Sunlight through the pine and oak trees as the Subaru wound its way up the mountain.
The excitement inside the Subaru was palpable.
"Oh my god, Mom, we're almost there," Chrissy said looking up from his phone in the backseat.
"Ermergerd ermergerd ermergerd," said Jonny in the front seat, using his typical defense mechanism of pretending to make fun of something while secretly loving and celebrating it with an enthusiasm that could only be called boyish.
"Okay," Mara said behind the wheel. "You guys wanted it, so I hope it's worth it."
"It's already better than last time," Jonny said.
"Yeah," Chrissy agreed. "Yeah."
In a tenth of a mile they were off pavement to the hard compacted dirt of the final road up the mountain. A quarter mile on the dirt road, which the Subie handled easily, then up a steep, paved driveway to the cabin.
"As promised," Mara said, slowing the wagon to a stop in front of the house.
"Just like old times," Jonny said, smiling, getting out of the car, fast.
"Wow," Chrissy said, looking at the cabin up and down. "I remember this place."
"Look," Mara said, uncertain. "It's been . . . years. We don't have to, I mean, we could try a different, nicer cabin . . ."
Jonny looked at his mother with shock. "But—you promised."
"Yeah, Mom," Chrissy said. "You said we could have whatever trip we wanted before senior year at State, and we wanted this. We wanted this cabin."
"Yeah, let's," and then Jonny stuttered a second, "d-do it right this time."
"But, boys, even if you are college men now," Mara protested. "It's not, it's not—I mean, won't there be too many memories?"
"Of course there are memories, Mom," Chrissy said. "This is how we get rid of them."
"Like exorcising ghosts," Jonny said.
Mara hesitated, but did not protest. "C'mon," Jonny said, "let's hug," and he and Chrissy swooped in on their mother for a tight, group hug. The twins, fraternal with brunet Jon and blond Chris, had their mother's tall, naturally slender frame, but at twenty-one, they now each had four inches over their mother's six feet of height, and Mara felt herself comfortably snuggled in her sons' embrace.
"Okay, boys," Mara said after a long while. Her body and spirit was warmed by the heat of their strong bodies. "Let's have a kiss and then go inside."
Jon and Chris celebrated, and first Jon, then Chris, gave Mara a sweet, long kiss on her lips.
"Mom," said Chris while Jon took charge and opened the Airbnb's lockbox, "how come you're in your forties but kiss like girls at college?"
Mara smiled. "Because I'm young at heart, sweetie."
The cabin was eerily, and then enchantingly familiar. Partially built into the side of a steep hill, the multi-story luxury cabin still had the same pine-and-oak, faux-rustic decor from a decade ago.
"It's like Brigadoon," observed Chrissy. "The cabin exists in the same three-day weekend, outside of time and space, and we keep retuning to it." He looked at some of the paperback books on the shelves. "I think I was reading these sci-fi books when we were here ten years ago."
Jon laughed. "Amazing you could get any reading done ten years ago."
"Oh, come on, boys," Mara said. "It wasn't that bad."
Her sons scoffed.
"That boyfriend of yours didn't want to spend much time with us," Jon said, "but he sure spent a lot of time with you."
"That's no fair, he tried to get to know you—" Mara defended him.
"Yeah, but he tried to get to know our sister a lot better," Chris sneered.
Mara flinched. "I thought we agreed this weekend was just for us, that we wouldn't bring her up."
"You know she's already been here with him?" Jon said. "That it was her idea, to re-do the weekend in the cabin with him. That when we were all here, she was dreaming the whole time that it was just him and her, even thought she was only a college freshman. That she brought him up here a year ago and they fucked all over the place—"
"Stop it! Stop it!" cried Mara.
"It's just facts, Mom," Chris said. "He's telling the truth. Why do you think she always slept as close to your bedroom as she could when we all used to travel together? Why she would sleep on a tiny couch or ottoman like a cat outside your door rather than take one of the bedrooms in the house? I mean, come on," Chris said, climbing up the wooden stairs to the cabin's lofted top floor. "Look at it up here. This is just a glorified landing at the top of the stairs, here's the master bedroom, the master bathroom, and our sister—your daughter—slept up here on this tiny wannabe daybed—Jesus it's still here—rather than sleep in one of the bedrooms downstairs so she could be close to him. So she could hear you two fuck."
"So he could come out of the bedroom after fucking you and fuck her, give her a turn," Jon said. "She was a nineteen year-old-virgin, she was going crazy and he was fucking your brains out all the time. It's almost like you can't blame her."
"I— I—," stammered Mara. "I don't know what to say."
"Don't say anything," Jon said. "But it's all out in the open—so let's banish those ghosts. Replace all those tough memories with new, better, loving ones."