Frost

Roads Less Traveled

“I’d offer to drive but I think I’d – it wouldn’t end well.” He modified his statement at the memory of a Jeep’s unfortunate meeting with a tree, and stared out the windshield. He’d been leery when she’d told him to get in the car, but it had been three lonely days of silence – even in the bedroom – and he was glad for some semblance of normal even if it was…not quite all there yet.

Her hands tightened around the steering wheel as she flicked on her turn signal. The turn for Ridgeline Road came about a mile and a half after Wilson’s Pond, and she shuddered reflexively as her mind replayed Jack’s fall through the ice in stunning clarity.

He stretched his legs out and slunk a little in the seat, content to watch the scenery go by in the comfortable silence. She hadn’t wanted to really celebrate Christmas, which was only two days away – and he’d conned her into it by telling her it was a necessary insight into humanity. He had, of course, maintained a stony silence about whether or not he’d been anywhere in the vicinity of the manger in question at the appropriate time, and ultimately told her it wasn’t something meant for him to comment on.

Jack wouldn’t comment further on the Creator, either, and Mari knew when to back off.

They passed a thatch of tall pines and he thought of the one in the living room. It was small and sparse. Mari had called it a Charlie Brown tree, and the reference had gone completely over his head. For the sake of his cultural education, and much to her amusement, she found A Charlie Brown Christmas on YouTube. He didn’t understand the tree any better, but he’d found a new appreciation for filling in the gaps a truck could comfortably drive through with the many strings of multicolored lights she’d picked up at the hardware store.

“What are you expecting?” he asked, tired of the quiet.

“I don’t know,” she said. She bent forward, looking for numbers on houses or mailboxes. They were only at twelve, and the road climbed further into the heavy woods and mountain foothills. “It could be a trailer, it could be a mansion – I really don’t know.”

“That was nineteen.” He jerked his thumb toward the house they were in front of.

“Next one on the right, then.” Mari reminded herself to breathe normally. There was a break in the trees, and set back away from the road in a natural clearing was a one story Colonial. The empty driveway was plowed and smoke puffed happily from the chimney. She pulled in almost to the closed doors of the unattached garage and shut the car off.

Jack tried to peer around a couple of trees next to the side of the house toward the backyard and couldn’t see a thing.

“This is…not what I was expecting.” Before her courage could desert her, she left the keys in the ignition and got out of the vehicle. Jack did the same, and they crunched their way through the snow on the shoveled path and up the two steps onto the covered front porch.

It looked, from first glance, to be a fairly large house. Why had her mother moved out of it and into something significantly smaller with a tiny barn and a couple of cows?

The tin can containing the keys was behind a decorative shrub by the faded welcome mat, and she fit it with shaking hands into the lock.

There was already a pair of boots on the mat to the right, and she left her boots there, mindful of the polished hardwood floors beneath her mismatched socks. Jack followed closely on her heels, and she felt like she’d stepped out of one fairytale and into another – namely The Three Bears – though she couldn’t say she felt like Goldilocks. Not with Jack Frost breathing down her neck instead of nipping at her nose.

Good Lord if she ever did get this whole fiasco on paper they were going to think she was absolutely bonkers.

An open doorway to her left revealed a dining room with a sturdy oak table and glass-fronted cabinets with delicate matching china. The double doors on the right were closed, and she stepped hesitantly into the family room, complete with a high ceiling and a fireplace on the left. Another set of double doors guarded the next room to the right, and she focused instead on the sounds coming from the open doorway on the other side of the fireplace. She crept closer, mildly aware of Jack’s hand hovering inches from her own.