BIG MOUNTAIN

by Penny Wylder

  “Loving it, and Bailey,” I promise, “you’ve got a great town here.”

  “Well thank you. You heading out in the morning?”

  “Sadly.” I make a show of pouting. “Back to the big city for me.”

  “Ah well. Make the most of your last day then, hear me?” He waves as I stagger upstairs.

  But I know I’m not going to take his advice. If Gil were interested in me, he’d show it. If he wanted a second round, he’d make it happen. He hasn’t, so… it’s fine.

  I fall asleep practically the moment my head hits my pillow, and when I wake up the next morning to see a torrential downpour outside my window, I take the hint. I check out, smiling in sympathy as the receptionist complains about the rain. Then, instead of doing one last pass for pictures like I’d planned, I just head straight for the train station. I’ve got the material I need. And if I get home early, it’ll give me more time to start editing these pictures before my boss’s editorial board meeting next week.

  Like I said, I’m a workaholic. Takes a lot to distract me from the job. Not even hunky, hot as hell country man can do it for long.

  6

  Jenna

  The photographs are a huge success.

  My boss tells me he got more inquiries about Bailey Village and its fair than any other recent travel story we’ve run. He thinks it’s because of the local interest factor—so many travel pieces today are about far-flung places, ones that would take a ton of planning and money to reach. People fell in love with Bailey because it’s so close and accessible.

  My boss paid me an extra bonus for the job, and even sold a few prints of two photos—the one of the little girl eating ice cream near the food truck tents, and another of some kids dancing around the bonfire in the woods—to a big gallery.

  Two weeks after I spent the weekend in Bailey, those prints go up in a gallery downtown. I show up in a black strapless dress and answer questions about my work, my inspirations. I make a pretty penny off print sales from that night, too.

  An added bonus of that weekend away—not only did I get a breather for those three days, but the success of the pictures I took is giving me a little more wiggle room. A little more breathing space, so that I don’t have to jump on every single job that comes my way. I have the money, and the clout, that I can turn some gigs down, if I want to give myself an honest-to-goodness actual vacation for once.

  Everything is going great, in other words. So why don’t I feel as excited as I should?

  Another two weeks after that gallery opening, I find myself sitting in my office on a gray Monday morning, gazing moodily out the window, watching rain streak the panes of glass and wondering what would have happened if I’d been more forward with Gil. What if I’d just come out and said, “Want to fuck me again tonight?” the morning after, instead of awkwardly slipping out of his cabin?

  Would he have wanted to hook up again Saturday night? Maybe Sunday morning, too?

  I shake my head. Doesn’t matter. He told me outright that he’s not the wife and family kind of guy. That he prefers casual flings. So I might have gotten a couple more nights of mind blowingly great sex out of him. So what? It would’ve just made my heart hurt even more to leave him behind. As it was, I shouldn’t have felt anything. Not for a one night stand. Not for a guy who probably doesn’t even remember my name anymore.

  I shake my head and turn back to my desk. But the sudden motion, combined with the head shake, not to mention the questionable burrito I scarfed this morning on my way to work, because I was craving crappy Tex Mex for some reason, makes nausea surge in my stomach. I grab the waste bin under my desk and dry heave over it, silently I hope, because the last thing I want to do is accidentally puke in front of all my coworkers.

  I manage to hold it in, but my stomach is still churning angrily. Crap. I dig through the emergency medicine stash in my overhead until I find some Tums, and I pop those into my mouth, hoping that’ll settle things down.

  That’s when someone knocks on my desk. I practically jump out of my skin.

  “Jenna?” My boss is standing right behind me, frowning at me in confusion.

  At his elbow stands an unfamiliar woman in a suit that looks like she stole it off a guy who was slightly heavier than her, and never bothered to get it tailored.

  “Hi,” I sputter, glancing back and forth between them. “Sorry, I was just feeling a little off, and debating if I needed a sick day—”

  “Jenna, this is Detective Hartman,” my boss speaks over my hurried mumble. “She wanted to ask you a few questions about the Bailey Village festival.”

