I had thought Josh was thoroughly focused on his game, but there was an immediate squawk from the living room, and he materialized in the kitchen, his shoulders rigid, his fists clenched, and his face outraged. “No.” He stage-whispered so Mom couldn’t hear. “I’m not going to Grandma’s. I’m coming with you. I won’t go. I won’t.”
His insistence came in my right ear, and Mom’s whine came in my left. “I don’t think that will work, Bryn. I have women’s club tomorrow, and I’m signed up for a potluck this weekend at church. There’s nothing around here for a young boy to do. How old is he now? Eight? Ten? There isn’t anyone his age in the neighborhood to play with. No, I don’t think that will work at all.”
I had thought maybe the fact Josh was the offspring of the amazing Del might give him special status, but apparently not. I’d get no help in this direction. “Yeah. All right, Mom. I understand.”
“Well, thank you so much for calling, dear. Have Del get in touch to tell me about her travels. Such an interesting life. And I’m so glad you’ve left that awful farm and gone back to the city. I always knew that place was going to fail.”
I said my goodbyes and hung up, shaking the stiffness out of my hand from clenching the phone so hard. I took another deep swallow of my beer.
As was true with all my calls home, there had been no inquiry about me or my life. Mom had stopped by my homestead once on her way to the Smokies. She looked around at my years of work—the barn resurrected from its original tumbled state, the organic garden built up from scratch, the Winesap trees in the orchard pruned to health and in full brilliant bloom—and she wrinkled her nose. Rather far from the grocery store, isn’t it?
My throat tightened hard. Some things never changed. A storybook relationship with my mother was just as unlikely as a fairy-tale friendship with my sister.
I set my phone on the counter and turned to face a furious Josh.
“You want me to go stay at Grandma’s? Grandma’s?” His voice was half angry, half injured. “I trusted you. I thought you wanted my help.”
He stormed back to the living room before I could reply, and at that moment the pizza arrived, so I let the argument lie. He wasn’t safe with me, but even if I could convince him to stay with someone else, that might not improve the situation. Based on what Steven had said, Carl had a long reach. And if I left Josh against his wishes, who knows what he might try. Was it possible to Uber to Aspen?
We pulled slices of pizza onto plates in silence and sat on the couch with the TV off for a change. Josh’s anger vibrated around him, and his pointed silence sucked all the energy out of the room, each passing second further underscoring my mistake. I should have talked to him before I called Mom. Should have treated him with respect. This temporary parenting gig was tougher than I expected.
“I’m sorry.”
He grunted.
“I’ll do a better job of including you from now on.”
He took an angry bite of pizza, his face tense. “I’m not some little kid you need to ship out of the way or hide information from.”
“You’re right. It won’t happen again.”
He relaxed a bit. “Okay. Truce.”
His distrust was still obvious, but at least the meal felt more companionable. I ate a slice of my pizza. “So. Colorado. Have you ever been that far west?”
“No.”
“I went out for some whitewater trips when I was in college. You’ll get to see the Rockies. I love the Appalachians, but the mountains out there are something else.”
“They look huge in pictures.” He sounded somewhat interested. Like his enthusiasm for the canoeing we’d done, it was a nice change from the constant video games.
“You’ll be blown away. I’m sorry I didn’t think to bring my camping gear. It never occurred to me we’d be heading out like this. Hotels are expensive, and sometimes it’s hard to find ones that will take Tellico.”
Josh swiveled to face me. “We’ve got camping stuff.”
“You’re kidding. Where is it?” Del was the last person on the planet who would ever sleep on the ground.
“There’s a shed out back that was empty when we moved here. Mom put a bunch of stuff out there. She said she was going to sell it all one day, but I think she forgot.”
“Let’s check it out.” We stashed the leftovers in the refrigerator, and Tellico and I followed Josh out the back door.
