Will brought me a roasted marshmallow on a stick. “Here, Mom,” he said. I took it off and let the gooey inside and the crispy outside dissolve on my tongue.
“Thanks, honey.” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
Melted chocolate accented his dimpled cheek when he smiled.
“Mom!” Geena’s other daughter hollered from their camp. “I need help with my braid.”
Geena rose with a muffled groan. “Coming.” She turned to me. “Was nice chattin’ with ya, AJ. We’re yonder here if you need anything. Anything at all. Maybe come join us for breakfast? Come, Sam.”
“Bye, Will,” Sam said, skipping to her mother.
“Best of luck,” Geena added to me, her eyes somber and true. “You’ll get your cub, momma bear.”
****
“Three more pages, Mom?”
“You said that twelve pages ago, honey.”
Endearing eyes held mine over the flicker of the lantern. “I know I can read it, but I love listening to you read it. You read better than Dad.”
Ouch. “Okay, three, but that’s all,” I said through a yawn. I continued reading the book to him in my best lyrical and expressive voice. Harrison had bought this book about a boy’s adventure in Alaska for him. Will had enjoyed reading with his father each night. They’d already read the first book of Will’s wizard-cat series together, and I toted along the second one.
Will yawned, too. “Time for bed,” I said after finishing the pages.
“Aww…Mom, a few more,” he said as he wriggled himself inside his sleeping bag and rested his head on his pillow. “But…”
I gave him my no-nonsense look. “I’ll sing the states song. Here’s your whistle.”
He nodded, laid the whistle beside his pillow, and closed his eyes.
After singing, I made my way to the tent flap. “Love you, honey.”
“Love you, Mom.”
I was outside the tent when he said, his voice halfway to sleepyville, “I miss Dad.”
That was the first time he’d said it in the year since Harrison’s death. Of course, he’d said it in the early weeks, but he’d stopped. I poked my head in. “I do, too. You’re my main man now, Will.”
His eyes remained closed, but a smile curved his lips. “I’ll take care of you, like Daddy did. Finn will, too, when we find him.”
“Here.” I cracked and shook a glow stick. “Illuminate!” It glowed neon yellow.
“Impressive, Mom, but you’re not a wizard,” Will said, taking the glow stick from me.
I zipped the tent flap most of the way closed, leaving the lantern near the opening. I stoked the fire aimlessly. I popped my earbuds in.
A few minutes later, my phone vibrated in my pocket, scaring the hell out of me. I fumbled with eager hands to see if it was Brandon. It was a text message from Sarah. Checking in. Be safe, honey. Thinking about you. I tried calling her, but it didn’t work. I had no idea when she’d sent it. I texted a response, but that didn’t send either. I was officially in the blackout-zone now. I was surprised her text came through at all. At least she hadn’t tried to dissuade me from going again. Heck, I was halfway there.
I took her message as a sign. I was going to get through this. I emptied my mind as dusk’s shadows lengthened and the fire dwindled to black remains. Geena had long since disappeared with her daughters into their pop-up camper. All my neighbors had settled in for the night.
I was going to find my son.
Despite my upbeat tunes, exhaustion wrapped itself around me as the last orange flames disappeared. It was only eight p.m., but driving all day had taken its toll, my cold lingered, and I was pretty sure the blackouts and anxiety attack were from my antidepressant withdrawal.
Emotional and physical fatigue had set in for sure.
I was about to turn in when the familiar whoosh of bike chains froze my step. Even with the chatter and rustlings among the overflowing campground, I recognized that sound instantly. I hadn’t noticed any other bikes in the campground. With my senses alerted, I searched the obscurities of late evening, surprised with the hope that filled me. I had messed up with Reid.
I squinted. The whoosh drew farther away, and I found myself stepping from my perimeter of safety—the ten paces I had allowed between me and Will and our stuff.
Whoosh. Clink, clink, clink. Whirr.
There it was, but it receded as the bike distanced itself from our site. Had he seen me? I wanted to holler, “Reid!” but I didn’t. He screwed up, too, but I was the bigger ass. Why would he come back? It probably wasn’t him anyway. I returned to the edge of my perimeter.
