by Rula Sinara
“It’s perfect actually,” she said, forcing a smile. “Show us why Mac Walker decided to call this place home.”
This was it. She was in all the way. Now all she had to do was get him to agree to keep Nick. Doing so would mean swallowing her pride and sharing her worries about Brice. That also meant confessing that her life wasn’t turning out to be as stable and perfect as she’d hoped or let on. And to reckless Mac of all people. That was akin to begging for “I told you so.” As if Mac Walker weren’t cocky enough. She might as well hand him an extra serving of ego on a silver platter.
* * *
CONSIDERING THAT THIS trip had been her idea to begin with, Mac never thought Tessa would be the one scared to go up. Five minutes in the air and Tessa was still gripping the sides of her seat and she hadn’t opened her eyes once. Nick, on the other hand—sitting up front with Mac—had raked his hair out of his face repeatedly to take everything in. Mac resisted suggesting that Tessa loan his nephew her hair elastic.
Maybe being up here was good for the kid. Exposure therapy. A way to remember taking flights with his parents. Kids were more resilient than grown-ups gave them credit for. Tessa, however, had turned into a more cautious person, rather than a stronger one.
Mac spoke into his headset, giving them his usual tour spiel and pointing out the lay of the land and the view of Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance. He identified the wildlife herds they spotted, but was pretty sure Tessa didn’t hear a word. Too bad. Her loss. She was missing out on some spectacular scenery. She leaned to one side and rested her forehead in her hand.
Please don’t barf in my bird.
“You need an air sickness bag back there?” he asked, hoping she wouldn’t make a mess. She scrunched her face but shook her head. He told her where they were kept in the back, anyway.
“Can we land for a few minutes?” Her mouth clamped shut as fast as the squeaky words left her lips. Boy. She really wasn’t doing so well. Mac altered course.
“Camp Jamba isn’t far. Hang in there.”
Camp Jamba was not a luxury tourist attraction—especially not for a Tessa caliber of tourist—but it was his favorite place to get away. A small camp, nice and remote with minimal offerings. The owners, Mugi and Kesi Lagat, were an older couple who’d become good friends to Mac over the years. More like family. And if this whole trip of Tessa’s was about trying to snap a teen boy out of his funk, then a taste of the rustic life might just do the trick. Come to think of it, taking him to Busara for a day to help out with baby elephant rescues wouldn’t be a bad idea, either. Nothing like helping others to make a person appreciate their own life. The good and the bad.
“What are those?” Nick asked, pointing at a grazing herd, several members of which sported formidable black horns that rose high off their heads in a graceful curve.
“Grant’s gazelle.”
“Cool. Can you see them, Aunt Tessa?” Nick asked, louder than necessary, into his mic. He turned to his aunt, who sat huddled in the back with her eyes still shut. “Oh. Never mind. You okay?”
“I’m fine, Nick. You have fun. I’m fine.”
“We’re almost there, Tess,” Mac added, noting the beads of sweat forming on her forehead. The camp came into view as they cleared a mass of trees. He really wanted her on the ground and out of his baby before she got sick.
He landed in his usual spot and gave them the clear when it was safe to hop out. Tessa ran straight for the bushes.
Getting her back to the Hodari Lodge was going to be very interesting.
* * *
TESSA’S LEGS WOULDN’T stop shaking and they’d been on solid ground for a good fifteen minutes now. She sat on an overturned log that served as a bench near the entrance to Camp Jamba—the kind of camp that catered to granola-loving tree-huggers, from what she could see. She sure hoped they had a jeep and driver here. The thought of going back up in the air made her hands hot and head cold. We landed in one piece. We landed in one piece.
Nick had followed Mac inside, clearly more comfortable with watching wildlife from the air than from the ground. She glanced back at the small, earthy-looking, thatched-roof cottage that Mac told her was both the main office for the camp and the owners’ home. Guests, she assumed, rented one of the framed tents, fashioned from sticks and tarps, that dotted an area about ten yards from the main house. A stone-lined dirt path led to each one and a grove of elephant pepper trees kept the area cool. The entire camp was situated on a low rise overlooking a branch of what Mac had said was the Mara River and a formidable expanse of the Masai Mara grasslands beyond.
