Daddy Lessons

by Carolyne Aarsen

  The sun eased its way down toward the horizon when she got off the chairlift at the top of the run she had taken Natasha and Deanne down only yesterday. She stood there a moment, allowing the waning warmth of the sun to ease away the chill that had enveloped her soul since she’d watched Dan walk away. When she found her phone, she would know if he’d really meant to abandon her.

  The hill was quieter than yesterday. Most of the weekend tourists were back in Calgary, Lethbridge, Cranbrook or wherever they had come from.

  She twisted her board downhill, then let gravity do its work. The wind whistled through her hair as she carved quick turns, the snow spraying out from her board with each twist of her body.

  She missed this so much, she thought. But more than anything, she missed doing this with Dan. Her heart stuttered at the thought of him.

  And as she neared the spot where she was sure Deanna had run into her, she slowed down, praying she would find her phone.

  Praying there would be a message on it from Dan.

  She came to the area and loosened her bindings, stepping out of her board. She looked over her shoulder, trying to recreate the scene. The odds were not in her favor. How many people had gone over this spot since? But it was close to the trees and maybe. Just maybe.

  She first walked a circle around the area, going into the trees, then back onto the hill. Nothing. She started kicking up the snow in the vain hope she would find something.

  Nothing.

  This was silly. Just go to the chalet and call him.

  Maybe she needed to take a leap, here. Trust that going back to Dan was right, whether or not he’d come to his senses.

  Searching for her phone was obviously futile. She knew her pride was getting in the way.

  She walked over to her board, stepped in the bindings and then as she bent over to tighten them she caught a flash of metallic pink winking back at her. She pushed the snow aside and with a triumphant grin, pulled her cell phone out of the snow.

  She pushed it into her shirt against her stomach to warm it up, her heart beginning a nervous pounding. What if the phone was broken? What if Dan hadn’t called her? She took a deep breath. She already knew what she had to do, regardless.

  When the metal no longer gave her a chill she pulled the phone out and hit a button that woke it up. The screen flickered, wavered and then shone back at her.

  Twelve missed calls.

  With trembling fingers she checked the call log. One of the calls was from Shannon. One from her Nana.

  And ten were from Dan.

  She sat down in the snow, her legs giving way, her heart fluttering in her chest. He hadn’t left her. He hadn’t forgotten about her.

  Then the phone sent its tinny song ringing into the silence. Hailey started, her fluttering shifting into pounding.

  She glanced at the call display.

  Dan.

  “Hello,” she said, frustrated with the weakness of her voice.

  “Hailey. Finally.”

  Did she imagine the relief in his voice?

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “I’m on the hill.”

  Silence followed and she found herself tensing, curling her toes up in her boots, clenching a fist.

  “Can you wait there for me?”

  “Okay.” She hated how shaky that single word sounded. She cleared her throat, got a grip and continued. “Where do you want to meet?”

  “Top of Monnihan?”

  “On the hill?” Dan hadn’t been on the hill since Austin died.

  “Yes. If that’s okay.”

  She hardly dared think what this might mean.

  “Yeah. Sure. I’ll be waiting.”

  “I’ll be there in about half an hour.”

  She took a quick glance at her handset. “That’s cutting it close. Crow’s Nest chairlift shuts in forty-five minutes.”

  “I’ll be there. Just wait for me, please?”

  She wanted to ask why, but that would waste time. So she simply said yes, and disconnected. When she put the phone in her pocket she made sure to zip the pocket shut. Then she pushed herself to her feet, trying to work her head around what was going on.

  Dan was coming to the ski hill.

  “We’re closing the lift down.” The liftee held up his hand as Dan came up to the Crow’s Nest Chair.

  Dan slipped on his gloves, his heart still pounding from running all the way from the ticket booth. He caught a few breaths as he watched the chairs still moving up the mountain, holding skiers. He held up his ticket and looked the kid, much younger and about a foot shorter, in the eye. “I bought this ticket five minutes ago. The girl who sold it to me said the lift would be running for another fifteen minutes.”

  With a rustle of his baggy snow pants, the kid shifted his weight, snapped his gum and shrugged. “Yeah, but that’s only for the people on the chair already. I’m not letting anyone else on.”

  Dan stifled the urge to grab the kid and throttle him. Hailey was waiting and he wasn’t letting her down. Not again. He looked up the hill, then slid a bit closer to the kid, smiled down at him. “I’ve been skiing and boarding on this hill since you were in diapers. I know this lift doesn’t shut down until four and it ain’t four.”

  The kid just stared at him.

  “I’m getting on the lift.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Try and stop me.”

  Dan pushed himself past the kid and jumped onto the first chair that came around.

  “Hey, you can’t do that,” the kid yelled. “I told you it was closing.”

  Dan ignored him, knowing the kid wouldn’t stop the lift, not with all the other people still on it, though he had to suppress a laugh at his own daring. For someone who routinely drove five miles an hour under the speed limit, paid his taxes even before they were due and always came to a full stop at a stop sign, this was daring indeed.

