A Little Too Late (Madigan Mountain)

REED

Twenty minutes later, I’m standing outside the snowmobile shed with Ava and a maintenance guy named Hank. Ava wears a backpack containing work gloves, headlamps, and trash bags.

She seems awfully cheerful about it, in spite of the fact that we could be making out on the sofa upstairs.

A pickup with Randy’s Humane Animal Control painted on the side pulls into the maintenance lot on studded tires. The engine shuts off, and a lanky white guy with curls escaping his beanie hops out. “Ava!” He gives her a big smile. “Always a pleasure!” He lopes across the snow to give her a big, overly tactile hug.

“Glad you could get here in this weather,” she says.

“Eh, the snow has mostly stopped.” He releases her and glances up at the sky. Then he claps his mittened hands. “Okay, lady. Whatta we got this time?”

“Bert says raccoons.” She beams at him from close range, because this dude is the kind who does not know how to respect a woman’s personal space.

“Point of entry?” he asks.

Ava doesn’t seem to notice that this guy is a flirt. “Bert thinks someone just left the door ajar. This early in the season, we have new people who don’t understand the consequences of their actions—and their snack wrappers.”

“Ah. Easy job, then. No repairs.” He’s beaming at her like an idiot. “Want to ride up together?”

“She’s coming with me,” I say, slipping the key to the snowmobile out of Ava’s hand.

The guy’s eyes slide over to me. I think he didn’t even notice me before. “Duuuude. You look familiar. Are you one of the mythical Madigan sons?”

I don’t even know how to answer that, so I just scowl at him.

“Randy, meet Reed Madigan,” Ava says. “You probably went to high school with one of his younger brothers.”

“Rightio!” the guy says. “I was between Crew and Weston. Used to jump off cornices with Crew on powder days. How is that guy, anyway? Haven’t seen him since before we were legal to drink those beers we used to hide in the woods.”

“He’s great,” I say, as if I even had a clue. “I’ll tell him you said hi.”

“Sa-weet! Let’s go catch some coons!” He grabs two metal poles with loops on them out of his truck and follows Bert to one of the snowmobiles.

“I’m driving,” Ava says, plucking the key out of my hand.

“But—”

“My caper, I’ll captain it.” She hands me a helmet.

I laugh, because I should have seen that coming.

“If you’re a good boy, you can drive back down.” She straddles one of the double sleds and clips the tether to her beltloop.

I swing onto the back and watch as she primes the engine with an expert tug and then pulls the starter cord with brisk efficiency until the motor hums to life. Ava was already the sexiest woman I ever met. Now I’m watching her master the hundred and fifty horsepower engine between her legs.

Honestly, I’m a little turned on. And we’re beginning to move.

We head up the mountain in the dark. I hold the handgrips and lean back against the seat support. The moon is hazy behind the clouds, but it’s still bright enough to show me the mountain’s contours far beyond the Ski-Doo’s headlamps.

What is this unfamiliar emotion I feel? It’s…happiness. Joy for no particular reason. I didn’t know I had raccoon eviction on my bingo card, but I don’t really mind all that much. The new-fallen snow stretches out in front of us, untracked. The air is cold but not punishing, and its scent is clean and piney.

I lean forward and wrap my arms around Ava’s waist, my hand across her tummy.

She lifts her chin to chastise me. “That’s not safety protocol.”

“Then don’t crash.”

In response, Ava leans into the throttle. I’m exhilarated as she zips up the mountain, quickly gaining on the other vehicle. She bypasses the peak lodge to head for the smaller warming hut the ski patrol uses. It’s old—shaped like a wooden octagon—and was built when my grandfather started the resort.

We pull up a few minutes later. When I get off the sled, Randy and Bert are standing there waiting for us. “Let’s do this,” Randy says. “I can hear ’em in there. Engines made ’em nervous.”

Ava removes her helmet and takes one of the poles from his hands. “After you, Randy.”

He switches on his headlamp and slowly opens the door to the hut. I hear a chuckle before he switches on the overhead light. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Here we are interrupting your party.”

When Ava and I crowd into the doorway behind him, I see the floor is strewn with debris. The raccoons have tipped over the garbage can and ransacked it. It looks like they got into some first-aid supplies, too.

“What a mess, kids!” Ava hoots. “Didn’t Mama raise you better than this?”

Randy laughs as he crouches down to look under a bench. Two cute little masked faces peer out at him.

He advances slowly toward them, extending the cabled loop on the end of the pole. “All right, everybody be nice and chill. This won’t hurt a bit,” he says sweetly. “Who’s first?” Then he starts singing to the tune of Happy Birthday.

