by Noelle Adams
“What were you saying before?” Alice asked, trying to remember the previous thread of conversation regarding the hike.
“Oh.” Micah turned back to check the shelf one more time, but it didn’t move—just like it hadn’t all the other times he’d checked it. “Nothing. I can’t really remember.”
“Okay. Well, what time were you thinking for the hike?”
“About one?”
“Sounds good. I’ll be ready.” She watched as he picked up his tools. “Thanks for doing that.” She nodded toward the shelves to indicate his work on it.
“Sure. Of course.” His blue eyes looked up at her face and then down. Then up again at her face and then down. “It’s my thing. The apartment, I mean.”
“Of course.” It was a good reminder that he wasn’t working on her shelves as an act of generosity to her, but because it was his responsibility.
Micah was a good guy, but he wasn’t going out of his way to be nice to her. She needed to keep things in perspective.
She suddenly wondered if this hike was a good idea after all, but she couldn’t bring herself to change her mind and not go.
***
The hike was good—surprisingly easy and enjoyable.
They drove just out of town to a well-established hiking trail up a mountain, near where their summer camp had been. Micah secured Cara in the backpack carrier, and she cooed happily as they walked through the sunshine and shade of the trail.
They talked about the trail, about the wildlife and growth that Micah pointed out, about hikes Alice had taken in Asheville, and about Cara. Micah seemed relaxed. He smiled a lot. And Alice was washed with familiar feelings of closeness and fondness.
This was Micah. The Micah she remembered. The Micah she knew. The Micah who seemed to match her in an inexplicable way.
“Oh,” Alice said as the trail bent around through the woods and then came out on a clearing that sloped down into an expansive view. “It’s Hanging Rock. I didn’t realize it was so close, since I used to always come up to it from the other direction.”
The other direction was the camp, from whence she’d often passed by this location, clearly identifiable by the large piece of rock extending from the side of the mountain over the trail.
“Yeah,” Micah said, gazing around after turning back to check on Cara, who had fallen asleep behind him. “I used to come here all the time.”
“Really? You mean from camp?”
“No. All the time. Once I was able to drive, I’d come out here. I’d sit right there.” He gestured to a grassy area that had a clear view of the gently rolling mountains. “And I’d just…”
“Just what?” she asked, her voice strangely breathless.
He glanced away, looking vaguely embarrassed. “Think. Pray. Work things out.”
“Oh.” She thought about how different her own associations with this spot were. She only thought about it in connection to that summer, which meant in connection to him. “We came here a lot,” she said, without thinking. “That summer, I mean.”
“I know.” The resonance of his deep voice sounded significant.
When she looked over at him, she saw he was gazing at her with eyes that seemed to promise the same things they had those summer evenings, when she’d poured out her heart and her dreams to him.
Reminding herself she’d been wrong about what she’d seen in his eyes then and she was wrong about it now, she gave him a little smile and glanced away.
But because she was feeling close to him, she couldn’t help but ask, “Did something happen in college?”
She saw him stiffen slightly. “What do you mean?”
“In college. When you…when you changed. Did something happen? I always wondered.”
He released a long breath, staring out at the mountains in the distance. “No. Nothing happened.”
“Then why did you change so much?”
“I don’t know.” He must not have his normal defenses up either, since he answered much more easily than she expected. “There’s no good reason for it. Nothing happened. Nothing provoked it. I just wasn’t around people I knew, people who knew me. So I could be anyone I wanted.”
“But why did you want to be that…that guy? He wasn’t you.”
“I know he wasn’t me. I think that’s why I wanted to be him. I’ve always felt…”
When he didn’t finish, she prompted, “You’ve always felt what?”
“Like I’m not quite good enough for my family.”
Her lips parted slightly because she was so bothered by the words. “What are you talking about? You were good at everything, all through school.”
“I was good at sports, and I had a lot of friends. But I always felt like I wasn’t smart enough or serious enough to be part of my family. I mean, Daniel was always destined for seminary. And I couldn’t do anything more than throw a ball and make people laugh. And ask girls out.”
“Micah,” Alice began, her heart jumping painfully.
“I didn’t feel good enough to be the person everyone thought I should be. I was just…me.”
“There was nothing wrong with being you. Not everyone should be preachers. No one expected you to be just like Daniel.”
“I know. But I guess I always felt like the odd man out—so, when I was away from home and had no accountability, I just…became someone else.”
“Is that what it felt like? Like you were someone else?”
He nodded and met her eyes. “I didn’t like him, even then.”
“So what brought you back?”
“A lot of things. Daniel and my folks never gave up on me. And I’d been less and less satisfied with not living what I believed. Then one morning—it was right after I spent the night with Heather—I looked at myself in the mirror and just hated myself. I hated myself. I saw everything that was ugly in me. And it was like I could hear God talking to me, saying I didn’t have to be that man. So I just…came back.”
