by Mary Beesley
Between the mushy couple on her right and Leo up front, the only safe place to look had been out the window.
“I don’t have service.” Zena tapped her phone with a frown. “Zero bars. I told Jake I’d text him when we found the place.”
“He’s not invited,” Silvia said.
“I know that, Mother.”
Leo parked, and Benji pulled his car behind. The ten of them walked around like journalists over a crime scene, setting their feet carefully and keeping their noses slightly turned up. Ten yards into the forest of skinny trees, a clearing opened up. They all gathered in the middle of the dry grass and looked at each other with expectant faces.
“Well, lovely,” Silvia said. Her red lipstick and tight jeans looked garishly out of place with the peeling tree bark and buzzing insects. “This looks like a nice place to set up. Who’ll help me with the tents?”
“I will,” Hunter said. He and his sister were the only ones with eager eyes and skipping steps.
“Come on, then, captain,” Silvia said.
Everyone followed them to the cars. Jo put the passenger seat of her car all the way reclined and lay down with her sleeping baby. She put a shirt over her face and checked out. Tempest meandered over to where Leo unloaded the trunk of his car. He pulled three tent bags out and set them on the ground. He looked back into the car, rummaging but not finding another tent. He turned, his gaze drifting over Tempest before landing on Silvia.
“Is this it?” He asked his mom.
Three tents? How was that going to work?
“Yes. Two doubles and a four man.”
Every face turned to her. Fortunately Jo was too far away to hear. Silvia bristled. “Christopher and I will take one. With the little children, I thought the four man would be enough for the Preston family.”
“That leaves me, Leo, and Tempest.” Zena voiced what Tempest was thinking.
Silvia’s cheeks paled as she looked over the tight faces of the three single adult children. “I might have miscounted.” When no one responded, she forced a bright smile. “Good thing y’all are trim. I’m sure they base those measurements off big people. It’ll be good sibling bonding.”
“You’re kidding me,” Zena said, again taking the words out of Tempest’s mouth.
“Did you miscount sleeping bags too?” Leo asked, his voice pinched.
Silvia’s shoulders curled in, making her suddenly appear small and fragile. Her eyes went big like a puppy. “The guy said it was so warm we wouldn’t need sleeping bags. He said it made a lot more sense to use blankets.” Silvia padded to the luggage and unzipped a large duffel full of fleeces. Her nervous mouth turned up. “And I got the thicker mats for people to be comfortable.”
Like that made it all better.
Clearly Silvia didn’t already have a storage room full of camping stuff. Was this her first time sleeping outside? Tempest certainly hadn’t done it more than a handful of times. And not in fifteen years. Dread chilled her blood as she looked over the bag of fleece. She pictured the three of them crammed in a two-man tent, Zena wedged between her and Leo. Sharing blankets. This night was going to suck. At least Blair would love hearing the recounting of this fiasco when Tempest got home, if she made it out of here alive.
Leo took a deep breath—a yoga-cleansing-bad-juju breath if Tempest had ever heard one—and with a resigned set of his shoulders, he picked up the bags and carried the tents ten yards to the clearing. Dad, Benji, and his two older kids jumped to help.
Zena and Silvia seemed to be having a silent conversation, which involved lots of tense staring. Tempest wandered toward the men. It seemed the safer option. She stopped at the edge of the clearing in the shadow of one of the varieties of wider trees. The men hadn’t noticed her yet, and she hesitated to join, feeling suddenly like she didn’t belong with this group either.
“I asked my llama if he wanted to go camping,” Hunter said. “He said alpaca tent.”
“Hunter!” Leo whooped. “My man.”
Benji gave his kid a fist bump. “Coming in hot with the llama jokes.”
Hunter beamed. Hannah looked annoyed she hadn’t shared the joke first.
“Wanna go camping?” Benji asked, pulling the supplies from the biggest bag. He held up one of the rods. “ ’Cause I’m pitching a tent right now.”
“Nice.” Leo chuckled. He handed Dad one of the two matching two-man tents.
So each of the men was in charge of pitching their own tent tonight. Tempest smiled at herself but didn’t venture to share her thought. She didn’t feel she had the right equipment to participate in this joke game. She smiled again. She was on a roll.
Dad dumped the contents of his duffle on the ground and peeled tags and plastic off the never-been-used tent. He picked up a pole. The top connection snapped together, but he couldn’t get the bottom fold to straighten. He ran a hand through his hair and shook the misbehaving rod in frustration.
“That looks in tents over there, Christopher,” Leo said.
Benji gave Leo a silly grin and a thumbs-up. “Punny.”
Dad looked up, his brows tight with frustration. “Why do they have to make it so hard?”
“How else are you going to pitch a tent?” Leo pinched his mouth, but the grin won out, pulling his cheeks up.
“I guess you’re right.” Dad’s focus remained on the gear. “It doesn’t make sense to store the poles fully extended. But mine won’t go straight.”
