Karinne stopped bailing. The thought of being with Max around the clock was a heaven impossible to imagine, not with the children Max always said he wanted. Or maybe Cory had a point. Maybe she hadn’t allowed herself to imagine it.
“Before we hit the rapids in a few minutes, watch the shale and sandstone. It dates back to the Pennsylvanian Period. Here the layers are full of reptile fossils. You should be able to see them.”
The women nodded, studying the various rocks. The layered rock and cross-bedded formations glistened in the steaming humidity fogging off the walls.
“I can picture this as a primordial mist,” Karinne said. “And dinosaurs are wading around the next bend. Max, can we hike around the fossil beds?”
“For preservation purposes, it’s not allowed. Sorry,” Max said as Karinne sighed in disappointment. “But the next time we stop, it’ll be for the day. We’ll do the House Rock Rapid, then the Roaring 20s before pitching the tents,” Max said.
“What are the Roaring 20s?” Anita asked.
“Mile 20.5 through Mile 27 is all rapids,” Max explained, taking in the other watercraft about them. “Hence, the Roaring 20s. We’ll camp around Mile 32. We’ll stop early enough to beat the crowd and get a good campsite.”
“We have trail bars if you get hungry before then,” Cory offered. “Plus a big dinner and campfire stories afterward.”
“I love ghost stories… How about you, Karinne?” Anita teased.
Karinne thought of C. C. Spauldings’s “The Toll”—the nameless skeleton in an old photograph—and wondered how the family of the deceased man had lived the rest of their lives without closure, without details. All of a sudden, one pink sweatshirt and a note had put her back in that category.
“I’m not in the mood for ghost stories,” Karinne said honestly. She hadn’t told Anita about the note from the woman claiming to be her mother.
“Karinne?” Max asked. “You okay?”
She wasn’t. That photo had reminded Karinne of her mother and set off strange dreams. Something about that image—the lost soul, the pathetic skeleton faceup by the side of the water—had upset her, despite her professional interest. It represented the loss of a family member, perhaps someone’s parent. Someone like Margot.
Suddenly, she didn’t look forward to the evening campfire with her usual enthusiasm. She felt uncharacteristically uneasy, definitely unsettled. Her smile back to Max felt weak in response. She settled herself safely into the raft, checked her life jacket and grabbed at her safety loops.
“I’ll be fine once we get through those rapids.”
The water current pushed the raft ahead. Max restarted the engine for additional power and began the journey. The men steered through the turbulence, but Karinne couldn’t get into the spirit of the ride.
Anita’s exhilaration showed. She even cheered, “Faster!” as the large silver pontoon raft behind was catching up to them.
With its larger engine and heavier weight, the pontoon raft traveled faster through the rapids than the smaller raft, and soon gained on them. Max and Cory also noticed the approach of the pontoon with its dozen passengers.
“They’re getting awfully close to us!” Cory yelled out, making corrections with his paddle.
“I see them!” Max yelled back.
“What do we do?” Anita asked.
“The bigger boat has the right of way,” Max said. “Don’t worry—we’re fine.”
Their smaller raft certainly seemed more maneuverable, Karinne decided, holding on tightly. The Colorado River could easily accommodate both craft, even in the rock-and rapid-strewn areas. Karinne watched the approach of the silver pontoon with its passengers whooping at the impromptu race. The pontoon pulled beside them, white water showering everyone, but both captains could see well enough to maneuver.
The pontoon’s pilot yelled a friendly greeting to Max, then began to pull ahead. Karinne blinked. One older gentleman in the raft was actually snapping pictures with both hands! Karinne sat up straight, admiring the nerve of the photographer, and wondered if he was a professional or hobbyist. She dashed water from her eyes and squinted, trying to get a better look at the camera, when she suddenly noticed the woman directly behind him.
Another splash beneath the smaller raft lifted them into the air, and for a moment Karinne was exactly level with the woman. It wasn’t just any woman—it was her mother….
