Wild Ice

by Rachelle Vaughn

  There had been several times when he’d tried to shake himself out of the rut, but the next day he always fell right back into the dreary routine. There wasn’t much else to do besides veg out in front of the TV and it was just as well. The mindless chatter on the boob tube kept his mind from drifting into the past. Most days anyway. Other days it didn’t matter how loud he turned up the volume, he couldn’t seem to drown out the voices in his head. His own voice reliving the past, doctor’s voices, Darla’s voice... He’d hear her telling him about a fundraiser she was in charge of, or a conversation they’d had about a vacation they were planning. It was never anything important, just endless chatter that reminded him she was still there and not going to fade away anytime soon.

  Grief wasn’t a good companion. It kept you up at night, drained you until your body ached and took and took without ever giving anything back in return. JD knew this, but that didn’t stop him from getting lost in it every day. The feelings that grief caused him were like old friends. Anger held his hand in the mornings, sorrow kept him company in the afternoon, and loneliness rocked him in its arms at night.

  * * *

  Lauren couldn’t sleep—she’d been too anxious to tackle her growing to-do list—so she decided to drive into town early that morning and stock up on supplies. She noticed that Marsh had ventured out from under the bed to use the litter box some time during the night, so that was good.

  When she returned from running her errands, Lauren decided to start inside and clean the cottage from top to bottom. After putting the groceries away, she started a load of laundry, swept out the kitchen and cleaned all the windows. It didn’t take long before the tables shone with furniture polish and every speck of dust was banished.

  Tomorrow, with all of the cleaning done inside the cottage, she’d finally be able to explore the refuge. Even though it was the slow season, there would still be some year-round residents such as American coots, ring-necked pheasants and wood ducks.

  After everything was sparkling, Lauren worked all afternoon sorting through her aunt’s clothes, books and knickknacks. In her will, Aunt Cora requested that Lauren donate to charity whatever she didn’t want, so Lauren boxed up what she didn’t need or want to keep and loaded it into her car to take into town later. For a woman in her seventies, Aunt Cora hadn’t collected much over the years. Her collection of books and field guides took up the bulk of her belongings. Lauren kept the books because she’d need some reading material anyway, especially if she was going to survive an entire summer without cable. She could easily spring for a satellite, but there was too much she wanted to do outside besides sit indoors glued to a TV screen. It would take days just to explore all the trails around the property and her binoculars would provide more entertainment than a TV ever could.

  Lauren started a new life list of all the birds she saw around the cottage. She jotted down the name of the Anna’s hummingbird she saw sipping at the feeder in the window and the common yellowthroat eating a grasshopper out in the yard.

  That afternoon, when the phone rang, Lauren nearly jumped out of her skin. The ringer sounded out of place in a place where the sounds of nature dominated. Her mother’s clinical voice snapped her from her birdwatching euphoria. Alicia Bennett barely said hello before she started questioning her daughter’s choices.

  “Mom, I’m not running away,” Lauren insisted. “We’ve gone over this a million times.”

  “Then what do you call moving to a cottage in the middle of nowhere?”

  “I call it paradise. The bird activity is incredible here.” She proceeded to describe all the birds she’d seen since arriving and rattled off the names already on her life list. She knew her mother couldn’t care less if she’d seen four different types of sparrows since arriving, but she told her about it anyway, just to annoy her.

  “Lauren, you need to face reality. Traipsing around the swamplands isn’t going to do you any good.”

  Quite the contrary. Being near the refuge was exactly what Lauren needed. This was reality. It might be wrapped up in nature and topped off with seclusion, but it was as close to reality as she wanted to get.

  “Mom!” Lauren let out an exacerbated breath. “I love this place.”

  “I don’t know what Crazy Aunt Cora saw in that old cottage anyway. It’s out in the middle of god-knows-where surrounded by wild animals. Just come back home and we’ll figure everything out, okay? I promise this whole thing with Daniel has boiled over by now.”

