Page 9 of Christmas at the Ranch

Five

I wake up disoriented in a dark room. It feels like the middle of the night, but it’s nearly nine.

I slept in. I sit up, hitting my head on the bunk above—and it all comes rushing back.

My dad. The arrest. My mother’s phone call.

Handing over my trust fund and just…driving.

To Evergreen. Of all places. Whatever peace and certainty I experienced last night is gone.

I only feel panic. I have to get out of this town is my first thought.

I had an unsettling dream about dark woods and burned-out lanterns.

Being utterly lost. Hearing a wolf’s howl and feeling afraid.

What am I doing here? Why would I do this to myself?

I turn on the lamp on the little desk and pull on my gym clothes from the day before.

Downstairs, I’m expecting the homemade scones Sam raved about, and for my mood to be brightened by her enthusiasm for absolutely everything—but all is just as silent as it was the night before.

I don’t even smell any coffee brewing; in fact, I don’t hear any noise in the kitchen at all.

That’s strange. Sam made such a big deal out of the inn’s early morning breakfast, but the kitchen door is closed tight. Am I late?

Out the window, I can see the snow falling in thick, white clumps, and when I step closer and peer out, I realize my car is half buried in snow.

Sam and Reesa are outside, shoveling the walkway, silent and determined.

I see a plow has already been in to clear the driveway, but my car has now been swamped.

I pull on my snow boots and parka and open the front door.

“Good morning!” I call out. “Wow, what a blizzard! Do you have an extra shovel? Let me help.”

Sam looks up at me, then away, back to her shoveling.

Even from here, and through the snow, I can see the disappointment in her eyes.

Did she already find out I’m not actually a hotel reviewer?

I step gingerly down the front stairs and head toward them.

But as I approach, instead of saying good morning, Reesa turns to her daughter and says, “Go inside, Sam,” her voice tight.

Sam scampers away without looking at me.

“Listen, I’m sorry if I gave her the idea I’m a hotel reviewer,” I begin—but Reesa cuts me off.

“You need to leave, please,” she says firmly. “I’ll refund you for the portion that would have been for your breakfast. And then you can go.”

I blink in surprise. This seems like an extreme reaction for giving her daughter the wrong impression about who I was. “I actually am a freelance journalist, I just don’t write about hotels,” I say. “But I was planning to pitch something to one of my editors.”

“No, thank you,” she says. “I don’t think an article with your name on it would do us any good.”

“I don’t understand,” I begin, but as I say the words, I realize I do. I’m a member of the Oakes family, and she somehow knows. But how? I realize I’ve said this out loud when she answers the question.

“It’s all over the Evergreen Business Owners’ group chat.” Then she shakes her head and says, “Poor Gill.”

It was one thing when I could think about the people my father hurt with his scheme as nameless, unknown to me. But my heart is aching already for whatever has been lost here.

“Gill—who is that?”

“He runs the fish and chips and bait and tackle place in town. Years ago, when apparently your family was staying right here over Christmas—an interesting fact you did not mention last night—your father and his cousin canvassed the town for investors. Luckily, most people didn’t trust them, or didn’t have enough money to get into TurbOakes at ground level.

But Gill invested everything he had just received from his beloved late father’s estate. ”

I feel like I’m on a fishing boat, lost in a storm, seasick. I can’t believe my father and Reuben went after people in town. Did they even need the seed money? Was it just for sport?

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I had no idea.”

“I saw the name Oakes on the article that was sent around in the chat. And then, there was a picture on the internet, at some gala.”

Reesa takes her phone out of her pocket and turns it toward me. And there’s the full image of me and my parents at the AGO gala last year. I’m no longer just cut off at the hem of my sparkling green skirt. I’m beside my parents, smiling, looking like one of them. Their darling daughter.

“I only went because my parents said I had to,” I say, but this feels so disloyal. I love the AGO. I wanted to go. And I’m not a child. I don’t have to do what my parents say.

“Then I realized it was you,” Reesa continues, ignoring me. “I don’t know what you’re doing here in Evergreen, and frankly, I don’t care. I just want you to leave.”

Reesa turns away from me and calls out, “Sam? Please gather Ms.Oakes’s things!

” Moments later, my gym bag lands with a thud in the snow at the bottom of the stairs, and the front door of the inn slams shut again.

I think I see a curtain twitch, and Sam’s face peering out, her eyes filled with disillusion.

By the time I’m done shoveling my car out of its snowy prison, I’ve taken off my parka and am covered in a cold, clammy sweat.

I carefully lean the shovel against the porch and take one last look at the exterior of the inn.

I’m exhausted, embarrassed. The only bright side is that I am not nostalgic for this place anymore.

Once I get out of here, I swear I’ll never think of Evergreen again.

I get in my car and drive carefully down the inn’s driveway and out onto the road—but I can already tell I won’t make it back to the city without snow tires.

The road is plowed, but the snow is still coming in thick.

