Glacier Girls Chapter One

My divorce finalized Tuesday and my new show was greenlit on Wednesday. Now it's Thursday and I'm on a gravel road in Montana talking to myself, a habit I developed during eight years of marriage to a man who was never in the room, even when he was.

I’m probably driving a little faster than I should be, but Jess stopped giving even one-word responses to my texts about an hour ago. She's really annoyed.

"You pushed your way into her trip," I tell the windshield. "You crashed a seventeen-year-old's birthday weekend and then you upgraded it without asking, just so you’d feel better about crashing it. And, okay, also because you have no interest in sleeping in a potentially bug-infested motel bed when there are stunning vacation rentals nearby. She’ll forgive you when she dips a spoon into the caviar.” Jess won’t give a crap about the caviar, and she definitely won’t give a crap that it came from the latest Marvel movie premiere.

Somewhere past the last gas station, my phone’s signal dropped completely and took the navigation with it, so now I'm on a gravel road headed in what I'm hoping is the general direction of the rented cabin, relying on a screenshot of a pin Jess sent hours ago.

Despite what I told the windshield, a quiet Jess is never a good thing. I've been reading her moods since we were nine years old in Minneapolis and decided we would be besties for life, to the point of cutting ourselves — or trying to — with a plastic knife and rubbing our thumbs together.

When I suggested I join them for Mia's birthday in Glacier National Park, I also suggested the upgrade from the cheap motel to a lux VRBO. These suggestions came after Jess declined my invitation to change their rustic plans and meet in Chicago to celebrate my divorce.

When Jess declined by initial suggestion, I conceded. "Fine. But it's Mia's last birthday before she can legally abandon us," as if I’d won an argument. "We are not staying in a motel."

She let me make the upgrade, even though fancy VRBOs are not her style. She always lets me do the things, and we both understand and have agreed, without ever saying it out loud, not to do accounting. Our lives took very different paths after college; mine is movie premier tins of caviar and hers is Aldi’s frozen cod. We’re both perfectly happy with our choices.

Speaking of accounting, "Hello, beauty," I say to the Birkin on the passenger seat next to me. She — nothing male could be so stunning — is tobacco leather with gold hardware, sitting there like this is her car and I’m here to chauffeur her around. She cost more than Dick loses in Vegas in a single day, and even Dick admits he “has a problem.”

Dick is my newly-minted ex, who insists on going by Richard, which is why he shall always be called Dick, forever and ever, amen.

I bought the glorious Birkin bag Wednesday afternoon, one hour after getting the text greenlighting my show. I stood in a boutique on Rodeo with an Amex black card in my hand and I thought: this is mine. Not ours. Mine. The transaction was approved and I felt something glorious I've been trying to think of the word for. It's not happiness, exactly. But it's a zip code adjacent to happiness. The feeling of a door you've been wanting to slam for a long time finally closing at the same time a door you’ve been desperate to enter swings wide for you. Freedom? Hope? Possibility?

"I earned you," I tell the Birkin.

She doesn't argue or rationalize or justify. Unlike Dick.

The Cartier watch on my wrist doesn't argue either. She's been with me since I saw her in a consignment shop on Melrose, years ago, when my Visa had a five-hundred-dollar limit and I ate a lot of saltines and peanut butter so I could pay the credit card bill. The watch was the first thing I ever bought myself that said who I was going to be instead of who I was. The Birkin is kind of her graduation gift, if you think about it. From where I started to where I am.

“I'm not admitting this to Jess, but damn, girl, you are a beauty!” I say to Glacier National Park out the windshield, which is now speckled with bug guts.

Montana is showing off. The aspens have turned completely gold, so gold it looks fake, like a prop master spent time in a building getting every leaf and bit of bark just right. The snow-capped peaks are visible above the treeline. I'm not going to tell Jess how beautiful it is because she will take that as proof that Montana is better than Chicago.

The rental hits a bump so deep my teeth slam together. The car does not love this road. My dental hygienist may have thoughts, too, if this keeps up.

I haven't seen a house or car or rabbit in at least ten minutes. There is nothing much out here, and for a minute I wonder if I missed a turn, but according to Jess's pin I should be close.

A red pickup with a shell on the back comes around the bend toward me, and the driver — it’s a man, of course, it's always a man — doesn't give a shit that I exist. Figures. He’s wearing a stupid Yankees hat.

I pull toward the trees, focusing hard to stay out of the small ditch. This is not a two-lane situation. Unless you’ve got a penis, apparently.