Older, a little heavier, but Karinne knew that face. The woman turned her head, giving Karinne a full frontal view instead of a profile. Their eyes met. Karinne gasped in shock and her fingers loosened on the straps, just as a huge powerful plume of water hit her in the chest and swept her overboard.
As her back slapped against the water, she thought she heard the woman call out her name, but Max’s voice drowned it out. The icy water sent chills up and down her body, the current kicked her about. The force spun, bounced and haphazardly dragged her through the rapids. Then she lost sight of the yellow raft and the silver pontoon. She almost panicked. She bobbed up again and managed to catch a glimpse of Max.
“Hang on,” he shouted. “We’re coming!”
She felt his strength become hers and wrapped her vulnerable arms around her life jacket, letting the Colorado take her, its human cork, wherever it pleased. The cold felt unbearable as Karinne fought for air in the maelstrom. Suddenly, she found herself caught in an eddy, whirling around and around the edges. It seemed almost alive as it tried to pull her down into the murkiness of the deeper waters. Karinne kicked hard, using her arms, desperately struggling to keep away from the eddy and the hidden rocks beneath it. Despite the life jacket, she felt her strength failing as the sucking current pulled at her feet.
“Karinne!” Max yelled. “Stop fighting! Hold your breath and let it take you under!”
Karinne couldn’t see his face, nor could she see the yellow of the raft or the silver of the pontoon.
“It’ll bring you up again! Go down!”
Let the water take her down? Karinne kicked even harder, trying to break free.
“Take a breath and just let go!” Max ordered.
“We’ll find you, I promise!” Cory yelled.
“Do it, Karinne!” Anita screamed.
Karinne could hear the panic in Anita’s voice. She realized she might sink—drown—right now. She was running out of strength in the limb-chilling spray and it was becoming harder and harder to fight for air pockets in the white water.
“Now, Karinne! While you still can! If we get separated, the other boat will pick you up!”
Karinne choked and sputtered. She didn’t know the Colorado. She couldn’t understand how Max could trust such a rogue river, but she trusted Max—and she wasn’t about to lose her future with him now.
She allowed herself another few seconds to suck in air. In between sprays of white water she gulped as deep as she could and, with one final shiver, let herself go down into the sucking maelstrom. The water pulled her under with a strength that threatened to tear the sneakers off her feet. She felt the heaviness of deeper water pressing down on her, the buoyancy of her body and life jacket no match for its weight. Then, with a rib-crushing torrent, the current caught at her one last time to throw her upward into the air, the light, and into view of the glorious yellow raft captained by the man she loved, waiting just as he’d promised.
But even as she swam toward safety, her mind reeled with old images, and new ones.
That woman in the other raft… Could it be…her mother?
Chapter Six
Mile 31.9,
Vasey’s Paradise
Karinne still felt queasy with fear and adrenaline. She also felt incredibly foolish for falling into the river and not following Max’s directions. Eventually, she’d let the current grab her, take her under and bring her back to the surface of the Colorado.
Max and Anita had pulled her inside the raft. Cory soon docked at the closest camping area downriver. Max hadn’t left Karinne since they’d arrived on
the shore and he’d helped her out. He threw a dry towel around her shoulders, briskly rubbing them, and making her feel like a two-year-old instead of the confident woman she usually was.
“Are you okay?” Anita asked.
Karinne nodded.
“Cory, why don’t you start a fire?” Max suggested. “Come on, Karinne, time to get out of those wet clothes.”
A few minutes later, she entered the Porta Potti with dry clothing and a replacement pair of socks. She refused to give in to the urge to be sick to her stomach—an urge not related to the potent odor of chemical treatment—and, once she’d changed clothes, hurried outside again, the door flapping closed behind her.
Karinne took in the Porta Potti door and read the sign posted to prevent campers and wild animals from close contact. It read For Safety and Hygiene, Please Latch This Door Securely! With trembling fingers, Karinne tried to fasten the outside catch. She couldn’t. The cold, her nerves and aftershock made it impossible. And she’d left her soggy wet mass of clothes inside on the wooden floor. Max got them and closed the door latch for her.
