Fourteeners

by Sarah Latchaw

  Another wave of familiarity struck me, and I couldn’t help but smile. “Doesn’t matter whether you live in Colorado or Cameroon. If a dude’s talking sports, a raging wild fire wouldn’t get their attention.”

  “Maybe one of these.” She patted her rear, then seemed to remember she was swimming in baggy cargo pants. “Well, maybe not today.” A wave of self-consciousness claimed her as she took in her disheveled appearance. “I’m so sorry, I’m not usually crude, or so…” She swiped away the tangled wisps that had escaped her ponytail.

  Lord, I just wanted to scoop up this woman and hug her. “Hey! You look like you’ve been outside, doing what people do in Colorado. But you’re not from here, are you?” I dug a little. “Tamaulipas, is it?”

  Just like that, the woman’s face shuttered. She quickly scribbled her note, folded it in half, and passed it to me. “I apologize, I have to run. Thank you very much!” She heaved her bag onto her shoulder and was halfway out the door before I realized she was leaving.

  “Wait! I don’t know your name.”

  She paused, and then, barely above a whisper, said, “Marieta. Just Marieta.”

  “Just Marieta,” I repeated.

  The tiny girl in my arms gave an angry mewl, demanding my attention. Marieta watched her, a deep sorrow behind her eyes. “Congratulations,” she murmured. “I didn’t know…”

  “Oh, this little sweetheart isn’t mine, although I’m still working on a deal with Luca.” I gestured behind me. “He’s the proud papa.”

  The melancholy lifted as she comprehended my words. With a rushed “goodbye” she was gone, and only the fragrance of citrus lingered.

  It took a cistern-full of self-control not to unfold that neon yellow slip of paper and read Marieta’s words. I was Samuel’s wife, after all. But because I was his wife, I needed to trust that he himself would inform me of the note’s contents.

  He paced our living room, tugged his hair, barely containing the freak-out. “You honestly couldn’t tell that she was my sister?”

  “Well, of course I can see the resemblance, now. It’s all about context. Your long-lost sister was the last person I’d expect to waltz into Paddlers on a Friday afternoon.”

  Samuel placated. “I know, I’m sorry.”

  I gestured to the note. “What does she want?”

  “She wants to meet tomorrow afternoon, says she needs my help with something. She left a phone number.” Pace pace, tug tug. “God knows it’s risky for her to be in town, especially when there are so many migrant workers up for the summer—people who might recognize her.” Pace pace, tug tug. “But I can’t help it. I’m so damned glad to see her again. She wants to meet at the Mount Sanitas trailhead, on the edge of town.”

  “Isn’t that rather secluded?” I raised an eyebrow.

  Samuel met my eyebrow and raised his chin. “Santiago will go with me.”

  “If you think it’s safe…”

  In the end, it hadn’t mattered whether it was safe or not. Samuel waited three hours (Santiago bailed after two), called her prepaid phone countless times.

  She never showed.

  If Samuel had made a pact with his sister to sever contact, one wouldn’t know it by the way he threw himself into tracking her down. He began with discrete inquiries in the Chicano communities along the Front Range. Nada. Then he moved on to migrant services, but her false identification said she’d been born in the U.S., so of course she didn’t register in their database.

  Her last known address—in Texas—proved to be a dead end…she hadn’t lived there in three years.

  I scoured the internet and social media, but any half-brain knows you don’t post about hiding from a drug cartel and expect to live, so that was fruitless. When I mentioned that maybe she’d changed her mind about meeting him, he reasoned that a person doesn’t travel all the way from Texas to Colorado, only to ‘change their mind.’

  “North Texas or South Texas?” I asked. He replied with an ice-blue stink-eye.

  We were chasing a ghost. She’d manifested for five minutes, this girl with no name and no home, and vanished into the blinding sun. “Am I going crazy?” I asked Samuel. “I swear she was there.”

  He shrugged, defeated. “I never told you her name was Marieta. Your description is accurate. Who else could it be?”

  He didn’t even own a picture of her.