I stood for several minutes, ear outstretched, ignoring the clamor of the camps. Nothing. He was gone…somewhere in that dark vastness of people, tents, cars, and trees.
I returned to the now dead fire. I cupped dirt and plopped it on the remaining embers and cozied myself beside Will in the tent, tire iron in hand.
Chapter Ten
Missing
September, Two Years Ago
“Come on, slow poke!” I hollered as I reached another impassable granite boulder. By boulder, I meant car-sized obstruction on our trail. Good grief, Katahdin was a relentless mountain. Most challenging one yet. Especially on our mid-thirty-something bodies.
Harrison huffed as he caught up to me on the trail. “I’m not the spry guy you traipsed all over New Zealand and Australia with, am I?”
I wiped sweat from my brow and then did the same to his high forehead as we both caught our breath. “Slow and steady wins the race.” He removed his ballcap and ran a hand through his thinning, ash-blond hair.
He managed a tight-lipped smile, but a lively twinkle sparkled at me. He planted a peck on my lips. “If we ever get there.” He slid his hat on his head.
I sipped from the water pouch tucked in my daypack and examined the large granite glacial rock before me. “The books said this trail was the easiest way. Ha. Longest. Definitely strenuous. Easiest? I beg to differ.”
Harrison equally surveyed the mounds of rocks before us. He rubbed his arthritic knee. “Yeah, hardly.”
“Okay, strong guy. I need help. No grips or ladders. Push me.”
He did. He gave my bottom a firm push. His hands purposely rested longer on my rear than was necessary. I chuckled and then heaved myself over the boulder. “How do short girls, with no knights at their side, do this? You can’t exactly push a strange woman up by her backside.”
Harrison laughed as he hoisted himself effortlessly, although with a painful wince, after me. I stuck my tongue out at him. “You suck.”
We scrambled over granite boulders the size of refrigerators and sofas. I shielded my eyes from the nearly midday-sun glare. An endless azure sky and craggy mountain dominated the scenery.
We drew closer to the peak. “Maybe this is it?”
“Two false peaks already.”
Nope, it wasn’t. Damn, this mountain was hard. Katahdin provoked us as we continued our trek over a third false peak. “I think we’re getting close,” I said.
“Well, the Gateway is the toughest stretch,” Harrison said.
“I’ll be doing the ouch-shuffle for days,” I added, rubbing my quads, allowing my heartrate to recover. I puffed my inhaler and paused. “Let’s rest,” I offered as Harrison caught his breath and grimaced, unsuccessfully hiding his knee pain. The doctor had said no more hikes. Did he listen? Well, part of it was me. You only had so much time in life to enjoy your passions.
Several other hikers found our cluster of carefully stacked rocks to be a worthy resting spot. We exchanged exhausted smiles with them.
Harrison opened his trusty old compass, which had joined us on our trips to New Zealand, Australia, Utah, California, and Scotland. Bulky, it’d triggered a frisk and closer examination by the TSA staff at an airport on our way to Utah. I smirked. “Why do you carry that clunky thing around? Doesn’t your smartphone have GPS?”
“It’s fun,” he said.
Old a
tlases and compasses…my husband who worked in a high-tech science career still loved the classic tools of explorers. He worked the compass, and then he pulled the map from his backpack. Well, even I thought trail maps were cool.
“You’re my North,” he said.
I smiled and leaned in for a kiss. “And you’re mine.”
I handed him a clementine and captured a few photos of the green valley carved by glaciers. Far below us, streams meandered and trickled through the tree line and waterfalls cascaded down the rocks we’d traversed hours before. A sudden wind gusted, and I clung to our precarious outcrop. Harrison embraced me, and I let my body rest into his, not bothered by his sweat.
“We’ve got this,” I said to him.
“Always the optimist, my darling,” Harrison said, rubbing and stretching his knees. I was impressed though. He was hanging in there.
“It’s how we roll. I’m your cheerleader, honey. I’ll get you there. Just don’t lose me on the way down.”
“Never, my HBA.”
Honey baby angel—my nickname he had given me in grad school. HBA. Not sure how we’d created that one.
