The Shuddering

shoulder to make sure the others weren’t eavesdropping. “About the possibilities, you know? I guess it’s kind of nice to know that the cards are off the table.”
    Lauren nodded faintly. She admired Jane for her ability to stay positive, sure that if she were in Jane’s position, she’d avoid even looking at April, let alone occupying the same house with her. But that was Jane’s nature. She took the good and discarded the bad; she was nice to everybody, even if they didn’t deserve it, even if she secretly loathed their existence—though Jane would say that everyone deserved kindness and that she didn’t really hate anybody. Lauren supposed that sort of compassionate patience came with spending five days a week with a gaggle of kids. Once you could handle that, you could handle just about anything—even a waif of a girl who, in Lauren’s opinion, was trying to look way too French with her glossy jet-black hair and her flawless skin.
    “Well, you’re a stronger man than I,” Lauren told her, grabbing an apple from a basket that sat on the island, biting into it before Jane seized it a second later.
    “Don’t,” she said. “You’ll ruin your appetite.”
    “Okay, Mom ,” Lauren teased, then turned to the kitchen door when what sounded like something between a growl and a bark echoed from outside.
    Jane padded across the kitchen to peer through the glass embedded in the door. “Is Ryan out there?”
    “I think he’s in the garage. I saw him dragging the boards through the hall a few minutes ago.”
    A snarl tore through the air before one of the trees just beyond the porch shuddered. Lauren blinked, shooting Jane a startled look, a jolt of anxiety lodging itself in her throat. But she laughed quietly when a young doe bounded into view. It looked panicked, terrorized by the husky that was nowhere to be seen.
    Jane took a sip of her tea before abandoning the mug next to the kitchen sink with a frown. “She shouldn’t be out there by herself,” she said, marching across the kitchen and down the hall before hanging a right past the laundry room. Lauren followed.
    Jane pushed the door to the garage open, the smell of hot paraffin wafting up from five feet below. Down a set of cheap wooden stairs that didn’t match the cabin’s character, Ryan had set up shop; four snowboards lay suspended between two pairs of sawhorses, their colorful undersides exposed. The workbench at his elbow was littered with wax blocks and tuning tools. He didn’t look up, the melodic buzz of his headphones predictably blocking out the rest of the world. Lauren couldn’t help but wonder what he was listening to, whether they had the same taste. They had listened to Jane’s eighties stuff all the way up from Phoenix. He hadn’t complained even once.
    It was by her own avoidance that she hadn’t met Ryan before this trip. She had evaded every get-together when she knew he was in town, sidestepped every invite she knew would put them in the same room. His accomplishments intimidated her. His ability to travel the world while she was stuck in 160 square feet of cubicle space made her hate him a little. He was that guy: the one everyone secretly detested not because he was loaded, butbecause he was free. But the more time she spent around him, the more she wanted to know him.
    Lauren bit her bottom lip as she watched him work on her board, the muscles of his arms rippling with each graceful pull of wax.
    “Ryan.” Jane tried to get his attention, but Ryan was dead to the world, intently focused on his task. Lauren pushed her hair behind her ears, wondering whether Ryan was thinking about her, wondering if there was a reason he had started with her board rather than his own.
    Jane sighed and tried again. “Hello? Damnit.”
    “I’ll get him,” Lauren offered, descending the stairs, trying to give Ryan a wide berth so as not to startle him. She stepped around the other side of the sawhorses and waved. Ryan blinked at her before pulling his headphones from his ears.
    “Hey,” Lauren said.
    “Hey,” he replied. “What the hell did you do?” He drew his fingers across the gash she’d acquired two seasons ago when she just about Sonny Bono’d it into a tree. Lauren blushed as she considered another “accident” if only to have him tend to her wounds.
    “Nearly died,” Lauren said lightly, a little embarrassed.
    “Oona’s outside,” Jane said from atop the stairs. Ryan glanced up at her, then shook his