“Oh, honey.”
The weariness in her voice made Frankie’s gut twist. “Sorry, Mom.”
The phone muffled as Melinda put her hand over the receiver. “It’s Frankie. He’s lost an hour north of Duluth.” A pause, then, “What? What?” She unmuffled the phone, and when she spoke to Frankie next, her tone made her panic clear. “Sweetheart, your dad says there’s a terrible storm up there. Terrible.”
“Yeah, I kind of figured that one out.” Frankie glanced out the window at the snow, which seemed to be coming faster and faster. “Mom, I better go if I’m going to have any chance of making it back to your place tonight.”
“Sweetheart, no. Find a hotel and ride this out. I want you safe.”
“I don’t want to be stuck up here in Podunk, Minnesota. Oh my God, you should have seen these three crazy lumberjacks in the café where I stopped for directions. Anyway, there isn’t a hotel close to here as far as I can tell, unless I go west.”
“Franklin Nelson Blackburn, you get lost trying to find the bathroom in the middle of the night. I won’t have you driving in the snow.”
“Look, Mom, I gotta get going. I’ll call you once I get on the highway, okay?”
“Oh my God. Let me put your father on.”
“No. I’m hanging up. Please call the guys for me and let them know I’ll be staying with you.”
“Frankie,” she demanded, but he didn’t hear the rest because he’d hung up. For good measure, he turned the phone all the way off.
No way was he getting stranded here. No. Way.
THE ROADS AROUND Logan, Frankie discovered as he pulled out of the café parking lot, had worsened considerably while he’d been inside. Tall, narrow trees surrounded him on either side, a few evergreens but most of them northern hardwoods without leaves, making it seem like Frankie drove through a tree graveyard drowning in a blizzard. He could still see the pavement, but just barely, and several times he found he’d wandered into the left-hand lane because the snow had drifted the right side of the road shut.
Just get to the highway, he coaxed himself, and put on the Gregorian Christmas album his mother had given him. Get to the highway, get to your parents, and never use GPS again.
As the monks sang serenely about Ave Maria, Frankie white-knuckled the steering wheel and tried not to get hypnotized by the falling snow. It felt very surreal, the music drifting around him as snow and darkness threatened to engulf him should he lose control of his car. The woods were pretty, even if they were in the middle of nowhere and full of backwater yokels and prejudiced “Christians” who voted against marriage equality and thought Twin City residents were yuppie snobs, so out of touch they hadn’t heard of hipsters.
The monks shifted to “Silent Night”, and Frankie thought of the three bears, especially surly Papa Bear. They were exactly the kind of guys that had given Frankie so much hell growing up. Funny, he’d been in Minneapolis for almost ten years, but ten minutes in that café had taken him right back to being fourteen and queasy while he got ready for gym. Saint Peter was slightly refined because of its proximity to the Cities and to Mankato, and also because of the college, but it had its share of rednecks too. Sometimes they seemed angrier and nastier because they had to live alongside what they considered uppity people, like Frankie and his family.
Frankie had taken piano and violin lessons, and until he’d been able to beg his mother to let him drop out, dance. It didn’t matter that Frankie had enjoyed those activities and that they’d been soothing and peaceful to him—Frankie never played baseball or dreamed of buying a killer car or went hunting with cousins, and that made him somehow a threat in the eyes of Saint Peter’s differently cultured. It didn’t matter that Frankie had a whole circle of friends, some of them even other boys, in his family’s social set. When it was Frankie versus the redneck boys, Frankie always lost.
Those three lumberjacks, no question, were more of the same. He bet none of them had sported Vote No car decals during the marriage amendment fight in 2012 or urged their representatives to help pass marriage equality. He’d put money too on them being the guys who had threatened to hold the heads of guys like Frankie over stunk-up toilets. They probably wrote FAG in black marker on the lockers of Frankie’s Logan, Minnesota spiritual brothers. They had every mark of small-town bully written on them, and Frankie was oh so glad to be leaving them behind.