She closed her eyes and the fluttering shadows that danced against her lids soothed her nerves. The sounds that surrounded her kind of reminded her of the music they played in her yoga meditation class at home. A person didn’t need earbuds or music here. The air was filled with song so complex, so mesmerizing, it could never be man-made. It was magical. It soothed her motion sickness. She’d never been more out of place, yet she’d never felt so unexpectedly at peace. She was surprised that anything related to Mac’s life could make her feel that way.
She was simply overcome with relief from having successfully fled her house in the Cape with the flash drives. She was projecting that emotion onto Mac’s wilderness. That was all.
Wow. She’d actually taken a risk and made it this far. She had to admit the feeling was a little thrilling. A bit empowering. Mac was the last person on earth she’d ever confess that to. But it wasn’t over and risks came at a price. She knew that better than anyone.
“Drink this,” Mac said, walking up and handing her a soda. “They’re getting more bottled water later today and I didn’t want to risk the well tap on you, even with a filter in place. The bubble in this will make you feel better in any case.” She reluctantly opened her eyes.
“Thanks,” Tessa said, taking the cold bottle from him. Her fingers touched his. She ignored the ripple in her chest and rubbed her fingertips up and down the icy dew that had formed on her bottle. She drank and immediately felt her stomach settle. “Is Nick okay?”
“Yes. He’s browsing some wood carvings and a few things they have for sale, souvenir-wise. They don’t really have a gift shop. When real guests are here, they put out things like T-shirt samples on the porch, but keep the inventory inside their home.”
“I didn’t give him any of the rand I converted to shillings yet.”
“Not a problem. He’s just looking.”
They both sat quietly, taking in the exquisite view of acacia trees and a herd of elephants passing them in the distance. The leaves of the pepper trees rustled overhead and the chatter of a million animal languages vibrated through the air in a lulling rhythm.
“So this is why you live here,” she said. A hint of admission was easier to take than awkward silence.
He nodded.
“It does make for nice meditating,” she allowed.
“And it’s free. Always amazes me that people will dish money out for things to help them relax, yet they never bother to try going for a walk or sitting somewhere like this.”
“Not everyone has access to a place like this. Or even a backyard. You really like prejudging and making assumptions, don’t you? For your information, group meditation classes do have their benefits. They’re motivating and supportive and they really help with anxiety. I even took Nick to one.”
“Bet he loved that.”
She pressed her lips together and turned away. No, Nick had hated it, but Mac didn’t need to know.
“I’m sorry about cutting our flight short. Obviously I’ve flown before—not in a helicopter and I avoid small planes, but big ones I can handle—and I didn’t expect to react the way I did. I was never good at going out on boats with my parents, either. Not even when I was little. At first, it was the motion sickness. Later on it was the nightmares I’d hav
e about them out there on their own. I should have never, ever watched movies like Jaws or The Perfect Storm.” She took another sip. “This mental image of Maria and Allan crashing flashed before me after we took off and I couldn’t get rid of it.”
Mac etched the dry ground with the end of a stick.
“Don’t worry about it. It happened to me a couple of times after the funeral. I had to work a little harder at putting it out of my head and getting in my pilot’s seat. When someone calls you and needs help, it makes putting your fears aside easier. The nerves and memories do hit you in random spurts, don’t they?”
Tessa dug the heel of her sneaker into the ground and ran it back and forth forming a coffin-like trench. Any bigger and she’d be saving Mac the trouble of figuring out where to hide her body once she spilled the truth. She pulled her ponytail loose and scratched her scalp.
“I’m leaving him with you, Mac,” she said, keeping her eyes on a herd wandering so far off in the distance that she couldn’t identify them. “I’m so sorry, but I need to leave him with you. He doesn’t know yet.”
