Chapter 18

Chapter 18GaleThe elves did not, in fact, figure out why the transmission kept making that sound. It kept making the sound as I drove out of Bellsford, driving off into the darkening night, and no amount of blaring my music could drown out either the rattling or the bleary streaks of heavy thoughts in my head.In fact, I think it had gotten worse. The transmission, that is, although—come to think of it, I’d been sad about a girl who couldn’t commit to me on the drive in, and now I was even sadder about another girl who couldn’t commit to me on the drive out.I wasn’t developing a good track record here.I gripped the wheel tightly, just focusing on the drive ahead of me, but the empty roads out in this part of the countryside with no scenery but thick rows of evergreens squeezed in on either side of the road, it wasn’t like there was a lot for me to think about other than replaying everything over and over. I cycled through guilt and anger and a deep, heavy sadness like it was the world’s shittiest playlist, and it was almost a relief when I’d been driving for half an hour and my brain got the memo and faded into numbness instead—almost because then it was panic as the noise from the transmission absolutely, definitely got worse, a loud splitting crack from below me and then it felt like something was grinding as I drove, and I swore loudly because if I was going to lose control and pitch off a cliff and die, I could have at least still been with Stella when it happened and go out happily—The brakes worked fine. I eased it down to a crawl, and whatever it was snapped back into place, because it lurched right back into feeling smooth again once I dropped to fifteen miles an hour. I shut off the music, just gripping the wheel with white knuckles, nothing but the sound of my heart hammering in my ears. Thank god the roads were empty—I hadn’t seen another car in ages, and I didn’t feel too terrified about driving at a snail’s pace—but it meant I was out of luck getting help from a passerby.Tentatively, I tried pushing it back up to speed, climbing a little higher at a time, but when I hit twenty-five or so, the awful grinding started back up, and I dropped it back down in a panic. Once again, smooth as butter, going fast enough I might as well have been walking.Shit. I wasn’t driving all the way home at electric-scooter speeds. I’d be out here until morning. I needed to check the map and see a place to stop, but I didn’t dare stop right now, or I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to move again at all. So I flipped on my hazards and counted every second like it was my last as I crawled down the gentle slopes of the road, and when I finally found anything—a quiet little house not too far off the side of the road—I didn’t ask questions. I pulled into the driveway, coming to a stop at the side, half off the road and under the cover of evergreens with their snow-weighted boughs, and it was only once I came to a stop that I realized I’d barely breathed since it happened.I put the car in park, sucked in a breath, and I collapsed back against the seat. My heart hammered so hard it sounded like a drumbeat, and my hands were shaking… I held them up to my face, just watching how much they trembled.Okay. So. I at least didn’t land in the hospital. I just had to hope there wasn’t some crotchety old man who was going to barge out of the house and shoot the intruder. I was on their private property, and I didn’t know what I’d do if they asked me to leave. I didn’t want to push my luck—couldn’t really take my time breathing nice and slow, coming down from it all. I took my phone down from its clip on the dashboard, and I pulled up the map, looking for any kind of mechanic, anything, but I didn’t even get that far—no data connection.“Dammit, please.” I refreshed over and over, like it might get me through. I felt tears biting at my eyes now—I wasn’t even calling help if I couldn’t get signal. What was I supposed to do, stand by the side of the road with my thumb out waiting for some creep to kidnap me?I collapsed against the seat back, looking out through the window as snow drifted down against the glass, stirred from the thick boughs of the evergreens overhead. Every second passed intensely and hazily all at once, striking like a clock close to midnight and drifting like a dream all in one.“Okay, okay,” I said, clasping my hands on the steering wheel. Hearing a voice, even my own, kept me from spiraling completely right now. “Listen, Gale, you’re okay. You’ve got this. You’ll be okay. You’re going to figure this out. This too shall pass…”I wasn’t buying it, but it was grounding at least to hear myself speak. I shook off the clouds of sharp, needling despair that clung over me and made it hard to think, and I went through my phone again. The house had a wifi network. Password protected—who the hell did they have to worry about mooching off their network, fucking Santa Claus?