into Ashley. When I open the door with a bright smile on my face, Vanessa is standing there in hiking pants, her face carefully made-up, designer sunglasses balanced on top of a mass of glossy, blown-out hair. She looks like a model in an advertisement for vitaminwater and I instinctively want to slap the sunglasses right off the top of her head.
“There you are!” I say instead. I reach out and fold her into another hug; press my warm cheek against her cold one. I pull back, give her a look. “Are we still going to do yoga together? I was so looking forward to that. I’ve been out there every morning, without you.”
She flushes. “I know. I’ve had a cold. But I’m feeling better now.”
“Maybe tomorrow, then.” I lean against the doorframe. I notice that she’s holding a backpack in her hand. “You going somewhere?”
Her eyes skitter over my shoulder to Lachlan, still lying on the couch surrounded by papers. “I’m going for a hike to Vista Point. And I thought maybe you guys would want to come.” When he doesn’t look up from his laptop, she turns back to me. “The weather report says that a winter storm’s coming, in the next day or two. So this might be your last chance. To hike.”
“I’d love that,” I say. I turn to Lachlan. “Honey? Take a break?”
Lachlan slowly tears his eyes away from the screen, his eyebrows furrowed, as if his mind has been engaged in deeply intellectual internal debate and he resents being dragged back to the mundane present. If I didn’t know that he was just watching reruns of Criminal Minds, I would almost be convinced myself.
“I’m in the middle of this—” he says.
Vanessa blanches. “Oh, you’re writing. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Oh, no, it’s fine. A hike, eh?” He sits up and stretches, and his T-shirt rises up a bit, exposing a toned expanse of stomach. He offers us both a dazzling smile as if he couldn’t be more thrilled by the idea, even though I know that hiking is on the bottom of the list of things he enjoys, flanked by taxes and rom-com movies. “I wouldn’t mind stretching my legs. I was struggling with that paragraph anyway.”
Twenty minutes later we are in Vanessa’s car, a Mercedes SUV so new that it still smells of the factory in which it was assembled. We drive south along the lakeshore, passing weather-beaten motels with neon vacancy signs out front, a shingled general store advertising sub sandwiches and cold beer, A-frames with covered boats in their driveways, away from the multimillion-dollar vacation homes and into the hush of the national forest. Vanessa is gushy, almost manic, as she peppers us with facts about the places that we pass.
“We’re coming up to the estate where they filmed The Godfather Part II, although it’s all condos now. See, out past that boat? That’s where Fredo gets murdered.”
“Down that driveway is Chambers Landing, a pier with a historic bar, it’s been around since 1875, though now it’s mostly full of frat boys getting loaded on Chambers Punch cocktails.”
“There’s a charming little Scandinavian mansion up ahead, it looks like something straight out of a Norwegian fjord. My great-grandfather used to play pinochle with the owner, back during the Depression.”
I remember some of these stories from when I lived here as a teenager. Every place has its lore, but Tahoe clings particularly tightly to the time when it was more exclusive, more glamorous; when it was more than just an overpriced weekend ski getaway for San Francisco’s tribes of tech bro millionaires. I stare out the window at the forest flying past and think that it’s nice to be in the mountains, away from the toxic bustle of urban life, the glittering lights that advertise desire. I imagine bringing my mother up here, to recover from her disease. The fresh air might be therapeutic; certainly it would be good for us both to get away from city life.
And then I remember that once Lachlan and I leave here, along with Vanessa’s money, we’ll never be able to come back again.