Snowbound Summer (13 page)

That was unfortunate. By morning, Anne, at least, was more than ready to sit down for a serious discussion, but neither of her parents would have it with her. Hanna nursed a hangover and stayed in her bedroom with a pillow over her head. Howard said he'd made their mother angry enough for one trip and said everything that needed saying.

Kitten threw up her hands in disgust and announced that she was going home early. This set off a storm of protests from her seventeen-year-old twins and a bitter shake of resignation on the part of Howard, which only got worse when Anne started talking about doing the same thing. She eventually compromised by agreeing to simply stay away for the day. She and her family would take their rental car and go find something to do far away from Snowline Lodge and her adoptive parents. Kitten, on the other hand, would not be deterred from her decision to leave, so after more than a little negotiation, Ron agreed to make certain Brett and Marcie didn't get themselves killed without their parents around and that they got on the right plane tomorrow when it was time to leave.

An hour later, almost everyone was gone. Hanna still wouldn't come out of her room and Howard sat with the television turned loud enough that he wouldn't have to listen to anyone. In many ways, it seemed like a normal day with the Miller family.

“So which run are you two planning to ski today?” Kara asked the twins as they tried to quietly slip away from the adults. That wasn't easy to do, of course. A blind man would notice them bumping their way out of the cabin with their skis slung over their shoulders. “We ought to name a location we can all meet up at every couple of hours to make certain you're okay,” Kara told them.

Brett rolled his eyes in disgust. “We're not kids, you know. We don't need a babysitter.”

Kara decided to throw them a bone. “That's why we're not making you ski with us,” she said. “But Ron promised your mother we'd look out for you and you
are
going to check in with us every couple of hours!”

Marcie decided it was better to accept the inevitable than to waste the morning arguing about it. “We're going to ski the expert slope this morning and then do some ice climbing this afternoon.” She opened the door to escape before Kara could argue with her or name the meeting location. “Hey, cool, it's snowing!” Marcie said.

Brett hurried up beside her, banging his skis against the doorframe. “It's snowing in August,” he said. “Who would have thought it could do that?”

Ron and Kara stepped up behind them to see huge white flakes of snow falling down on them. It was a wet snow, melting quickly as it hit the pavement, but still snow by any definition.

“If you'd watched any of the weather reports,” Ron said, “you'd know they've been predicting this storm all weekend.”

Brett stepped out into the snow holding out his hands to catch the flakes. “But it's snow, Uncle Ron!” he said. “I mean, it's not like we're in Alaska or anything.”

Ron and Kara followed Marcie out the door to join Brett beneath the clean white flakes. It felt good landing on their faces and Kara stuck her tongue out to taste her first August snowfall.

“It's only snowing up here,” Ron said, “and barely that from the look of it.” He pointed down the mountain. “Down there it's rain. Look, you can see the difference.”

Kara followed Ron's gaze. Sure enough, the fluffy white flakes seemed to turn angry and gray as her gaze moved down the mountain.

“I was watching the weather with Dad last night while you were talking with Mom,” Ron told Kara. “The state is worried about flooding down in the valleys. Apparently they've had an awful lot of rainfall this year and the rivers are all really high.”

“That's boring!” Marcie announced. “Who wants to go skiing in fresh snow?”

She and her brother took off running before Ron or Kara could answer.

It wasn't until they had almost disappeared that Kara realized they still hadn't set a place and time to meet up with each other.

* * * *

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Chapter Twelve

They ran into the kids by chance as they grabbed cheeseburgers at a sort of fast food, cafeteria-style restaurant called the Alpine. The snow was coming down harder than ever, actually adding accumulation to the slopes, but not really sticking on the paved surfaces of the parking lots and the roads. If it kept up like this, Kara thought it would start to cover everything, but for now, at least, it was still turning to water and rushing down the mountain. The television screens, which dotted the Alpine, showed local news reporters in their wet weather gear standing in the rain near flooded intersections and dangerously high rivers.

“This is awesome!” Brett informed them through what should probably have been two and a half mouthfuls of food. “I've been posting pictures on my Facebook page. Everybody thinks it's so cool we're skiing in the snow.”

“How are you positing on your Facebook page?” Kara asked. “You're skiing.”

Marcie rolled her eyes at her with the weary patience of the young toward their elders. “We've got phones, don't we? We post and text on the ski lift going back up the mountain.”

She pulled out her phone, pushed a couple of buttons and showed to Kara a photo of Brett smiling on the lift with the snow coming down all around them.

She turned to ask Ron if he knew they could do this, but he was grinning sheepishly at her.

“Not you, too?” she asked. “I thought you were checking emails from work.”

“I keep telling you I can set you up to do this,” Ron reminded her.

Kara didn't truly understand why anyone would want to be able to check their messages and post on their pages from ski slopes or restaurants. Didn't they understand that part of the reason you took a vacation was to get away from all of those distractions?

She decided not to raise the point. It was one of the principle disconnects between her and her younger boyfriend. Some things you just accept. There was no point in arguing about it.

“Hey, can I ask you two something before you hit the slopes again?” Ron asked.

Brett had just stuck another double bite worth of cheeseburger into his mouth, but he made a barely comprehensible sound of agreement.

“Does it bother you at all to find out your mother was adopted?”

Neither Brett nor Marcie had to think about this question. “Nah!” they said. “She's still Mom and they're still Grandma and Grandpa.”

That simple statement made eminent sense to Kara, but she doubted that Kitten and Anne were operating on
sense
now. Finding out you were adopted was a fundamentally
emotional
experience.

