The Shuddering (18 page)

“There’s no goddamn way,” Ryan said. “This isn’t going to work.”

“Are you sure that plow isn’t in there?” Sawyer nodded toward the garage.

“I didn’t see it. It isn’t as though Pop was ever exactly handy, you know? He doesn’t have some epic supply of usefulness stashed away for times like these.”

Ryan continued to shuffle down the driveway toward the road, leaving Sawyer to knock snow off his car. He stopped at the crest of the hill, looked down the length of the drive—a good quarter of a mile, its rough surface and various potholes completely invisible beneath a blanket of white. Had there not been trees on either side of the road, it would have been impossible to tell it was there at all.

“This is insane,” Ryan said softly, then raised his voice, craning his neck to look back toward his friend. “Even if you do get down there, you still have, like, five miles to the highway, and that highway is going to be
closed
, man. You’re going to fly off the road and kill yourself.”

But Sawyer didn’t reply. With half the Jeep uncovered, he waded to the other side.

“Since when did you stop caring about life?” Ryan asked. “I know things are complicated, but say yes to the future. Be reasonable.”

“Hey, Ry?” Jane’s voice came around the side of the house, clear as a bell in the silence of a fresh snowfall. Ryan looked toward the cabin. He couldn’t see her, but he knew exactly where she was—hanging halfway out of the kitchen door, wincing against the cold.

“Yeah?” he called back.

“When you’re done, can you check for alfalfa under the deck and put it in the deer feeder if it’s there?”

“Are you kidding?” he mumbled, but replied before she had a chance to ask him again. “Yes, dear,” he chimed, then plodded back toward the cabin just in time to watch Sawyer pull open the driver’s-side door. He had to give it a firm tug before it gave, frozen to the doorframe. Sliding inside, Sawyer banged his shoes together, trying to loosen the snow from the treads of his boots and folds of his jeans.

“I’m trying to help you,” Ryan told him. “It was a miracle getting her up here.” He nodded at the cabin, at the voice that had just spooled across the blanket of snow. “You do realize that, right?”

Sawyer kept his silence.

“And since when do you not answer me when I ask you a question, anyway?” Ryan asked, clumsily adjusting his trooper hat with gloved hands. “I mean, I respect your privacy and everything, but since when did we get to that point?”

The Jeep’s engine rumbled to life.

Sawyer leaned back in his seat and sighed.

“You don’t want to talk about it.” Ryan held up his hands. “I get it. But you realize you’re making a huge mistake, right? You do realize that this crazy shit…” He waved a hand at the house. “It’s just going to get worse, yeah?”

“It’s called responsibility,” Sawyer said. “Maybe you’ve heard of it.”

“You mean the stuff it takes to run a successful business?” Ryan quipped back. “Yeah, I’ve heard of it. But responsibility doesn’t have to take over your life.”

“No?” Sawyer raised an eyebrow at his friend. “Is that why you’re moving? Because it hasn’t taken over?” Sawyer stepped on the gas, revving the engine. Ryan stepped away from the car as Sawyer swung the door closed.

“It’s part-time,” he said, raising his voice, trying to yell through the window glass and over the engine’s roar. “What you’re getting into is full-time for the rest of your goddamn life.” The Jeep started to roll backward, crunching snow beneath the back tires.

Sawyer gave it some gas, leaving deep tire tracks in the driveway. Backing up onto the road, he pointed the Jeep down the steep grade. The e-brake zipped into place. Ryan watched his childhood friend slide out of the car and trudge around its front, using the Jeep’s tracks as a thoroughfare as he marched back toward the house. Ryan blocked his way when Sawyer reached the end of the tracks, his hands held up, wanting to say what he had to say before Sawyer went back inside.

“Listen, you’re my best friend, all right?”

“Don’t,” Sawyer warned, pushing Ryan’s hands away from his chest.

“You don’t have to do this. A kid doesn’t have to come with vows anymore.”

“Ryan, move,” Sawyer said, but Ryan refused.

“I’m not moving until you hear me out, because this shit has to be said.”

“Nothing has to be said. What’s done is done.”

Ryan shook his head. “What does that even mean?”

“Just move.” Sawyer tried to step around, but Ryan moved in the same direction.

“
What’s
done?” he asked. “You told me you were going to wait; you were going to think it through.”

