We drive for a few minutes, past restaurants and business areas, a few dude ranches. Suddenly the ski area opens up on one side of us, the mountain rising behind it cut into big white lanes through the trees, the tram running all the way to the top. It looks crazy steep, all of it. Mount Everest kind of steep.
Jeffrey sits up to get a better look.
“That is one wicked mountain,” he says like he can’t wait another minute to hurl his body down it. He checks his watch.
“Come on, Mom,” he says. “Do you have to drive like a grandma?”
“Do you need some money?” asks Mom, ignoring his comment. “I gave Clara some money for lessons.”
“I don’t need lessons. I just need to get there sometime in the next millennium.”
“Lay off, doofus,” I say. “We’ll get there when we get there. We’re like less than a mile now.”
“Maybe you should let me out and I could walk. It’d be faster.”
“Both of you, be qu—” Mom starts to say, but then we slide on the ice. She hits the brakes and we drift sideways, picking up speed. Mom and I both scream as the car careens off the road and crashes through a snowbank. We come to a stop at the edge of a small field. She takes a deep, shaky breath.
“Hey, you’re the one who said we’d love the winters here,” I remind her.
“Perfect,” says Jeffrey sarcastically. He unbuckles his seat belt and opens the door.
The car is resting in about two feet of snow. He glances at his watch again. “That’s just perfect.”
“What, you have an important meeting you have to get to?” I ask.
He shoots me a disgusted look.
“Oh, I get it,” I say. “You’re meeting up with someone. What’s her name?”
“None of your business.”
Mom sighs and puts the car in reverse. The car moves back about a foot and then the tires spin. She pulls forward and tries again. No luck. We’re stuck. In a snowbank. In plain sight of the ski hill. It really can’t get more humiliating.
“I could get out and push,” says Jeffrey.
“Just wait,” Mom says. “Someone will come.”
Right on cue, a truck pulls off to the side of the road. A guy gets out and tromps through the snow toward us. Mom rolls down the window.
“Well, well, well, what have we here?” he asks.
My mouth falls open. Tucker leans in the window, grinning from ear to ear.
Oh yes, it can get more humiliating.
“Hey, Carrots,” he says. “Jeff.”
He nods to my brother like the two are best buds. Jeffrey nods back. Mom smiles up at him.
“I don’t think we’ve met,” she says. “I’m Maggie Gardner.”
“Tucker Avery,” he says.
“You’re Wendy’s brother.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We could really use some help,” she says sweetly as I slump down in the seat and wish I was dead.
“Sure thing. Just sit tight.”
He jogs back to his truck and returns with tow cables, which he hooks to the underside of the car quickly, like he’s done this kind of thing a million times before.
He gets back in his truck, pulls up behind us, and attaches the cables to his truck.
Then he tows us smoothly onto the road. The whole thing takes all of five minutes.
Mom gets out of the car. She gestures for me to do the same. I look at her like she’s crazy, but she persists.
“You need to say thank you,” she says under her breath.
“Mom.”
“Now.”
“All right.” I get out. Tucker is kneeling in the snow unhooking the cable from his truck. He looks up at me and smiles again, revealing a dimple in his left cheek.
“In case you couldn’t tell, that was my rusty truck towing you out of a snowbank,” he says.
“Thank you so much,” says my mom. She looks pointedly at me.
“Yes, thank you,” I say through gritted teeth.
“You’re very welcome,” he says cordially, and in that moment I see that Tucker can be charming when he wants to be.
“And tell Wendy we said hello,” Mom says.
“Will do. Nice to meet you, ma’am.” If he’d been wearing his cowboy hat, he would have tipped it at her.