  And he didn’t feel the least bit sorry.

  Hailey was waiting for him.

  He wanted to call her, to make sure she was still there but resisted the urge. Anything he had to say to her from here on had to be said to her face.

  The lift creaked and groaned as his chair headed toward the top. The muted humming of the cables pulled back memories of hours and days spent on this hill. He looked below him, watching the more adventurous and reckless kids, skiing and boarding down the packed snow below the lift. Their laughter and squeals reminded him of the adventures he and Hailey undertook.

  In spite of his resolve, memories of Austin wove themselves through them.

  Seven years later, memories of his brother, of that day, could still sting and accuse. He struggled to put that aside. Then he sat back in the chair and did the only thing he could while he waited. He prayed.

  After what felt like hours, he finally got to the top of the hill and slid off. No sooner had he touched the ground, the lift creaked and then groaned to a halt.

  Dumb kid shut it down early anyway. But Dan didn’t care. He had made it.

  He tightened his bindings, and looked around a moment, orienting himself.

  Seven years later. As he stood on this first ridge of the mountain, it felt as if he had never been gone. The angle of the lowering sun cast waiting shadows. The day was winding down.

  Below him he saw the town of Hartley Creek. His hometown. The place he had run away from all those years ago. He was back now and he was back on the hill.

  In spite of the weight of what lay ahead of him, he felt euphoria build as he pushed himself off, snow swishing under his board, the cool air whistling past him. He faltered a moment as he caught an edge, regained his balance, and then he was carving down the hill, shredding snow, heading off toward Monnihan
.

  Where Hailey waited.

  Just then Dan caught a flash of orange as a kid zipped past him on his snowboard, almost cutting Dan off. He resisted the urge to yell at the kid to be careful, then frowned as the boy headed directly toward the ropes marking off the area that was off-limits.

  The boy didn’t look back and without hesitation lifted the rope and ducked under.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Dan called out.

  The kid looked back over his shoulder. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen. Younger than Austin was.

  “Come back here,” Dan called. “That area is out of bounds.”

  The kid turned, then with a swish of his board, disappeared over the white ridge. Dan hesitated a moment, wondering what to do. He thought of Hailey, waiting for him, then thought of the kid heading into an area that he knew would be dangerous.

  You haven’t boarded in ages. You’ll just cause more problems.

  But Dan couldn’t ignore the voice in his head that nagged at him. What if something happened to that kid?

  Dan glanced down the hill one more time, apprehension over Hailey fighting his need to at least keep an eye on the young boy. He made his decision, then ducked under the ropes and followed the tracks through the fresh powder.

  The boy was going fast. Dan had pushed himself beyond his comfort level, but was pleased to feel his old skills returning. He was never the flashy boarder Hailey was, but he always managed to stay ahead of her in powder.

  He carved over, cut a quick turn to avoid some trees, then hit an almost vertical slope. His heart jumped in his throat as he made his way down, his every nerve on alert, his heart lifting in his chest.

  He caught a glimpse of orange, yelled again but the boy didn’t slow down. Dan pushed himself to go a little faster to keep up.

  He maneuvered past a clump of trees, heavy and white with snow, cut a sharp curve and then stopped.

  He couldn’t see the boy anywhere. Frowning, Dan scanned the hill again, following the tracks.

  Then ice flowed through his veins. The tracks led to a tree and then disappeared.

  Dan pushed off, heading straight down the hill, the wind whistling past him. He struggled to maintain control, adrenaline surging through his arteries.

  He got closer and his suspicions were confirmed. All he could see sticking out from the snow around the tree was the edge of a snowboard. The boy had fallen into a tree well, a deep snow depression around the tree, and was now probably lying upside down, covered in snow. Dan stopped, took his board off and carefully approached the tree well.

  “Can you hear me? Don’t move,” Dan called out. “Don’t move at all. You’ll just shake down more snow. Just lay still.”

  His heart plunged when he heard a muffled cry. The boy was still alive.

  If he didn’t pull the boy out soon he would suffocate. But if Dan wasn’t careful he would end up stuck himself.

  “Listen to me. Don’t move,” Dan repeated. “Stay calm. I’ll get you out but you can’t move.” Dan went below the well, grabbed his board and shoveled snow away from the hole as fast as he could. “Don’t move,” he called out while he worked.

  Dan forced himself to breathe, to make his movements steady and sure but his limbs felt like they were moving through syrup, his hands couldn’t go fast enough. Thankfully, the boy’s snowboard was lodged in the snow like an inverted bridge, preventing him from going farther down into the tree well. This high up the snow base was meters thick and the open area under the tree was also that deep.

  Dan pulled, and when he felt a shift, he pulled harder. Finally, after what seemed like hours he managed to drag the boy free.

  “Take a breath,” Dan urged, rolling the boy onto his back. “Just relax and take a breath.”

  The boy, his face crusted with snow, coughed, sputtered, gasped and coughed again.

  Dan sat back in the snow, his limbs like limp spaghetti. He had to breathe himself. Had to force himself to relax.