We laughed. On all our mountain climbs, I was the one who cheered us up, up, up. He moaned and sighed and heaved. He was the one who suggested we turn around on many hikes. Not me. I had goals! The descent was a different story though. My legs vibrated, knees buckled, and feet ached as we scrambled down. He’d always lose me in the scree somewhere or in the maze of rocky boulders. We made a great team on all our climbs though: Mt. Washington and Franconia Ridge in New Hampshire, Mt. Mansfield in Vermont, and next, Mt. Marcy in New York. Our goal was to hit all the highest peaks in New England and beyond. We’d bagged our fair share of mountains in other places, too, like Beinn Eighe in Scotland, parts of Mt. Aspiring and Mt. Cook in New Zealand, and a few foothills in the Sierra Nevada range. I was his yin and he my yang.
Now Katahdin. The beast. Or at least that’s what I liked to call it.
I searched my pack for a chocolate chip granola bar.
“Katahdin means ‘greatest mountain.’ Named by the Penobscot Indians,” he said matter-of-factly.
I tore open the granola bar and bit into it, ignoring the calories. I’d burn five thousand today. “You’ve mentioned that before.”
He scratched his chin. “Ah.”
He had a habit of repeating the same stories, facts, and statistics as if it were the first time. Like father, like son. I loved that about him though.
I poked his shoulder. “You too tired from this morning?” We’d camped in Katahdin Stream campground the night before and had gotten a six a.m. start after an early morning tent dalliance, our nearest company the squawk of birds by the stream. What was with men and tents? Perhaps it was the intimacy. We shared a compact, two-person tent that lacked standing room, offering plenty of opportunity to get close.
He smirked back. “Never.”
We were pushing noon. I was going to hurt for days. Perhaps the hotel we’d presciently booked for tonight had a soaking tub. Daylight was going to be at our back by the time we completed the eleven-hour, ten-mile hike.
However, a sun-drenched September with a brilliant sky and ideal temperature gifted us. Pleasant company, too, although he continued to grumble.
Harrison stood and looked skyward. “We need to reach the summit soon.”
We scrambled, huffed, moaned, and stopped aplenty.
Harrison cursed as he slipped and scraped a knee. Angst wrinkled his high forehead.
“Stop it,” I said.
He glared at me. “Stop what?”
“Thinking about work.”
He compressed his lips in his usual passive-aggressive avoidance.
“They’re okay. They won’t die without you.”
I could use you, I wanted to say. I wasn’t going to start another argument today. I’d let the resentment about the laundry list of tedious tasks I did daily because my husband worked long hours continue to bubble and hiss. Another time. It’s not like he didn’t already know about my grievances. He wasn’t going anywhere. We’d get through this phase like we did with all the others.
The sulky quietness continued as we huffed along through car-sized sections of boulders stacked, wedged, and nestled in such a way that made climbing hard without the few handholds and simple metal rungs for gripping. I was sure I’d be seeing gray-speckled granite slabs in my sleep.
Harrison said, “Allen is such an ass. He was harping on me about delegating work. Delegate to whom? He won’t hire me any replacements for Rob or Chandra. The clients won’t let up. Allen says work harder. Harder? Yet also delegate? How do I do both? I can only put in so many hours a week.”
Try seventy. Yeah, I’d counted. “They’re okay. You can check your email when we get to the hotel tonight.”
Could we enjoy one day without them? I fumed internally, attacking the rocks.
Finally, the false peaks and miles of boulder scrambles were behind us, and we reached the alpine tablelands. I adjusted my backpack, chugged water, and turned to enjoy the 360-degree view. We had another mile to the actual summit, but I absorbed the eerie beauty. “It’s like another planet.”
“Ha, like Mars. I bet Will would say that, huh?” Harrison echoed my sentiments.
“Wow, yes.” Rusty red-brown vegetation and short alpine grasses carpeted the rocky and mostly flat mile of tableland. My feet, knees, hands, butt, and abs all sighed. I squinted at Katahdin’s summit, Baxter Peak, in the distance. One final five-hundred-foot ascent after the next mile and we’d be there. I paused to look around, and of all places, on the flat tableland, took a wrong step and nearly twisted my ankle.
“Damn!”
“Close one. You okay?” Harrison said, approaching.
Frazzled, I inhaled but breathed a sigh. “Yeah.” Ever since my tumble down the steps to feed our cat Snow, and the sickening cracks associated with that fall, my right ankle liked to give me a hard time.
