by Jaime Maddox
It had been forever since she’d really enjoyed herself, yet in just a couple of days, Abby had managed to bring her more joy than she’d felt in the past year. She wanted that—to be with Abby and laugh. Perhaps she wanted even more. She hadn’t really had time to think about it. Yet, now, she couldn’t avoid the difficult decision before her or pretend it was insignificant. Kayaking together wouldn’t be a chance meeting; it was premeditated and full of promise. The promise of happiness, at least for a few hours. But if she wanted to have any fun with Abby tomorrow, she needed Jess’s blessing.
Jess’s number was first on her favorites’ list, and she dialed it as she paced the kitchen. It was already after ten, and normally she wouldn’t have called so late, but she had to. If she didn’t, she’d spend a sleepless night worrying about making the call in the morning. No way was she spending a day on the river with Abby if Jess made her a better offer. Hell, any offer.
Waiting was torture, and Jess made her listen to several rings before answering. She envisioned Jess staring at the phone’s screen, deciding if she wanted to talk to her, and the thought made her sad.
“Hi, stranger,” Jess greeted her, and Ward thought it an odd choice of words. If they’d become strangers it was only by Jess’s design. Why rub it in? She heard no emotion in Jess’s voice, neither happiness nor anger. She was annoyingly indifferent.
“How’s it going?” Ward asked, fighting tears. It was difficult to make this call, and even harder to hear everything unspoken in Jess’s response. Yet she needed to hear Jess tell her their relationship was over. Again. She just needed to hear the words so they might register, finally, in her heart.
“Good. Really good, in fact.”
Jess didn’t offer, but Ward had to ask. “Wendy?”
Ward heard Jess take a deep breath. “Ward…” she said, stretching the monosyllable into three.
Ward sighed. Was she that annoying that Jess couldn’t bear to deal with her? Or was Jess that much of a jerk? The way Jess was acting, and had acted, suddenly pissed her off. And angry felt a whole lot better than sad.
“Listen, Jess. I just need to ask you one thing, and I’ll never bother you again. If I want something after this, I’ll have my lawyer call you, okay? So, are you sure about this? Because…”
The anger evaporated as she realized what she was about to say. Lowering her voice, softening her rage, she said, “I met someone, Jess. Someone…fun. And beautiful. And she asked me out. But I can’t say yes if I’m worrying about you. So if you tell me it’s really over, I’m ready to move on and start dating. If you tell me to wait, because you’re not sure—well, I’ll wait. Because…”
Even though it was still true, Ward couldn’t say I love you, not after what she’d been through. After what Jess put her through.
“What’s her name?” Jess asked, and Ward heard more kindness in her voice than she’d heard in a long while.
She stopped pacing and looked out at the hospital parking garage in the distance. It was brightly lit and gave the eerie appearance of daylight even though it was late. Then she imagined a face, with eyes that held laughter and tremendous warmth, and it suddenly softened the view from her window. “Abby.”
“What’s she like?”
Ward ran a hand through her hair, anxious. She hadn’t called to talk about Abby. “What the fuck is this, Jess? An interview?”
“Ouch. Sorry. I was just trying to be friendly.”
Closing her eyes, she swallowed a tear. “Hmmm. I guess I didn’t recognize friendly.”
Jess gasped. “I guess I deserve that. And you deserve some happiness. So go out with your Abby and have fun. If things change on my end, I’ll let you know.”
The coldness was back in Jess’s voice, and it was just what Ward needed. Anger was definitely much better than sadness. “I can’t do that, Jess. I can’t be with her and think I might have a chance with you. I can’t use her for entertainment while you’re making up your mind.”
“I don’t know what else to say. Go out with her. I’m dating, and you should, too.”
“So, it’s really over?” Ward put a palm to the forehead that suddenly throbbed, wishing she could retract the words, knowing how pathetic they sounded. She reached for a glass and turned on the water.
“I hope we’ll always be friends.”
“I have no interest in friendship, Jess,” she said and hung up.