“Do you feel like yourself now?”
His mouth twisted oddly. “More like me.”
“Why not totally like you?”
“I’ve changed too much to be the boy I was in high school.” He gave her a quick, diffident look. “The one you used to know. I spent year being that other guy, and you can’t escape those kinds of…consequences. That other me keeps trying to drag me back, still trying to break me.”
She thought about that for a long time. When she raised her eyes again, having gotten her her thoughts together, she saw Micah was watching her, waiting for her response. “I know how you feel,” she admitted.
“I doubt it.” Despite the curt words, his expression was almost fond.
With an annoyed frown, she replied, “Why wouldn’t I know? I have another me too, you know. I’ve been trying to…to resurrect my life since I’ve come home—to not be stupid, to not invest myself in lost causes, to not make up daydreams I think will make me happy, to focus on what my real priorities should be. But it’s hard, since that other Alice keeps rearing her head.”
His expression changed into a little smile. “What do you do when she does?”
She wasn’t quite ready to tell him about her five rules, so she said instead, “I tell her to go away. That Easter is coming, and because of Easter I know the old Alice is already taken care.”
His smile changed to something deeper. “Yeah.”
Alice raised a hand without thinking and placed it on his chest. “That’s true of that other Micah too, you know.”
“Yeah.” He gazed down on her, and the look in his eyes made her breath catch in her throat.
Then Cara started to whimper and flail her arms as she woke up, and whatever the moment had been was over.
The rest of the hike was pleasant and companionable, but that moment never came back.
***
A few days later, Alice studied herself in the mirror, hoping she looked appropriate for a candidate for a position at a college library.
She wore
a pale blue twinset with a gray pencil skirt and, instead of uncomfortable pumps, loafers with two inch heels. She’d pulled her long curly hair back into a knot at the nape of her neck and put on a little makeup.
She looked nice, slightly old-fashioned, but like she was making an effort. She figured she would fit in at any academic library she’d ever known.
It would have to do.
It wasn’t even six-thirty in the morning, but her interview was at nine-thirty, and she had to drive two hours to get there.
At least the college was paying for the mileage for her trip.
She grabbed her bag and stepped out onto the landing of the stairs that led down from her apartment to the ground.
As she was making her way down, Micah came out the side door of the house, holding Cara in his arms.
He must have come out because he saw her, since he walked over to meet her at the bottom of the stairs.
He was watching her with that familiar sober expression, the one that made her feel so uncomfortable, since it didn’t seem like him at all. “You look nice,” he said.
His voice wasn’t warm or particularly admiring, so she assumed he was just being polite. “Thanks. You’re going to be okay with her today?” She reached over to stroke Cara’s cheek, since the baby looked so sweet and sleepy.
“Yeah. We’ll be fine. I don’t have to go out today. I figured I’d finish up the woodwork in the living room.”
“Well, don’t let her play with any power tools.”
He gave her a mild eye roll.
“Okay. I better get going. I want to leave time for any traffic problems or to get lost.” She leaned over to kiss Cara’s cheek, brushing against Micah’s body more than she’d intended.
More and more, she was growing intensely aware of him—his body, his presence—and she wasn’t used to feeling that way around men.
Even with the men she’d been interested in before, even with the men she’d been engaged to, she hadn’t been so conscious of their physicality. Not the way she was feeling with Micah right now.
“Well, do well at the interview.” He wasn’t anywhere close to smiling at her as she stepped back from him and Cara.
“I’ll try.”
She felt nervous and unsettled and not excited about the interview at all, but she had to do it. To not go to the interview would be making a decision about staying in Willow Park for the long-term, and there was absolutely no reason for her to do that.
She hiked up her skirt as she got into the car and waved at Micah as he stood on the walk with Cara, both of them watching her.
When she turned the ignition, her car made a startling noise and then nothing happened. She turned it again. Still nothing.
She swore under her breath and inhaled deeply, trying the ignition one more time.
Nothing.
As she got out, she saw Micah was already on his way over to the car.
She asked, “Is it the battery, do you think?” She didn’t know anything about cars, but she knew batteries were a fairly easy fix.
“It didn’t sound like it.” He was frowning as he handed Cara to her. “I’ve got a battery tester, though. I check it for you real quick.”
He popped the hood and then went into the garage, coming out with something in his hand. A minute later, he shook his head. “It’s not the battery. I wonder if it’s the—”
“It’s not going to be something that can be fixed easily, is it?”
He straightened up from where he’d been leaning over the engine. “Not in a few minutes, no.”
She sighed, feeling droopy, although she wasn’t sure why she expected anything to go right for her. “I’ll call and hope they’ll reschedule the interview.”
“Just take the SUV,” Micah said. “I can figure out what’s wrong with your car while you’re gone.”
Alice loved the idea of someone else dealing with her car problems—since she dreaded messing with broken cars more than anything else—but she wasn’t at all comfortable with the suggestion.
