Snowbound Summer (3 page)

“Don't believe her, Ron!” Howard said. “Playing a little hard to get and pretending concern for your feelings are just tricks women use to set the hook more firmly in your mouth.”

Ron ignored him. He lifted his hand to caress Kara's cheek. “You don't have to give me your answer now. We can talk about it all you want to after we get back to Detroit. But to answer your question:
Yes, I'm sure!"

Ron leaned in to kiss her but the front door to the cabin slammed open and Ron's youngest niece charged into the room.

“Pee pee!” she shouted. “Pee pee emergency!”

The little five-year-old girl ran past Ron, Kara and Hanna and desperately began to search for a bathroom. Her mother, Anne, appeared in the front door, expressions of amusement and exasperation fighting with each other on her face.

“To the right!” she shouted, “at the end of the hall!”

The little girl spun about and darted in the proper direction still shouting about her emergency.

“Honestly,” Anne said as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her. “If she'd just go before we leave the house this wouldn't be a problem all the time, but she's always got to wait until the very last minute. And she won't ever use a public restroom.”

She stepped deeper into the cabin, unzipping her vest. “Whew! It's hot in here. Oh, and hello Ron and Kara, how was your flight?”

Anne was the Miller family member Kara felt most comfortable with. She was both the oldest daughter—just five years younger than Kara—and the sibling with the least apparent problems. She had a sweet, chipper personality and a big sister attitude which mixed the best of mothering instincts with a sibling's ability to tease and kid the baby of the family. In short, she didn't take Ron too seriously and she always seemed completely comfortable with the fact that Kara and Ron were dating.

Kara used Anne's arrival as an excuse to avoid having Ron kiss her in front of his parents and hopefully lower the tension a little bit. She should have known better. As she moved to give Anne a hug, Hanna returned to the latest point of contention.

“Ron's moving in with Kara,” Hanna announced. The disapproval in her voice reverberated about the small cabin.

“Really?” Anne asked. Her voice showed nothing but pleasant surprise. “Congratulations!” she offered Kara a hug. “I'm so happy for the two of you.”

“Of course, you'd say that,” Ron's father said. “You're a woman, after all.”

“And I love you, too, Daddy,” Anne said in the same lighthearted voice that she'd used to describe her daughter's unnecessary pee pee emergency.

She turned to direct a question at her mother. “Is it my imagination, or is he worse than usual today? Most people assume it's the guy who's taking advantage when he moves in with a woman without marrying her first.”

“She's reeling him in!” Howard Miller explained, “getting ready to finish catching him.”

“Please do!” Ron told Kara. When she didn't respond, he pantomimed roping her and pulling her closer. When Kara still didn't respond out of consideration for his parents, Ron stepped next to her and wrapped her in his arms again.

“Hey, get a room,” Anne teased them. “I'm not old enough to see that icky kissing.”

Ron turned to face her, sliding his arm around Kara's back. “Actually, that's the subject that started this conversation,” he told his sister. “Kara and I are going to get a room in the main lodge. There aren't enough bedrooms and we don't want to play slumber party games with you and your husband.”

Anne looked confused for a moment. “Hey, that's right,” she told her mother. “We are short a room. What's wrong, didn't you think we'd all fly out here?”

Hanna blushed.

Anne pounced on her mother's expression like the confession of guilt it was. “That's it! Isn't it? You didn't think Ron and Kara would end up coming, did you?”

Hanna tried to regain control of the conversation. “That's enough, Anne.”

Anne's smile grew larger. “No, that's not it, is it!” she exclaimed with a sudden burst of insight. “You didn't think that Kara was going to come.”

She glanced over at Kara and winked. “I can't imagine why. We're such a polite family and Dad always makes every woman feel so welcome.”

“I'm simply being honest about my feelings,” Ron's father defended himself.

“That's why we have these things called
manners
, Daddy,” Anne told him, “because no one really wants you to be all that honest.”

Hanna wasn't smart enough to let the conversation stay with her husband so only he would look like a horse's ass. “I did not think Kara wasn't coming,” she insisted.

“I'm sure we're all reassured to hear that,” Anne said. She stepped beside Kara and slipped her arm around her, effectively squeezing Kara between herself and Ron. “Because I never had any doubt. Kara loves Ron and she wouldn't let him go to a family gathering on his own, no matter how rude some of the people might be to her.”

Kara felt a confusing mixture of relief at Anne's insightful friendship and embarrassment that she would say these things in public.

“When you get ready to move, you be sure to tell me. Gene, Matt, and I can all carry boxes and Jody can keep Emmy out of trouble over at Mom's.”

“Thanks, Anne,” Ron told her.

“But we haven't actually worked out any of the details yet,” Kara added. “We've actually only just begun to discuss this subject. Ron sort of jumped the gun.”

“Don't let Mom and Dad make you uncomfortable over this,” Anne told her. “Just remember, Dad hates all women indiscriminately and Mom's a hypocrite.”

Ron's father seemed undisturbed by his daughter's accurate depiction of his feelings, but his mother bristled in her own defense. “Anne!”

Anne was unwilling to backtrack. “It's true, Mom! And you know it! If Kara and Ron were a gay couple you wouldn't think twice about them moving in together.”

Her daughter's criticism seemed to puzzle Hanna. “But that's because gay's can't marry in Michigan,” she said.

Her husband snorted derisively but made no further comment.

Kara wondered how she could change the subject, but Anne didn't give her a chance.

“Is your family going to be okay with this?” Anne asked. “I thought you told me your mother was pretty strict.”

Kara didn't even want to consider her mother's reaction to what Ron was proposing. “No,” she said, “my mother is going to be even less happy about it than your parents are.”

“Then why not just wait,” Hanna suggested. “There's no reason to rush into things.”