  My cheeks go bright red. “Oh. Uh…” I extend a hand, which the detective shakes rather harder than I think is strictly necessary. “Nice to meet you. And sure, anything you want to ask, fire away.” I laugh a little nervously.

  The detective cuts my boss some side-eye. “Why don’t we step into your office, Mr. Morris, if we can use that for a moment? I’d rather continue this conversation in private.”

  “Of course, of course.” My boss nearly trips over himself to lead us both back around the cubicle section to his big-windowed corner office. “Let me know if you need anything.” To judge by the way he’s eying Detective Hartman, my boss doesn’t mind if her suit isn’t fitting right.

  And to be fair, for her age—more like my boss’s age, in her mid-50s probably—she does look like a fox. A fox in need of a Clueless-style makeover, but still.

  “I don’t need a lawyer, do I?” I joke as she shuts the office door behind us. I laugh. She doesn’t.

  “I just have some routine questions, Ms. Walker.”

  My stomach sinks. “Jenna, please, Detective Hartman.”

  Detective Hartman flashes me a slightly warmer smile, at that. “Jenna. Call me Stacey. Now, like I said, I just have a few routine questions here. Your boss tells me you attended the Bailey Village festival for the entire weekend?”

  “That’s right, Dete—Stacey,” I catch myself.

  “And did that include the first night of the festival, the Friday evening?”

  “Yes, I got there early Friday morning.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual or suspicious that evening? Anything at all.”

  My heart lurches in my chest. My stomach does, too, and for a moment, I worry I’m going to be sick again. It takes a moment, and a few deep breaths, for me to quell the new rise in nausea. Dammit, Tums. Why aren’t they working yet? I breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth, and think through the detective’s questions.

  “I’m not sure,” I finally say. “Could you be more specific? Like… what sort of suspicious?”

  All I can think about, when I flash back to that night, is Gil. Meeting him by the fire. Flirting, dancing.

  Fucking him all night long.

  My face goes red all over again. My stomach surges, and it takes an effort to shut my eyes, let the wave of sickness pass through me. You’re not going to puke. You’re fine.

  When I open my eyes again, Detective Hartman—Stacey—is staring at me, frowning. After a moment, though, she must decide to ignore my reaction, because she leans back in her chair. “A man was murdered at the festival this year, Jenna.”

  Gil.

  For a terrifying, heart-wrenching second, that’s the first crazy fear that pops into my head. But it couldn’t be Gil—she was asking about Friday night, and anyway, I saw him on the Saturday, working his booth same as ever. Or, at least, I avoided him on the Saturday, and spied on him from a neighboring booth.

  “Who?” I manage to ask, once I’ve talked myself out of panic.

  Stacey pulls a folder from the briefcase she’s carrying and opens it. Then she flips it around and slides it across my boss’s desk to me. “A man named Bradley Myers. He was a visitor to town, helping run a retreat his law firm was putting on in the area.”

  I stare down at the photograph, what looks like a posed headshot of Bradley, apparently, at a beachside resort trying to look tough, despite
the cocktail beside him and the sunny beach in the background. It’s the sort of headshots I’d seen people use when they struck it big selling their first company idea out in Silicon Valley or something—the photo itself is good, but the pose, the staging, it’s all a bit ridiculous, like a kid trying on his dad’s suit. They’re trying too hard to be edgy, cool, to stand out from the crowd.

  But more surprising is the fact that I recognize him.

  The man from the hotel lobby when I first checked in. The one complaining loudly on his cell phone about how Bailey Village wasn’t nearly as good as his company’s retreat in India last year. “I met him,” I hear myself saying, shock seeping in. “I was staying in the same hotel as him. We checked in at the same time, on Friday morning.”

  “Did you speak to him?” Stacey’s attention sharpens. She leans closer, across the desk. “Jenna, any information you might be able to remember, anything at all, could really help us now.”