—but I could at least try something. I tapped in a couple of common throwaway passwords, hoping they might be tech-illiterate, but they all bounced.Shit, I had no other options. I bundled up, tossing my scarf tightly around my neck, and I pulled on my gloves before I stepped out of the car. The bitter, driving cold clung like dry frost to the inside of my nose and my throat when I breathed in, and the icy sting of the wind was like sharp metal on my ears—I should have taken Stella’s advice, should have gotten that hat. I hunched my shoulders walking up to the front door of the house, moving slowly with my heart pounding, envisioning myself getting kidnapped or just shot on the doorstep—having some sneering old man tell me to get lost seemed like a winning outcome at this point—but I raised a gloved hand and knocked, hard, at the front door.No response. I couldn’t see any lights on in the front, but it was hard to see through thick curtains anyway, small windows on the rustic wooden construction. I swallowed, and I knocked again, calling out with my voice awkward and strangled at first.“Hello…? Sorry to bother you, I just… my car just broke down on the road…”No response. I was talking to an empty house. I hung my head, going back to the car, and I sat in the driver’s seat, staring out the window and looking up at a beautiful, clear starry sky.Maybe I could wish on a star. I just wished I could make it through the night.I closed my eyes, sinking my head back against the headrest, and I let myself drift, telling myself to just wait—wait for something, anything. It took twenty-seven minutes, watching painstaking minutes pass, before a car pulled in next to me, slowing down to a stop just a bit behind me. My heart jolted in my chest, and I turned, my words suddenly tangled up and an anxious feeling churning as I tried to remember what I needed to say, and I stopped at the sight of the car, a forest-green SUV that I’d seen at the lodge, but I couldn’t quite place…I stepped out of the car again, bracing against the driving cold, and I heard the driver’s side door opposite me on the SUV open and shut, but nothing in this world could have prepared me for Charlie coming around the front of the car, bundled up in a fuzzy pea coat and a knit beanie, giving me a once-over.“Gale?” he said. “What are you doing here?”“What am I doing here? What are you doing here? I literally just—” I gestured up to the sky. “I just wished on a star, and here you come. What’s with you and the Christmas magic?”He smiled. “This is my house…”“Oh.” I rubbed my neck. “Okay. I guess it makes sense you’d be here…”He softened. “Guess it’s no surprise you’d end up here if something happened… mine is the only house for a while out here. Car troubles?”I swallowed, hard. My heart was beating too quickly right now, a desperate sensation like I needed this to work, to just be safe and that I could breathe again—I nodded. “I think the transmission gave, or something… it wouldn’t go above, like, ten or fifteen without this awful sound and not steering right, so I pulled into the first place I found, tried to contact help but I don’t have any damn signal out here.”He relaxed, gesturing me to the house. “You look like you’ve seen hell. Why don’t you come inside, have some food, sit down for a bit?”“I just need to get on the road—”“I know a few people I can get to come look at your engine. Should be able to get you going long enough at least to make it back to civilization, get to a shop close to home and sleep in your own bed, but that’ll have to be tomorrow morning.”“I…” I slumped against the side of the car. The adrenaline was melting away into total, body-numbing exhaustion now, and despite all rhyme and reason, I wanted to just hand over the controls.“I’ve heard you’re heading out in a hurry, but…” He looked away, pushing his hands into his pockets. “But somehow I suspect it can actually wait a bit longer.”I cleared my throat. “I, er, I owe you one.”“Please.” He held a hand up. “Let’s at least get inside before we have this conversation. I’m going to get frost in my beard.”