She scrolled through the Airbnb listings now, looking for the one that had caught her eye earlier. The main picture showed a log cabin nestled in snow, smoke billowing out the top. A deck protruded off the back with sparkling white Christmas lights lining the railing. The title proclaimed “Your White Mountain Getaway!” She clicked to a picture of the interior—a roaring woodstove on a brick hearth surrounded by big, plush couches (if Thea happened to see the massive flat-screen TV mounted to the wall behind the woodstove, so be it). Anne was about to ask Thea what she thought about a trip to the cabin in a few weeks when she had a thought.
She brought up her messages and texted Rose: Thinking of weekend getaway to White Mountains with T . . . It’s been a few weeks since we’ve seen you. Would you want to come? She threw in a couple of smiley faces and one kiss face. If Anne’s close relationship with Thea had become strained recently, Thea’s relationship with Rose, Anne’s mother, had only continued to blossom. It had been hard on Thea, at first, not being able to see Rose daily, but Rose visited once a month and called Thea every Tuesday night; tonight Anne would hear Thea’s giggles echoing down the hallway from her bedroom. Rose spoke in soft, soothing tones and had a different baked good for every one of life’s problems. Literally. Her mother owned a bakery in town called Rose’s Sweets. Rose and Thea used to have tea parties with baked bread that Rose would bring home fresh from the bakery oven. If Rose weren’t Anne’s own mother, Anne would resent how naturally motherhood came to her, especially with Thea.
Anne imagined Rose padding around the kitchen of her parents’ house, grabbing her favorite blue fired-clay mug (her fingers brushing briefly against her dad’s favorite whiskey glass, collecting dust) from the open shelves, and standing in the soft sunlight as she poured her third cup of coffee of the afternoon. She’d have been up since three a.m.—even on her days off, her body was stuck on bakery time. Rose’s reply came almost instantly: Wow! When are you thinking?! Sounds like fun! Count me in! I can’t wait!
Anne wrote back: That’s a lot of exclamation points! Maybe in a few weeks when it gets warmer? Mid-April? and then backtracked the message, clicking Delete with her thumb while balancing the two shirts and pair of leggings that Thea was loading into her arms.
She looked at the listing again. From the looks of the booking calendar, late March was off-season in the small ski village of Loon, New Hampshire. She watched Thea, weaving through a rack of shirts, laughing with her whole face when a shirt fell off its hanger onto her head; for a second Thea was two years old, draping a blanket over her head in plain view, You can’t find me, Mama.
She wrote: What about this weekend?
THREE DAYS
BEFORE THE CABIN
THEA
It was raining as Thea wrote in her diary, a small white journal with an actual lock that clasped over the front and a tiny key that she kept in a jar on her bedside table. Big, fat drops of rain splattered against her windows, making her feel even more melancholy, but in a good way, as if the weather had decided to validate her pain. She glanced around her new room, pausing in her scribbling to bring the pen up to her mouth. She nibbled absentmindedly on the end of the pen, already chewed down to a shriveled stump, and watched the rain fall harder outside. A few seconds ago, there had been a deep rumbling of thunder and the big, fat drops had given way to a torrential stream of water that cascaded past her windows. Thea shivered even though the windows were shut, sealed tight against the rain and wind. Although she hated her mother, she liked the new house, and she especially loved her new room. After a moment of staring at the soft blue walls and listening to the rain, she continued to write: I used to love three people with all my heart. And now I have only Mimi and him. How could my own mother do this to me?
Thea put the pen down, satisfied with the end of her journal entry, and stretched out in bed, laying her head against a cool, fluffy white pillow. She closed her eyes, listening to the rain hit the windows like a firehose and feeling hot tears roll down her cheeks, down her chin, and pool on her neck. Her mother would be calling her down for breakfast soon and Thea couldn’t decide if she wanted her mother to finally see her anger, her sadness, or if she wanted to keep it hidden, so that it could burn and grow. The longer she kept it a secret, the more impossible it felt to confront her mom. And what could her mother even say to make it better at this point anyway? Thea inhaled shakily and, to keep from crying, tried to focus on the blue wall across from her, but her throat ached and her mouth trembled downward. She finally put her face into her pillow and screamed. When she lifted her head, she took a deep, shaky breath and sat up.
“Thee,” she heard her mom’s voice drifting up from the bottom of the stairs. “Honey, breakfast is almost ready.” A pause and then: “I don’t hear the shower yet. It’s been a couple of days, baby. Please wash your hair. Come on, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”
Thea snorted. Her mother was always doing that. Preempting. Like she knew Thea was going to lag. Like she couldn’t even give her a chance before annoyance and impatience crept into her voice. Well, fine, Thea thought and crossed her arms. I’ll take my time. She laid her head back against the pillow and closed her eyes until she heard “THEA. Let’s GO! We’re going to be late for school again. In the shower.” And then, as if she just couldn’t help herself, “Now!”
Thea groaned and slowly moved her limbs out of bed and quickly stripped off her fleece pajama bottoms and a gray long-sleeve top, almost threadbare from the frequency with which she wore it. She shivered as the cold air pricked her skin, tiptoeing on the balls of her feet into the small bathroom off her bedroom, touching as little surface of the cold tile floor as possible. She pulled the glass door open and turned the silver knob all the way to the left, toward the H, and then waited for the telltale steam to fog the shower door. While she waited, she leaned her elbows on the marble countertop and glanced into the mirror hanging directly opposite, suddenly shocked by her own reflection, by the sameness of it; her physical appearance hadn’t changed at all—the same light blue eyes and straight blond hair reflected back at her—and yet everything inside her was different. She stared for another moment and then stepped into the stream of water, gasping with a painful pleasure as the water seared her skin. Thea swung the shower door shut and stood in the burning stream of water with her eyes closed for several seconds. When she opened her eyes, she saw only fog at first. Little by little, her eyes adjusted, and the glass door came back into view, now completely opaque. Without thinking, she traced a shape into the condensation with her pointer finger. And then, this time purposefully, traced her initials and his initials, above and below the heart. She watched as another layer of fog slowly formed, creeping over her drawing, whitewashing it away. It was fitting, she thought, like the relationship itself, invisible to the naked eye, etched just below the surface. Her initials faded first, TT, and then his, TR.
Ted Redmond.
It felt impossible that prior to this school year, she didn’t even know him—that he had existed elsewhere before her, and she, too, had had a whole life before him, before she walked into Spanish class a few months ago. He wasn’t even supposed to be at her new school—it was only due to a chain of fortuitous events that he had stepped foot inside Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School in South Burlington and into her Spanish class—and that thought, of them never knowing each other at all, caused Thea physical pain. She was in the midst of playing out this horrific scenario in her head when her mother’s voice burst into her consciousness, making her jump.