  “Aunt Cora wasn’t crazy, Mom. And you can’t make that promise. Everywhere I go there’s whispers and pointing. I can’t deal with all that. This is where I want to be. Please respect that.”

  Alicia made a pained noise. It was virtually impossible for her to respect anything about her daughter’s personal boundaries.

  “I want to at least stay the summer to see the orioles and flycatchers arrive.” Then in fall, Lauren thought to herself, the pintails would arrive followed by white-fronted geese and snow geese signaling the beginning of their winter migration. Then in winter, the duck and geese numbers peaked. Lauren knew her mother would throw a hissy fit if she decided to stay that long. Ah, what the heck. Maybe she would. Until she had a reason to leave, Lauren just might stay as long as she wanted.

  “This is a classic case of avoidance.”

  Lauren rolled her eyes. “I’m not a case, mother. And it’s not like I have a job waiting for me there anyway.”

  “Honey, you’ll find something. A colleague of mine is looking for an intern for the summer. Why don’t you come back and I’ll line up an interview for you?”

  “No thanks.” Lauren wasn’t cut out for the concrete jungle. Besides, she had her own ideas about how to solve her job situation.

  “Well, okay,” her mother finally gave up the ghost. For now. “You have a sharp mind, Lauren. I just wish you’d use it to help people and not birds.” She emphasized the word birds like they were something heinous. There were worse things Lauren could be interested in. Right. Just try telling that to Alicia Bennett. In her opinion, the sciences of medicine and psychology were the only way to go. The fact that Lauren’s brother was an architect only added fuel to Alicia’s disappointment fire and gave Lauren a twinge of enjoyment.

  “Ooh, my appointment is here. We’ll talk more about this later...”

  “Bye Mom.”

  After speaking with her mother, Lauren decided she had more than enough energy to tackle the yard work outside. Taking her frustration out on the vegetation would be a good way to clear her head of her mother’s nagging voice. Alicia could preach about boundaries and gobble-d-goop about respect to her clients, but somehow those principals didn’t apply to her only daughter. Lauren’s father wasn’t any help either. He just nodded in agreement with his wife and avoided conversation altogether. Psychologists were just as messed up as their clients, Lauren thought with a huff as she grabbed what tools she needed out of the shed. The only difference was the fancy certificates and diplomas hanging on their walls and the extra letters at the end of their names.

  Lauren made quick work of trimming the hedge along the driveway by listening to the birds and identifying them from their songs. She’d have a few more names to add to her list: a ring-billed gull, an oak titmouse and a black phoebe, to name a few.

  By the time she reached the mailbox at the end of the driveway, she’d identified a half dozen of different birds just by sound. After trimming back the bushes around the bright blue mailbox, she ran her hand over the hand-painted hawk. Aunt Cora would never have criticized Lauren for taking some time to regroup after what she’d been through. Why were some people taken from us so much sooner than others? Lauren wondered.

  Before she could ponder the mysteries of life and death any further, she heard a car zooming down the dirt road and turned to see who it was. The road didn’t get much traffic, so it must be someone on their way to the refuge. Lauren looked forward to meeting some fellow birders in the area. Maybe they’d stop to chat and
exchange stories about their sightings.

  The fancy black SUV had dark tinted windows and looked ominous barreling down the road the way it was. Tires gritted through the gravel kicking up dust behind it. It wasn’t someone who worked at the refuge because they drove pea green pick-up trucks.

  Lauren gave a friendly wave, but the SUV kept moving without even slowing down.

  Dark sunglasses shielded the driver’s eyes—a male by the looks of his athletic build—and he barely lifted two fingers from the steering wheel in response.

  Lauren chuckled to herself. The man was probably lost and too stubborn to ask for directions. She shrugged and turned back around to assess her work.

  Men. You couldn’t live with them and you couldn’t move to the middle of nowhere and escape them.

