Page 28 of Big & Lily

“Wait? Cameron lost the car keys?”

“I’m handling it.”

“Mom! Where are the extra car keys?”

“Cam!”

“Well, she’s the only one who knows where anything is around here.”

“Big! Did you fall in?” Lily’s shout is carried by the mountain breeze so that, even behind this rock, Tim and I can both hear her clear as a bell. I can also hear the chuckles from her audience.

“Fall in? What’s happening, Bridget.Areyou okay?”

“I’m on top of a mountain. This is the first time we’ve had service since we got to camp.”

“Don’t tell me camp equals tents.”

“Do you need saving, Big?” More laughs.

“I see Lily is also still alive.”

“For now. She’s been in rare form since we got here.” I tell Tim about the wedding rings and the flirting, the general adolescent attitude and the tears. “I want to help her. I really do, despite the constant snark—which I’m putting down to her, well, her situation. I’ve tried to encourage her to talk about Eric. All she does is blow me off.”

“Maybe she’ll chill out in a day or two and then you can sit her down.”

“I think she’s projecting, or blocking, or compartmentalizing.”

“One from Column A, two from Column B? Try not to get too worked up about it. This is your vacation too. And hey, look at you. You climbed a mountain.”

I peer out from my hiding spot behind Ladies’ Room Rock. The views are as spectacular from the bathroom. “I did,” I say. “Look at me. I really did.”

Chapter Fourteen

“Heidi, first round’s on me,” Brick shouts across the bar to his sister.

Nine of us are gathered around a table meant for six, our elbows bumping into each other, our chair legs crossing. No one cares about the proximity to people who were strangers yesterday. We’ve passed our first test—more of a test for some than others—in the mountains. I’m sure the prospect of free drinks is helping.

Heidi laughs and raises a skeptical eyebrow. “What’s the occasion?”

“Bridget fell in the creek,” offers Ian. “Brick invoked the free-drinks rule! Cheers to Bridget!” He lifts an invisible cup into the air, since his free drink hasn’t arrived yet. The group follows suit.

Heidi raises an eyebrow and gives her brother a twisted smile. “Is that so?” She and I both know there is no “free-drinks rule.” Brick shrugs, a boyish smirk on his weathered face, and Heidi starts pouring beer from the tap.

“And a Coke,” says Dane.

“Make that two,” adds Ian as his son scrunches his nose in disappointment.

Heidi lines the beers up on the counter. Brick stands, pushing his chair back. It scrapes across the rough-hewn wooden floor. “Drinks coming up.”

“Let me help you,” I say, scraping my own chair.

We wait at the bar while Heidi fills the soft drinks from a spigot. The Heidaway is just what you would expect from an outback building in Alaska, right out ofNorthern Exposure. Wood-paneled walls adorned with what I’ve come to realize are the requisite bleached-out moose antlers. A dusty taxidermied white owl perches on a shelf above the bottles of booze, and framed photos of huskies outnumber the guests. In one photo, a team of dogs harnessed to a sled pose with a young woman holding a trophy. I notice similar trophies behind the bar. Leaning forward, I take a closer look.

“Is that Heidi?”

Brick wraps his hands around two beer glasses and glances up at the photo. “Yup.” He delivers the drinks to rousing cheers and returns. “She was a teen champion musher back in the day. Came in third in the Junior Iditarod in ’93. At one point or another we had thirty dogs on the property. She raised every one of them. Now she’s down to one, ol’ Koda, a near-deaf, geriatric husky who sleeps on the couch and doesn’t pull his weight for anything.”

“Except when he’s guarding her pickup and scaring the shit out of the customers.” I laugh.