  The weekend of our fourth annual mental health benefit was nearly upon us, and I’d drafted my Cabral family to help with the gory details, from hanging Chinese lanterns to placing neon signs along the roadside. Morning drizzle swathed Lyons in a fine sheet of clamminess and taunted draught-plagued ground with rain, but it dried up as the sun baked the mountainside. Sofia and I unzipped our raincoats as we bounced between restaurants and art galleries, restocking flyers.

  “We’re good to go,” said the frazzled waitress at the Lyons Diner as I filled out a donation receipt. “Thirty pre-sliced fruit pies for the benefit concert, delivery scheduled for eight a.m. to Planet Bluegrass. I’ve heard it’ll be a heck of a concert.”

  “We’ve got a great line-up.”

  She leaned in, conspiratorially. “I’ve also heard that Indigo Kingsley’s putting in an appearance.”

  “Er…that I can confirm is not true. She’s filming the next Nixie movie.”

  “Pity. Loved her in the last one. Your hair’s different.” She eyed my blue curls and not in an admiring way.

  “Oh wow, the morning has flown by so fast!” I glanced at my watch, then to Sofia. “We really need to hit the other businesses.”

  “Sure thing,” the waitress said.

  I loved Sofia, but I missed having Molly by my side. She would have convinced me that I totally rocked this color. Sofia simply said my untamed blue mop was ‘classic.’ Victory rolls were classic and Sofia was a fibber.

  Molly and Cassady were flying back from Alaska, and I bounced on my heels like a kid hopped-up on Red Bull. Yet another reason I needed to get out of town and into the mountains— to burn off this nervous energy.

  Sam and I had planned to spend the afternoon hiking the mountain of my nightmares…Longs Peak. My therapist insisted the climb was a necessary evil. But we’d had a row this morning, before the coffee had even filled my mug, and now I’d be climbing Longs Peak solo.

  It all began when I’d hinted that he needed to tell Alonso and Sofia they had a niece… “Kaye, I can handle my family,” he’d said, still rubbing sleep from his eyes.

  “They’re my family, too.” I stirred creamer into my coffee a little too vigorously and sloshed it down the side. “Sooner or later someone at church, or the magazine, or the grocery store is going to ask them why their son is looking for this strange girl. What will you tell them?”

  Sam slammed a cupboard shut. “I’ll figure it out myself.”

  “You’ve always been this way, it’s like pulling teeth to understand you.”

  “This is who I am. You knew this the first time you married me, and you knew this the second time you married me. If it’s a facet of my personality you can’t live with, then perhaps you should ask yourself why you married me at all. Where are you going?”

  “To hand out flyers with your mom, and then on to Longs Peak.”

  He scrambled to clean up his breakfast things and gather up his gear. “I’m not ready yet. Let me change.”

  I shoved several power bars and a new pair of gloves into my hiking bag. “I’m going by myself.”

  “No. I’m coming with you; that was the plan. Don’t leave like this.” He placed his hands on my biceps, beseeching me to wait. I stepped out of his grip.

  “I need some time alone, Samuel. I’m not storming away angry, I just...I want space.”

  “What if you have another panic attack? What if you’re injured and climbing by yourself? That’s too risky.”

  I grabbed my day-pack and stalked toward the door. “You knew this about me when we married. Perhaps you should ask yourself why you married me at all.” W
ith this parting shot, I realized I had stormed away in anger, after all.

  The bell tinkled above the door of a Main Street boutique as we distributed the last of our flyers. Sofia walked me to my car door and casually leaned against it, preventing me from leaving.

  “What troubles you, mija?”

  I bit my lip and glanced down the street, at the blue sky overhead, anywhere but into her loving eyes.

  “A mother knows things.”

  Shame reddened my cheeks as I remembered the terrible things Samuel and I had shouted at each other this morning, and I feared we’d said one hurtful word too many. “Did you ever ask God to change Samuel, when he was deep in addiction? Or even to heal his mind?”

  “Oh, many times. Have you?”

  “Yes.”

  She patted my hand. “But I should have asked God to change me. I needed strength to forgive my broken son and love him, just as he was.”

  She tucked my hand in her elbow and we sauntered down the sidewalk, toward the greenspace with the park benches. “For so long, we hid our son’s bipolar disorder because we were too concerned with keeping our family affairs private. Can’t let others see we aren’t perfect, oh no. But God has a way of tumbling pride. I had to pull back the curtain and let people see us—me—for what I am.”