  Chapter Four

  The Man of Teal Manor

  When JD walked into his state-of-the-art modern kitchen, he heard a sad cooing coming from outside. Great. Some bird had really dialed in on the sound of grief. It was just the sort of eerie, melancholy sound he needed to start off his day.

  Just like every other day, JD spent the morning on autopilot. He made coffee, fed Mel, and then worked out in his home gym. He didn’t exercise because he needed to maintain the physique of a professional athlete anymore, but because it was something to do to pass the time. Immersing himself in exercise was the only way to get through the pain. Or so he told himself. The pain he inflicted on his body with his brutal exercise regimen was nothing compared to the pain that ate away at his soul these days.

  For the past year and a half, JD had rigorously kept himself in game-day ready shape. Not because he was ready to play, but because it was really the only thing there was to do besides watch TV. It would be easy to go a little batty if it wasn’t for his weight room. He could run dozens of mindless miles on the treadmill without a single thought crossing his mind. It was easy to watch the numbers tick by on the display.

  After his morning run, JD would zone out and focus on the dumbbells in his hands or do ten more push-ups or twenty more crunches. Every day he pushed his body harder and harder. Out of spite or as punishment or just because he had something he needed to prove. He did all of the workouts he used to do with a personal trainer, now he just did them on his own. The thoughts in his head were drowned out with a voice pushing him harder.

  When his workout was done, he parked himself in front of the TV and caught up on the day’s news and watched old action movies. The uncomplicated plots and plentiful action kept his mind off his grief. Then he’d eat some boxed mac and cheese and drift off to sleep.

  Waking up alone every morning was tough. When he played hockey for the Red Valley Razors, he was used to sleeping alone on road trips, but the team would eventually return home and Darla would be back in his bed. This wasn’t a road trip. This was his new (and unimproved) life where he slept alone every single night, week after week, month after agonizing month.

  To avoid that empty bed, JD stayed up late watching TV and usually fell asleep in his recliner. It was comfortable enough and it solved the problem of waking up alone altogether. Mel didn’t seem too bothered by JD’s sleeping arrangement. He slept at JD’s feet with his chin on his paws or snuggled into his dog bed in the corner and snored like a moose. They both had their own routines, each one aware of the other and careful not to get in each other’s way.

  If it weren’t for his big oaf of a dog, JD would have gone weeks without speaking to anyone. He ignored the calls on his cell phone and didn’t even have a landline hooked up. They were completely and utterly alone in Hayley’s Point, just the way JD wanted it to be.

  Cody Lambert, team captain of the Razors, still came by every few months to check on JD and to give him an update on Cody’s twin boys and little girl. Even though JD told Cody he didn’t have to keep dropping by for visits, he secretly enjoyed the company of his old team captain. When Cody wasn’t telling some story about his kids, they mostly talked about hockey. JD had already missed an entire season and lived vicariously through his TV. Cody would try to talk JD into coming back to the Razors and JD would say he needed more time. It was a dance they’d been doing for months.

  Outside the kitchen window, the bird cooed again and JD grumbled. Even if he wanted to stay in bed all day and feel sorry for himself he couldn’t because of the damn birds squawking outside. So, he dragged himself out of the recliner and attempted to function like a normal human being. He shuffled into the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee, fed Mel and gave him fresh water and then disappeared into the weight room for a few hours. Then, he’d take a long hot shower, settle back into the overstuffed recliner and watch movies for the rest of the day. For dinner, he’d scrounge up something that didn’t take too much effort to cook, watch some more TV, fall asleep during a late night show and do it all over again the next day.

  JD wasn’t proud of his new life. It was monotonous and empty and completely meaningless. In a matter of months he lost the two things he loved most. Darla and hockey.

  Darla didn’t want him to retire because she knew how much the sport meant to him. But he couldn’t travel around the country playing hockey while she was fighting for her life. She was the realistic one, volunteering and doing charity work while he played a game for a living, but when she got sick, reality hit him like a body check into the boards. Given the choice between his wife and the game, he chose Darla. It was the easiest decision he ever made and the one decision he didn’t regret. Even now.