She finally braved a glance at Mac. His jaw was popping like there was no tomorrow as he stared at the dirt just beyond his boots.
“And I had just started to think you were actually coming out of your glass cocoon to enjoy the world around you. That your maternal instincts had kicked in full throttle. Yet you’ve planned all this—this trip—and failed to discuss your decision with either of us. Nice one, Tess.”
“Trust me on this,” she said.
Mac stood abruptly and turned on her.
“I do trust on a case-by-case basis.”
“Brice isn’t father material. He doesn’t have the patience and he’s so busy he’s never around. Nick deserves better than that. He needs a male role model. He’s miserable with me, Mac. And I... I have work I need some time to focus on.”
Mac narrowed his eyes.
“Are you trying to tell me Brice is mistreating him or something? And that you have more important things to do than care for Nick?”
“No! Brice is simply not present and I can’t do this alone.” It was true that Brice hadn’t exactly been an attentive husband or guardian lately, but that was a separate issue. “Nick simply doesn’t mix in well with our life. Our lifestyle is too...”
“Sterile?” Mac offered. She glared.
“If you care at all about Nick, you’ll take him in. At least for a while,” she said, trying to soften the blow but knowing full well that “a while” would turn into “until he’s a legal adult.”
Mac sat back down and scrubbed at his face.
“I’m about to take on a lot more work, Tessa. Largely, so I can continue to provide for his expenses. There’s no way I can keep an eye on him and make sure he’s not freaking out at every turn when an animal shows up. They kind of tend to around here. Plus, you saw where I live. And school. He may be on holiday right now, but you can’t rip him out of his school at this age. We agreed he needed to have his peers around him.”
“Yes, we agreed, but things have changed, okay? I tried...”
“No!” Nick appeared at the door to the cottage looking like an irate bull. Tessa and Mac both leaped off the log. “You liars! You selfish, little...” The trail of cussing that ensued had Tessa covering her face while Mac tried to get a calming word in edgewise. With the kid’s anger-fueled lungs, half the Serengeti had probably just gotten a ripe lesson in original insults.
“Nick, calm down. Let’s talk. Nothing has happened yet,” Mac said with his palms held up. “And you owe your aunt exactly nineteen apologies by this evening or I might rent you a permanent tent right here at this camp.”
“Nick, I was going to talk to you, but...” Tessa tried adding.
“Both of you need to just shut up,” Nick persisted, pacing and gripping his head as he yelled. “You make me sick! I hate you!”
“That’s it. Tessa, come with me,” Mac said, leading the way to the cottage. “You, Nick, park it on that log until you get in control. No control, no inside. No flight back. Got it?”
Tessa hurried after Mac, shocked at how he’d handled their nephew. For one thing, Brice had never ordered Nick to apologize to her. He didn’t feel comfortable reprimanding him. Nick had had plenty of outbursts before and not once had Brice intervened as Mac had. Not for her sake or Nick’s. He dealt with Nick’s outbursts by telling her to take him to see a different therapist.
She briefly greeted the owners—Mugi and Kesi, if she’d caught their names correctly. Her mind was on Nick so she wasn’t paying attention. She apologized for anything they might have overheard, then glanced out the window. Nick had actually listened to Mac and was sitting on the log, rubbing his hands along his jeans.
“Will he be okay out there alone? What if he runs off?” she asked.
“He’s surrounded by wildlife. Trust me, Tessa. He won’t move more than two feet from that log unless it’s to run toward this door.”
CHAPTER THREE
NICK LASTED NO more than ten minutes and the look on his face made Mac feel like scum, but the kid had gone over the top. No wonder Tessa was begging Mac to take over. Had Brice not been supporting her in raising him? Mac understood what Nick had to be going through. Around the same age, Mac’s mother had abandoned the family, and his father, left to raise his sons on his own, had always favored Allan as the son with potential. His parents may have been alive when he was a teenager, but his world had been turned upside down just the same. Mac had left the Cape long before his father, a South African air force veteran, passed away, and their last encounter had not been on the best of terms. He and Allan had become close brothers because they really could only count on each other. But as much as Mac had hated his father’s overly strict and emotionally removed parenting style at the time, he knew firsthand that what Nick needed were boundaries. Without them, the kid was going to be as lost as Mac had been.
