"But why?" Julia threw her free hand into the air in frustration. "Would you please

just tell me what the hell is going on?"

Isabelle was silent, and Julia could imagine her wringing her hands with worry.

"All right," she said finally. "All right. I'll call him."

And she was sure she would want to bang her head against a wall when she did.

Isabelle and Drew were both stubborn as hell. It was a wonder they didn't get along

better, since they were so much alike.

"And what about you, Mom? Are you okay?" Whatever had Isabelle so worried

about Drew had obviously taken a toll on her, as well. Julia could hear it in the tremor of

her voice.

"Just call him." Isabelle hung up the phone, leaving Julia more confused than ever

about how her family had abruptly disintegrated eighteen months ago, and how she

would ever manage to help heal the rift.

By the end of the day, Isabelle wasn't the only one worried about Drew.

Julia had tried to call him, but he hadn't picked up, so she'd left him a voice mail

message relaying their mother's concern and asking him to call back.

He didn't.

It was true that he'd become somewhat reclusive since he'd taken off from Bozeman

with his clothes, his car, and the few things Tessa had left him. Julia hadn't seen him in

person in all that time, because he'd made it clear that he needed his space. But he

usually returned her calls, even when they were made to relay a message from their

mother.

And it usually didn't take him all day, either.

She tried not to be too upset about Isabelle's cryptic expressions of concern, but it

was hard. Why was she suddenly worried about him—or, to be accurate, more worried

than usual? There'd been a tone in her voice—something distinctly different from the

typical martyr routine she used with Julia. Something fragile, like she might suddenly

shatter at the least bit of pressure.

Had something happened?

If it had, Isabelle certainly wouldn't tell Julia. Neither would Drew. As distant as

Isabelle and Drew had become from each other, they seemed to have formed a tight club

of secrecy and resentment, with Julia firmly on the outside.

Not that she wanted to belong to a club like that.

She went about her day and tried not to think about it. She began transferring her

sketches for the Bozeman hotel job to the CAD program on her laptop. She reluctantly

got dressed, including snow boots and gloves, and shoveled enough snow to get her car

out of the driveway.

She drove to the Safeway on Main Street to stock up on essentials like white wine,

hot cocoa, Pop Tarts, and Cap'n Crunch, and then brought her purchases home. She ate

lunch—a frozen burrito she heated up in the microwave—and put the plate in the

dishwasher.

With that done, she assessed the sorry state of her house and decided the laundry

couldn't wait any longer, as she was already on her last pair of clean underpants. She

threw in a load, and then thought that she might as well scrub the toilets while she was at

it.

She'd folded the clean laundry and was beginning to think about dinner, when she

realized Drew still hadn't called her back.

She plopped down onto her sofa with her cell phone and thought about what to do.

After a moment of consideration, she texted him:

I'm about to call you, and you'd damned well better pick up.

Julia waited until her screen showed that he'd read the message, and then she called.

"Jules." He sounded tired.

"I tried to call you this morning. More than seven hours ago. I left a message. Are

you screening my calls?"

He let out a sigh and didn't answer, and that was as good as a yes.

"Drew, jeez. What's going on? I get a phone call from Mom this morning, and she

sounds all quivery and upset, saying she's worried about you. And then you shut me out.

Like always. Is everything okay? And you'd better not give me some bullshit line just to

placate me, either."

"Jules, don't worry about it. I'm—"

"I said I don't want a bullshit line." She was using her bossy big sister voice, which

she had employed often and to good effect during their childhood.

"Okay. Something did happen, and I'm … a little thrown. But I'm not ready to talk

about it, and I promise that I'm going to be okay."

"You're going to be okay," she repeated. "Which means you're not okay now."

"Julia …"

"Something happened that Mom knows about, and that has the two of you upset, but

you won't talk to each other about it, and neither of you will talk to me." She neatly

summarized the events of the day, feeling hot tears coming to her eyes.

He didn't say anything.

"I'm your sister, Drew."

"I know you are."...

Those burning tears threatened to spill over as she seesawed between worry and

anger. She stood with one arm pressed tight across her chest, as though the defensive

posture could protect her from her hurt.

"You've changed." Her tone was accusing. "You and Mom both. At first I thought it

was grief over Dad, but it's not that. It's not. The anger and the silence and the secrets

…"

"Julia? You need to respect the fact that there are things I don't want to talk about,"

he said.

"Yeah. Sure. Right." She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. "And you

need to respect the fact that I used to have a family." Her voice broke. "I used to have a

brother and two parents, and … and we all loved each other, and we were here for each

other. And what do I have now, Drew? What do I have now?"

She hung up before he could answer, and then threw her cell phone onto the sofa,

where it bounced once before coming to rest.

It was a goddamned good thing she'd thought to buy beer and junk food. She was

going to need them.

She took the beer, along with a jumbo bag of Cheetos, over to Mike's house later

that evening, though she hadn't been invited and likely would be interrupting some

essential male function, like lounging in sweatpants and watching football highlights on

ESPN.Mike Norton, a rough-hewn, weathered guy in his midfifties who was the go-to

general contractor on Julia's biggest jobs, answered the door in sweatpants, just as she'd

predicted. But there was no TV noise coming from his living room—just the whine of the

smoke detector blaring throughout the small, 1950s-era house.

The smoke alarm was accompanied by the distinct smell of something burning and a

light haze of gray smoke.

"What the hell, Mike?" Julia pushed past him and into the house, carrying the beer in

one hand and the Cheetos in the other. She set the items down on the coffee table and

proceeded into the kitchen, waving one hand in front of her face as though that might be

an effective method of clearing the smoke from the air.

