A silence descended and she busied herself braiding a strand of her hair. As much as he loved his mother’s rather mercurial personality, it often made simple conversation nearly impossible. She usually blurted out exactly what was on her mind, without the benefit of a filter. Though, truth be told, Eli had come to the conclusion that she enjoyed shocking people.
“Is there some other topic we might discuss?” Eli asked.
“I suppose your inability to settle down and find a purpose for your life is off-limits as well?”
“The commitment gene is missing in the Montgomery family,” he muttered. “I take after you and Trudie. I make enough money to live my life. That’s all I need for now.”
“Well, in the interest of making money to live your life, I just happen to have a job for you, a good-paying job. They hired me to do it, but now that you’re home, I think you’d be perfect for it.”
“What kind of job?”
“I got a call from a production company in Los Angeles. They’re doing a reality show, a girl-in-the-wild thing where they drop this woman into the wilderness and she has to fend for herself for a year. They wanted to rent Trudie’s cabin because they’re basing the concept on her life on the mountain.”
“You rented out my grandmother’s cabin?”
“You won’t believe what they paid,” Annalise said. “It’s all very professional. This woman they got to host the show, Lucy Parker, she’s read all your grandmother’s books. She’s a huge fan.”
“How old is she?”
“What difference does that make? I was twenty-four when I first climbed Everest. Your grandmother was fifty when she wrote her first book. Age is just another metric that men use to put women down.”
Eli cursed softly. “All right, never mind her age. How long is she going to live there all alone? Two, three months?”
“A year. And she isn’t alone. She has a dog with her.”
“A year? How is a TV personality from Los Angeles going to feed herself? Does she hunt? What about chopping wood? There must be a production crew that’s going to stay with her. They wouldn’t leave her up there all alone.” He stared at Annalise. “Well? Did you ask these questions?”
“Well...no. I’m sure they know what they’re doing.”
“Does she have a radio or a sat phone to call if she needs help?”
His mother shrugged. “I have no idea. You can find out yourself when you hike up there the day after tomorrow. That’s the job. Check up on her once a month. Bring a few supplies to her.” She stood up. “In the meantime, I think we should go out and stuff ourselves with pizza and beer.”
“You don’t eat cheese,” he said. “You’re a vegan.”
“I’ve realized that cheese is quite possibly the most sublime food on the planet. And I only eat organic cheese from grass-fed, humanely pastured milk cows.”
“Next thing you’ll be telling me that you’re eating meat.”
“Bacon,” she said. “I mean, it’s really not meat. It’s fat. And it smells like sex feels. At my age, I just don’t think I should deny any of my urges. Life is short. We have to enjoy every single moment. That’s what Richard says.”
Eli rubbed his forehead, wondering at the sudden knot of tension beneath his fingertips. Maybe a beer—or five—was exactly what he needed right now. It appeared that a lot of things had changed since he’d last been home.
Leave it to his mother to involve them both in some silly reality show. The reality was that life in Trudie’s cabin was hard and lonely and it wasn’t a place for make-believe adventurers. He intended to let Lucy Parker know exactly what she was in for. And once she found out what a winter in the Rockies would be like, she’d want to run right back down the mountain.
* * *
LUCY PARKER ROLLED over on her bunk and winced at the ache in her shoulder. She’d spent the previous day stripping the bark from a tree she’d felled last week. It was backbreaking work, but all part of the process—the process of building her own shelter that would withstand the harsh winter.
She sat up and brushed the hair out of her eyes. This was the life she’d signed on for. A year in the wilderness, a year living life as Trudie Montgomery had. And the first task was to construct a small log cabin. She’d been on the mountain for exactly a month and had managed to gather enough logs for one wall of the ten-by-ten foot shelter she’d planned to build.
Her plans had undergone some revisions once she realized how heavy a twelve-foot tree could be. So she’d reduced the diameter of the trees she harvested to only those she could drag through the woods herself.
Though she was behind schedule, Lucy was certain that once her body got used to the specific labors involved, she’d pick up speed.
Her only companion in this adventure, her dog, Riley, was stretched out beside her on the old iron bed. When she sat up, he lifted his head. “I’d sleep much better if you’d stay on your side,” she muttered. He gave her a soft woof then leaped over her and scurried to the door.
She crawled out of bed, wrapping the old quilt around her to ward off the chill, then opened the front door of the cabin. Her breath caught in her throat as she took in the amazing landscape around her. To the west were mountains—high, craggy, snow-covered peaks. To the east, thick forest and the foothills. The closest town was Stone Creek, twenty miles away by air, but hours by vehicle and foot. She’d come to the cabin via a helicopter that had landed in the wide green meadow to the south, a meadow now painted in the watercolor hues of the first wildflowers of the season.
Riley scratched at the screen door and she opened it. He ran out and she followed at a more leisurely pace. She’d put her watch away and sealed it in an old baking-powder tin, allowing her body to dictate the hours of the day. When she was hungry, she ate. When she was tired, she slept. And when it was time to work, she focused all her energy to push herself harder than she’d ever been pushed. She loved it.
Lucy drew a deep breath of the crisp morning air. Her year in the wild promised to be both a personal and a professional challenge, and she relished the chance to prove herself. She’d bounced around from job to job in television production for years, picking up jobs where she could and making enough to put herself through college. She’d read Trudie’s books when she was a teenager and had dreamed of a life spent alone, with nothing but her strength and wits to sustain her.
An offhand conversation with another producer had resulted in a proposal for a new reality show. She’d spend a year in the wilderness, following in the footsteps of famous feminist Trudie Montgomery. Amazingly, her proposal had been accepted, a production budget had been secured and on April first, Lucy had been left in the meadow with Riley and twenty crates of supplies to get her through the next twelve months.
All she had to do was provide at least fifteen hours of video footage per week, chronicling her efforts to survive in the wilderness, recording her thoughts on Trudie, her feminist ideals and the challenges she’d faced. Meanwhile, the producers were working to sell the series to a network.
Lucy had been given a battery-operated two-way radio to call for help in case of an emergency, a laptop computer with a satellite uplink to upload her video footage each week and a generator to charge both the video camera and laptop.
Figuring it should be charged now, she walked back inside and grabbed the video camera, then sat down on the top porch step and turned it toward herself. Pushing the record button, she smiled. “Hooray, hooray, it’s the third of May. I’ve been on the mountain for exactly one month and today, I’m going to have a visitor. Annalise Montgomery, Trudie’s daughter, has agreed to stop by once a month to check up on me and bring me a few supplies. And to