Page 89 of Stay this Christmas
Thankfully, the beam of the headlights caught a small sign readingHideaway.
“This is it.” I turned down the dirt road lined with scrub brush. Not much to see out here even in the daylight, but at night, this amounted to a lot of nothing. The whole point, but still.
A small building came into view in the darkness. “I think we’re here.”
“That’s an outhouse.”
“Past that.”
She turned to me, her expression unreadable in the near-total darkness. “You didn’t say anything about an outhouse.”
“Is that a dealbreaker?” On a lot of my trips, an outhouse would have been a luxury, so it hadn’t occurred to me to warn her.
“No, I just…you know…snakes.”
She whispered the last word as though speaking it out loud would summon them to her.
“Now that would have been a good fear to face for your list.”
She made a sound of disgust. “No, thank you. That’s a normal, God-given fear.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for you.”
A tiny house sat about seventy-five feet away from the outhouse, and I pulled up in front.
“Oh,” Harper breathed a sound of delight as we drew nearer. “Is this it?”
Luckily, she sounded enthusiastic. This night would have busted up real fast if she’d been as disgusted by the thought of staying here as she was by the thought of running across snakes on her way to the outhouse.
The small house wasn’t much bigger than my dad’s lawnmower shed but stood twice as tall, with a steeply sloped roof like half an A-frame. A fire pit sat somewhere close by, along with Adirondack chairs and a picnic table, but I hadn’t planned to put those to use. From the pictures on the rental’s listing, we’d be completely secluded out here, with nothing but trees for miles.
Trees and stars.
“You ready?” I asked.
“Let’s see it.”
We grabbed our things and climbed the three steps to the tiny house’s door. I punched in the code the owner had given me and helped Harper inside. Cold in here—I’d have to get a fire going before we did anything else. Flipping on a switch by the door to get the solar generator up, I turned on the lights.
“Oh,” Harper breathed again.
I’d become a real fan of her breathy sighs.
The main living area was maybe six feet by ten feet, with a tiny kitchen by the door, a fold-down table and chairs on the opposite wall, and the high wall nothing but windows. Harper took a few steps across the glossy hardwood floor, soaking it in.
“Oh, wow.”
A queen-sized bed sat in a nook facing the windows, beneath the sloping ceiling. The chill in the air made its plush pillows and soft blankets especially inviting. The small space had been hung with thick tapestries, making it feel like its namesake: a hideaway.
“This is beautiful.” Harper spun in a slow circle, her hands clasped together in front of her chest as she examined the tiny house. “But—”
She ducked past me and looked around, her brow furrowed. Not much to see over here except for a single-burner camp stove that barely qualified as a kitchenette and a small wood stove.
“Where’s the second bed?”
My stomach bottomed out. “There should be two.”
“Pretty sure I just had the grand tour, and there’s no other bed.”
