Chapter Twenty-Four
It didn’t take Gretel long to see that Jason wasn’t going to tell Zander if something was wrong. But she’d managed to get some smiles and laughs out of the boy, so she set her sights on the next stage—getting him to open up.
She figured the best approach was to join him in his natural habitat—the snow. She asked him to show her his ski run workout. As soon as they were gliding down the trail, Jason turned into a different person. All of his snarkiness vanished and he turned into a confident, joyful kid.
They skied for a while in comfortable silence broken only by Jason pointing out a flock of chickadees chittering on a spruce tree, or Gretel asking where he got his skis. He went on a long rant about how hard it was to get good equipment in Lost Harbor, and how frustr