  But the nausea has returned stronger than ever. The whole room is spinning, and spots are darting across my vision. I can’t hold it back any longer. Without even a word to Stacey—I can’t talk now or I’ll burst—I leap up and stagger toward the bathroom.

  I don’t make it. Luckily, my boss keeps his trashcan poised beside the little single-seat toilet he has attached to the big corner office. I have time to grab that, and then my breakfast comes surging up out of me.

  I drop to my knees beside the trashcan and heave. I throw up once, twice, and then my stomach does that horrible thing where it’s empty, but it keeps on trying to push anything that might remain out. I heave again, retch, then again. Eventually, I feel a hand come to rest on my back, massaging in slow circles. I hear someone shout, and then a crash of footsteps, and the sound of my boss’s familiar voice.

  “What’s going on? Is Jenna all right?”

  “I think it’s the shock,” Stacey murmurs back, voice much lower than his. It’s her hand on my shoulder, I realize, and she pats me again as another heave rocks through me. “Apparently she’d met the man in her hotel. This news would be a lot for anyone to hear but…” Their voices lower. Stacey’s hand leaves my back, and they retreat to a far corner of the office, murmuring.

  I manage to get to my feet and stumble the rest of the way into the bathroom. There, I do my best to clean up, as much as that’s possible. I scrub my face, rinse out my mouth. Stare at myself in the mirror, breathing hard, eyes glazed. I look terrible.

  I look terrified.

  Because I know Stacey is wrong.

  Yes, it’s pretty damn shocking to hear a man was murdered. A man I’d spoken to, more so, however briefly. At an event I attended, too.

  But I’d been feeling sick even before the detective arrived. Before I had any idea what went down at that festival. I’d been feeling nauseous all morning. And yesterday, too, come to think of it. It wasn’t as bad, not as violent, but I definitely felt a little queasy.

  So, right there in my boss’s tiny office add-on bathroom, under harsh fluorescent lights, as I scrub at my face and wash my hands under frigid tap water, I start to count. And with each day I count, my breath comes a little faster, and my heart rabbits in fear.

  I remember the night with Gil all over again. The moment he reached for the drawer beside his bed. The moment I stopped him. I’m on the pill, so…

  I storm back out of the bathroom. Straight past my boss and the detective, who bark questions after me, asking if I’m all right, if I need anything. “One second,” I call over my shoulder, racing for my desk. I grab my purse and empty the contents onto it.

  Sure enough, right there is the packet of pills. And when I count, I realize, I’m off by two. Two days of skipped pills, two days I forgot about them. It happens from time to time. I never really think much of it. Take two again the next day. It’s not like I’m hooking up all the time.

  I toss the pills onto my desk and pull out my calendar instead. Right there are the little asterisks I use to mark it. The day my period starts. My last one? A month and a half ago. Two weeks before my hookup.

  My current one? Hasn’t started yet. Won’t start for another eight months, I realize.

  Holy fuck.

  I’m pregnant.

  7

  Gil

  As I take my normal path down into the village—the main road, through the city center, en route to Tommy’s hardware shop—I can’t help but notice how everything has changed.

  There’s old Mrs. Baker on the first corner I pass, out doing her weeding like she does every Tuesday. But today when I walk by, she doesn’t shout at me or wave. She casts a nervous glance over her shoulder, then hauls herself upright and scurries into the house. I’m sure if I stopped and asked what was wrong, she’d say she just needed a glass of water. Like everybody does now—treading lightly, being cautious, checking over their shoulders constantly, and lying about what they’re feeling.

  Because the truth is, Bailey Village just isn’t the same anymore. Not since the murder.

  You can feel it in the air, like a constant thundercloud stuck over the town. Everyone is side-eying everyone, wondering if they had a hand in it. If they’re the ones who dragged that lawyer out into the woods and strangled him to death, then emptied his wallet. Whoever it was even tried to cover their tracks. They left a note in his hotel room, typed up and printed out, a letter saying he was bailing on this lame festival and heading out of town.

  But his coworkers knew no matter how much he hated this town or the event, he’d never bail completely on such an important meeting. They reported him missing on Sunday morning, as the festival was closing down, once they realized he’d missed the entire retreat, something that had been on their calendars for almost a year.