  “What are you?”

  “Real. If I’d learned this lesson sooner, I might have spared so much heartache.” She slid her sunglasses up and scrutinized me. “I assume this has to do with the woman Samuel is searching for?” She smiled at my bug eyes. “My son thinks he is so clever, with his New York ways, but in Lyons you can’t keep your parents in the dark. Is this the same woman who caused such a fuss in Tamaulipas?”

  I warred with telling her the truth about her niece. It’s not an easy thing, to do what’s right at the expense of one’s marriage. Didn’t she deserve to know? Now I realized the dilemma Sofia, Alonso, and Dani had faced when they’d hid Samuel’s bipolar disorder. If the tables had been turned, I might have done the same.

  As it turns out, I did do the same. I didn’t tell her, not because I lost the nerve, but because an unexpected visitor plopped onto the park bench beside us. Her hair was bunched into a top knot and giant sunglasses half-covered her face, but I’d recognize that A-list, Aussie incarnation of tenacity anywhere, on and off the big screen.

  “Kaye Cabral, you freckled, sexy beast. What have you done to your hair?”

  I leapt to my feet. “Indigo!”

  She laughed and threw her arms around me. “Surprise!”

  “Rumors were flying that you planned to crash our concert, but I’ve been telling everyone they’re false.”

  “Nothing like a well-placed rumor to drag people out of the woodwork. Hallo Mrs. Cabral.”

  “My dear, a pleasure to see you again.”

  Indigo Kingsley was Hollywood royalty and was best known for portraying Neelie Nixie in Water Sirens. She also used to date Samuel and, once upon a time, stole the tootsie roll center right out of my candy-coated day whenever their steamy photos were splashed across magazine racks. (Grocery shopping had been awesome.) They split because Samuel was still in love with his ex-wife (me), and Indigo was in love with gourmet cheeseburgers (and Marco Caldo).

  “Where’s your dreamy chef?”

  Indigo waved her hand. “Off chasing moose and other Colorado-y things. He wants a picture of a bighorn sheep, but Samuel said unless he goes up early morning, spotting one is akin to spotting modesty at an awards show.”

  “You’ve talked to Samuel today?”

  “I did.” She peered at me over her glasses and I shifted. For as chatty as she was, Indigo was surprisingly observant. Back when they’d dated, she’d noticed Samuel’s manic moods, right away. Now, concern was written all over her face. “He didn’t sound right on the phone. Is there anything I can do?”

  Sofia and I exchanged a worried glance. I squinted up at Longs Peak and regret and relief warred in my bones. It would still be there to climb another day. “Thanks Indigo, but I was just on my way back to Boulder. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.”

  When I was in middle school, I ran hurdles my one and only track season. To hit the three strides needed to find a rhythm and clear a hurdle, you have to be tall or really fast. I’m neither. Watching me run hurdles was probably like watching el changuito try to scale his baby gate. My coach said I needed to shave seconds off my time, and I tried, I really did, but speed was not my thing. I was stubborn, though. It took pathetically hobbling over hurdles after a bad tumble in the middle of a track meet for me to call it quits.

  Long story short, no matter how much you desire something, certain dreams just aren’t possible (despite what motivational posters will tell you).

  I texted Samuel to let him know the Longs Peak climb was off and I’d be home soon. He replied with a brief: Writing all day, do what you like. Ugh. I chucked my phone into the counsel.

  Dread roiled my stomach because I knew what the next few weeks would be like as he slipped into another episode.

  I rounded the curves toward Boulder and Left Hand Canyon Road came into view. In a split-second decision, I cranked the wheel.

  Cars, billboards, civilization fell away the deeper I drove into the canyon. I rolled down the jeep windows, opened the skylight. Fresh mountain wind blasted my skin and cleared away emotional debris that had collected in hard-to-reach crannies.

  The creek was no longer swollen with spring rain and now trickled along the base of the canyon, nearly obscured by thick ribbons of cattails. I slowed until I spotted the tire-track drive that ascended up the mountainside to the property Samuel had purchased. Wildlife went silent at the slam of my car door. I crawled onto the hood, statue-still.

