Snowed In Read online

  Snowed In

  Rachel Hawthorne

  For Amber Royer,

  librarian extraordinaire,

  who convinced me

  this story needed bats

  Contents

  1

  “It’ll be fun!”

  2

  I felt my eyes widen and my jaw drop. “Seriously?”

  3

  “You okay?” Nathalie asked.

  4

  I am so not a morning person. And early morning?

  5

  The next morning, I threw on baggy sweats before leaving…

  6

  Why was I always saying idiotic things around Josh? I’d…

  7

  Only, we weren’t kissing. I was amazed by how much…

  8

  Okaayyy…I had not expected that.

  9

  “Are you ready?”

  10

  We climbed up a short embankment, leaving our skis and…

  11

  I shoved Josh’s shoulder, breaking us apart.

  12

  I know some girls load up on ice cream when…

  13

  The next morning I woke up and could barely move…

  14

  I figured the best way to stop thinking about Josh…

  15

  The next morning when I woke up, Tara wasn’t in…

  16

  In the end, Nathalie’s boyfriend didn’t talk Shaun into wearing…

  17

  “What was going on back there?” Tara asked when I…

  18

  As Tara explained it, from the time they’d arrived on…

  19

  It was harder than I thought it would be to…

  20

  The next two days were hell. Mostly because I didn’t…

  21

  The next morning, I slept late, snuggled beneath the blankets,…

  22

  For our first date, we didn’t exactly “go out.” Technically,…

  About the Author

  Other Books by Rachel Hawthorne

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  “It’ll be fun!”

  Those were my mom’s words. It’ll be fun!

  At the time, I’d thought so too.

  Her idea of fun was to pack up her divorced middle-aged life and move up north. Way up north. Where winters are cold, snow and ice exist in abundance, and my dad could become a distant memory.

  Not that I blamed her for wanting to get away from it all. Dad recently announced that he planned to remarry, and I’m not exactly thrilled with the prospect of having a stepmother. Marsha isn’t wicked or anything. Actually she asked me to be one of her bridesmaids, but I told her that I needed to think about it. I’ve never been a bridesmaid before, and I’m not sure I want my first time to be at my dad’s wedding. Because it’s totally weird thinking of him with a wife who isn’t my mom. And okay, I resent that he’s going to marry someone else. It feels like he’s not only betraying Mom, but betraying me.

  So when Mom told me she wanted to move and asked, “What do you think?” I replied, “Let’s do it!”

  Of course, that was before I was standing in the front parlor of our new digs, shivering, with my parka zipped up tightly and my gloved hands tucked beneath my arms, searching for a little extra warmth.

  It was, like, negative one thousand degrees outside. You think I’m exaggerating, but Mom’s idea of fun included moving to an island on the Great Lakes—in the middle of winter, when the surrounding water was starting to freeze. It was that cold. Although cold doesn’t adequately describe it. It was much, much colder than cold.

  I was going to have to pull out my thesaurus and learn a whole list of adjectives for cold.

  We’d flown into the small airport about an hour earlier. Our luggage had been loaded onto a taxi, only this taxi was a wagon with runners instead of wheels, because, oh, yeah, the island is covered in mounds of white glistening snow.

  I’d actually been excited when Mom mentioned the snow, because arcticlike weather was a totally new experience for me. I’ve spent most of my seventeen years living in north Texas. When it snows half an inch, schools and businesses shut down, and the local news interrupts the regularly scheduled programming to provide up-to-the-minute progress reports on the trucks dumping sand on the expressways. The reporters stand on overpasses explaining that it’s really cold, while showing footage of fishtailing vehicles, people slipping (yes, falling down on icy streets is newsworthy in north Texas), and children sliding down hills on baking sheets because we don’t, as a rule, invest money in sleds.

  I’m pretty certain that kids here have sleds, and that the news isn’t going to include roving reporters asking people how they’ll deal with the half inch of snow forecast to arrive by nightfall. Here snow is measured in feet—possibly yards—and freezing is clearly a way of life.

  Cars, motorcycles, and trucks aren’t, however.

  Did I forget to mention that? The island has a ban on motorized vehicles. They’re left on the mainland.

  Mom thinks this is “quaint.”

  I haven’t quite decided, although I’m trying to be open-minded about it. I was hoping to guilt Dad into buying me a red Ford Mustang when I graduate from high school. So I either need to guilt him into buying me something else, be content to drive only occasionally when I’m on the mainland, or move off the island permanently. Something to think about later. Right now, I was suffering from brain freeze.

  “There, I think I can feel warm air blowing out now,” Mom said. She was standing on a chair, her one bare hand—the other was still gloved—pressed against a vent in the ceiling.

  She’d adjusted the thermostat on the heater as soon as we walked through the door. Then she’d lit a fire in the gas fireplace in the parlor. I discovered that a gas-burning fire with fake logs doesn’t generate as much heat as a wood-burning one. But then it’s not as much trouble to start and keep going, either.