Put your head in the loop.

Don’t make any poops.

Put your head in the loooooop…

He slides that thing right over a cute black nose, and I’m stunned when it actually works. Slowly, and making little baby noises, he slips the loop down the raccoon’s body. “Come on big fella. I need your hands, too. It’s gonna be fine.”

In response, the raccoon growls.

Note to self—don’t ever have Randy’s job. We are way too close to this potentially rabid animal.

He nudges the raccoon, causing it to lift one of its paws, and tightens the cord to cinch the snare around the raccoon’s body.

“There we go,” he says. “Come to daddy.”

The raccoon thrashes its fuzzy limbs, suddenly breaking free. With a loud squeak, he leaps in my direction, and I let out an unmanly noise of surprise.

But it lands on a chair instead of leaping onto my throat to kill me. Soon it’s cowering and regretting all its life choices.

I kind of know how it feels.

But Randy seems unbothered. “That’s what I get for only grabbing one leg.” He moves the loop over the raccoon again, patiently maneuvering until he’s got it by the midsection, this time with the snare around both front feet.

Then he hoists the raccoon again, its body tilting forward, head down and limbs outstretched like a furry starfish. It makes a growl of deep unhappiness.

“Yeah, I’ve heard it before,” Randy says cheerfully. “Here, Ava—trade you.”

To my stunned horror, Ava calmly trades poles with him. Now she’s holding a raccoon on the end of a stick at what I hope is a safe distance away from her body. Slowly, she carries it outside.

I follow her to make sure it’s okay. I don’t know what I could really do, though, except fling my body onto it if it tries to escape.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

It only takes Randy a few minutes to catch the other animal. The poor thing obviously gave up after its pal got captured. It hangs sulkily from the snare, eyeing Randy with irritation in its eyes.

Then Bert shakes out the trash bags, and he and I clean the hut, which only takes a few minutes. Privately I wonder if you can catch rabies from raccoon spit on granola-bar wrappers. But I guess I won’t ask.

When we’re done, I close the door to the hut, firmly engaging the latch.

“All righty, then!” Randy says, grinning at Ava. “I’m gonna let this guy go, and as soon as he runs away, you do the same.” When he loosens the snare, the raccoon doesn’t need to be asked twice. He scrambles toward the tree line.

Ava’s charge follows a moment later. “Well done, crew.” She takes something out of her pocket and hands it to Randy. “Have a drink on me before you go, or whenever you’re back at the lodge.”

“Will you join me?” he asks.

I tense. I knew that guy was up to no good.

“Sorry, I have an early morning tomorrow,” she says sweetly. “Maybe another time.”

I almost growl like a raccoon.

As Ava and I suit up for the snowmobile ride back down the mountain, I sit in the driver’s seat this time. “Cold pizza is still pizza,” I remind her. “Shall we?”

She sits down behind me and wraps her arms around my waist.

It feels nice. Really nice. “I’m sorry you had to come up the mountain at this hour,” I tell her. “It’s not fair that all the crappy things fall to you.”

“Reed, I love this job. And not in spite of all the weird things I have to do. I love it because of those things. Catching raccoons by moonlight? Who wouldn’t want to do that for a living?”

With my hand cocked above the starter, I go quiet inside. Until this very second, I don’t think I truly understood that Ava’s job here wasn’t merely an accident—a Plan B she had to form after I blew up her life.

She’s happy here. She’s found her place. She’s good at it, and she loves it.

Something tight inside my chest unhooks.

“Reed, is everything okay? Do you need a refresher on how to start the sled?”

A laugh bubbles out of me. “I’m good, lady. Really good.” I pull the starter, and it catches on the first try. I let up on the brake and then push gently on the throttle. If the sled flies forward, I won’t be able to maintain my badass reputation, will I?

But it’s fine. We begin to glide across the moonlit snow. The storm has let up, and it’s even brighter than it was an hour ago. Picking up speed, I ease into the first turn. The wind chills my face, but I don’t even care. “Hold on,” I tell Ava. “Tight grip.”

She hugs me with her knees, and then I steer us off the groomed path and into the powder.

Ava lets out a little shriek. “Reed!” She starts to laugh as we go surfing over the snowdrifts.

It’s exhilarating to steer through mounds of feather-light snow. I’d forgotten how this feels. The mountain. The cold air rushing me. The endless expanse of snow and moonlit sky. Lately, the most adrenaline I experience is when I score a meeting with a new client.

I haven’t been living, I realize. Not the way I used to.

And I want it back. All of it. Including Ava.

Especially Ava.