  “Retired” was the technical term. It wasn’t a decision he announced with a press conference or with a bunch of hoopla like most guys did. He just quietly slipped away from the sport and took his place next to Darla where she so desperately needed him.

  Retired. Was that what he was? JD had always dreamed of playing his entire career with one team—the Red Valley Razors—and then retiring his jersey when he was too old and decrepit to lace up his skates anymore. He knew good and well he was far too young to be in retirement. What was he doing out here in no man’s land, wasting away the best years of his career?

  He was protecting himself. Yeah, that’s what he was doing. He didn’t bother to go back to playing hockey because someone or something would come along and find a way to take that away from him, too. So he just didn’t go back. It was better to avoid everything from his old life altogether. Avoid it and look back on it from afar.

  Sure, he could eventually go back to it if he wanted to. He could play and travel and have no one to come home to. The emptiness would still be there as ripe and painful as ever. No. No sport was worth that.

  JD had lost a part of himself. It was gone and buried with Darla and he didn’t know how to get it back.

  Chapter Five

  Buddy

  Early the next morning, as a reward for working so hard at cleaning up the cottage, Lauren set out on the trail. She knew she needed a hat to protect her fair skin from the harsh California sun, so she grabbed her Aunt Cora’s old sun hat from the hook by the door. The backpack she wore was full of granola bars, her journal and field guide, a bottle of water, and her camera.

  The thick trees around the cottage opened up to a clearing in the field of tall grass behind the mansion next door. If she remembered correctly, there should be a creek not too far from the edge of the property and Lauren was determined to find it. She just might get lucky and find a heron or egret fishing there.

  As soon as the sun came up over the mountains, its heat warmed the cool morning air until it was balmy. The heat in Red Valley was much different than South Oakdale. Here, the sun baked the earth so violently that Lauren feared the wetlands would catch fire. But they never did. The tall swamp grass swayed gently in the summer breeze and the trees wilted from the sun’s intensity but they never burst into actual flames.

  Bright white puffy clouds dotted the sky and the smell of Bermuda grass and pepperweed filled Lauren’s nostrils. The beauty of this place was overwhelming and made her want to frolic through the meadow a
nd have a The Sound of Music moment.

  Aunt Cora was always happy living on her own slice of the refuge, where the land was untouched by visitors and cars. Lauren still couldn’t believe that she was now the proud owner of that same little slice of paradise.

  When Lauren was little, Aunt Cora would lead her and her brother, Scott, down the trail and point out the wildlife along the way. She knew the difference between a California gray squirrel and a mottled ground squirrel and she knew every species of bird on the refuge. Cora was kind and patient and oh-so-knowledgeable of the area. She would have made a wonderful mother. Lauren always thought it was a shame that Aunt Cora never had children of her own. She’d never asked her aunt why she didn’t marry or have a family; Lauren was young and the question would have been inappropriate. But now, as the sun illuminated the wetlands and cast a glow over the sycamore trees, Lauren wondered if the beauty of this place was enough to fill that kind of void.

  Lauren cut across the field behind the mansion and followed the trail. The mansion’s windows shimmered in the sunlight bringing it to life despite its dilapidated state. It didn’t look any less imposing from the back. A large covered patio ran the length of the house and the empty field acted as a barrier between it and the refuge. What a pity for such a magnificent house to sit empty! The view must be insanely stunning from inside. Especially from the upstairs. You could probably see the entire refuge from way up there.

  The trail cut east and Lauren left the mansion behind her to follow the pathway through the clearing until she reached the trees. The path was narrow, created long ago by Aunt Cora’s diligent footsteps. Sure enough, there was the creek, running parallel to the path. The trail forked with one direction leading north and the other going south. Lauren chose the path to the right and walked south.