Still, there wasn’t any denying that even in the snow the landscape was beautiful up here. When Frankie had been little, he’d dreamed of running away to a cabin up north, where everything would be quiet and quaint like Mayberry and everyone would like him for a change. Of course, then he’d grown up and realized the farther north he went the less it would be like Mayberry and the more it would turn into Deliverance. Still, that fantasy had never quite died, and especially with the lilting voices of the monks drifting around him, the scene made Frankie nostalgic, wishing a life like that truly could happen to a guy like him.
He stopped daydreaming and made himself focus on the road. Just a few more miles to the turnoff, he reminded himself, not sure if it was actually a few more miles or not. Soon, he amended. Soon you’ll be on the highway and scot-free.
That was when he saw the moose.
The animal came out of the brush just as the music swelled to a dramatic, hopeful climax. Frankie couldn’t make it out at first, but as soon as he did, the only thought he had time for was that he was screwed. The moose was bigger than a cow, dark and hairy and so full of antlers it was hard not to be hypnotized by them. Frankie shouted and braked, but he might as well have pushed on the accelerator. Turning its head to look at Frankie’s car, the moose didn’t so much as blink, let alone move.
Shouting again, Frankie swerved around the moose, caught the edge of a snowdrift and spun out.
Snow on snow, the monks sang as the Festiva sailed into the ditch and down into a shallow ravine, where the engine sputtered and died but the music played on, eerily upbeat as the snow came down faster and faster, the monks oblivious to Frankie’s doom.
Chapter Two
MARCUS GARDNER BREATHED a sigh of relief when the slicked-up pretty boy left the café, but the memory of the man who could have been Steve’s twin lingered long after. It stayed with him as he and his two best friends piled into Arthur’s truck, jostling against the door as they meandered into town toward the care center.
“What’s eating you?” Arthur reached across Paul and nudged Marcus’s knee. His cheeks were almost as red as his hair, making him look like Santa in his salad days.
Shrugging, Marcus averted his gaze to the window, where the snow came down in sheets. “Nothing.”
“Just usual grumpiness then?” Arthur settled into his seat with a sigh. “Weather sucks ass, that’s for sure. Don’t know where that cutie back at the café was headed, but I hope to hell he’s got snow tires.”
“He was lost.” This came from Paul. He pulled off his cap and ruffled his curls, altering their disarray more than putting them to order. “Patty was all mother hen over him. Said he was going back to Duluth. He was supposed to go back to Minneapolis from there but took a really, really wrong turn. Poor guy. I hope he makes it home.”
There wasn’t any way the “cutie” would be seeing the Cities tonight. Marcus frowned harder. What the hell was a guy like that doing up this far anyway? And driving a Festiva no less. How were those tin cans even legal?
“I should have told him to stop by the cabin. I could have kept him warm,” Arthur suggested.
Paul snorted at Arthur. “He’d have taken one look at your ugly mug and run.”
Arthur leered and placed a meaty paw on the inside of Paul’s thigh. “You don’t seem to find my mug that intolerable, babe.”
Paul grumbled and pulled his leg away. When the truck swerved, Marcus snapped to attention and glowered at Arthur. “Eyes on the road, Romeo.”
Arthur leaned forward and squinted into the snow. “Jesus. Was it supposed to be this bad? I’ll have to use four-wheel drive in an
other half hour, at the rate it’s coming down.”
“We could skip the visit,” Marcus offered, though he didn’t really want to.
Arthur waved a dismissive hand. “It won’t take but a few minutes. Besides, you’ll be insufferable if we don’t.”
“He’ll be insufferable anyway,” Paul muttered.
Marcus turned back to the window.
Logan Manor had its Christmas lights up already, the multicolored lights on the roofline a beacon amidst the swirling snow. Arthur parked near the door, but even so they were coated head to toe with flakes when they buzzed their way into the main foyer.
Kyle, the night nurse, smiled at Marcus as he traded his snow-clad boots for paper booties at the nursing station. “She’s just had her dinner and is settling in with her TV.”
Marcus gave a curt nod while tucking his gloves inside his coat pocket. He left his logging coveralls on mostly because it’d be more work to take them off than was worth it for as little as he’d be staying. Of course, given the temperature they had things cranked to in here, he’d be sweating like a pig in two minutes. “How’s she doing tonight?”