“Yeah, that would be great. My ears are freezing off.”The house was charmingly cozy on the inside, although if I was being honest, a hovel with cockroaches in it would be like paradise right now as long as it was a safe place I could sleep. It was a small place, wood construction with a slanted roof and a big window at the back looking out over the mountains, a forest-green corduroy couch in front of a big fireplace that flicked on at the touch of a switch—not exactly all the rustic charm of a log-burning fireplace, but gas was probably better anyway. There were intricate art pieces along the mantle and over most of the walls, made out of various mixed fabrics, and even the oversized Christmas tree squeezed into the corner was dressed up in handmade fabric ornaments. I hung up my outerwear by the door, stepping out of my boots, and Charlie gestured me to the couch before heading for a wooden archway.“Some tea, coffee, hot chocolate?” he said. “Mulled wine? I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to knock yourself out on wine right now.”“Just… just some tea.” I paused. “Do you just up and have mulled wine sitting around?”“I like a cup of it by the fire while I do fabric work…”“Screw it. Let’s do that. That sounds great.”It was only a minute longer before we were sitting on the couch together, the fire crackling, soft symphonic Christmas music playing from a stereo setup he had that looked like it came from another century, and we cupped mugs of mulled wine while I hunched under a blanket. The wine was exactly what I needed right now—warm and sweet, the sweet spices on my palate like being wrapped up in a fuzzy quilt, and the gentle hum of the alcohol’s warmth in my throat took the needling edge off the stress.“Thank you,” I said, my voice low, as I held the wine close to my body, feeling its warmth against my chest. “I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t, uh, coincidentally had a house here. I thought you lived in Bellsford.”“I have a little place—just a postage stamp, really—in Bellsford where I stay if I have an early shift at the lodge or something like that, but this is home proper. My late grandmother left it to me.”I relaxed, looking around the place, taking it in. Explained why it looked like I’d walked into a different time period… when I caught sight of a workbench around the corner with textile supplies and piles of discarded fabrics, I gestured to it. “This is that art project Stella mentioned?”“Mm-hm. I take clothes, curtains, upholstery, anything that doesn’t serve anyone any good anymore, and I give it new life. I’m not as good as my grandmother was, but it’s fulfilling. And it makes me feel like she’s around again.”I sipped my wine, watching the way he stared into the fire with a distant smile. Finally, I said, “You and your grandmother were close?”“Quite far. She lived in Argentina.”“She lived where? Why did she have a house here?”“Ah, you know. She had a husband, and they didn’t want to be married anymore, but with times those days being what they were…”I pursed my lips. “She moved away and left him with the house, and it went to her when he died?”“We were never quite sure why Argentina specifically…” He laughed. “Quite some speculation there was a man waiting for her there. She went the whole nine yards. Learned Spanish so well she’d forget her English sometimes, danced tango and everything. But she’d come back to the US sometimes, stay in this cabin for a while, and I’d come up here and spend a week or two just taking in life and all the ways she looked at the world. She taught me to pay attention. She said it was fair—that I’d taught her to pay attention to herself, when I was born and she realized she didn’t want to be celebrating milestones hollowly, alongside somebody she felt obligated to be with.”I looked down, desperately trying to shove all my feelings into a box. This morning, waking up next to Stella, felt like a lifetime ago… and at the same time, it was still too raw, still too stained with the painful what-ifs. “She sounds like a wonderful woman.”“She cursed so violently she’d make a sailor blush, so my parents were never one to agree, but she was,” he laughed. “Always wanted to go visit her in Argentina, but… always put it off for another day, until—as the cliché goes—there wasn’t another day.”“I’m sorry for your loss.”“Thank you, but I’ve healed. She’s still alive and well in her art. I think that’s why it speaks to me. I imagine that’s why you keep all of Stella’s sketches, too.”“The—” I almost sloshed my wine down my front. “What?”He smiled serenely. “You don’t need to play dumb.”Shit, this was the guy who cleaned our room. He knew entirely too much about us. I looked away. “Guess… I guess I’m supposed to get rid of them now.”He sighed. “I really do owe you an apology, I suppose… if it weren’t for what happened with me, you and Stella would still be together.”I pulled tighter into myself, feeling the sick feeling ball up in my throat. “We would, but… only for a few more days anyway. We just… we were never in a position to make it work…”He didn’t say anything. I sighed, hanging my head, and I pulled the knit blanket tighter around myself, taking a long sip of my wine.