  Thank you, Lord, he prayed as he drew in another shaky breath.

  The boy coughed again, then jerked to a sitting position. “What happened?” he gasped, glancing wildly around as if getting his bearings again.

  “You fell into a tree well.” Dan forced himself to breathe again, his thoughts a jumbled whirl of relief, prayers and beneath all that a slow stirring of anger.

  “A what?” he asked, his voice a timid sound.

  Dan’s anger grew. “You went boarding out of bounds and you don’t know what a tree well is?”

  The boy coughed again as he shook his head and Dan could see that his face had turned as pale as the snow they sat on.

  “See how the branches of these spruce trees flare out?” Dan asked. “They’re like an umbrella and keep the snow from gathering under the tree so there’s this open space under the branches that forms a pit. This mountain gets an average snowfall of nine hundred seventy centimeters—that’s thirty-one feet if you don’t do metric. The snow around the tree is powdery. You get too close to the tree and you get sucked into the snow and dumped, usually upside down, in a hole deeper than you are tall. And there’s a bunch of trees in these out-of-bounds areas, all of them with a well around them.” Dan heard his voice rise and stopped himself.

  The kid looked scared enough. He was still breathing heavily, his eyes wide and dark.

  “What if you didn’t follow me?” he asked, his voice wavering with fear.

  Dan held his gaze a beat, as if to underline what he was about to say. “You would have died from suffocation because there’s no way you could have gotten out of that well on your own.”

  It didn’t seem possible for the boy’s face to grow any whiter but it did. He blinked a couple of times, before giving in, dropping his face into gloved hands with a sob.

  Dan watched him for a moment, then, taking pity on him, moved closer and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, giving him a hard squeeze.

  “You’re okay.”

  The boy dragged his gloved hands over a face streaked with tears. “Thanks. Thanks for saving my life.”

  The words shifted something deep within Dan as the reality of what had happened only now seemed to settle. If someone had followed Austin, would he still be alive?

  “What’s your name?” he asked the young boy.

  “Jeremy. Jeremy LeBron,” the boy said, his voice still shaking.

  “Well, Jeremy, you okay to keep boarding?”

  Jeremy glanced back at the tree well and the disturbed snow around it and drew in a shaking breath. “I don’t know.”

  “You’ll be okay if you follow me,” Dan said, getting to his feet. He didn’t want to take the chance that the ski patrol would come and find them. They had to get back to the main hill before it got too dark.

  Jeremy slowly got to his feet, wavered a bit and then nodded.

  “Okay. Let’s get you down the hill.” He glanced around to get his bearings. Near as he could tell, if they traversed the hill they could hit the mountain at the top of Monnihan run.

  And hopefully Hailey would still be waiting there. He pulled out his cell phone to call her to let her know. His heart sank in his chest. No bars. No reception.

  He tucked his phone back in his pocket, then pushed off across the hill, Jeremy right behind him.

  Please, Lord, let Hailey still be waiting, he prayed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Hailey pulled her knees close, digging her board in the hill. She’d been sitting here, at the top of Monnihan run, for twenty minutes now. Dan should have been here long ago.

  She glanced at her phone again, wondering if he would call her. Wondering if she should call him.

  He knows exactly where you are, she thought.

&nbs
p; So where was he?

  Hailey glanced down the hill, now empty of skiers, the chairlifts swinging lightly in the ever-present mountain wind. In a couple of minutes the ski patrol would make their last sweep of the hill, urging all the laggards down to the bottom, checking for injured skiers and boarders.

  The sun was easing down toward the mountains. Soon it would be dusk.

  How long should she wait? Should she wait?

  He’d said he was coming.

  But behind her confident declaration came a chilling thought. What if he changed his mind? And on the heels of that, what if something had happened to him?

  Hailey felt a flutter deep in her stomach as she looked down the empty run below her. She could see the figures of the last skiers and snowboarders standing at the bottom of the hill, done for the day.

  Please, Lord, let Dan come.

  She felt as if all she’d done since Dan had called her was send up simple, formless prayers. Because she wasn’t sure what to pray for.

  She pulled out her phone and checked but there was nothing.

  The familiar swish of a board caught her attention and her heart. She spun around and then with a spray of snow, a red-coated ski patrol stopped by her. Though he wore a helmet Hailey recognized Jess Schroder, a fellow boarder whose father owned the ski hill.

  “Everything okay?” Jess called out, looking down on her.

  She wanted to smile up at him and say yes. She wanted to believe that Dan wasn’t here simply because he was late.

  “Have you seen Dan? He’s wearing a blue coat, black pants, riding a black snowboard?”

  Jess leaned on his poles and pushed his goggles up on his helmet, his blue eyes squinting against the glare off the snow. “No, sorry, Hailey. Haven’t, though I’ve got a couple of guys checking out some tracks that went out of bounds about hundred feet above here.”

  Hailey hugged her knees, chewing on her lip. Was that Dan? She dismissed that thought. Dan would never take a chance like that. He knew she was waiting.