Chapter Eighteen
Cardiac Contusion
Why have a GPS when none of the roads show up on it? It seemed like the device was useless in the mountains, and Ward turned around for the third time on a deserted stretch of road, searching for Abby’s driveway. She thought back to the last time she’d been in this situation, driving in circles around Frieda’s lake. That day had started off terribly but ended well. She could only hope this one was half as good.
She pulled off to the side and dialed Abby’s number. Thankfully, she had cell-phone service.
“I ran out of gas driving in circles. What do you suggest?”
“Give me landmarks, maybe I can help.”
She looked around. “I see trees. Green ones. Oh, and a bird. A big one. Big and black.”
“Well, you’re very close, then.”
Ward chuckled. Abby made her laugh, and at the moment, Ward loved her for that. She’d spent a restless night after talking to Jess, had called several friends to cry with in the middle of the night, and awoke in the morning with a migraine.
Yet, she’d vowed to move on. Her date on the river with Abby was the first step in her new journey, and with Abby’s wicked and delightful sense of humor, Ward thought it had the potential to be a great trip.
“Help me! Please!”
“Okay, okay. Lock your doors so a bear doesn’t attack you, and I’ll come rescue you.”
“Do you know where I am?”
“I have no idea, but you sound so pathetic I have to at least try.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Tell me the last thing you saw that was man-made.”
Ward thought for a moment. “I saw a sign for boats. Gondola something.”
“Great! You’re on the right road. That’s the company that sells and fixes boats on the lake. Is that sign in front of you or behind you?”
“I have no idea. I’ve turned around a few times.”
“What direction are you facing?”
Ward looked at the compass on her mirror. “East.”
“Okay, stay put. I’m heading east, and with that kayak on your roof, I should be able to spot you. So, how was your day?”
“What?”
“How was your day? What did you do?”
Ward couldn’t tell her. She didn’t want to talk about Jess, or how she’d spent much of the morning thinking of her as she’d shopped for groceries and laundered her clothes. “It was okay. I bought some food and washed clothes. Nothing special.”
“Well, I’m glad about the clothes. I don’t want you smelling funny. Look to your left.”
Ward did as directed and smiled at a waving Abby. She wore a huge grin beneath a Phillies cap and sunglasses, and Ward could see it all clearly because Abby was driving a sporty little red convertible.
“We have to turn around,” Abby said, and made a K turn right in the middle of the road. Since Ward hadn’t seen any other vehicles in the time she’d been lost, she figured Abby, in her tiny Porsche 911, was probably safe.
“How far are we? Are we close, or were you driving around looking for me before I called?” Ward executed a similar turn on the deserted road, although not as gracefully as the sports car had.
“About thirty seconds away.”
“Well, at least I was close.”
“Very close,” she said, and Ward saw her blinker signal a right-hand turn.
She saw a guardrail beside the driveway, and an old stone bridge over a stream, just as Abby had indicated, yet somehow Ward had missed the gravel road. She followed it now for several hundred yards, into
a clearing in the woods where a small log cabin with an attached two-car garage was set among landscaping shrubs and flowerbeds. In front of an open garage bay, a pickup truck sat, a kayak dangling over its tailgate. Abby pulled the Porsche into the other garage bay and hopped out.
“Nice ride.” Ward nodded toward the convertible. “I might go hungry for that, too.”
Abby grinned. “Thanks.”
“I kind of like the truck, though, too.”
“That was free. I inherited it from my father.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
Abby laughed. “Oh, no, don’t be. He didn’t die. He moved to Florida and bought a convertible of his own. The truck’s twenty years old and not worth much, so he gave it to me.”
“My parents fled to Florida, too, but all I got was a couple of boxes of junk from my childhood bedroom.”
“Those greedy bastards.” Abby shook her head and frowned.
Ward laughed. Again.
“Do you need to use the bathroom before we leave? We won’t see anything but woods for the next few hours.”