Mac exchanged looks with Tessa as they listened to Nick’s fifty-percent-sincere apology—a percentage Mac figured was pretty good for a teenager.
“Apology accepted,” Tessa said...maybe a little too quickly. “Nick, you know I loved your mom. She was my sister and she trusted me to do what’s best for you. I had to make this call.”
Nick simply chewed the inside of his cheek and turned away, his nostrils still flaring.
“Well, clearly these aren’t the makings of a real holiday, so why don’t we abort the rest of today and head back to discuss this,” Mac suggested. A family discussion. The phrase hit him from out of the blue, and he almost laughed out loud at the notion. The three of them were like three stray puzzle pieces from different boxes that would never fit together, let alone form a picture of a family.
“Yeah. I want to go back,” Nick said. “First, tell me where a guy is supposed to pee around here without a lion biting his...”
“Hey!” Mac held up a warning finger and Nick chose not to finish his sentence. Something about Nick’s attitude made Mac want to keep the fact that the cottage actually had a flushable toilet to himself, but he resisted blurting the few ideas he had on where else to go pee. There were always bushes with lurking predators.
“If you ask politely, Mr. or Mrs. Lagat will show you a bathroom you can use,” Mac said.
Nick left a dust cloud in his wake. Tessa rubbed her arms.
“Can I get a ride back on wheels? I’ll pay for the service,” she said.
“I’m usually the service people use to get out here. The camp does have a jeep, but it’s typically used to take guests out on safari.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what. You go on. We’ll stay the night. But I really need to see if someone here has a charger I can borrow or a computer I can use. I have to check my emails and take care of a few things, and there’s no way I’m getting back in your helicopter. Someone can
fetch me tomorrow in a jeep.”
“Hate to break it to you, darling, but there’s no internet out here, and do you have any idea how much longer it would take to get back by jeep?” Mac asked.
The Tessa he’d known hadn’t been quite so clueless. If anything, writing for their school paper had given her a smart—albeit nerdy—image. Living with money had spoiled her. She’d had a soft heart for animals in shelters back then and always posted articles about school fund-raisers and food drives to help support them. She’d even taken home one too many herself. She told him they kept her company. Maria had been more of a social, outgoing type than Tessa and spent much of her time at school events, and their parents were often away at sea. Maria had been a lot like them. Much like Mac’s brother had followed in his father’s footsteps. Tessa, not so much. He’d kind of felt sorry for her.
Mac had tried reaching out to Tessa since his brother hung around her sister all the time. He’d even attempted to draw Tessa into their crowd, but she hadn’t wanted anything to do with him. He made her nervous for some reason, so he’d backed off. He still was around a lot, though, because of Maria and Allan dating. He’d once overheard Tessa having an argument with her sister in her bedroom; she’d cried about wanting to be more than the latch-key daughter of adrenaline-driven parents. She was fed up with them prioritizing work over spending time at home with their daughters, and risking their lives at sea. She’d been royally ticked off at him when she opened her room door and found him lingering in the hall. Allan’s plans for hanging out in their backyard were cut short when Mac told him they’d better leave before Tessa killed him.
And then there was the time during Allan’s senior year when Mac had tagged along to visit Maria and fire up the grill. He’d gone inside to grab a drink and ran into Tessa freaking out. Her computer crashed before she had the chance to save her English paper that was due the next morning. He insisted she use his essay, which would have no doubt been worse than hers but was better than nothing. He ended up writing a second one and turning it in after the deadline. His father gave him a lot of flak for the late penalty, but Mac figured he’d have picked on something about his grade regardless. Seeing the relief and gratitude on Tessa’s face had been so worth it. And he’d obviously mistaken it for a truce. A friendship. Right now, Tessa was looking at him with the same wrenching expression as she had that night.