  I listened. Waited.

  I slid to the ground, felt dirt and gravel beneath my hands. I waited for words, struggled with what to say. Finally I gave up and listened to a quiet that wasn’t really quiet at all. Insects resumed their cricks and buzzing, and birds warbled from the crowns of giant ponderosas. Up the hill, a woodpecker hammered at a skeletal tree with bones bleached white by many summer suns.

  The breeze whistled the tall grass; conifers and their leaves rustled in answer.

  Quiet.

  Was this the peace Samuel spoke of? To meld into the cadence and grandeur of the natural world, to be a part of something greater than you and know, deep down inside, you were made to be loved?

  Maybe finding the right answer wasn’t the key.

  Maybe it was finding the right question.

  I didn’t know the words to say, so I thought…

  You know what’s in my heart. I can’t ask you to change him anymore, so will you change me? If I’m not meant to be a mom, please, please take away this longing inside of me. All I’m asking for is a little peace.

  Peace is what I was given, beneath the ponderosas and warblers and blue sky, where our home would one day sit.

  Chapter 12

  Drag

  When a rope runs through several unaligned points of protection, friction is created and can throw a climber off-balance.

  The rising sun painted the sky in early morning hues as I turned onto the drive of Planet Bluegrass. It was the day of our long-planned mental health benefit and my jeep was laden with heavy duty plastic tubs, boxes of performance schedules and electronic equipment. A world news anchor’s somber tone sanded the rough edges from my jagged mood. But then I listened to the next story…

  “The internet activist collective referred to as “Unknown” released a statement yesterday, indicating its refusal to cease its campaign against the Mexican criminal cartel, Zacatón, and their government supporters. Animosity between the amorphous collective and the cartel peaked last Thursday, when Unknown demanded the release of Daniel Rodriguez, a hacker allegedly kidnapped by the Zacatón Cartel in April of this year. Unknown has threatened to make public information damaging to the cartel’s smuggling operations. In national news...”

  I turn
ed off the radio and killed the engine. Sitting in the deep blue of early morning, I forced my mind away from Samuel’s mysterious involvement with the Zacatóns and Unknown. Today was about giving the local mental health clinic a show of support, the likes of which they’d never seen.

  A bleary eyed Molly stifled a yawn and waved into the beam of my headlights. She and Cassady had caught the red eye from Anchorage, and I questioned whether she’d even been to bed. Before I’d unbuckled by seatbelt, she ripped open my door and flung herself on top of me.

  “Kaye Bear, you naughty girl.” She backed out of my car and allowed me to exit. “What’s this I hear about Indigo Kingsley dragging her L.A. entourage to our concert? How amazing is that?”

  “Believe me, I’m as shocked as you are. But you know Indigo’s a big ol’ softie when it comes to Samuel.”

  “Does that worry you?”

  “Not like it used to.” Warmth burned through my chest like a good whiskey. The sun had yet to peak over the mountains, but Molly’s light encompassed me. I pulled her around to the trunk. “Wait until you see how the merchandise came out. The temp tats you designed are trill.” I dug out the plastic tub.

  “I don’t think you can use ‘trill’ unless you’re a millennial or you’ve been in prison.” She held up a fake tattoo, the phrase ‘Embrace Your Crazy’ tangled in a lick of wicked black flames.

  “I think I’ll put it here, just above my cleavage. See how many hugs I get.”

  Molly and I dragged crates over to where the rental company had assembled vendor tents. We spent the next thirty minutes applying tattoos and unpacking gear while we waited for the first wave of volunteers to arrive.

  “What’s Hippie up to this morning? I thought he might be here.”

  Molly inspected her sandal strap. “Cassady’s trying out a new trail bike with the Paddlers boys. Supposedly it has Bluetooth capability, logs your trek. He can’t stop talking about it. He and Santiago said they’d swing by before crowds really pick up.”

  “Assuming crowds pick up.”

  “That’s my Debbie Downer.” She hugged me again. “Attendance has trended up each year, no reason for that to change. Besides, the doors haven’t even opened yet, the weather rocks, and we’ve got local bands with big followings.”