The Shuddering

counter.
    “But you know what?” he asked.
    “What?”
    “I sort of resent it.”
    A flurry of anxious butterflies erupted around her heart. Resent? Her gaze shot across the kitchen. Ryan was looking right at her, his expression shifting from unsteady to justified, as though he’d just unearthed some terrible secret.
    “It’s true, then,” he said steadily. “There was an ulterior motive. You knew what was going to happen, that we were going to dig each other. How ironic that I should meet a girl I actually like weeks before packing up my shit and moving halfway across the world.”
    She clenched her teeth, suddenly hating him. “And you?” she asked, shooting a quick look toward the hallway to make sure nobody was eavesdropping before narrowing her eyes and glaring at her brother. “ You didn’t have an ulterior motive?” she hissed, keeping her voice down.
    “Oh, I certainly did,” Ryan confessed without missing a beat. “But that got as screwed up as this whole trip, and I hate to tell you, but that isn’t my fucking fault.”
    She looked away from him, taking a steadying breath. He was right; it wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Things were just twisted, too muddled to ever get back to the way things were—back when she and Ryan and Sawyer were the Three Musketeers, always together, always laughing, never lonely or angry or unsure.
    “You’re right,” she said after a long while. “He will get stuck.”
    “He’s already stuck,” Ryan said to himself.
    “You should go out there with him. If he’s going to leave, at least it’ll give you more time—”
    Ryan shoved himself out of his chair. “There are plenty of rooms. She didn’t mind spending an entire day alone in the fucking lodge, but now she can’t sulk on her own in here? What’s the difference?” He crossed the kitchen to meet Jane at the sink, turning her to face him by looping his arms through hers and pulling her into an unanticipated hug. Jane sighed against his shoulder, mutely shaking her head at their situation. “I love you,” he told her.
    Lifting an arm to press the hem of her sleeve to one of her eyes, she eventually stepped out of his embrace and grabbed the carton of eggs from beside the sink. “How many do you want?” she asked, sniffling.
    “Three,” he said.
    Jane looked up at him, forced a smile.
    Ryan stared at her for a moment, then gave her shoulder a squeeze and turned away, wandering down the hall.
    “This is fucking crazy,” Ryan concluded while waddling through the snow, careful not to kill himself as he descended the deck stairs. “This snow and this idea. What the hell happened anyway?”
    Sawyer plunged his hand into the precariously balanced powder on the railing, pushing it overboard. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
    They rounded the corner to spot the Nissan and Jeep, heavily frosted, the tires half-buried in the drift.
    “Dude.” Ryan gave an incredulous laugh, motioning to the vehicles to punctuate the scenario’s insanity. There was no way this plan was going to work.
    “Didn’t your dad have some sort of plow attachment for the snowmobile?” Sawyer asked.
    “Like twenty years ago. He doesn’t come up here in the winter anymore. He never got over that winter break.”
    “Then why did we come up here? You didn’t think it was possible that we could get snowed in?”
    Ryan held up his gloved hands. “I checked the forecast. I checked the damn thing like a half dozen times. You want a bullshit job? Predict the fucking weather.”
    “Look.” Sawyer sighed. “I wouldn’t care if it was just us, you know? But she’s driving me insane.”
    “You want to tell me what happened?” Ryan asked, punching holes in the snow with each step. “Or are you going to cryptically whine about it for the rest of the weekend?”
    “Just help me, okay?”
    “I’m trying to help you. Want me to call her a cab? Request an airlift?”
    Sawyer finally reached his Jeep and drew his arm across the hood. A thick blanket of white slid forward, exploding just beneath the front bumper.
    “There’s no goddamn way,” Ryan said. “This isn’t going to work.”
    “Are you sure that plow isn’t in there?” Sawyer nodded toward the garage.
    “I didn’t see it. It isn’t as though Pop was ever exactly handy, you know? He doesn’t have some epic supply of usefulness stashed away for times like these.”
    Ryan continued to shuffle down the driveway toward the road,