  Unfortunately, the rain on Sunday washed away any scent trail. The police had to call in everybody for help, and we combed the woods for days.

  Until the following Saturday, when little Jimmy Anderson found a shoe out by the old pine grove, near the path I walk home every night. He told his daddy, his daddy told the cops, and next thing we knew, coroners were digging up a body in a rolled-up tarp and giving us all the ninth degree.

  I reach the main stretch of town, and smile and wave to Mr. Fisher who runs the barber shop on the corner. He cuts my hair every month, first of the month, like clockwork.

  Today, however, when I wave, he just smiles a little half-smile, one side of his mouth, like he’s not sure. Doesn’t want to commit to a full smile, not in case I’m the type of person he oughtn’t to be smiling at. He bobs his head, though, and I’ll have to settle for that over his usual exuberant wave and invitation to come in for some morning tea.

  I dig my hands deeper into the pockets of my coat and keep walking.

  Doesn’t matter. Eventually the police will sort this out, and everyone will get friendlier again. They’ll stop eyeballing me, that crazy old hunter and farmer guy who builds his own furniture and kills his own meals, and they’ll learn who really did that poor city kid in. Then everything will go back to normal.

  It bugs me though, how quickly people I’ve known my entire life jump to conclusions. Just because Sara Potts started a rumor she saw me wandering off into the woods the night the guy was killed (I did, but only to follow the hottest girl I’d seen in years into said woods), just because the body was buried closer to my property than anyone else’s (hardly my fault my grandfather decided to build a cabin on the far, antisocial end of town), and because nosy old Kyra Grace, a woman my mother’s age with more time on her hands than sense, says she took her dog for a midnight walk on Friday and heard screams coming from my cabin (she might have, but they definitely weren’t screams of pain).

  Those few rumors were enough to make my whole village want to throw me under the bus.

  I shake my head.

  I spoke to the cops already of course, at length. I gave them my alibi. Air-tight, if difficult for me to track down.

  Jenna.

  Just the memory of her is enough to dispel my
current foul mood, if only for a moment. The memory of my hands on her body, her body writhing underneath mine. The sensation of her legs wrapped around my waist, her lithe hips thrusting against me. The throaty sound she made when she screamed out in ecstasy…

  Fuck. It still gets me. Even now, a month later.

  I can’t tell you how many late nights and early mornings those memories have come in handy since. I keep that mental image of her in mind as I wrap my fist around my cock in the shower. Hell, even now, on my walk in to start work, I’m getting hard thinking about her.

  Think about something else. Anything else.

  Because as amazing as my one night with Jenna was, it was just that. One night. I’ll never see her again. She’s a city girl—she doesn’t belong here.

  I’m starting to wonder if I do anymore, after all this.

  Anyway, the detective leading the case, Hartman, she promised to track Jenna down and confirm my alibi. So that will be that. Jenna will prove I’m innocent, and we can all move on with our lives.

  Hopefully sooner than later, I think, as Mrs. Grant and her irritating little hamster of a purse dog cross the street to avoid me.

  Finally, I reach the hardware store where I’m headed. I’ve got about a million back orders stacked up from the festival—one of the other great things about that weekend, I took in enough pre-orders for specially-made furniture from out-of-town people, city slickers like Jenna who want to add a rustic touch to their penthouses—that I’ve already paid my mortgage through the end of the year just with their pre-payments.

  Now, I just need to actually make the damn things. Which means restocking on the supplies I ran myself clean out of building other display pieces in advance of the festival.

  The little bell over the top of the hardware store door tinkles as I enter, announcing me to the clerk inside. “Morning, Tommy,” I shout as I walk in.

  From the back of the store, Tommy pops up and waves. As usual, he’s set up behind the counter with his breakfast—a bag of BBQ-flavored potato chips, a Diet Coke, and a microwaved Hot Pocket. If Jenna thinks I eat like a bachelor, she ought to see Tommy here.