“Kara's mother has about as much chance of coming around to supporting us as Dad does,” Ron observed. “We can't live our lives tiptoeing around everyone else's problems. We're going to do what's right for us and the rest of you will just have to deal with it. This decision has nothing to do with you.”

Was this the same man who'd just pleaded with her to let them hang out with his mother this weekend so she wouldn't feel hurt?
Kara wondered. But then she realized Ron's positions on these two subjects really weren't incompatible. In the final analysis, whatever Ron and Kara had hoped to get out of it, this weekend was about his parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary. Putting them first was the decent thing to do. Moving in together was a completely different sort of issue.

“If we do move in together,” Kara announced, “then my mother will have to learn to deal with it, too...just like everyone else.”

“Great!” Anne said. She suddenly realized that Emmy had not reappeared. “I'd better check on my daughter,” she said. “Snow boots can make going to the bathroom a little more difficult.”

As if on cue, Emmy called out for help. “MOM!”

Anne hurried past them.

Her presence and support made Kara feel better about the trip and more generous. “So why don't Ron and I head over to the lodge and get ourselves a room,” Kara said. “And then, if you'd like, Hanna, we can take you and Howard to lunch to thank you for inviting us out here. The others can join us if they come in from the slopes.”

Hanna agreed, but she didn't look very happy about it.

* * * *

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Chapter Three

It took Howard Miller nearly ten minutes to get his belt buckled and find his coat and shoes with his wife prodding him along as if he were three and not sixty.

Outside, the weather at Snowline Lodge was absolutely beautiful. Bright sunshine lit the air and caused the snow to sparkle. It was cold—but not winter cold at these elevations. The storm clouds were still visible on the horizon, but it was hard to tell just how far off they really might be from this altitude.

Kara had never seen snow in July before and found the mix of warmer weather and glistening white snow very appealing as they walked the few hundred yards from the cabins to the main lodge. Ron led them directly to the check in counter while his mother continued to complain that it wasn't necessary for Ron and Kara to get their own room.

“Hi,” Ron said to the young woman behind the counter. “Do you have an empty room for the weekend? My parents invited us up to stay with them but miscounted the number of people who would be joining them.”

“Of course,” the young woman said as she began to punch buttons on her computer. The nametag on her bright red vest read: Margie.

“Ron, I don't want you and Kara to have to stay away from the rest of the family,” Hanna insisted.

Her inclusion of the phrase
have to
really irritated Kara, but since she was about to get her way, she kept her mouth shut about it.

Margie called up the vacancy information on her screen. “Will that be one suite or two?” she asked.

“One, please,” Ron answered.

Howard Miller stepped up to the counter next to Ron. “Would you happen to have a cabin with more than three bedrooms?” he asked Margie.

“What?”

The question emitted from the mouths of Hanna, Ron, and Kara pretty much simultaneously.

Margie hesitated in front of her computer, watching the Miller family over the top of her screen.

Howard smiled slightly, as if he were a little boy doing something naughty or mischievous. It wasn't a flattering expression on a sixty-year-old man. “If we can upgrade to a larger cabin, there'll be no need for Ron and Kara to get their own room.”

“But we want our own room, Dad,” Ron said.

Howard's mischievous smile blossomed into a full-fledged grin.

“Oh, for God's sake, Dad!” Ron swore. “This isn't a game. Kara and I—”

“Your father's right!” Hanna said.

Ron stopped speaking mid word and turned to face her. Kara was pretty certain that in her boyfriend's twenty-five years of life, he had never heard the phrase,
Your father's right,
pass through his mother's lips before.

“It solves
all
of our problems,” Hanna said. “You and Kara can have a little privacy while I get to keep my whole family around me.”

Hanna turned to the clerk behind the counter. “We're currently in Number Seven. Could we upgrade to something larger?”

Margie's fingers began to move across the keyboard again—much too efficiently in Kara's opinion.

Ron tried a different line of defense. “Mom, it doesn't make any sense for you to move everyone to a whole new cabin. We're only going to be in the hotel room to sleep anyway.”

“I want my family together this weekend!” Hanna told him while Howard grunted in amusement. “If this is what it takes to make that happen, then this is what it takes.”

“We do have an open cabin,” Margie announced. “It has four bedrooms, a hot tub, and two baths.”

Kara felt her spirits sag. Hot tubs weren't going to be fun under these circumstances.

Ron made one more tepid effort to stave off disaster. “Mom, Kara and I would really rather stay in the lodge.”

“I don't care what you'd rather do!” Hanna told him. “I want the two of you to stay with me in the cabin!”

Well, at least she's honest about it,
Kara thought. Still, there was no point in making this easy on Ron. They'd both have a far better time if they didn't stay with the family.

“I guess you have to decide, Ron,” Hanna continued, “if you came to Snowline to celebrate your father and my fortieth wedding anniversary or you came to have a weekend of fun with your girlfriend.”

“I guess I didn't realize I had to choose between those two options,” Ron announced. “But we certainly came to celebrate with you, Mom, so if that means we're not actually allowed to have any fun ourselves, so be it.”

Kara thought a reasonable woman would give way now, but Hanna could clearly not be described in such a fashion. The older women sniffed at Ron's remark, but went ahead and instructed Margie to switch their reservation. There were fees involved in the transfer, but over all everyone seemed happy with the arrangement except, of course, Kara and Ron.

* * * *

* * * *

They put off lunch in order to move their suitcases to the new cabin. Then delayed it further while they transferred the luggage and gear of Ron's siblings’ families to the new cabin as well, so it was well past one p.m. before Ron and Kara found a moment alone as they made their way back to the lodge a few minutes ahead of Hanna and Howard to get lunch.