“And to think the kids want another cat!” Harrison said too gleefully for my liking.
I shot him my best evil glare. He laughed. I rubbed my ankle.
I was grateful we’d taken this way instead of the Chimney Pond route. We’d hiked to the pond on a previous trip, and one glance up that steep side had me reconsidering the Knife’s Edge. Hell, no.
Quite opposite from the placid, gravelly, and peculiar tableland, party central welcomed us at the summit. Harrison pointed to a couple of twenty-somethings sharing beers, yes, beers at the top. One guy stood by the Katahdin signpost and held his tattered backpack over his head. He was definitely a through-hiker who had conquered the entire two thousand miles of the Appalachian Trail. People laughed, snapped photos, drank, and—
“God, is that champagne?” I asked.
Harrison sniggered. “Naturally!”
I snapped dozens of photos. I gawked over the other edge, and by edge I meant sheer drop, to Chimney Pond and the three trails leading to the summit from that side. Below seemingly tiny deep blue lakes winked at us. To our east teased the jagged Knife’s Edge. My fear of heights—okay, my fear of falling—would’ve halted me there. However, it was a breathtaking sight!
“Look at that!”
“You wouldn’t have made it,” Harrison said.
“Nope. Glad we took the Hunt Trail.”
We ate in silence, taking it all in. “Maybe one day, the boys would want to do this,” Harrison said.
I bit into my turkey sandwich. “Maybe.”
We were both aware that Will didn’t have it in him. Finn, maybe. “Let’s try smaller ones first. They do like camping.”
“Is he going to be okay, AJ?” Harrison said, his voice low as he tipped his head back to look at a cluster of puffy clouds.
I rested my hand on his knee. He interlaced his fingers with mine.
When Harrison’s melancholy about Will kicked in, my hopeful optimism evaporated.
A perfect metaphor straddled us. Rough-edged granite boulders. I was
my family’s rock. Even rocks cracked and eroded, though. Doubts wormed their way in and joined the turkey sandwich in my stomach. And here I’d thought I had adjusted well to Will’s diagnosis. Maybe not so much. “Yeah. He will be.”
“It’s my fault,” Harrison said.
“Nonsense. He’s both of us.”
“Yeah, but…”
“Nonsense,” I said firmly. “You’ve done well in life. Look, you’ve got me!”
My attempt at humor didn’t work on him. He hunched forward, a frown creasing his face.
I thought about all the childhood tales that Patsy had regaled us with through the years. Harrison had been a tough kid. He’d been labeled with ADHD and autism, but Patsy scoffed at labels, and I never got a real answer from her about the “label.” The 1980s had been a nebulous decade…they had pushed the limited meds available at the time on her as a solution. Not for her son. Instead, she shuffled him to different schools, quit her job, and worked hard to see him and his younger brother, who now lived and worked in London, succeed.
Beside me sat a PhD scientist—with an awesome and understanding wife—who had prevailed. Sure, he was quirky, socially awkward, and not the best at reading me…but God, he was loyal, loving, smart, and we shared a great fondness for learning and nature. All couples had their flawed communication skills and longing to be understood by their partner. We tried. We tried damn hard. He was a doting father to the boys. We shared a lot of similar interests and sitting on this weathered granite intrusion was one of them.
And I loved him dearly.
Okay, Will was a lot like him. So what? Harrison turned out well. “He’ll be fine,” I repeated.
Despite my hiker’s appetite, I couldn’t finish my sandwich. “I think I should quit my job.”
“What? You love writing for the magazine.”
I tucked my sandwich away, turning from Harrison, because the real reason I needed to quit couldn’t be said. I didn’t want to stir up an argument of who did more. Nobody ever won that debate. Frankly, I couldn’t juggle it all anymore between Will’s needs, the household, my part-time work, and dreams to write. The list was long. I was the one who stayed home and rearranged around the quandary of snow or vacation days, summers, appointments, illnesses. Work at home with our two kids was impossible. Novels took a lot of time, too. It wasn’t a nooks and crannies kind of career. I was tired thinking about it all. All I said though was, “I need time to work on my novels.”
Will Rise from Ashes Page 16