Kyle shrugged. “Middling. Not her best, but not her worst. Maybe a bit weepy and disoriented, but she’ll know who you are and be glad to see you.”
“We’ll be out here.” Arthur leaned over the counter to toss a flirtatious smile to Kyle as Paul glowered and the nurse blushed.
Glad to leave the eternal soap opera that was Arthur Anderson behind for a few minutes, Marcus went down the hall to his mother.
Mimi Gardner was tucked in her recliner, a quilt over her legs and a magazine in her lap as the TV broadcast a news program. When she saw Marcus, she frowned and gestured helplessly to the television.
“Sweetheart, I’m so glad you’re here. I don’t want to watch this, and I can’t get my clicker to work.”
Fishing the remote out of her lap, Marcus aimed it at the screen and patiently retaught his mother how to change the channel. “You want the Food Network, Mom?”
“I don’t know.” She seemed flustered and angry, but when Rachael Ray appeared, chirpy and happy and whipping around her kitchen, Mimi relaxed. “Yes. This one.” She smiled and patted Marcus’s hand. “Thank you, honey. Did you have a nice drive up from the city?”
Marcus’s heart fell. He hated it when she forgot this much because the conversation was always awkward. “I live up here in Logan now, remember?”
Mimi frowned, agitated again. “But you have that nice job at the law firm. And that sweet boyfriend. Why would you leave?”
“Because Steve cheated on me and lied to me through his teeth, and the nice job at the law firm was eating my soul.” He took her hand and smiled, trying to ease over the awkwardness of her forgetting. “How was dinner? It smells like chicken out there.”
“It was fine.” Mimi touched her hair, still troubled, but not as bad as she could have been. “Marcus, I need to get my color done. I can’t go in to work tomorrow looking like this.”
Oh, one of these nights. “You don’t have to work anymore, Mom. You’re retired.”
“That’s ridiculous. I don’t want to retire. Who retires at fifty-three? Besides, that idiot Kristen can’t get the hang of the new computer system. And she’s horrible with story time.”
“If you’re fifty-three, Mom, you had me when you were fifteen.”
Mimi frowned at him a moment longer before her eyes filled with tears. “I’m forgetting again, aren’t I?”
“I think you’re tired.” Marcus stroked his mother’s hair, noticing it was indeed a lot more gray than she liked to keep it. “We’ll see about getting you to the Cut ’N’ Curl once the storm’s over. Maybe I can even take you down to Duluth and treat you with dinner after.”
She seemed a little mollified, but she sank back into her chair, looking small and frail and very old. “I am tired, you’re right. I still don’t see how that Kristen can run the library though.”
“She isn’t. They have a young man running it now. From what I hear, story time is a huge hit.” From what Marcus also heard, he was another friend of Dorothy. For a town of less than a thousand, Logan sure had some weird odds on its homosexuality ratio.
Mimi squeezed Marcus’s hand. “Thanks for stopping by, Marcus.”
“Of course.” He continued stroked her hair. “There’s a blizzard, so it might be a few days before I can check in. I’ll tell them at the front desk and have them pass the word to the other nurses in case you forget.”
She huffed and rolled her eyes. “I think we can count that as a given.”
“Hush.” He drew her hand up and kissed it. “You can always call me, you know, and I’ll remind them of that too.”
“I hate this,” Mimi whispered. “I’m too young to be this senile.”
She was, but there wasn’t much to be done about that. Alzheimer’s was a real bitch. “You’re not senile. You’re my mother, and you’re wonderful. I’m looking into getting my own place, and when I do, I’ll have you over for a nice dinner every weekend.”
“You should go back to the city. You’re never going to find anyone to date up here.”
This was most certainly true. “I don’t want to date anyone. I’m done with that nonsense.”
“Now who’s senile?”
The brief flare of the mother he’d known made Marcus smile. He kissed her cheek. “You rest, Mom, all right? I’ll call tomorrow and make sure you’re doing okay.”
Mimi kissed him back. “I love you, sweetheart.”
“I love you too, Mom.”
