Moonlight on Snow

Untitled Part 1

          Haley Gant suddenly wished she could celebrate her thirtieth birthday the way her sister planned to celebrate her own. With all her friends, a dozen of the hunkiest male strippers, and enough champagne to float a boat. Probably an aircraft carrier if Courtney’s usual parties were any indication.

            Haley sighed. Right now she’d settle for enough champagne to float a tiny toy boat, but champagne was a scarce commodity on the slopes of the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana. Haley took a sip from the blue spattered enamel cup and grimaced. Coffee, even laced with sugar and powdered creamer, ran a distant second to a crystal flute of chilled bubbly.

            Despite her resolve not to succumb to weak female emotions, as her dad would say, Haley felt downright weepy as she watched the hands on the wind-up brass clock creep toward midnight. The rising wind accompanied the ticking of the old-fashioned clock in its inexorable journey to end the old year and begin the new one, bringing her thirtieth birthday with it. Thirty-years-old! Haley’s shudder couldn’t be attributed entirely to the bitter cold of the Montana winter. Where had the years gone?

            Six months ago when she and her sister had met in Las Vegas for a week’s vacation, Haley had cracked every over-the-hill joke she could think of, but she wasn’t laughing now. Courtney, younger than Haley by five years, had remarked at the time that Haley was trying too hard to be blasé. Bless her flaky sister’s heart! Courtney, who somehow had the uncanny ability to zero in on emotional issues, was on target. As usual.

            Haley smiled when she thought again of how Courtney vowed to celebrate her own thirtieth. Of course, she and Courtney, split apart by their parents’ bitter divorce, with Courtney raised by their free-spirited mother and Haley by their stern, no-nonsense  father, were worlds apart in opinions and beliefs.

             Most of the time, she didn't dwell on how she and Courtney had ended up reflecting their respective parents’ personalities. Sometimes though, like tonight, she did find herself wishing she could be more like her younger sister.

            Haley looked around her snug log cabin. Maybe she could squeeze one male stripper in, but only if he didn’t mind dancing on the old red and navy-braided rug in front of the stone hearth. The silliness brought a smile to her face and took her mind off her moody thoughts.

            Normally, she was too focused on work to notice how narrow and, a small sigh escaped her, how boring her life was. Tonight though, the solitude of the small cabin and the loneliness of the isolated research station with the wind moaning through the huge pines depressed her. Even the falling snow had lost its charm after nearly two months of the blasted stuff, and, now, she had a storm to anticipate according to the weather reports.

            Next time she accepted a research project, she vowed, she’d make sure it was some place warm. Like the equator! Right now the tropics sounded like her idea of heaven. She grimaced. Maybe if she wasn’t so focused on her cold solitude, she could concentrate on the report she should be writing.

            Instead of writing the year-end project report she needed to present to the corporate bean counter when he arrived next week. She'd spent the last day of her twenty-ninth year staring into the flames of the fireplace and questioning her life. Past, present, and future. Another sigh escaped her. Haley didn’t like the answers she’d found to those life questions. Restless, she tossed her pen aside, too distracted to pretend to work any longer.

            Though she’d never been one to celebrate the New Year, or even her birthday, she suddenly wished she were wearing a flashy gold dress and holding a flute of champagne while she danced with a hunky guy, to use Courtney’s words, in a hotel ballroom with other noisy revelers. The hunky guy would definitely be the perfect accessory for such an ensemble.