Benji, squatting near the ground, chewed on his knuckle, his body silently shaking. He tilted his reddening face away from the older man. Tempest, standing near the trees, had her own lips clamped against the rising laughter.
Dad looked at Benji, brow raised in question. Benji finally turned to face his father-in-law, and a wave of laughter broke through his defenses.
Dad’s face fell. “I get it. That’s very funny.” His voice dripped with sarcasm.
“I won’t tell Silvia,” Benji said, barely getting the words out over his giggles.
“I do not have a problem with my rod!” Dad shook the folded-over stick in Benji’s direction.
Benji, clutching his side, keeled over out of his crouch and fell onto his butt.
“Looks like you can’t get it up,” Hunter said, his face innocent and concerned.
As the clearing erupted into a volcano of spewing laughter, Tempest slipped back to the car. Those men had definitely never been camping before. Still chuckling, she rummaged in her bag for the insect repellant. She sprayed her exposed skin, only her wrists, hands, and head, before wandering off to find a nice place to pee. It took a while. Even though the bushes here looked way less bug infested than the local wild preserves back in Texas, she surveyed every patch of grass carefully before exposing her tender underparts. By the time she returned to the group, three tents stood in a row. Those smaller ones were definitely two-person tents. She would be sleeping in the car.
“Who’s ready for a hike?” Dad asked.
Why not? What else did they have to do around here? “I’m in,” Tempest said. “Let me grab my hat.”
“The baby’s still napping with Jo,” Benji said. “So it’s just me and the older kids.”
Five and seven years old hardly seemed older.
“And all of us.” Silvia sent sharp stares to her two adult children.
Leo put a water bottle in each pocket before he came and stood by Hunter. Zena replaced her sandals with sneakers and put on big sunglasses before joining.
“Where are we going?” Hunter asked.
“On an adventure.” Dad squinted at the surrounding dunes. “But hopefully it takes us up to the top of that hill.” His lips curled down as he looked to Tempest and Benji. “Pay attention so we don’t get lost.”
“I knew I should have invited Jake,” Zena said.
Dad surveyed the thick undergrowth and twisting trees between them and the hill he’d picked out. “But let’s start down this road.” It went not at all in the same direction he’d poin
ted. “And see if we come to a path.”
“Good idea,” Tempest said. Getting lost out here with no cell service was not in this weekend’s agenda. And she wasn’t prepared for bushwhacking.
They started out slow. Tempest walked near the front of the group. If she couldn’t see Leo, maybe she could pretend he wasn’t here. Didn’t have a freshly shaved face. Hadn’t flown them all out on a gorgeous jet where the pilots had called him Mr. Allred.
They walked in silence except for the chatter of the children.
“Watch out for snakes,” Benji said to Hunter, who’d taken a stick and traipsed into thick undergrowth.
Tempest started devoting a portion of her attention to snakes.
“What kinds are here?” Hunter moved closer to his dad.
“The only poisonous ones I know of around here are rattlers,” Benji said. “But you know about those.”
Hunter rehashed the story about the time they’d found one in Texas. Then he shared a story about a water moccasin in the neighborhood lake. Hannah added a story about chiggers. And another about a brown recluse.
“I think maybe that’s enough stories for this camping trip.” Zena had her arms pinned close to her chest as she walked. “Maybe we tell more when we’re headed out in the cars tomorrow.”
Leo chuckled. “This is why we’re camping in California. Nothing dangerous here.”
“That’s not exactly true.” Dad held up a finger.
“Maybe let’s talk about that later too,” Leo said.
Tempest looked over her shoulder as Leo put a comforting arm around Zena.
Dang, why did he have to be so thoughtful?
“So.” Benji turned to Zena. “You used to live down here?”
“In Carlsbad. I’d just graduated from college and was getting serious with Jake. I got a job in the area so we could see if we could make it work. It didn’t in the end.” Her lips turned sad below her big sunglasses.
“Still a beautiful place.” Benji looked like he’d put his foot in a hole.
“Yeah. I loved living here. He taught me how to surf. I’m still not very good, but…”
“Better than the rest of us, I’m sure.” Benji’s shoulders loosened.
“I couldn’t really tell you why we broke up. We were just fighting about the dumb stuff. We were both stubborn and short-tempered. But we’re still sort of friends. He told me about this camping spot.”
“Not sure he was doing us a favor,” Leo muttered.
Tempest bit her lips to keep from chuckling.
“He’s still single.” Zena pushed her glasses higher up her nose.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Benji said.
Leo frowned at his sister. “Please don’t tell me you’re going to see him. That breakup tore you to pieces.”
“I’ve grown up since then.” Zena motioned to her body. “And as you can see, I’m still in one piece.”
“You still fall in love too easily.” Leo’s voice was as soft as a breeze.
Her retort came out sharp. “Better than refusing to ever fall in love.”
Everyone stopped walking. Leo stiffened. His gaze flashed to Tempest. The look was short, but it cut her to the core. Never loved? Good thing she hadn’t let herself get in any deeper with Leo. But she had the almost overwhelming desire to comfort him now. His shoulders had curled in, and he looked tensed up against a blow, trapped by a gang closing in. She wanted to hold him and kiss the sadness from his face.