The shed stood in the far corner of the weedy backyard, a small wooden structure that looked even older than the house. The twisted wire holding the latch closed was rusted into a dense mass, and it took me a few minutes to pry the tangled strands apart, scraping my hands in the process. “After you.” I followed Josh in, propping the door open to give us enough light.
Dusty heaps lined the edges of the room—a stack of empty boxes, a few full boxes that had never been unpacked. It smelled musty, closed tight for too many hot summer days in Tennessee humidity. It all looked as if it had been tossed in a hurry into random heaps and ignored. “When did you and your mom move in here?”
“Summer after I was in sixth grade.” Three years ago. “They raised the rent where we were before.”
I started working my way around the shed, checking box labels and looking into bags. Most of the things Del had stashed here were Sawyer’s, and they brought strong memories. A box labeled S’s desk drawers. He would have hated having all his stuff jumbled into a box. The dark blue winter coat he’d bought right after graduation, the one that made him look like an overripe blueberry. A pair of snowshoes from the time he went up to Michigan for a mid-December hiking trip.
There was a framed cross-stitched sampler commemorating Del and Sawyer’s marriage—Mom’s handiwork, I was sure—and a glass decanter that might have been a wedding gift. My jaw tensed, and I wondered how many of their wedding gifts had originally been intended as gifts for Sawyer and me. All Mom would have had to change was a single name on her cross-stitch—they’d been married on our planned wedding date.
And Josh was right, there was camping gear. Sawyer’s and my camping gear. Every item—each reminder of what I’d lost—etched into me like acid. The tent Sawyer and I had bought together for our paddling trips. Our Coleman stove, blackened from steady use and smelling vaguely of propane. The dented cooking pots we’d assembled from yard sales. His sleeping bag, with a right-handed zipper. My sleeping bag, bought left-handed so we could zip them together, sleeping intertwined on cold mountain nights. All the things we’d treasured, callously discarded.
The photos in Del’s apartment had triggered memories of her deceitfulness. These things of Sawyer’s—of Sawyer’s and mine when we were a couple—brought confusion.
He had kept the bright orange flashlight we’d bought in Virginia, the star chart we’d consulted on crystal nights when the Milky Way lit the sky, the battered cribbage board we’d used for countless games played on countless picnic tables. He’d kept them after his marriage. Did he ever look at them? Did he ever remember?
I flipped open a large flat box that looked vaguely familiar. My breath sucked in hard, and a low moan escaped before I could stop it. Josh gave me a sharp look. I forced my face into order, or hoped I had, but I was gazing at a small framed painting, a mountain scene with a cascading set of rapids in the foreground. Sawyer and I had bought this painting together. We’d gone to West Virginia to run the Gauley, found a small café for dinner, and put our name on their waiting list. With an hour to kill, we’d wandered into an art gallery next door.
“Choose the one thing here you like best.” His arm swept in an arc to encompass the full gallery. “It’s a game—don’t worry about price. I’ll do the same, and we’ll compare.”
“All right. You go left, and I’ll go right. No fair watching to see where I stop the longest.”
He laughed, and we separated.
It was a different way to browse, pretending I could actually buy something. Most of the pieces were big, sized to form the centerpiece of a wall, an
d they had big four-figure price tags to match. Some were striking. Some were beautiful. But it was this small painting that reached out to me. It was obvious the artist knew and loved these mountains, and her brushstrokes had captured every nuance of the river’s wildness.
Sawyer and I completed our inspection.
“Which one?” he asked.
“No way. You first.”
He led me unerringly to the same painting I’d chosen. “This one. This is the one with magic.”
It felt like an omen.
Neither of us had money, both of us scraping by on student loans, but Sawyer didn’t hesitate. He lifted the frame from the wall and carried it up front to pay. “I’ll hold on to it,” he promised. “We’ll hang it together in our first apartment.”
It was the first time he’d said anything that implied we had a future together—years before we became officially engaged. A shared painting. A shared life. It was a good memory, but it felt surreal, like recalling someone else’s happiness, not my own.