"Just let yourself right in," he said dryly, following behind her. "It's not like I was in

the middle of anything."

In the compact kitchen, she found a formerly frozen pizza sitting on the counter. The

edges of the crust were charred into a black and smoking ruin, and the forlorn little pieces

of pepperoni looked like some kind of irradiated debris from the surface of Mars.

Obviously, waving her hand around wasn't going to cut it. She heaved open the

window over the sink and began flapping a dish towel in the general direction of the

kitchen smoke detector.

"Jeez, you're opening a window?" he groused. "It's twenty degrees out there."

"It's either that or suffer from smoke inhalation."

They had to yell at each other to be heard over the screaming of the smoke alarm.

As Julia continued flapping the dish towel, to little effect, Mike pulled a step stool

out of a utility closet, climbed onto it, and disconnected the smoke alarm. The sudden,

blessed silence was sweet relief.

Mike climbed down from the step stool with the silent smoke detector in his hand,

and they both looked at the blackened pizza.

"You can build a gazebo big enough to seat twenty out of nothing but lumber and a

dream," Julia said, looking at him in wonder. "But you can't manage to cook a frozen

pizza at four hundred degrees for twenty minutes?"

"I guess I got distracted." He scratched the gray stubble on his chin. "Kinda forgot it

was in there."

"Distracted by what?" She grabbed a pair of oven mitts off the counter, picked up

the smoking, black pizza, and threw it into the garbage can sitting on the floor near the

refrigerator.

He shrugged, looking embarrassed. "I was on the phone with Emma."

Emma was Mike's ex-wife, whom he harbored great, persistent dreams of winning

back one day. The problem was, she had already remarried and moved to Arizona, where

she and her new husband had a house, complete with a swimming pool, a sunroom, and a

dog.

"Oh, Mike." Julia looked at him with equal measures of pity and scorn.

"Yeah, yeah." He waved her off. They'd had this conversation many times before—

the one where she told him he was wasting his time and doing unnameable damage to his

heart by refusing to move on—and they both knew that it wasn't going to do any good.

"Well." Julia let her shoulders sag in defeat. "What are you going to do about

dinner?" She changed the subject and gestured toward the trash can, which now smelled

like charcoal and burned cheese.

"I saw you brought Cheetos," he suggested.

Julia and Mike had a kind of routine they went through every time one of them

showed up at the other's house. If Mike was the one to come to Julia's place, he had to

pretend he was there to render some essential manly service out of paternal concern. He'd

grumble that somebody had to clean out her rain gutters, since there was no way she

would ever get around to doing it herself, and then, either while he was completing the

task or afterward, he would bring up whatever it was he'd come to talk about.

If Julia was the one to go to Mike's house, she had to pretend that she was there to

consult him on some question related to the landscaping business. There had to be some

kind of pretense that the visit was related to an important chore or work-related issue.

Otherwise, Julia would have to admit that she had no female friends, and Mike would

have to admit that he was lonely without his wife and wanted someone to talk to.

Since admitting those things would have required more introspection than either of

them was comfortable with, they danced around an awkward fact that was, nonetheless,

as true as the North Star: They were each other's best friend.

An outsider might have called the routine pointless or even absurd, but the two of

them had grown comfortable with it, and they relied on it like one would any other of

life's rituals, like brushing their teeth or drinking morning coffee.

"So, you didn't come here to bring me Cheetos," Mike said, stuffing a handful of the

bright orange snack food in his mouth. "Why did you come?"

"I wanted to find out what your schedule looks like in August."

"August," he repeated.

"Yeah. I'm bidding on that restaurant job."

"It's February," he pointed out.

"Of course it is."

They ate some more Cheetos and drank some of the beer she'd brought, and then she

launched into the real reason she'd come. "There's something going on with my mom

and Drew."

Mike took a swallow of beer to wash down the Cheetos. "This isn't exactly news,"

he informed her.

"Yes, but this is something different. My mom called me this morning and said she

was worried about Drew, but she wouldn't say why. Then I call him up, and he sounds

like hell. Really awful. Like maybe he's been awake for the past forty-eight hours, living

on coffee and cigarettes. Which would not be unprecedented for him. But he won't tell

me what's wrong. What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to think?"

"You could stay out of it," Mike suggested. He was lying back in his La-Z-Boy, in

full recline mode. "Maybe try minding your own business for a change."

"I would!" She threw her hands into the air, forgetting that one of them was holding

a Cheeto. The orange corn nugget flew two feet to the left and landed beside her on a sofa

cushion. "I'm not the one who brought me into this, remember. My mom called me. I was

happy! I was just ... living my life! And now I can't just be happy and live my life,

because there's some big, mysterious thing going on with Drew. He might not want to

talk about it or even see me"—she let out a ragged breath, suddenly overcome by

emotion—"but I love him, Mike. And I want him to be okay."

"Of course you do." He put his chair into the upright position and leaned forward,

resting his elbows on his knees. "You know, kid, you're a good sister and a good

daughter." He looked at her pointedly. "But if they won't accept what you've got to give,

there's not a hell of a lot you can do."

It was uncharacteristically touchy-feely advice, coming from him, and so she felt

compelled to nod thoughtfully. As though there was even a rat's ass of a chance that she

was going to just walk away from her family's problems.

"I'll think about it, Mike," she said. "I really will."

"Ah, that's crap," he said mildly, leaning back in his chair again. "You're going to

do what you always do. You're going to piss and moan and feel bad, and then you're

going to obsess, then you're going to come back here and bitch about it again in a few

days."

"Probably," she admitted. She finished off her first beer. "Are you going to eat the

rest of those Cheetos?"