Sawyer grabbed him by the shoulders and moved him to the side before stepping around the Nissan’s front bumper, trudging toward the deck.

Ryan peered at Sawyer’s back. “Hey,” he called out to him. Sawyer paused, looking over his shoulder. “What the hell did you do?”

Sawyer shook his head and looked away, ascending the stairs while Ryan was left to glare at the trunk of a tree.

Sawyer stepped back inside the cabin, tracking snow across the floor. He snatched his backpack off the ground and threw it over his shoulder, the duffel bag following suit. Jane was standing at the kitchen island, a whisk in her hand, a chrome mixing bowl sitting in front of her. She blinked at him, her expression blank. Sawyer stared at her, frozen in place, his brain telling him to say something, to apologize yet again, but his vocal cords constricted, refusing to make a sound.

“Are you really leaving?” Jane asked, her expression unreadable.

“It isn’t my call,” he croaked past the dryness of his throat. “I’m sorry. Everything is just…”

Jane nodded, looked down. “Yeah,” she said. “I know.”

He stared at her, wanting to ask what that meant, wanting to know what it was she knew. But before he could gather up the courage, April stepped into the kitchen and shot Jane a look: a smile so disingenuous that it turned Sawyer’s stomach.

“Thanks so much for having us,” April said, her tone painfully insincere. “We had a blast.”

Jane’s expression wavered. He watched her indecision flicker across her face like bad reception, challenging her soft-spoken nature as she tried to smile in return.

“We’ll see you again,” April told her. “At the wedding, for sure.”

Sawyer’s heart pulled into itself like a snail backing into its shell. For half a second he felt like the world had reversed its orbit. April stepped through the open kitchen door and out into the snow, leaving Sawyer silently reeling in her wake. When he dared to glance back up at Jane, she looked a little paler than before, her green eyes glinting in the morning sun. He hadn’t wanted the news to come out this way, hadn’t even told Ryan for fear of how he would react, especially after what Jane had gone through with Alex not more than a few months back. Sawyer had kept his engagement to April a secret from the person who knew everything about him. Ryan even knew about the baby six weeks ago, and back then Sawyer had still been unsure about how he felt about what his life had become. And the first thing Ryan had told him hadn’t been “congratulations” or even how Sawyer had just screwed up in the biggest way possible, but “Don’t marry her.” It was classic Ryan, a warning born of his own insecurities. And so when Sawyer asked April to become his wife two weeks later, he hadn’t brought it up in conversation with Ryan.

But now it felt like keeping that secret had been all for nothing. He was waiting for it, waiting for Jane to tell him she never wanted to see him again, waiting for her to tell Ryan, so Ryan could tell Sawyer what a huge mistake he was making. How stupid could he possibly be?

“I’m sorry,” he said, then turned, not wanting to hear her reply, not wanting to see her face, not wanting anything but to get away, to crawl into the Jeep and drive.

By the time he stepped off the deck, April was halfway to the car and his dismay was slowly shifting gears. He couldn’t help but think that maybe Ryan had been right—April
was
a mistake. Because what kind of a girl stooped so low as to break such
important news in such a cold, calculated way? What kind of a girl was willing to destroy his dearest relationships because she was pissed?

As Sawyer approached the Nissan, Ryan’s arms were crossed over his chest, his expression grave. His friend’s disappointment was apparent. Sawyer stopped in front of him, dropping the duffel bag into the snow.

“I have to tell you something,” he said. “Because April just made shit a lot worse, and if I don’t tell you, you’re going to hear it from Jane.”

“You already asked her,” Ryan said flatly, and while Sawyer shouldn’t have been surprised that Ryan had figured it out on his own, he was still caught off guard. He opened his mouth to speak, to explain, but Ryan shook his head as if to say
forget it
. “It’s your life,” he said. “It was screwed up of me to try to stand in your way. I’m sure she’s great.”

Sawyer frowned at Ryan’s resignation. Something about it felt finite, like his closest, truest friend was giving up on him, like Sawyer had just traded a best friend in for a wife. “Don’t do that,” he told him.

“Do what?” Ryan asked. “Finally stop being a dick and start being supportive? What else is there for me to do?”

“You’ll always be a dick,” Sawyer assured him, staring down at the snow.

“I should probably try to fix that, or I’ll end up turning into my dad.”