“No, thanks,” she said, and climbed up on her car seat to loosen the restraints holding her own kayak in place. Abby helped her slide it from the roof, and then they put it beside hers on the truck bed. After retrieving her life vest, paddle, and a small cooler, she joined Abby in the cab of the truck and they headed out.
“Did you remember your sunscreen?” Abby asked playfully.
Ward would stop shy of calling Abby a control freak, but she certainly felt comfortable giving orders. Ward had listened quietly that morning, writing quickly as Abby dictated a list of essential items for their short excursion on the river. After a minute, Abby had stopped and asked her to repeat it.
“I’ve kayaked before, you know,” Ward had told her, and reminded Abby again now. “I’m an ER doctor, Abby. I’ve taken courses in wilderness medicine. Sunscreen is first on the list of essentials.”
“Am I being too controlling?” she asked. Her eyebrows rose above her sunglasses.
“Maybe a tad.”
“I’m used to ordering everyone around. Sorry. Sunday mode, Ab, Sunday mode,” she said, and Ward cracked up.
“Do you always talk to yourself?”
“Always.”
Their playful banter continued for the duration of the ride to the park where Abby backed the truck into the boat-launch platform. They easily lifted the kayaks from the truck, and Ward waited with the boats and their gear while Abby parked her truck in the lot a hundred yards away. While she waited, she surveyed the river. Stream would have been a better descriptor, she thought, although not unhappily. She could have thrown a baseball across it, but even though the river was narrow, it also appeared calm, with little visible white water. It wouldn’t be a challenging voyage, but it would be calm and peaceful, and she needed calm and peace at the moment.
She looked around, happy to see nothing but a few scattered pieces of evidence proving the existence of man. A few vehicles in a gravel lot, a sign or two, but otherwise, nothing but green. Above her, a canopy of trees offered nearly complete cover, with only scattered areas of dappled sunlight shimmering on the water. In spite of the cars in the lot, the area seemed abandoned, devoid of human bodies and noise, the quiet broken only by the calling of birds above.
Abby appeared, breaking her reverie. “It’s nice here, isn’t it?” she asked as they pulled the kayaks into the water. After quickly donning their life jackets, they easily cast the boats into the gentle current of the river and were carried downstream. Ward used her paddle to guide her craft toward Abby’s.
“Shouldn’t we start off going upstream? So we can float back down later?”
Abby shook her head. “Trust me, we’ll be fine.”
“Okay.” Ward pulled her paddle across her lap, allowing the current to guide the boat. She too wore a baseball cap and sunglasses, as well as a T-shirt and nylon shorts, which had already suffered a splash from her paddle. Her feet were protected by hiking sandals that had gotten drenched during the launch but felt fine.
They coasted quietly for a few minutes, only using the paddle to steer and not to propel the kayaks, and she allowed herself to soak up the peace of her surroundings. It was amazing.
“Look,” Abby said softly and nodded to the left. Just around a gentle bend in the river, three young deer frolicked in the water as their mother watched from the shelter of the forest. The youngsters noted the kayaks but continued to play as Ward and Abby steered opposite and latched onto a fallen tree to anchor. The deer reminded Ward of her and her brothers as kids, splashing each other as they played in the waves at the Jersey shore. As children she and her brothers had watched strangers warily, just as the deer observed them. Finally, their mother decided they’d had enough fun and called them back into the woods. Ward and Abby pushed back into the water and watched as the smallest of the deer held back. It seemed curious about the humans, determined to introduce himself. And then, like a flash of lightning, he bolted after his siblings. Ward followed the white of his tail until he tucked it down and disappeared.
They smiled at each other and steered back toward the center of the river, where the current was strongest, and after a few minutes, she finally needed her sunscreen, as the river widened and the overhead cover parted as if offering the river to the heavens above. Suddenly, beads of sweat formed as the full force of the July sun beat down on them, and she was happy for the cap and sunglasses, and for the icy water in her cooler. As they floated along, they pointed things out to each other—wildlife in the forest, ruins along the riverbanks, occasional people and the detritus they’d left behind. Abby pulled out a squirt gun and blasted Ward, who retaliated with a significant paddle splash that soaked Abby’s top.