“This place has more rules than a courthouse,” she said, trying to make a joke. Her voice shook.
“Come on, sit down.”
“We can’t.” Karinne gestured to another sign in front of bubbling springs and the garden of ferns, mosses and flowers to the far right.
Please Do Not Approach! Protected Area For Endangered Kanab Ambersnails.
“I thought we’d sit over here.” Max guided her to an area where a weatherworn wooden bench allowed visitors to lounge safely behind the edge of the springs’ boundaries, the water itself surrounded by saddleback-shaped boulders, rubbed smooth by thousands of years of erosion. Karinne sat while Max dropped her wet clothes onto one of the rocks and joined her on the bench. He put his arm around her and drew her close.
“Warmer?” he asked.
“Drier, anyway.” She couldn’t help shivering.
“Cory’ll start a fire,” Max assured her. “What happened out there?” he asked.
“I fell,” Karinne replied.
“I checked the hand loop. It’s fine. Did you lose your balance?”
“No, I just…didn’t hold on.”
“That’s not like you, Karinne.”
“I got distracted.”
“Hold tighter next time.” He urged her even closer.
“I will. Promise me you won’t think I’m crazy.” At his nod, Karinne gulped in a deep breath.
“I thought I saw my mother.”
“Here?”
“In the silver pontoon. Max, it looked like her. I swear it was Mom again. I twisted to see better. That’s when I fell in.”
“You scared the hell out of me,” Max said.
“I scared myself more.” Despite her dry clothes, she shivered again. “You never told me about the whirlpools. I’m starting to hate surprises. How can you live in a place like this, Max?”
“First of all, you said you wanted to see what I did for a living. Second, if you weren’t chasing a ghost, you wouldn’t have fallen out of the raft. Your obsession with the past could’ve cost you your life! You didn’t follow the rules, you just jumped head over heels—literally—for a stranger in another raft. I thought you had more sense than that.”
Karinne leaped to her feet, away from the rock and out of his arms. “So I’m an idiot?”
“No, I’m the idiot. Because from now on, I’m going to do everything I can to help you find this woman.”
“You will? Oh, Max!”
“And then, after that, you’re going to choose between having a husband or chasing after your parents the rest of your life. I want to live mine with you. If it isn’t going to be that way, I want to know by the end of this trip.”
“You’re really giving me an ultimatum?” Karinne gasped.
“No, I’m giving myself one. This is our last chance to see if our relationship can work. I love you, Karinne, but if I can’t have you in my life—and so far I haven’t—it’s time to cut our losses.”
“I’ve been with you every chance I get!”
“A weekend every few months? That’s not enough. You know my father was a cruise-ship captain, and Mom and Cory and I were always without him. I hated it. I swore I’d never do that to my own family. I offered to move to Phoenix once, and you told me not to. The ball’s in your court. It’s time for you to make up your mind.”
“And what about you?” she accused. “You keep saying you want children. Do you expect me to quit my job? I could, you know. But I just don’t see the point. You think we’ll see each other more with me and the babies at home and you rafting down the Colorado? I might as well be working.”
Now it was Max’s turn to gasp. “You don’t want children? But you always said…”
“Yes, I do, but under normal conditions. I’d end up with the same thing your mom had. An absentee husband. There’s no day care on the river. Or if you stopped working and I continued, it would be the same thing. I’d be an absentee mother and wife. Why subject the children to what we already suffered through?”
His voice grew grim, cold. “So you’re saying marriage wouldn’t change anything?”
“I didn’t say that.” Karinne rubbed her forehead. “But sometimes I don’t know what to think.”
“Make up your mind. I want to know where this relationship stands.”
“It’s where it’s always been! With me loving you!” she said hoarsely.
“It’s not enough, Karinne. It’s not.”
“YOU THINK SHE’S all right?” Anita asked, glancing over her shoulder at Max and Karinne in the distance as Cory started arranging wood.
“If dry clothes and a fire don’t do the trick, Max will.”