  Mom stepped off the chair, faced me, and grinned. But it wasn’t her natural grin. It looked fake, painted on, forced, as though she didn’t want to acknowledge that we’d made a huge mistake. My mom is the most honest person I know, but this smile had the makings of a con—like the one you get when your mom takes you to the doctor and tells you that whatever the doctor is going to do, it won’t hurt. But it does—always. And so you start to recognize that smile and dread it.

  Mom removed her woolen cap and static electricity made her short blond hair stick up at various angles. I figured my own blond hair—which hangs just past my chin and, under normal circumstances, which these were not, curls at the ends—would do the same thing when I removed my cap. But I’d read somewhere that a huge amount of body heat escapes through the head, so I kept my hat snugly in place, trying to trap as much heat as possible inside my five-foot-two-inch frame.

  “It just takes the air a while to warm up, which makes sense if you think about it, since the air is so cold,” Mom said, rambling, as though trying to convince herself as well as me that everything was going to be all right.

  “And once it gets warm, it’ll stay warm,” I said optimistically.

  “Oh, definitely,” Mom said, her fake smile shifting into a more normal-looking one. “I doubt we’ll ever turn off the heater.”

  “Except during the summer.”

  “Maybe not even then. Depends on whether or not we’ve thawed out.” She laughed. “Who would have thought cold could be this cold?”

  “It’s an excuse to buy more clothes.”

  “Like you need an excuse,” Mom said.

  Okay, I was a clothesaholic. I loved buying clothes. I was pretty pumped that I was going to nee
d to stock up on winter clothes that I’d never needed to buy before.

  Mom spread her arms wide. “Welcome to Chateau Ashleigh. Our new home and business.”

  I smiled at that pronouncement. Couldn’t help myself. She’d named our new Victorian bed-and-breakfast after me: Ashleigh Sneaux—pronounced Snow. In our present circumstances, the irony of that didn’t escape me.

  Mom had kept the name a secret, so when we arrived, I was totally stunned to see the carved wooden sign hanging on a post near the white picket fence surrounding the Victorian house. It’s so like Mom to do something special for me, and I have to admit that I think the name sounds a bit romantic, which would go with Mom’s goal to create a romantic atmosphere for guests.

  Mom’s a romantic at heart, in spite of the fact that things for her and Dad didn’t last forever. I admire that about her—that she isn’t bitter about being part of a statistic. She still wants to go in search of better things, something she didn’t have a chance to do when she was younger, since she and Dad got married the summer after they graduated from high school.

  Mom’s always advising me to wait. “Have fun, enjoy life, get married later, much, much later.”

  Not a problem. Quite honestly, I wasn’t even interested in having a boyfriend. I know that sounds strange. Every girl I knew was obsessed with having a steady guy. Not me. I was, however, obsessed with guys—plural. I liked dating guys. Lots of guys. For short periods of time. It’s sorta like going to a wine tasting, I guess, where you taste samples of wine until you find one that you really like. Then you buy it in abundance. Not that I’ve ever been to a wine tasting, but I’ve heard things.

  Anyway, that was sorta my attitude when it came to guys. Try them all. Don’t settle, because as soon as you do, someone else might come along and then you have to go through the whole breakup thing before you can go out with him. Better to keep the options open. Besides, there are a lot of guys to sample!

  Or at least there were back home. I’d dated several guys at my school, and I was all about exploring possibilities.

  Here the possibilities would be severely limited. The island has one school, grades kindergarten through twelfth. The junior class has five students—six when I enroll after the winter break. So getting married is definitely not in my immediate future. As a matter of fact, getting a date might not be doable either. I didn’t want to think that I might be reduced to online dating.

  Yeah, right. Hook up with a serial killer, why don’t you, Ash?

  My guilty pleasure is horror movies. The more horrific the better. So I have a tendency to view danger in the world where none exists. I get a rush at the idea of people in peril—in the movies anyway. Someday I want to write a horror novel, and Mom’s plan of moving to a small island with a tiny population has called out to the writer in me, the part that craves solitude and quiet in order for the muse to come out and play.

  “I’m not planning to make any changes to this room,” Mom said suddenly, snapping me away from my thoughts.

  Mom’s a fixer-upper lover. The previous owners left not only their furniture, but the need for numerous repairs. Hence Mom’s reasoning that we needed to move here during the winter—before tourist season—so we could fancy things up and get the business ready to go. I really appreciated that she considered me her business partner.

  Of course, I wouldn’t get too involved until summer. School comes first, and that works for me. The “bed” part of our B&B means making other people’s beds, when I’m not exactly in the habit of making my own. The “breakfast” part means cooking breakfast for strangers. I don’t even make breakfast for myself. Nor am I prone to getting up early unless I absolutely have to.

  Mom removed her other glove and quickly shoved both hands into the pockets of her parka, unwilling, I guess, to admit that the house still wasn’t warm enough. I wondered if it ever would be.

  “Ready for the grand tour?” Mom asked.

  I smiled. “Sure. Why not?”