As our windows come parallel, I smile and raise the middle finger salute. He doesn't see it, or doesn't care. He slows a tiny bit to avoid the bump I just survived, and in that extra beat my eyes go to the back window.

There’s a girl, or young woman, mostly hidden behind a curtain of dark hair. Even though I can’t see her face, I can tell she’s looking straight at me. There’s a horror movie vibe to it. I hum a few bars of the song from Deliverance.

Then the truck is around the bend and gone. My imagination is working overtime, as it often does. It's been a day, leaving LAX at the butt crack of dawn, dealing with the flight into Kalispell, and then getting the rental, and now a long drive. I'm tired, and thinking about the wine I checked because I didn't trust myself to pack light enough to carry on, and whether Jess has told Mia I’m coming, and what Mia said. Mia has her mother's instincts and none of her patience or tact, which is one of many things I love about my goddaughter.

Finally, the cabin appears through the trees and it's even better than the photos on the website. It's built with log construction, and has a wide porch, with tall aspens ringing it. Gorgeous. Of course it is. I specified gorgeous.

"See, I told you the upgrade would be worth it," I tell Jess, who isn't in the car.

Her 15-year-old Honda, which is not a rental, is in the driveway. She's probably annoyed that I'm late. But that was the airline's fault, not mine.

I slip the Birkin over my shoulder, can't wait to see Jess's face. She'd never in a zillion years want one, but she'll know what it is, and what it means to me. The emotional weight of it. I hang my laptop bag over my other shoulder because work never sleeps, then navigate my giant suitcase out of the back of the SUV and drop it onto the gravel with a thud. Too late I remember the wine. If anything is broken inside I won’t know until I open it. I grimace at the thought of my consequences oozing out in a red puddle.

The long porch steps are wood, but I’m wearing my brand new pony skin Puma ballerina flats, so I’m quiet as a mouse. The front door is open a crack, because Jess is Midwestern about doors, and I push it open with my butt.

"Hello, beauties! The party has arrived!" I yell into the entry/living room/dining area/kitchen that is bigger than many of the million dollar houses in Santa Monica. "Somebody pour me a glass of whatever's open. Mia, come give your favorite god mama squishy kisses."

I have about thirty seconds to recognize how beautiful the space is, with its twenty-foot windows looking out at the mountains, its rock fireplace that rises two stories, the inviting sofas that will be perfectly yummy after a day breathing in mountain air.

And then a smell seeps into my nostrils. I lower my laptop case to the kitchen island top and release the handle of my suitcase while my brain works very hard, trying to tell me that what I smell isn’t what it is.

I try to find another explanation, any explanation, for what my belly somehow understands.

My brain fails at this. It fails hard.

I turn slowly and see a young girl on the floor by the window and my heart stops and then restarts, pounding like a jack hammer under my skin. I'm moving toward her before I've made a conscious decision to move, and then I'm close enough to see that her hair is blonde.

Mia's hair is dark.

It takes me another beat to understand that this doesn't mean Mia is okay. It just means this isn't her.

As I turn to scream for Jess, I see her on the floor near accordion doors to a large outdoor deck. The doors are closed.

Both Jess and the girl are naked. Both are on their bellies, hog-tied. Both are covered in blood.

And this isn't a movie set.

I fall to the floor and try desperately to free Jess from the confines of the rope. I can’t. I need to get up and find a knife, but also I can’t leave her.

I don’t know how long I'm on my knees beside the woman who has been my best friend for nearly thirty years. Long enough to understand that there is nothing left to do here, but understanding that doesn't help. The sound coming out of my mouth is one I've never heard before.

I dig my phone out of the pocket of my Lululemon tracksuit jacket. No service. Joke’s on you, sucker. Spectacular comes with great views and zero bars.

I push up from my knees, and fall onto my ass in a patch of muck no prop master could replicate, a mix of all the things that leave a body when it’s been destroyed like this.

“Mia?” I whisper, although I mean to shout it. I try again, putting force into the word. “MIA!”

Where is she? She could be hiding, waiting for her godmother to come and save her. I try to stand up again, Bambi on ice, and slip in a pool of blood, crashing to the floor next to the blonde girl. I touch one of the few spots on her lovely face that’s not crusted red and whisper, “Baby girl, I am so very fucking sorry.”

Then I get myself up and go through every room in the house.

There is no Mia.

I go outside. I stand on the porch and I look at the gravel road going back the way I came.

The memory of a red truck flashes through my mind.

The back window.

A face.

Dark hair.

Mia's hair.

I'm in the car before the thought finishes forming.

COMING OCTOBER 15TH!