A Snowbound Scandal

“Such as.” Kristine motioned with a roll for Miriam to go on.

“I would’ve informed him that I wasn’t one of his underlings and I deserved better treatment than a haughty No. Thank you.” She dipped her voice into a dopey tone that didn’t sound like him, but made her feel better. “I’d have told him that I became a success without his billions and in a field where I wasn’t causing global warming. My line of work is admirable.”

“It is, sweetie.”

“Thank you.”

Miriam had completed her degree in agricultural sciences, going on to do compliance work behind a desk for a few years until she realized how wholly unsatisfying it was to push papers from one side of her desk to another. Five years ago, she’d found the Montana Conservation Society and stumbled into her calling. She’d started as program manager and was then promoted to director of student affairs. She mostly worked with teenagers. She taught them how to respect their environment and care for the world they all shared. She found it incredibly rewarding to watch those kids grow and change. Several of the students who came through MCS wouldn’t so much as step on an ant if they could help it by the time she was through with them.

And yet Chase had dismissed her like she was a temp on his payroll.

“I should’ve gone over to his big, audacious house and told him what I think of his wasteful habits and egomaniacal behavior.”

“Who, dear?” Her mother stepped into the kitchen and gestured to the basket of rolls. “Kristine, to the table with those, please. We’re about to start.”

“No one,” Miriam answered. “Just... No one.”

Kris shuffled into the dining room and Judy Andrix watched her go before narrowing her eyes and squaring her jaw. Since Miriam’s father, Alan, had died five years ago of complications from heart surgery, her mom had taken it on herself to play both the role of mom and dad. It wasn’t easy for any of them to lose him, but their mother had taken the brunt of that blow. Thirty-nine years of marriage was a lifetime.

“Miriam, would you grab those bottles of wine and take them to the table for me?”

“Sure thing.” Relieved the conversation was over, she did as she was asked.

Halfway into dinner, however, her wine remained untouched and her food mostly uneaten.

“Meems, what’s going on in your world?” Wendy’s girlfriend, Rosalie, asked conversationally.

Miriam blinked out of her stupor and realized she’d been staring at her mashed potatoes, Chase on her mind. “Work. That’s about it.”

“How did the camp go this summer? I meant to ask but I was so busy.”

Busy being a surgeon. It happened.

Miriam filled her in on the camp for eighth graders she’d cochaperoned. “You haven’t lived until you’ve been in charge of thirty hormone-riddled teens in tents.”

Wendy nudged Rosalie with her shoulder. “That’s what I keep warning her about every time she brings up having children.”

“Children are great,” Ross’s wife, Cecilia, said at the exact moment their five-year-old daughter Raven threw her butter-covered roll on the floor.

“Raven!” While Ross went about explaining to his daughter that the food belonged on her plate and not on the rug, Wendy and Rosalie answered questions from Kristine about having children. Surrogate, they agreed, but they weren’t against adoption.

Mom interjected that she didn’t care how any of them went about it so long as she was given another grandchild.

“Or two,” she added with a pointed look at Kris and Brendan, who wisely filled his mouth full of stuffing rather than comment. “Meems, have you been seeing anyone?”

And that’s when the last strand on the rope of Miriam’s dwindling patience snapped.

“I’m sorry.” She stood abruptly from the table and the room silenced. Even Raven seemed to sense the importance of the moment and stopped her complaining. Every pair of eyes swiveled to Miriam. “I have to run an errand.”

“What? Now?” Her mother’s voice rose.

“I’ll be back in an hour, tops. That leaves plenty of time for dessert. Feel free to start playing games without me.” She could easily make the round trip to Bigfork and back before the traditional board game battle began. And she didn’t mind at all ousting herself from a conversation involving families and children when there was a man very nearby who was going about his evening as if she didn’t matter. Been there, done that. She didn’t care to suffer a repeat of ten years ago.

Miriam rushed into the kitchen and rifled through her mother’s cupboard for a plastic storage container. She sliced one of her pies and slid three large wedges into the container before snapping on the lid. She’d show him what he was missing all right.

She was pulling her coat over her shoulders when her mother appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. Judy eyed the pie in the container.

“Where on earth are you going in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner?” Her mother was a narrow, thin woman whose supermodel good looks couldn’t be ignored, even if she was in her early sixties.

“I don’t expect you to understand.” Miriam gave her mother’s arm a squeeze. “But there’s someone I have to talk to or I won’t be able to enjoy a single second of my holiday. I just... It’s something I have to do.”

“And a phone call won’t cut it?” Judy leveled a knowing smile at her third child.

“No.” Miriam wouldn’t risk a repeat of that robotic blowoff from last night.

“It’s snowing again.”

It was, but... “I have four-wheel drive.”

“I suppose if I stand here and try to talk you out of it, you’ll go anyway, only a little later than you intended on account of my keeping you.” Her mother folded her arms over her chest. She knew her daughter well.

“One hour. Tops.” Miriam repeated, wrapping her hand around the doorknob.

“At least take the mayor a plate of food,” her mother called before Miriam could escape. “You can’t only show up with pie.”

“How did you—?” Miriam leaned around her mother to glare beyond the doorway where Kristine sat in Dad’s former seat at the table.

Kris blew a kiss and waggled her fingers in a wave.

* * *

Only a year old, the Ford F-150 was equipped to glide through snow like it was popped corn. But as she drove closer to Bigfork, the visibility dropped and it was more like trudging through wet sand. It wasn’t “her” truck, per se, but had been provided graciously by MCS. She’d been begging for two years for a vehicle that could haul, tow and not give out if she had to drive up a mountain and rescue someone’s lost dog. Sure, that had only happened once, but she’d had to hike most of it on foot since her compact car hadn’t been equipped for the elements. It was practical for her to have a vehicle that could handle Montana’s terrain.

Thanks to those elements, the twenty-minute drive to Bigfork was stretching to sixty. She’d encountered traffic and low visibility, and on top of that her gas gauge was dangerously close to E. At a top speed of twelve miles per hour, she was getting nowhere slowly. Because she’d underestimated the weatherman and overestimated her F-150, there was no way she’d make it back to her mother’s house in this mess.

But Miriam still intended to make her way to Chase’s. She wasn’t giving up a scant few miles from his house. No way.

At a stoplight, she keyed in a quick text to Kris. I’m going to be celebrating at home alone tonight! Bigfork is buried. :(

Before the stoplight turned green, Miriam’s phone rang.

“You have to come back!” Kris said in greeting.

“It’s a mess out here.” Windshield wipers swiped away the gathering snow and Miriam turned right toward Pinecone Drive and the mayor of Dallas.

“I thought that storm was supposed to miss us.”

“Yeah, well, evidently Bigfork caught the edge of it. I’m in a winter wonderland.”