  She did a Vanna White arm extension, indicating the room in which we were standing. “The parlor, where we’ll serve afternoon tea.”

  A worn Oriental rug covered most of the hardwood flooring. A couch, a couple of chairs, and a coffee table were arranged in front of the fireplace. Other plush armchairs sat in front of the bay window. The curtains were drawn back and the front porch that spanned the width of the house was visible. Someone—a kind neighbor perhaps—had generously shoveled away the snow from the porch, the steps, and the front walk, so Mom and I had been granted safe passage into the house when we’d arrived. I had a feeling that in the days ahead, shoveling snow was going to become one of my jobs. I suddenly found myself wishing that I had a brother.

  Half a dozen small dried flower arrangements were scattered throughout the room, on the mantel, on various small tables. Cluttered didn’t begin to describe the décor.

  Mom led me through the entryway. The front door had an amazing oval-shaped etched-glass window. We walked across the hardwood floor and into the library.

  The room smelled musty and ancient. Along two walls, dark bookshelves stretched to the ceiling. Another bay window with the draperies pulled back offered a slightly different view of the outside. I could see the snow-covered lawn and street.

  A large desk sat near the window. Everything looked antique. Not a computer in sight.

  Mom and I went down the hallway, passing a bathroom on the right, turning into an alcove on our left before we got to the stairs. The alcove led to the dining room.

  “We’ll serve breakfast in here,” Mom said.

  A big, sturdy table sat in the center. A china hutch held plates and glasses. Portraits taken about a hundred years ago adorned the walls. I figured they were just to create atmosphere. I mean, if they were portraits of the previous owners’ family, surely they would have taken them.

  We went through the room and into the kitchen.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “This is where we’ll cook.”

  Mom laughed. She has a really nice laugh. Soft and full of fun. And she laughed all the time. Or at least she had BD—Before Divorce. As much as I hadn’t wanted to leave my friends in Texas, I was hoping that Mom would be happier here and laugh more.

  “Don’t give me a hard time, Miss Smarty-pants.” She walked to the sink and looked out the window at the backyard, which was blanketed in snow.

  I remembered reading somewhere that people could go blind—and crazy—surrounded by snow, because all the white is disorienting. I wondered if people got lost here, if they had rescue dogs.

  “This is going to be fun,” Mom said with a sigh.

  “It’s really quiet here, though, isn’t it,” I said, more as a statement than a question.

  She turned around. “That’s because there aren’t any cars.”

  But still, the silence was eerie. I told myself that it was because I wasn’t used to it. But it was more than that.

  “It’s just so horror movie–ish,” I said. “You know. A mother and daughter in an old house that creaks and moans and…it’s cold. Houses in horror movies are always cold.”

  Mom shook her head. “I don’t know why you like watching scary movies so much.”

  I joined her at the window. I’d always been fascinated by the idea of snow, but now that I was actually here I found it a bit unsettling. In a few more weeks, the ferry that runs between the island and the mainland would shut down for a couple of months. Then we’d be trapped.

  Deranged killers and psychos would have a field day before the first thaw. And no one would know until it was too late. Hadn’t I seen that scenario in a movie? I shuddered at the thought.

  “So why do you think the owners wanted to sell the place?” I asked.

  “Because it’s haunted.”

  2

  I felt my eyes widen and my jaw drop. “Seriously?”

  Laughing, Mom reached out and snatched off my cap. Yeah, my hair did the whole flying-around-my-head thing. I hadn’t considered that l
iving in the cold would mean endless bad hair days.

  “No, silly,” Mom said. “It’s not haunted. The owners wanted to retire. So here we are. Why don’t you go pick out your bedroom? Any room you want.”

  “Which room are you going to take?”

  “Back behind the stairs is a large bedroom. I’m going to take that one. I figured you’d want something higher up.”

  “Definitely.”

  Back in the hallway, I grabbed my backpack, deciding to leave my suitcase. No sense in lugging it around until I picked which room I wanted.

  Most of our stuff was being shipped here. Until it arrived, I had only the essentials of my life.

  The doorbell rang, and through the etched glass on the front door, I saw the shadowy outline of two people. I wasn’t certain I should open the door. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t know them. And what was the crime rate here? Would anyone even hear us scream?

  Mom’s hurried footsteps echoed between the walls as she rushed from the kitchen. Having removed her parka, she rounded the corner into the hallway. She was wearing a mint green sweater that matched her eyes—and mine. My grandma always told me how much I looked like Mom when she was younger. It gave me hope that I’d look like her when I was older. She was pretty. Another reason I didn’t understand Dad wanting to marry someone else.

  “Open the door, Ashleigh.” But she rushed past me and did what she’d ordered me to do. It was part of her AD (After Divorce) personality. She wanted to control everything.

  A girl about my age and a woman a bit older than Mom stood on the porch, their breath coming out in white wisps, their cheeks and noses red from the cold.

  “Hello!” the woman exclaimed before Mom could say anything. “I’m Laura Evans and this is my daughter, Nathalie. We saw you arrive earlier and wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood.”