Page 50 of The Christmas Express

Ember

‘I believe you that it’s paradise, but I can’t see a thing,’ Tonia says to me over a video call.

I’m holding up my phone, trying to show her the brilliance of the view from my little cabin here in Jasper National Park, but the morning sun is dazzling directly at me, turning the snow into an iridescent carpet.

‘Send me photos later, and get to the good part.’

I settle down on the rocking chair on my porch, coffee in hand, blanket on my legs. The air is crispy and crunchy-cold, the snow so deep it reaches in powdery drifts up the side of the cabin and is layered over the porch floor itself, but I’m breathing deep and slow here.

Tonia wants to hear about my kiss with Alex, for the third time. I already called from the train yesterday, and it was the first thing she asked me about this morning. I hunker down in my blanket, unable to keep the smile from my face, glowing in the sunshine.

‘It was a really good kiss...’ I begin, rolling my head back at the memory, a smile playing on my lips like they’re imagining hers exploring them. I might never see Alex again, but I won’t forget how she made me feel. This smile isn’t going away for a while.

I’ve decided to stay here in Jasper for another week. There’s so much of the national park that I want to see. God, it’s good to be out here in nature again, in a wide-open space, under the stars and the sun.

After I’ve hung up the call, I lace on my hiking boots, fill a bag with my travel flask and tons of snacks, and follow one of the winter trails towards Maligne Canyon, where I spend the best part of the day walking, crunching, stepping, a little sliding, and a lot of laying my eyes on frozen waterfall after turquoise frozen waterfall.

At one of them, deep in the canyon, I remove a glove and run my hand over an icicle, which hangs like hair over the side of the rocks, surrounding me.

My mum and dad would have liked it here.

They would have liked that I was here, soaking all of this in.

I can picture Mum laughing in delight at the sight of the waterfalls.

She always laughed when she saw something that made her smile, like the smile was trying to jump forward out of her and touch it.

I hope I can carry that on, find something every day that makes me smile so hard it tries to burst out of me.

Cali checked in earlier, which was nice of her.

Like Alex, like Bryn, like all of them, she has come in and out of my life now and that’s okay.

I’m glad to have put any ill-feeling so very far away, because really, look at all of this.

I inhale a lungful of big, clean mountain air.

Sitting in thoughts of ‘what if’, not noticing all the amazing beauty the world has to offer, isn’t how I’m going to live my life.

There’s an awful lot of that amazing beauty still to see.