“You shouldn’t apologize. It’s because of Stella’s shitty family. And Julia being stubborn as ever.”He sipped long and slow from his wine before he set it down, gently, on the coffee table. “You were never in a position to make it work, how?”I turned back to the window, just… happy to have something to look at that wasn’t him. “It’s a lot. And it’s not worth getting into right now.”“If not now, then when?”“In a year when I’ve gotten over her?”“Why get over her?” he said, his voice careful. “Waiting for another day, another love, in another place? You love her, and she loves you.”“I—everyone keeps talking about that. We were only together—”“For the better part of both of your lives.”I shot him a look. “How do you even know about that?”He smiled. “Julia talked quite fondly of you two. She likes you quite a lot… very grateful her daughter found you.”I felt something sick in my mouth, a roiling feeling in my stomach. I turned away again, pulling my knees up into my chest—this ringing in my head blotting out my thoughts, making it hard to focus, and I just needed to squeeze my mind back into my body. “That’s rich, when she’s the one telling me and Stella…”He paused. “Telling you and Stella what?”“Ugh. Forget it. I don’t want to have this conversation.”“And run away from everything?”“Why do you care?” I shot what I hoped was a withering look his way. “Because I’m some hopeless damsel in distress on the side of the road, now you have to tell me what to do with my life?”He smiled—soft, disarming. It just made the aching guilt in my chest worse. “Maybe… Christmas magic?”I glared.“Magic is in two people who become more together than the sum of their parts. It’s two people who come alive together in ways they never could separately. It’s… paying attention. With love.”“I have a literal attention deficit disorder.”He laughed. “I’ve heard it said that ADHD isn’t a lack of attention, but a lack of… control over your attention. When something speaks to your heart, you pay more attention—deeper attention—than anybody else would, don’t you?”I paused, faltering. He picked up his wine, sipping it delicately before he went on with a distant tone in his voice, looking into the fire.“I’ve seen it in you, and I think it is something magical. You have a shorter connection between your heart and the world. Your heart reaches out without all the filters of what you’re supposed to do, and when you love something—really love it, honestly, from the bottom of your heart—there isn’t a single part of it you don’t have the attention for.”“I…” I looked down, a feeling in my chest I couldn’t name. I didn’t want to remember all the small touches with Stella, the lingering gazes, laughing in whispers softly together as we lay in bed into the night…“And I’d seen it happen. With Stella, the rest of the world disappeared. Didn’t it?”It took me a while to push out a raspy, breathy whisper. “It… shouldn’t have disappeared. I let myself ignore the obvious signs. She wasn’t ready to commit to me if it would get in the way of her family, and where she fit into her family… and I wasn’t ready to ask. Just… I’ve always been like this,” I said, barely hearing myself now, looking into the dark surface of my wine. “Drifting from one thing to another. Never able to commit. And when I realize I don’t have a place there, I move on. Maybe it’s also my ADHD. Or maybe it’s just who I am as a person. Unbound… or maybe untethered.”He gave me a gentle smile as he spoke softly. “So doesn’t it mean anything that you’ve stuck with Stella through so much of your lives?”My throat felt tight. I took a long breath, looking down into my wine, and I couldn’t find anything to say.“Where are you even running away to?” he said, his voice low, gentle.“Going home.”“Where is that?”I gave him a look. I seriously doubted he was referring to the actual location.“I mean it,” he said, softer now. “Especially for a person who feels untethered… home might be as far away as Argentina. What’s the saying? Home is where…”I pushed down the hot feeling in my throat, a knot there. I took another sip of wine before I stood up, a tingling sensation in my chest. “Thank you for helping me,” I said, keeping my gaze straight ahead, not on him. “I don’t know how to pay you back.”He sighed, a tired smile on his face. “Don’t worry about repayment,” he said, standing up with me. “There’s a little loft bedroom I’ll show you to right now. Just get some good rest and I’ll see about getting someone in for your car. Look after yourself right now.”Was that it? Was I really supposed to leave it at that?I didn’t see anything else I could do. All I saw was the road ahead of me, and the rest of the world disappeared.Heading home. Wherever the hell that was.