Del would have thrown the painting out if she knew its history. Sold it if she knew its price. Seeing it this way—ignored in a box in a dusty shed—was like seeing an encapsulation of my whole relationship with Sawyer—something of beauty and value, cast aside as if it was worthless.
Del had no right to it, and she would never miss it. I set the painting aside to take with me. Maybe someday it would remind me of good days and not bad, and if that time ever came, I would hang it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Josh
One thousand, two hundred and ninety miles. Arkansas. Oklahoma. Kansas. Colorado. It sure was a long way from Memphis to Aspen, two endless days that dragged on forever.
Bryn drove. I sat up front. Tellico was in the back seat, and the camping gear was in the truck bed. When we started out, Bryn rested her hand for a moment on that carving of her homestead in the truck, like she wished we were heading east. We weren’t heading home, that was for sure.
“I can’t believe you’ve never crossed the Mississippi River before.” Bryn had traveled all over, but I’d never been out of Tennessee.
“Mom doesn’t like to drive long distances. What of it? She said even the three hours to Grandma’s was torture.” Torture for me, too—she chain-smoked one cigarette after another the whole way and yelled at every semi that rumbled past.
Maybe Bryn and I were wrong about this whole Colorado thing. I couldn’t imagine Mom sitting still in a car this long. But it was the only clue we had.
We went through the Ozarks, with signs for hot springs, which might have sounded like fun if I wasn’t counting every mile. Passed a water park with giant slides. Saw billboards for caves that promised beauty and amazement. There was plenty of stuff I would have liked to see, but the only times we stopped were for gas and food. The good thing was that after we were a few hundred miles out of Memphis, Bryn quit checking the rearview mirror and stopped acting twitchy. Farther from home meant farther from Carl.
Bryn had gotten another text early that morning—the clock is ticking—but she shrugged this one off. “He’ll never guess Colorado. I’m sure nobody’s behind us, and we have the advantage now—he has to wait until we get in touch with him this time.”
Well, maybe. He didn’t have to wait to burn down Bryn’s place. But I didn’t say anything. If it made Bryn feel better to believe we were safer now, I’d let her.
In Kansas, we passed thousands and thousands of cows packed tight in one little fenced square after another, like a checkerboard stretching as far as I could see. Even with the windows rolled up and the vents closed, the stink seeped into the truck cab, burning my nose and throat and leaving a gross taste in my mouth.
“Where’s their grass?” I asked.
“Nowhere.” Bryn’s face twitched. It was an answer that bothered her. “Why do you think I don’t eat meat?”
I hadn’t thought about it like that before.
I liked the camping part better than I expected. The first night, we stayed at a wildlife refuge with a big lake that had hundreds and hundreds of ducks, more than I’d ever imagined in one place. We took a hike with Tellico, then pitched the tent. There were still chores, but these were more fun than hauling mulch. I got to hammer the tent stakes in, and I was in charge of carrying water while Bryn lit the stove and fixed dinner.
That night, there was a rock under my back that dug into me no matter which way I twisted, worse even than sleeping on Bryn’s floor. But I could lie there and hear owls talking back and forth, so I almost didn’t mind. Mom would have hated every minute of it.
The next day, we were stuck back in the truck, watching the road move by, the seats hot and sticky, even with the air conditioning on. Bryn was quiet if I left her alone, but if I thought of questions, that would get her talking. She must have read a lot of books, because she knew an awful lot about animals and birds and trees.
“Why do hawks perch on fences by the roadside?”
“Because mice and voles like the grassy edges. It’s like lining up to be served at a café.”
“Why are there so many signs for tornado shelters?”
“This part of the country is called Tornado Alley because they’re so common here.”
She made things more interesting than in school.
I asked her about when she and Mom were little, because Mom had never talked about it. After all, they were sisters, right? She would know.
Bryn frowned, but after a bit, she came up with a story. “One time when your mom was three or four, we decided to have a tea party on our back porch. We lined up our dolls and stuffed animals along the edge of the porch—fifteen or twenty by the time we collected them all.
