Mountains to feed the community and shift the copper ore. The camp was soon fortified by a mercantile and a saloon, legitimized by two brick hotels and a post office, and for a time the people thrived. But eventually the price of copper plummeted and the miners moved on, leaving the hollowed-out detritus behind them.
The slope was steep on that side of Deer Creek, and a century’s worth of Colorado snow had exhausted the town, which was gradually losing its grip on the mountainside, collapsing down the embankment to the riverbed below. The surviving buildings had gone swaybacked and frail, propped up on nests of two-by-fours and tied to the trees around them like elderly relatives on life support.
The slow spectacle was a draw for visitors to nearby Telluride, who skied in to the Ridge for lunch and dumbstruck pictures—Can you even believe this place is still standing?—and returned along the network of ski lifts to the cloud-laced peak, then down again on Telluride’s side of the mountain, trailing perhaps a new set of poles or a scarf with the town’s tagline in bloodred letters, listing sideways as if toppling down the fleece: The Crookedest Town in the West.
It was a living. Barely. A few overbuilt homes were nestled among the aspen, the ultimate in inaccessibility, but for the most part the charm of Jawbone Ridge was lost on the masses. The town’s precarious situation made visitors uneasy and anxious to get away. The ground there felt uncertain, and the year-round residents had a strange way of moving, never stepping too hard on the frozen ground, their eyes sliding warily uphill as if waiting for the mountain to let go and finally finish them off.
At the far end of town, the road curved sharply along the edge of the ravine, then split off and turned abruptly uphill. The windshield of Julian’s car filled for a moment with pine boughs against a flat blue sky—then, as the road leveled off, the scene was replaced as if by magic with the roof, walls, windows and doors of a dark, narrow building.
Julian turned the car aside on the gravel lot and killed the engine.
Next to him, a woman’s voice filtered back into his mind.
“...two years ago. And it was beautiful weather. We didn’t even want to stop. We were the last ones on the gondola, and by the time we got to the top I had to pee so bad I didn’t think I’d make it to the bathroom.”
Emma giggled, a soft purring sound. She stretched widely, seeming to notice for the first time that they had arrived. She pressed her hand to the window, fingers spread like a spindly starfish.
“What is this place?” she said.
After the blocky cabins and rugged lines of Jawbone Ridge, the hotel next to them was strangely proportioned, crouching on the edge of the ravine as if driven there by the cluster of buildings below. A tall, crooked little place, with two steep arches flanking the portico and a roof like a hat smashed down over the top. The age-blackened walls imposed a sort of gravitas, and the leaded windows a sense of romance, but the hotel gave Julian the impression of a child at the edge of the playground who has not been asked to play.
Dark, neglected, unloved and unremembered.
No. Not true. Celia had loved the Blackbird. And Julian sure as hell remembered.
He popped the trunk and pulled out their bags: his, in sleek charcoal gray, hers a candy-apple red, studded around the handle with rhinestones that bit into his palm. A damned silly color for a suitcase and exactly the sort of thing Emma would choose. She had a passion for bling and kept herself well glazed: lip gloss, diamond earrings, a satin headband to hold back her wheat-blond hair. The effect was so convincing that he had only noticed her weak chin yesterday morning when she got out of the shower, her hair slicked back and face bare of makeup. This girl hadn’t even been given orthodontics, and here he’d taken her for money, for one of his own. Now he noticed the overbite all the time and held it as a sullen resentment against her, as though somehow she’d deceived him.
She was smiling up at him now, her rabbity head tilted to one side.
“Used to be part of the copper town.” Julian nodded toward the sign in black and red above the door: blackbird hotel. “Built by the mine owner so he’d have someplace to stay when he was in town, above the stink of it all. It’s changed hands many times since then, been modernized and all that.”
He faced the hotel with their bags in his hands.
An unexpected thrill of anticipation expanded in his chest. Any second now, Celia would open the door, or lean out an upstairs window, her hair lifting out like a banner, that slow smile on her face to show she’d been waiting for him. The sensation was so strong that for a moment he found himself searching the windows for movement, straining to hear her voice.
A second later, the excitement subsided. She wasn’t here. She never would be again.
Emma was waiting for him. She seemed to occupy too small a space in the scene, as if he were seeing her through the wrong end of a telescope.
“Are we going inside?” she said.
Too late now to change his mind. A cold knot of dread replaced the warmth of his original response. The Blackbird didn’t want him here any more than Celia had.
They crossed the rutted gravel lot and mounted the front steps. Julian opened the heavy wooden door and held it with his foot as Emma went inside. A bell hanging from the brass knob jingled as the door swung shut behind them.
Beyond the tiny vestibule, the room opened with surprising expansiveness to a tall, narrow space with a massive stone fireplace towering like a sentinel on the opposite end of the room. To their left was a winding staircase with a curved wooden banister, soaring up to the second floor. At its foot, a heavy door stood half-open; through the doorway, he could see a couple of hammered copper pots hanging from a rack and the edge of the long kitchen table. Celia had sanded that table to a beautiful sheen and finished it in a rich chestnut brown. She used to rub it down with an oiled rag after every meal; you’d catch the scent of it sometimes while you were eating, a faint bite of lemon where the warm plates sat.
As he watched, the kitchen door opened farther. A woman came halfway through the doorway and stopped. She was wearing a dark T-shirt and a pair of designer jeans so tight they had set into a series of horizontal creases up her thighs. On the front of her shirt was a screen-print image of the Blackbird Hotel, in white lines like a child’s drawing on a chalkboard.
Julian caught his breath.
Again he felt vaguely disoriented, thrown back in time. Yet Kate Vaughn was unmistakably part of the present. Her brown hair was lighter now, longer and fashionably streaked, but she looked much older than when he’d last seen her five years before. The babyish roundness of her face had gone, leaving a sharper line at her cheekbones and chin. It was the face of a beautiful woman now, evolved and polished. Cute little Katie, he used to call her. But it seemed that girl, like so many other things, was gone.
He thought at first that she was going to come forward and embrace him. She took one step, then hesitated as if she’d changed her mind.
“Julian,” she said.
“Hello, Kate.”
“How are you?”
“Surprised, at the moment. I didn’t realize you’d be here.”
He understood the lay of the land immediately. Kate’s family must have bought the only remaining property on the Ridge. Presumably to indulge her, to assuage any lingering grief; the Blackbird was far too small to make more than