“Thanks, but I’ll try to reschedule. I don’t want to drive someone else’s car. If it was yours, maybe. But it would be just my luck to back Rick’s SUV into a pole or something. I’d be nervous the whole time.”
He gave a faint smile. “But you’d be okay with backing my car into a pole?” Before she could reply, he must have thought of something. “Why don’t I just drive you there? Cara can come too. She likes to ride in the car.”
“I can’t ask you to drive two hours and then hang around just to—”
“You’re not asking me to do anything. I volunteered. I don’t have anything important to do today. Why shouldn’t I?”
“You were going to work on the woodwork.”
“There’s no hurry on that. There’s no reason for you to miss your interview. Let me put on some shoes on and grab a cup of coffee and Cara’s stuff.”
He turned around and was walking back into the house before Alice could object any further.
Disoriented by this new development, Alice just stood there, bouncing Cara slightly.
Then she realized this was actually happening—Micah was actually going to drive her to the interview—so she better go make sure he packed all the stuff Cara would need.
Taking a baby on a road trip involved a lot of paraphernalia.
***
An hour later, Alice was in the passenger seat of the SUV, tugging on her skirt to make sure it didn’t ride up too high on her thighs.
For the first hour, Alice had sat in the back with a babbling Cara, but when the baby had fallen asleep, Alice had moved up to the front seat.
“Do you know anything about this college?” Micah asked. He’d been pretty quiet since they’d started off, so she was surprised by the question.
“Not a lot. It’s a Christian liberal arts college. Less than a thousand students. They seem to have a decent library, though. And maybe, since it’s a Christian school, I’ll have less competition for the job.”
“Do they only hire Christians?”
“I don’t know for sure, but a lot of Christian colleges do.”
“Would this job be a lot different from your old college?”
“I think so. Since it’s so much smaller, I’d probably have to do more kinds of work, rather than having one fairly narrow job description.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“I don’t know. It might be good. It might be more interesting to not always do the same thing.”
He looked over at her briefly before he turned back to the road. “What was your favorite thing about your old job?”
She’d never really thought about it before. No one had ever asked her that question. “I don’t know. I guess it was teaching the library classes.”
“You taught classes?”
“When professors took their classes to the library to learn how to use it, I would teach those classes. It would be just one day of class, but I really liked teaching the students how to do good research.”
He looked genuinely interested. “I can’t imagine that would be the kids’ favorite thing to learn about.”
“No. Most of them were bored stupid. But I think I did a pretty good job of making it a little interesting. It was fun.”
“Would you be able to teach classes like that at this college?”
“I don’t know. It just depends how they handle them here.”
“Did you ever think about being a teacher?”
“Yeah. I did. In college, I thought about going into education. But I don’t think I would like to be a regular teacher. It’s different, just teaching the students that come to the library.”
“You were really good with the kids at camp,” Micah said, his tone different. “You were really good at teaching them the crafts. I remember being amazed that my Dormouse could get up in front of all of those kids and make them listen to her.”
Alice shifted in her seat, feeling a swell of nostalgic feeling and something deeper at his
words, at the memory.
Feeling like she needed to say something, she mumbled, “That was a long time ago.”
“I know.” Micah’s voice was slightly rough with some sort of texture.
They sat in silence for a couple of minutes, and Alice kept remembering walking with eighteen-year-old Micah around the camp in the evenings, ostensibly to check that everything was ready for the night, but mostly just spending time together.
He would hold her hand, and his had always been warm when hers was cool.
She’d thought he might want to hold her hand for longer than the summer.
But he hadn’t.
Finally, he said, “Do you think you could do any sort of teaching in the Willow Park library? I bet they’d be interested in reading programs and things like that.”
She stared at him in surprise.
He saw her expression and glanced away. “I mean, if this job doesn’t work out for you. While you’re waiting for a job you want. I was just thinking, if you like teaching like that, there might be something you could do even in Willow Park.”
“Yeah.” She leaned back against the seat. “I’ve thought about that. They just need to find room in the budget to pay me. As you might imagine, Willow Park has a very small budget.”
“I guess so. You could teach Sunday School. I bet you’d be great at that.”
“I taught middle-school Sunday School in Asheville. I liked it. I just don’t want to get into that here if I’m going to just move away.”
“That makes sense.” He stared at the interstate in front of him and didn’t say anything for another minute. Then he changed the subject. “What was your church like in Asheville?”
“It was fine. Smaller than ours. And even more conservative—I mean, about things we’re not so conservative about.” It hadn’t been a bad church, but the truth was she wouldn’t have chosen that one if Bill hadn’t already been going there.
As if he’d read her mind, Micah asked, “Why did you start going?”
Nothing to do but admit it. “My boyfriend…and then fiancé went there. It wasn’t the best fit for me, but the people were really nice.”
After another stretch of silence, he murmured, “What was he like?”