A peaceful silence had fallen over them as they looked to the trees and the forests, listening to the birds and other animals scurrying about the woods. In addition to the deer, they’d seen dozens of squirrels and chipmunks, one snake sunning on a flat rock at the water’s edge, and dozens of fish in the clear waters beneath their kayaks.
Ward couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so much fun. Not that it was all fun…it was relaxing, and that was truly a luxury. With all the twists and turns her life had taken in the past year, relaxation seemed a foreign concept. First she’d taken care of business at the hospital in Philly in preparation for her leave. Then she’d had to pack and find a suitable house sitter. Moving to Garden and adjusting to small-town life had been stressful, even though she hadn’t realized it at the time.
Yet she and Jess had been under the microscope, and her life had played out on the stage of the streets and restaurants of the town, the townspeople witnessing everything they did. Then, of course, it really got stressful. Her mother-in-law died, her father-in-law asked her to leave town, and she’d beaten the crap out of two innocent men. She was banished and spent six months hoping and praying and trying to regain Jess. Now, all that was behind her.
In a way, Jess had done her a favor by telling her about Wendy. It gave her an extra month to enjoy herself before she packed her clothes and her kayak and headed home to Philly. And when she got back from the beach in September and headed back to work, well—then she’d worry about selling her house. Hell, maybe she’d even tell Jess to take care of the details, since it was her idea. It didn’t matter. It would all work out, and just as the birds circling in the sky above her somehow found their way, she’d be fine in the end, too. Somehow, she’d end up where she was supposed to be. The beautiful woman beside her on the river had shown her that she still had a heart beating in her chest, and eyes to appreciate beauty, and ears to appreciate the song of the birds. Yes, it would all be fine.
Ward’s only worry now was the return trip up what, at her estimation, was ten miles of river. They’d been in the boats for a few hours, and though the current was gentle, it was still moving them farther from the boat launch. It was a long way to paddle, and even though Abby had told her not to worry, W
ard couldn’t help but wonder about her aching arms when they finally reached Abby’s truck. She decided to share her thoughts.
“I was thinking the same thing. Why don’t we pull the boats out up here.” Abby pointed to a clearing in the trees a few hundred yards ahead. “I could use a drink, and then we’ll head back.”
Ward didn’t tell her how she dreaded the return trip. She would still say it was worth it, four hours from now when they got back, but would she have the energy for even a shower later? Probably not.
Directing her kayak toward the left bank of the river, Ward followed Abby, amazed as she pulled her kayak up and into the backyard of a secluded cabin nestled in the clearing between the water and the forest. The cabin was two stories tall, with a chalet-style pitched roof on one side. The stone of the foundation seemed to flow outward, to a patio, and then across the lawn where large boulders sat scattered about, marbles thrown by the hand of God. Each was landscaped with flowers, the only color in sight.
Ward stayed in Abby’s shadow as they pulled the kayaks through the grass and finally rested them beside the stone patio at the base of the steps that led to a wrap-around deck above. She stopped short of following Abby into the house, but stood staring as she opened a door in the foundation and stepped inside.
Instantly, Ward heard the telltale screeching of a triggered alarm, then a series of five beeps as Abby deactivated it.
Suspicious, Ward studied her surrounding—the property, the house, the river. Of course! She thought. Abby had driven upstream to the boat launch, and they’d floated down. They’d have to drive back to retrieve Abby’s truck, but that sure beat paddling upstream.
“Do I get to drive the Porsche?” Ward asked when Abby peeked back out the door.
“No one but me has ever driven the Porsche. Sorry.”
Ward took advantage of the indoor plumbing, and when she emerged, Abby reset the alarm and they walked around to the front of the cabin where Ward’s car awaited them. “No one else has ever driven it?”