“Probably.”

“So, sorry for being a dick,” Ryan muttered. “Just give me a chance to get back into the country before you run off to Vegas or something, all right? I want to see Elvis marry you. I at least deserve that much.”

“The Chapel of Love for the ceremony and a Barry Manilow concert as the honeymoon,” Sawyer agreed.

They both went silent then, staring at the ground between them, shifting their weight from foot to foot as the cold bit at their cheeks. Finally, Sawyer moved in to give his best friend a parting hug. “Tell Jane I’m sorry, all right? It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Hey, good luck with Lauren. Who knows, right?”

Ryan smirked.

Sawyer turned to walk the narrow tire trail toward the Jeep. The question of whether the Jeep would make it through the snow was irrelevant now. They
had
to make it, because Sawyer couldn’t go back inside that cabin again. Not after April’s announcement. Not after the way Jane had looked at him, wounded, betrayed.

Slamming the car door shut, he clicked his seat belt into place, shifted into first, and released the parking break. April sat in the passenger seat, pissed off, not speaking—silence he was sure to miss a few minutes from now, when she’d grow tired of the silent treatment and launch into another tirade. Easing the Jeep forward, snow crunched beneath the tires. Ryan appeared in the side-view mirror, watching them descend the steep grade.

The distance between them grew.

When the Jeep slowed, Sawyer gave it some gas. It continued to ramble forward, but eventually had to stop. He put it in reverse, backing up to reveal a pile of snow he’d pushed forward with the bumper, a good two feet tall, compacted and barricading them from going any farther.

Ryan was right. They were going to end up dead.

April said nothing despite the wall of snow ahead of them, and for a moment Sawyer wondered whether she realized how unachievable this was. Maybe that was why she wasn’t saying anything—because she
knew
it was impossible. Maybe she was stewing in her own defeat, ready to tell him to forget it. But
Sawyer wasn’t going to forget it—not after what she’d pulled back there. She wanted to go, so they’d go. Passive-aggressiveness had slithered into his bloodstream, infecting him like a disease.

He shoved the Jeep into first, revving the engine. In the rearview mirror, Ryan put his hands on top of his head, his mouth moving. Sawyer couldn’t hear him, but he knew exactly what Ryan was saying.
You’ve got to be kidding.
But Sawyer wasn’t kidding.

He floored it.

April gasped.

The Jeep hit the bank of snow and rolled through it, but more snow gathered in front of the car seconds later. They had advanced only a couple of feet before they were stuck again, and this time Sawyer couldn’t back up. With one pile of snow behind them and another one ahead, they were trapped.

“Are you crazy?” April screeched.

“This was your idea,” he reminded her, trying to stay calm.

“Right,” she said. “This is all
my
fault, you bringing me here…”

“Bringing you here? Are you serious?”

“Go around it,” she demanded, motioning at the blockade of snow ahead of them.

“You practically begged me to bring you.”

“Yeah, well, big fucking mistake,” she said. “It won’t happen again, I assure you.”

Sawyer bit his tongue, deciding to focus on how to get the Jeep down the road, but April refused to let up.

“Like I want to hang out with your preppy-ass friends anyway.” She scowled. “It’s like spending a weekend with Donnie and fucking Marie.”

Sawyer closed his eyes, trying to keep his cool.

“It’s gross,” she told him.

He blinked at her.

“Gross that you associate with people like that.” Her bottom lip quivered and she looked away, as if ashamed of the judgment that had just dripped from her tongue. “I’m sorry that I’m not as perfect as Jane Adler,” she said softly, tears streaking her cheeks.

Sawyer opened his mouth to speak, but her culpability robbed him of his fire. He looked straight ahead, staring through the windshield and an endless expanse of snow, his guilt so heavy it was suffocating him, burning him up from the inside out. He unzipped his coat and pressed his face into his hands, momentarily overwhelmed by the silence that surrounded them.

“Here,” April said, her voice quavering with emotion.

Sawyer let his hands drop to his lap and blinked at a ring attached to a silver chain in the palm of her hand. It was an old ring he had had since high school, one that was far too big for her to wear, but he had given her as a placeholder for her real engagement ring once he had the cash to buy it. He didn’t move, afraid to take it, scared to know what that would mean. Would he ever see her again? Would he be shut out of his child’s life?