He learned to check the snow report every morning before deciding whether to have Sophie picked up by the school van or drive her himself. He was not, by nature, a man who talked about his feelings. He processed things by working by the physical language of wrenches and torque and the satisfying click of a problem resolving. In the two years since Lauren died, he'd rebuilt three vintage motorcycles, replaced the entire engine of a 1965 Ford Mustang for a client who couldn't afford to pay him what it was worth, and reroofed the garage himself over a long summer weekend. He'd also cried exactly once, alone in the garage at 11:00 at night, with a glass of whiskey he didn't drink and an old photograph he'd found behind the workbench, Lauren at 24, standing in front of the same building the day they opened it, laughing at something off camera.
He'd put the photograph in a drawer. He'd poured the whiskey down the drain. He'd gone back inside and checked on Sophie, who was asleep with Gerald tucked under her chin, and he'd stood in the doorway for a long time. He told himself he was fine. By most measurable standards, he was.
He was just very, very tired of being fine alone. He didn't think about this consciously. He thought about fuel lines and brake pads and the particular problem a 1978 Triumph presented when the ambient temperature dropped below 20 degrees. He thought about Sophie's parent-teacher conference next week and whether the leftover chicken in the refrigerator was still good. He did not think about the way the woman on the stool near his space heater had looked at him when he opened the door like she was surprised a warm thing existed in all that cold.
He was almost finished with the fuel line when Sophie came back with two mugs of hot chocolate. Navigating the garage with the focused seriousness of a surgeon carrying organs. She handed one to Riley with both hands and set the second one on the edge of Daniel's workbench without being asked. "I put extra marshmallows. " Sophie said. "Because you were outside a long time. " Riley looked down at the mug.
It was white with blue flowers around the rim, clearly the good mug. There were, indeed, extra marshmallows. "Thank you, Sophie. " She said. Sophie climbed onto the second stool with the ease of a child who had claimed this territory long ago. She arranged Gerald on her knees and looked at Riley with calm curiosity.
"What's your name? " "Riley. " "Do you live in the mountains? " "No, I live in Denver. " "We went to Denver once. " Sophie said. "Dad got lost. " "I didn't get lost. " Daniel said from under the motorcycle. "He got lost. " Sophie said confidentially to Riley. Daniel said nothing. Riley hid her smile behind the mug.
She drank the hot chocolate and it was, without question, the best thing she'd tasted in months. She thought about her kitchen in Denver, the one that her housekeeper kept stocked and her chef used three times a week to prepare meals. She ate at her desk while reviewing quarterly projections. She thought about the last time someone had made her something with extra marshmallows because she'd been outside in the cold. She couldn't remember.
Riley Hargrove was 31 years old and worth, at last estimate, somewhere between 40 and 60 million dollars, depending on the quarter and the valuation method. She had started Hargrove Analytics at 25 with a business partner who left after 18 months and a seed round she'd had to fight for every dollar of. The company built predictive market tools for mid-size retail chains, not glamorous, not the kind of thing that got TechCrunch headlines, but extremely useful and increasingly irreplaceable. By the time she was 28, she had 200 employees. By 30, she had 400 and a third office, this one in Austin.
Success had come to Riley Hargrove the way it comes to people who work 16 hours a day and treat sleep as a negotiation. Completely and in ways that left no room for anything else. She had an apartment in Denver's Cherry Creek neighborhood that cost $11,000 a month and that she used primarily to store her clothes and sleep. She had a personal assistant named Marcus who she trusted more than most people she'd known for years. She had a stylist, a personal trainer, a therapist she saw every two weeks and mostly lied to, and until four months ago, a fiance.
His name had been Brendan Westcott. He was handsome and successful and said the right things in front of the right people. And she had been with him for two years before she understood that she had been with him the same way she'd rented her apartment because it made logistical sense, because it fit the shape of the life she was trying to run. The engagement lasted 7 months. The end was quiet, no screaming, no accusations, just Brendan saying, in the careful voice he used for things he'd rehearsed, that he didn't think she was actually present in the relationship and Riley looking at him across the kitchen island and realizing she couldn't argue with that.
She'd handed back the ring. She'd gone to the office the next morning. She'd put it in a folder in her mind labeled resolved and moved on. Except she hadn't moved on because there was nowhere to move on to. There was only the next quarter, the next product cycle, the next round of investor calls.
There was only the vast, efficient machinery of her professional life running flawlessly, producing results, meaning nothing. Four months later, she'd stood at her office window on a Tuesday morning watching it snow on Denver and felt something she didn't have a precise word for. Not sadness, exactly, but its cousin. The sense of a life that was full of everything and empty in some way she couldn't locate or quantify. She'd gone downstairs.
She'd gotten on the motorcycle. She'd ended up here in a garage in Aspen with grease on her riding jacket and a mug of hot chocolate in her hands and a 7-year-old telling her, with complete seriousness, that Gerald the rabbit was afraid of thunder but not of snow because snow is quiet and Gerald prefers quiet things. "Gerald sounds like a very sensible rabbit. " Riley said. Sophie considered this. "He is. " "But he doesn't like change. " "A lot of people are like that. " "Are you like that? " Riley thought about this honestly.
"I used to be. " She said. "I'm not sure anymore. " Daniel straightened up from the Triumph and rolled his shoulders. "She's ready. " He said. He pulled the invoice pad from his back pocket and wrote for a moment. "Fuel line and labor. " "$60. " Riley stared at him. "$60. " She repeated.
"Parts and an hour of time. " He tore the invoice off and held it out. She'd paid $$340 to have the same bike looked at in Denver by a shop that had replaced nothing and found nothing wrong. She opened her mouth, closed it, and took the invoice. "I'd like to pay more. " She said. "$60 covers it. " He said. He wasn't stubborn about it, just certain, the way he was certain about fuel lines and brake pads.
She paid in cash. She stood at the garage door and watched the snow coming down, still heavy, and understood, without being told, that riding out into this was a bad idea. "Is there anywhere to stay nearby? " She asked. He looked at the storm. "Not that you'd reach on that bike tonight. " A pause.
He looked at Sophie, who was watching both of them with the interest of someone who has been hoping for something. Then he looked back at Riley. "There's a couch in the front room. It's warm. You can leave when the storm breaks. " "I can't impose. " "Sophie made you hot chocolate. " He said.