Anita sank to her knees to join him, her arms filled with wood. “She could’ve drowned.”
“Not with us on the job,” Cory said. “Sooner or later she’d have tired, and the current would have moved her clear. The smart thing is to do it willingly, without panicking.”
Anita shivered. “It seemed like forever.”
“But everything’s fine.” Cory took out his waterproof matches.
“I’m so glad. What would we have told her father?” Anita dropped her wood. She covered her face with both hands.
“Anita?” Instantly Cory was at her side. “Hey, it’s okay.” He gently patted her shaking shoulders.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Cory said. “You’re Karinne’s friend. Nothing wrong with that.” He retrieved his bandanna from her soggy jeans pocket, then pulled her hand down from her cheek to press it into her palm. “I nearly had a heart attack myself.”
“You did?” Anita sniffed.
“For a minute there, I thought Max was going to jump in after her, which would’ve been no help at all. The look on his face…” Cory shuddered. “Anyway, don’t let this scare you out of the raft. Max and I know what we’re doing. We don’t risk the really nasty rapids.”
“That wasn’t the worst?” Anita asked in a shaky voice.
“Not the deluxe thrill package. And you wanted to be a river guide,” Cory teased.
“Maybe I’ll find an accountant’s job topside,” Anita said.
“Either way, we can relax for the rest of the day,” Cory assured her. “Let everyone catch their breath.”
“Shouldn’t we go check on Karinne?”
“Wait for the coffee to heat first.”
Anita watched Cory finish with the wood. “Where are we, anyway?”
“Mile 32—well, 31.9, to be exact. George Vasey’s Paradise.”
“Oh.”
“Come on, mop your face, and ask me who he was,” Cory coaxed.
Anita wiped her cheeks with the bandanna. “Who was Vasey?”
“A botanist. He and Powell were together for the 1868 expedition to the Colorado River. Nice place, isn’t it? Karinne could’ve picked a worse spot to fall out,” Cory said.
The maidenhair fern blended w
ith the flowers in a fantastic array no florist could ever duplicate. Moss gently hugged the springs, creating emerald surfaces on rock and below the waterline.
“The snails must love it here,” Cory said. “They’re supposedly descendants from the Late Pleistocene species. Still got your camera?”
Anita pulled out her digital camera, took it out of the zippered plastic bag and snapped a few photos.
After a moment Cory said, “I should finish the fire and get the coffee going. You wanna stay here?”
“No, I’ll help.”
Cory extended his hand and pulled her to her feet. “Back to the real world, then.”
The four of them reunited at the campsite.
“Why don’t we set up the tents and you ladies start dinner?” Max suggested, his voice cold. Cory gave his brother a questioning look, but Max didn’t respond.
“Karinne, you up to it?” Anita asked.
“Of course.” Karinne’s voice shook slightly. “I just took a dunking. I didn’t get hurt.”
The women unpacked the cooking gear, then set up water to boil for pasta—a light-to-carry food stock.
“Want to hear a ghost story before dinner?” she asked Anita quietly. “I’ve got one.”
“You don’t want to wait for the guys?”
“Trust me—this story they’ve already heard.”
Karinne soon related her tale, as Anita marveled at the turn of events. She didn’t mention the part about Max wanting to end their relationship. He couldn’t be serious. Perhaps it was just the stress of the moment.
“How can you stand it? Either your mother’s alive or some creep is stalking you. No wonder you fell out of the raft. I’d be a wreck.”
“I am,” Karinne admitted. “I don’t need to wait for dark to feel nervous.”
“And I thought you had a rough day falling out of the boat,” Anita exclaimed, stirring in uncooked spaghetti.
“Now I’ll have to find a new roommate. Once you move out here…life won’t be the same,” Karinne said sadly.
“We’ll see each other.”
“Not often enough. You’ll be with Cory, and I’ll be stuck with some new roommate who leaves dishes in the sink and pays her rent late. Are you serious about joining Max and Cory?” Karinne asked.
The Reluctant Bride Page 6