When Marcus returned to the nurse’s station, Arthur had given up on Kyle and was arguing with Paul in front of the aviary. Eager to flirt, Kyle beamed up at Marcus as he relayed his message for his mother about the snow keeping him away, but Marcus steadfastly ignored him.
It might be funny how a town as small as Logan was chock-full of gay men, but Marcus meant what he’d told his mother. They could march a parade of queers down Main Street, and Marcus wouldn’t be interested.
Even so, as he climbed back into the truck beside Paul, the sleek, slim boy from the city who looked like the kind and gentle version of Steve flashed back into Marcus’s mind.
No, he schooled himself. He was especially not interested in that.
FOR SEVERAL MINUTES Frankie sat in the heavy silence of the car, processing what in the hell had happened to him.
He’d turned off the music, needing to get rid of the last of the sensory stimuli. He could feel his brain actively climbing over the idea that he’d swerved to avoid a moose—a moose, for fuck’s sake—and now sat in a deep ditch, buried in snow.
Buried. In snow.
Buried in a ditch in snow. In northern Minnesota on a road where he’d been the only car he’d seen for a long, long time.
Though his sense of shock made him want to stay still and keep processing, the looming truth that being buried in snow would be literal snapped Frankie out of his stupor and got him moving. Hands shaking, he climbed into the backseat and fished into the hatchback for his boots, his blanket, his balaclava and his thick gloves—the ugly ones he’d bought at the farm-implement store back in Saint Peter. In his pocket were his slim, insulated touch gloves, which Josh teased him for because he had the world’s shittiest phone that had nothing touch sensitive about it. They were stylish, though, and trendy, like Frankie’s coat. His Columbia ski coat could keep him snug on the top of a mountain, and for the price he’d paid, he assumed that covered a Minnesota blizzard. He had a fleece ear band too, one that didn’t mess up his hair. With this gear, he could face the worst of a Minneapolis storm.
He wasn’t in the city now though. The only part of his usual menagerie of winter wear worth anything was that coat. The rest were tossed on the seat in favor of the balaclava and the fat, fat gloves. The ones he’d actually never worn, only kept in his vehicle in case a moment like this ever happened. Which it had.
Buried in snow in northern Minnesota.
&
nbsp; Need to get out. Pulling on the balaclava, he clutched the blanket and gloves tight in his fingers. Need to get to a phone.
Wait, he had a phone. Heart lurching, Frankie fumbled in his pocket.
His phone had no service.
He turned it off and turned it on again, moved it around the car and held it up to windows, but nothing he did got him a signal.
He was buried in snow in a ditch, it was getting dark, he’d almost hit a moose and he had no phone service.
Frankie couldn’t help it: he whimpered. He didn’t cry, but he made some very non-butch noises and shut his eyes as he wished, desperately, that he were in his mother’s living room, or back home in Minneapolis, or even still at that damn café being harassed by the three bears.
Get out of here. Get your blanket, your gloves, and go. Leave everything else, just go, find shelter.
For a horrible second Frankie thought his door wouldn’t open, but with a panicked shove and a groan, the metal gave way and let him out. Cold blasted him, but the Columbia coat really was warm, and what it didn’t manage the blanket finished off. Frankie clutched the old quilt tight around him as he climbed the bank and stumbled back onto the road, where there was no longer a sign of a moose at all.
There wasn’t a sign of anything, not even tire tracks. In fact, as Frankie trudged to the center of the road, he realized no one would ever see his car so far down in the ditch. He saw too the jagged rocks he’d somehow dodged, rocks that could have caused a lot worse damage, not just to the car but to him. Frankie could be bloody and broken in a cold ditch, invisible to anyone on the road—with no cell service.
Walk. Don’t stand here and think about how you could have died. Walk. Walk, walk, walk.
Walk Frankie did, moving down the road in the eerily silent night, snow falling so hard now he had to blink against it as it froze along his eyelashes. The boots and gloves were thick, but his toes and fingers were starting to object to the elements all the same. He needed to get to shelter of some kind. Any kind.
He thought about how long it had been since he’d seen a mailbox beside the road. He wondered if he was walking toward town or away from it. He wondered just how cold he was going to get before he found somewhere warm and safe—and how long it would take to get there.
Let It Snow Page 2
