Page 82 of A Pack for the Wedding
28
Beth
3 days later
Inviting Harper to a one night getaway at a luxury cabin was a stroke of genius.
The drive up Maple Lake is easy. Maren rides shotgun and controls the music, which means we listen to her "Weekend Vibes" playlist that's 40 percent yacht rock and 60 percent what she describes as "cottagecore anthems". Harper sits in the back with her legs pulled up, a bag of trail mix balanced on her knee, quietly scrolling through her phone.
About an hour into the drive, Maren's playlist takes a sharp left turn and blares the painfully nostalgic opening chords of "The Reason" by Hoobastank. Harper’s head snaps up. She tosses her phone on the empty seat, leans entirely through the gap between Maren and me, and cranks the volume dial all the way to the right. "I haven't heard this since like eighth grade!" she declares, a massive grin breaking across her face.
By the time we hit the gravel turnoff for the lake, all three of us are screaming the chorus with the windows rolled down, the crisp, pine-scented air whipping our hair into a mess. Harper is drumming on the back of my headrest, Maren is attemptingvocal runs she absolutely cannot hit, and the tension I've been carrying in my shoulders starts to melt.
The cabin is even better than the listing photos. It sits at the top of a gentle slope that rolls down toward lake, surrounded by pines and birch trees. When we step inside, Maren drops her bag on the floor and spreads her arms wide.
"Okay. Okay. I live here now."
The setup is seriously impressive. There's a stone fireplace that takes up half the living room wall with a flat screen mounted above it. Opposite that is a sectional couch long enough for four people to sleep on, draped in a chunky cream knit throw. The kitchen island is a slab of butcher block the size of a dining table, and beyond it, huge bay windows frame a perfect view of the lake.
"Dibs on the loft!" Maren yells, already halfway up the stairs.
Harper wheels her suitcase into the bedroom closest to the porch and pokes her head back out. "This one's got a reading nook," she says, and something about the quiet delight in her voice loosens a knot I didn't know I was holding.
I take the second bedroom on the main floor. It has a beautiful wooden sleigh bed dressed in crisp white linen, a woven wool rug underfoot, and a framed watercolor of a canoe above the headboard. A large window looks straight out into the pines, and there's a small, modern en-suite bathroom. It’s simple and cozy.
We unpack in that giddy, half-distracted way you do when you're somewhere new and everything's a discovery. Maren finds a record player in the loft and puts on something mellow and jazzy. Harper discovers the pantry is stocked with fancy snacks—salted dark chocolate, rosemary crackers, three kinds of cheese—and lays them out on the island like she's curating a gallery exhibit. I open the french doors to the back deck and just stand there for a minute, letting the pine-and-lake air hit me full in the chest.
For lunch, we make a production of assembling sandwiches from the groceries we brought, Maren carefully layering hers while Harper and I just pile things on. We eat on the deck, our feet up on the railing. Maren tells a story about a woman at her gym who got into a screaming match with the front desk over a towel policy. Harper laughs, and she'shere, she's present, but I feel there's a thin pane of glass between us that I keep bumping into.
After lunch, Maren yawns so wide I can see straight to her tonsils.
"I'm taking a nap," she announces. "There is a down comforter up in that loft that I'm pretty sure I have earned every thread count of it."
"At 2 p.m.?" Harper asks.
"I've been up since 3 a.m. every day this week," she says. "So especially at 2 p.m."
Once she disappears, Harper and I drift back out to the porch with fresh mugs of coffee, settling into the two Adirondack chairs angled toward the water. The afternoon light is soft, catching the ripples on the lake through the trees, and we can hear birds calling back and forth across the water.
For a few minutes, we just sit, drinking in comfortable silence.
Harper wraps both hands around her mug. She's wearing an oversized flannel that must belong to Ben, and her hair is twisted up in a claw clip that's slowly losing its grip.
I take a breath, staring into my coffee. "Harper, about the other night at the campfire. I am so sor—"
"Beth," she interrupts softly.
I look up. "Yeah."
She takes a breath. Lets it out slow, her eyes fixed on the lake. "I need to say something, and I need you to just listen, please."
I swallow the rest of my apology and nod. "Promise."
"Thank you." She takes another breath. "I was hurt."
Well, at least that's straightforward.
"Not about whether you leave." She shakes her head quickly. "I mean,yes, about that. Obviously. The idea of you not being in Lakeview makes me want to throw up a little, and I say that with love. But that's not—" She stops. Tries again. "That's not the part that actually hurt."
