our particular set in a sea of them. But if she looks hard enough, there we will be, with just enough of an Internet presence to assuage any fears. After all, if you aren’t willing to display yourself for public dissection these days, people assume you must be devious and unworthy of trust.
A little poking around and Vanessa will be reassured that Ashley and Michael are just as normal as we said we were in our rental-site profile. A nice creative young couple from Portland, taking a year off from our lives to travel across America and work on creative projects. We’ve always wanted to spend time at Lake Tahoe, we wrote her; we’re even thinking of staying through the snowfall to get some skiing in. That sounds so lovely, Vanessa had written back almost immediately. It’s a quiet time of year, you can stay as long as you like.
How long will we stay? Exactly as long as it takes to infiltrate her life, uncover Stonehaven’s secrets, and rob her blind. And at this thought, I feel a little stab of satisfaction, something vindictive and small that I know I need to suppress. Don’t make this personal. Don’t make this about the past.
Lachlan finishes his soda, crumples his napkin, tosses it in the direction of the snarling wooden bear that looms behind us. The napkin lands in the bear’s open mouth and lodges there, snagged on splintered incisors. “Let’s get this show on the road,” he says.
Dusk comes early in the mountains. The rain begins not long after we leave the restaurant, a fine gray mist, making the road slick and perilous. Long-haul trucks belch their way up the mountain in the slow lane; four-wheel-drive SUVs jacked up on hydraulics whiz past us on the left; we, in Lachlan’s vintage BMW, stay steady in the center lane. (One should always drive the speed limit when one has fake Oregon license plates on one’s car.) At Donner Pass the mountains already have a crust of dirty snow on the highest peaks, and it gleams in the waning light.
Nothing about this part of the drive feels familiar to me. I’ve only been on this length of highway once, the day that my mother and I fled Tahoe, down the hill toward an uncertain future. And yet I carefully study the damp pines and mountain lakes we pass, nerves on edge, waiting for that nostalgic ping of recognition.
It comes once we descend toward Tahoe City, and the highway begins paralleling the Truckee River. Suddenly the curves of the road have a kinetic familiarity. Each passing landmark tugs at me with a flash of recognition: a German restaurant in a crumbling chalet that flies by in the mist; a log cabin with a tin roof huddling in a clearing down by the water; the raw granite of the river boulders, water descending down their faces. They come back to me as visual echoes: memories surfacing from the bottom of a mind that long ago paved over them with more pressing concerns.
It’s dark by the time we come to the edge of Tahoe City, with its low huddle of shops. We turn right just before town in order to follow the lakeshore south. As we drive farther from town, the vacation homes grow larger, newer, denser; classic A-frames make way for behemoth ski homes with two-story windows and wraparound decks. The pines grow closer to the edge of the road. A snowless ski resort flies past, its dirt slopes carved up with paths from the mountain bikers of the previous summer.
Occasionally, we get glimpses of the lake from between the houses, a dark void, drawn up for the winter. The pleasure boats are already dry-docked, to remain covered until May. Even the pier lights have been turned off for the season. I remember this about November at Tahoe, how it felt like you were stuck in a kind of no-man’s-land: the summer crowd departed and the skiers yet to arrive, the sun absent but the snow still holding off, everything quiet and still and dormant. A useless chill, devoid of winter pleasures, too damp and cold to even hike. The locals scurrying about their errands like squirrels, hoarding acorns for winter.
Lachlan and I drive the last few miles in silence.