Chapter 2 - Blood and Foundation
The retreat into the master bedroom was not a peace conference; it was a tactical withdrawal.
Olivia pushed the solid pine door shut with her heel, her face pale beneath her bronzer. Jason stayed in the hallway, loudly assuring someone named 'Sterling' that it was just a minor family miscommunication about property management and that the catering staff would still be serving the elk tenderloin at eight.
Diane sat on the edge of my quilt—the one my grandmother had hand-stitched from wool flannel scraps—and began to weep softly into her knuckles.
"How could you humiliate your sister like that?" Diane sobbed. "In front of the Hendersons! Sterling Henderson manages three private equity funds in Cherry Creek! Jason’s firm is this close to securing the mezzanine debt for the Lyons project!"
"I don't give a damn about the Lyons project, Mom," I said, standing by the window. Outside, the blizzard was thickening, fat flakes of San Juan powder sticking to the triple-pane glass I’d had hauled up from Montrose on a flatbed trailer. "I care about why there are twenty-four strangers drinking my bourbon, using my well water, and walking on floors I finished with three coats of polyurethane on my hands and knees while Olivia was having her eyelashes filled."
Olivia leaned against the heavy oak dresser I’d bought at an estate sale in Silverton. She had crossed her arms, her knuckles white against her cashmere sleeves.
"You don't need this place, Becca," she said, her voice dropping into that chilling, reasonable register she used when she was preparing to steal something large. "You’re single. You work sixty hours a week in an office park in Greenwood Village. You come up here what? Three weekends a year? Four?"
"That’s none of your business."
"It is my business! We’re family!" Olivia took a step forward, her eyes wide, glittering with a strange, frantic entitlement. "Jason and I have a brand. We have an image to maintain. Do you know what it does to his credibility when his clients find out we’re renting in Boulder? When they find out we don't own mountain property? People in our circle have places in Vail, or Breckenridge, or Aspen. We can’t afford Aspen, Becca! But this—this place has character. It looks authentic. It looks like old money."
"It looks like hard work," I corrected her. "Which is something you haven't touched since you dropped out of Colorado State because the parking was too far from your sorority house."
"Don't you dare talk to her like that!" Diane snapped, rising from the bed. Her grief had instantly curdled into defensive rage, the same transformation I’d witnessed every time Olivia had crashed a car, defaulted on a store card, or cheated on a college exam. "Olivia has children! She has Leo and Maya! They need roots, Rebecca! You don't have children! You don't have anyone!"
The room seemed to shrink. The woodstove in the outer hall popped, a sharp crack of expanding pine that sounded like a rifle shot across the silence.
I looked at my mother. Really looked at her.
She was wearing a silver necklace Olivia had given her for Mother’s Day two years ago—a necklace I had secretly paid for when Olivia’s card was declined at the jeweler’s counter in Cherry Creek. Diane had known, of course. The statement had come to her house by mistake. She had thrown it away and thanked Olivia twice as loudly over Sunday brunch.
"So that’s what this is," I said quietly. "Because I don't have a husband to lie to me and two kids to use as social media props, my life doesn't take up space? My labor doesn't count?"
"We were going to pay you rent," Olivia said quickly, sensing that Diane’s bluntness had pushed the needle too far into territory where she couldn't maintain the high ground. "A nominal fee. We were going to draw up a lease-option agreement. Jason has an attorney who drafted the paperwork. We brought it with us. We were going to give it to you tomorrow morning as a surprise."
"A surprise," I repeated. "You broke into my cabin, brought twenty-four people into a home that isn't plumbed for commercial use, invited investors to a house you don't own, and your plan was to present me with a lease-option contract on Christmas Eve?"
"It’s a win-win!" Olivia argued, her voice climbing into that shrill, desperate frequency. "You get passive income! We get the tax write-off for Jason’s corporate retreat! And Mom gets to spend Christmas with her grandchildren in the mountains! Why do you always have to be so selfish, Becca? Why do you always have to hoard everything for yourself?"
I walked over to the door and pulled it open.
Outside, the hallway smelled of spilled red wine and damp wool. Jason was standing near the fireplace, holding a clipboard, trying to explain the ski trails to a man in a Moncler vest who looked thoroughly bored and increasingly suspicious.
"Get out," I said to Olivia.
"Becca, be reasonable," Jason called out, turning around. "The pass is closed. You can't make us leave. CDOT put the chains requirement on Red Mountain twenty minutes ago. Nothing without four-wheel drive and commercial chains is getting down to Ouray."
I looked at Jason. Then I looked at Olivia.
May you like
"Then you’d better start walking," I said, "because your Audi doesn't have clearance for the drifts at the cattle guard, and I’m about to set the alarm code."
***