“What about you, Uncle Ron?” Brett asked. “How's it feel to find out you're a bastard?”

“Brett!” Marcie spun about and shoved her twin brother. With the skis on his shoulder and the new snow on the ground, he had to take a couple of steps to recover his balance.

“It's okay, Marcie,” Ron said. “I guess it's true, now that I think about it.”

“It's not true,” Kara said. She kept her voice quiet and informative, not argumentative or defensive. “In Michigan, if the baby is born in wedlock it is considered legitimate. It doesn't matter if your legal father is a biological parent.”

Ron shrugged as if to say he didn't know what the state legislature really had to do with determining such things.

“So are you going to make Grandma tell you who your real Dad is?” Brett asked.

“Brett!” Marcie hissed a warning.

Ron tried to smile. “Nobody makes your Grandmother do anything she doesn't want to.”

“But you're going to try, right?” Brett asked.

“I don't know,” Ron told him. “I've gotten along pretty well so far in my life without knowing who this guy is.”

“Maybe you do know him,” Brett suggested.

“Brett!” Marcie hissed again.

“What?” Brett asked. “I'm just thinking that Ron's real Dad could be one of Grandma's friends.”

“Your grandpa is Ron's real Dad,” Kara told Brett. “He's the only man that was there for him when he was growing up. Anyone else is just a pretender.”

She suspected that Ron was thinking back over his childhood, testing the statement she had just made. Maybe it would be a kindness if she could distract him from those sorts of thoughts. “What are you and Marcie planning to do this afternoon?” she asked.

“Well, we really like skiing,” Marcie said.

“But we were thinking about trying some ice climbing,” Brett added.

“If it's still open with this snow,” Marcie finished.

Kara really didn't want to try ice climbing, but it might just be the sort of distraction that would help Ron forget about his father's revelations for a while. “Ron wanted to try that, too,” she said. “Do you mind if we tag along?”

A look of discomfort passed over the twins’ faces. “Are you sure you want to, Kara?” Marcie asked.

“Yeah, Ron's pretty cool,” Bret answered, “but you're not as young as he is.”

Kara frowned. Why did everything with the Millers have to come back to the age difference between Ron and her? “I think I can keep up with you all,” she told them.

“Of course you can,” Ron agreed.

The twins looked like they'd take some convincing.

* * * *

* * * *

Ice climbing looked even more intimidating than Kara had expected—especially with the snow falling all around them hampering visibility. First they had to don safety gear: helmet, goggles and a web harness designed to keep them from falling. Then they fastened crampons over their boots—essentially the ice-climbing equivalent of the steel spikes men wore in baseball. Of course, these spikes were larger and sharper, but it seemed to Kara that the idea was basically the same.

Next they moved to the bottom of the ice cliff they would ascend and hooked on to the rope. On the upper side, the climb consisted of a combination of finding handholds with their gloved hands or making them with the ice axe. On the lower side they used the crampons on their feet to kick into the surface to secure enough of a hold to push up and find the next handhold.

Kara looked up into the falling snow and wondered if perhaps the twins were right about this one and she should give it a pass. “How far is it to the top?” she asked.

“Thirty feet,” Ron reminded her. Then seeing how nervous she was, added, “It's perfectly safe. These guys here,” he indicated the two lodge employees who were securing Brett and Marcie for the first climb, “are going to have you on belay the entire time. As long as you keep from hitting yourself with that axe, there's really nothing that can happen to you. Even if you completely lose your grip, the worst that can happen is that they lower you to the ground.”

Kara felt unconvinced by Ron's assurances, and she wondered if she'd be more pissed off if he told her she didn't have to do this than she was now that he clearly expected her to try.

“Are you ready?” one of the lodge employees asked Brett.

Brett gave him a big
thumbs up
and a huge grin.

A moment later, Marcie did the same.

Both teens started at the same time, using their ice axes with gusto on the pock marked surface of the cliff. Brett had a little trouble getting his first toehold but after that surged a couple of feet ahead of Marcie. Then he floundered about for thirty seconds trying to figure out how to further his ascent.

Marcie moved at a more regular pace, planning out her hand and toe holds in advance and looking to Kara like a seasoned pro. She wondered how many times the twins had done something similar to this back in Michigan.

“Hello,” a voice said behind them. “I thought you might be here. You said you wanted to try this the day you came down.”

Kara glanced over her shoulder to see Howard Miller walking up to them. He looked shy and hesitant, as if he didn't know what sort of greeting he could expect.

Ron only hesitated a moment before meeting him halfway and giving his Dad a big hug.

“Your sisters have disappeared,” Howard told Ron as if Kara and he hadn't been at the cabin this morning for the argument about what everyone would do today.

“I know,” Ron told them. “They just need a little time to think about what you told them last night. It won't make any difference in the end, but it's shocking...and Kitten always had issues anyway. She was always worried that you and Mom didn't really want her in the family.”

Ron led his father back to Kara.

“Hi, Gramps!” Brett shouted. His feet were about ten feet off the ground now and he looked down on them with a fierce grin.

Howard waved up to Brett and his sister before greeting Kara with an unenthusiastic, “Hello.”

Kara started to bristle when it occurred to her that maybe it wasn't a simple lack of enthusiasm which dominated Howard's greeting, but a surfeit of depression. She overcame her extreme distaste for the man and gave him a hug. “I'm glad you came out of the cabin, Howard,” she said. “The snow is beautiful and the twins are having fun. This isn't a good day to be cooped up inside.”

Howard seemed surprised by Kara's warmth. Ron's smile proved he was very pleased with her greeting.

The three watched the twins advance another five feet up the side of the mountain.