“We wanted the party to be very fancy, so we emptied your grandma’s china cabinet, which was strictly off-limits. We took out all the fragile cups and saucers, and since there weren’t enough for that number of guests, we took out dessert plates and dinner plates and wine glasses and crystal water goblets. Mind you, these were never used, ever, even on holidays—they were far too precious to eat off and were only to look at.”
I tried to imagine a house with all that. Mom and I usually just ate off paper plates.
Bryn was smiling as she talked. “We set the whole thing up. Filled each cup with iced tea from the fridge. But a proper tea party needs food, so we took the special cookies Grandma had baked that morning for bridge club and shared them out between the dolls and stuffed animals.”
“So, what happened?” The two of them probably got grounded for life. Or worse. I rubbed my sore cheek.
“Well, Grandma had been in her bedroom all that time, getting dressed for bridge club. When she came out and saw what we’d done, her face got red and she sort of grabbed onto the edge of the doorway like she was light-headed and trying not to fall. It hadn’t occurred to me that we’d get in trouble—we were having such fun—but in that moment, I got really scared. I was the oldest, so I knew it would be me that got it.”
She stopped and she had a funny look on her face.
“And then? You can’t stop there.”
She shook her head real slow like she couldn’t believe what she was going to say next. “And then, after a minute, she sat down beside us on the porch floor, not even worrying about the dirt getting on her clean dress. She drank tea and ate cookies and told us how a real tea party would be. She added a lock on the china cupboard the next day, but she never said another thing about it.” She glanced my way. “I haven’t thought about that day in years. But when your mom and I were little, we were close. We played together and there were some happy times. It all feels like a lifetime ago.”
She sounded tired and very sad, and she didn’t tell me any other stories about Mom.
Later that day, I tried to find out more about Landon, but she wouldn’t say much. She had called him again before we left Memphis. He and Bryn talked for a long time, and afterward she was restless again. Looking through all the camping gear. Picking up her phone a few times li
ke she wanted to call him back. But she didn’t.
I had a little better luck asking about Dad.
“Do you think Dave was right about maybe Dad having a twin in Colorado?”
“No, I don’t think so.” She sounded certain. Real certain. “He wasn’t adopted, and he didn’t have any brothers.”
“Tell me more about how you met my dad.”
There was a long wait, and I thought maybe I’d have to go back to talking about hawks and tornadoes, but she finally answered. “We met when we were in college at Memphis State.” She talked slow, like she was picking out what to say. “I was a freshman. He was a junior. I joined a backpacking club because I’d never been to the mountains before, and I figured that was a good way to get there. They would hire buses for big trips because so many students didn’t have cars. That’s how I learned to love hiking. Camping. Spending a lot of time outdoors.” She looked my way. “Just like you’re figuring out now.”
Yeah, okay. “But what about Dad?”
“He was a member of the same group, and he liked the camping and hiking, but what he really loved was kayaking. He used to organize whitewater trips, and he was always trying to talk people into trying it. He’d reserve the swimming pool at the school gym, haul in a few boats, and teach basic paddle strokes. How to roll. That sort of thing. It was like he’d discovered the Promised Land and was on a mission to lead everyone to it.”
“Dad taught you how to kayak?”
“He did.” Bryn’s mouth closed, with her lips all skinny, and I thought for a minute that was it, but then she kept on. “When he graduated, he got a job in Memphis, and we kept dating. Traveled a lot together for paddling trips. When I graduated, I got a job in Nashville.” Her hands tightened up hard on the steering wheel. “And that’s pretty much it.”
Okay, so Mom used to laugh at me sometimes, telling me I have to be a whole lot older before I understand women, but I’m not an idiot. Bryn was hiding plenty. “So, where all did you go to kayak?”
“Different places.” Her face was stiff, but this time I wasn’t going to back off.
Over the Falls Page 12