I turn on the radio, scan until I find a local station called Kayak, just in time for the weather report.

It’s delivered by a man who sounds like he’s eighty if he’s a day.

“Looks like we’re in for a heck of a lot of snow today, folks.

I can barely see my hand when I hold it outside the window of the station here, and there’s a snowfall warning in effect.

I think they’re calling for”—long pause—“a couple more feet, at least, and in a short period of time. So, stay home if you can…and if you can’t, best to put on some tire chains. ”

Tire chains? I don’t even have snow tires on my car, let alone tire chains. As if to prove this, my car fishtails at the bottom of a hill. Reluctantly, I turn left, heading toward Evergreen instead of away from it.

Ten years, I tell myself. It’s been ten years and this town is not going to look the same. This is not going to be another painful walk through my memories, like last night was.

And yet, somehow, it still is. There’s the grocery store where Tate and I went together to replenish his stock of the mints the horses liked to eat.

And then, on Christmas Eve, we went there to get the ingredients for his dad’s fondue recipe: Emmenthal cheese, broth, apple juice, garlic, lemons, and cornstarch.

There’s the movie theater, now shut down and housing a closed-for-the-season beach toy shop instead.

But the sign is still there, golden and red, the bulbs lining the words Evergreen Theater burned out or broken.

We went to see the latest Minions movie there—which neither of us had any interest in.

We used it as an excuse to kiss in a back corner until the credits rolled.

There’s Carrie’s Café, and when I see the pink-and-white hand-painted sign, my heart skitters in my chest. I remember thick, dark hot chocolate and caramel chip cookies, the best I’d ever had.

My stomach grumbles and my traitorous heart swoons, thinking of my teenage self sharing a cookie with Tate Wilder at a corner table.

I really have to get out of this town. My backward gaze is rose-colored, but there’s only heartache waiting for me if I keep staring so intently into my rearview.

I press my foot down on the gas pedal and keep going, looking for a garage.

But first, I have to pass Gill’s Fish n Chips n Bait n Tackle.

I’m agonized over my father’s crimes against this person.

My family owes Gill—money, definitely, but also an apology. I don’t feel brave enough for that yet.

As I continue past Gill’s, another memory surfaces.

Tate and I went there together, too. Gill kept polystyrene containers of worms and little buckets filled with minnows in a fridge in the corner, but the food was delicious.

I can now recall Gill as a big man with bright blue eyes and a friendly manner—just like everyone in the town.

Tate and I sat in a window booth with peeling vinyl, shared a huge plate of fries doused in malt vinegar and salt, fed each other pieces of crispy fried lake trout.

I sucked on a lemon, then kissed him. I had to avoid lemon-flavored anything for a full year after.

“ Please let me find a mechanic who can do my snow tires fast,” I mutter. And then, as if in answer to my wish, a sign comes into view out the windshield: M&M’s Autobody .

I pull into the parking lot, breathing a sigh of relief as a young woman with wavy blond hair, wearing festive red coveralls, comes out to greet me. She gives my car a once-over as I get out. “Let me guess, you’re here for the winter tire special?”

My relief increases as I tell her I am, then follow her inside.

She slides a form across the counter at the front and I pass her my credit card.

There’s a long silence then, a sudden chill I know isn’t simply from the blast of cold air caused by another customer opening the door and entering the shop.

The woman—the nametag stitched onto her coveralls reads Meredith —shoots a quick smile at the person who has just walked in, her glacier-blue eyes filled with warmth.

“Hey there. I’ll be right with you.” Then, to me, in a considerably less warm tone, she says “Just one second” before heading through a door behind the desk leading to the repair bay.

My credit card suddenly feels like it’s an incriminating item, my toxic family name a glowing beacon. I cover my card with my hand as I wait. The person behind me clears his throat, but I don’t turn.

After a few excruciating moments, Meredith is back. “I’m so sorry,” she says, but doesn’t sound sorry at all. “Unfortunately, we just ran out of the winter tires we have on special. All we have left are our custom European winter tires, which are quite expensive.”

My heart sinks. “How expensive?”

The price she quotes seems absurd. I suspect she just made up the whole European-winter-tires thing, but what other choice do I have?

“It’s fine,” I say, perhaps to convince myself. “Please go ahead.” I push my credit card toward her one more time and she looks down at it like it’s a dead fish from Gill’s.

“And it’ll be a lot longer than an hour,” she says. “These European winter tires are a specialty item. They won’t be ready until just before we close today.”

I’m even more dismayed than I already was. “But I need to get back to the city,” I say. I have to get out of this town. “Please, is there anything you can do?”

Another throat-clear behind me, and then a deep voice says, “Of course there darn well is. Meredith, cut the nonsense, would you? We both know there’s no such thing as European winter tires.”

I know who it is immediately. And I can’t decide if I want to turn and say hello or find a back door I can escape through so I don’t have to face him.

It’s Charlie Wilder, Tate’s father.