Leo straightened suddenly and strode out in front. Zena rushed to catch up, her muffled apologies filtering back to the Swan family trailing behind.
The road did not turn up the mountain; it ran straight through the low valley. They enjoyed a continuous view of bushes, bugs, and branches. Hunter complained about being hungry.
Hannah tripped. She yelped as she landed over a fallen log. She rolled to a sitting position, her lips quivering as she looked over her scraped palms. Her knee oozed blood. Her legging had ripped, the front shin getting increasingly soaked by the red dripping down.
Benji knelt at her side and peeled back the torn black cotton over her knee.
“Don’t touch it!” she screamed, lashing out at her father.
“I need to get the dirt out, honey.”
She cried louder.
Benji flinched against the shrill sound. “It’s going to be fine.” His voice was hard. “You’re fine.”
“Hey, tough little lady.” Leo crouched at her feet, the bloody leg between them. “You took that fall so well.” He pulled a water from his pocket, unscrewed the lid, and handed it over.
She had to stop yelling to drink. After a guzzle, she handed it back, sniffled, then clutched her thigh with a grimace.
“I have some doctor stuff back at the camp. We can get it all cleaned up, and you can even pick out the bandage.”
She eyed him warily.
“I have a box with glow-in-the-dark bandages.” He lowered his voice and leaned in. “And I’ll show you where the secret stash of gummy bears is. It’s only for emergencies, but I think we could use some for this.”
She brightened like a light.
“But my brave soldier is going to have to be strong on the march back to base camp.” He held out his palm, and Tempest’s heart might have melted all the way through when Hannah’s dirty, scratched up, bloody little hand slipped into Leo’s.
“Thanks, Uncle Leo.”
And just like that, Tempest’s heart froze back to stone.
****
Leo could not believe he was the only one who’d brought a first aid kit. What kind of parents took three children camping without bandages and allergy medicine, at the least? After Leo finished helping Benji clean and fix up Hannah, he rubbed in a third application of hand sanitizer and tried not to think about the smear of her blood on his sleeve. After ALL, acute lymphocytic leukemia, nearly killed him at age nine, he’d had a hard time believing the doctors when they told him he could relax his germophobia after years of having a compromised immune system. True, he hadn’t been sick, not even a cold, for seven years, but was that a result of his now apparently strong immune system or his energetic handwashing schedule? He didn’t think it was worth the risk to find out. He was not paranoid. He was cautious. And it was totally normal to want a shower after a walk in the woods.
He knew nature, trees, rocks, and worms and such, weren’t generally disease ridden. He’d mostly gotten over that particular anxiety. Some sun-sanitized dirt on his skin no longer made him crazy. And so he would leave the bloody shirt on for the rest of the day just to prove he wasn’t afraid of bodily fluids anymore. Blood was the hardest for him to overcome. It was so powerful and personal and vivid. But he was stronger now. He wasn’t a frightened child. He wouldn’t even notice the rusty red stain.
The children had joined their mother setting up folding chairs by a firepit. Good, fire killed all the germs. Maybe he could accidentally burn his shirt.
His duffel bag called to him from the backseat of the car. He had four clean shirts in there. Four. He didn’t need that many for tomorrow. Children carried all sorts of diseases. Giving in, he walked around the side of the car. The Ford Explorer shielded him from the group. Careful not to touch the blood, he peeled off his shirt and stuffed it in the trash bag his mom had tied to the side view mirror. He breathed deeply, smelling fresh loam. Ah. Much better. He sanitized his hands and wrists one more time, and then he found a navy long-sleeve tee in his bag. He turned at the sound of footsteps. Tempest stopped by the back wheel, her focus snapping to his bare chest.
“Um.” She looked up at his eyes. “Uh.”
A slow grin spread over his face at her mumbling. She wasn’t quite as cold as she pretended.
She looked at his mouth, a frown forming on her lips, before her gaze dropped to his belly once more, like she just couldn’t help herself.
His smile grew.
She looked at the dirt. “Your mom wanted me to ask you to bring over the cooler bags with
dinner. They’re getting the fire going.” She whirled around. Her shoulder hit the side of the car in her fluster. She stopped. Tilting her chin, she looked sideways up at him. “Thanks for helping Hannah. That was really cool of you.” She strode away.
Satisfaction slipped over him like the feel of his freshly laundered shirt.
****
When the initial pit fire burned to embers, they cooked dinner over the hot coals: pineapple slices, bratwurst, and s’mores. Everything tasted better than it should have. After all the food had been cleaned up, the scraps and garbage shoved in a cooler bag and put in the car to discourage foraging creatures, they added logs to the fire. The adults sat in a semicircle upwind, sipping drinks and staring at the flames, while the kids ran around scaring off wildlife. The sun had long since set when Jo and Benji finally decided to force their children into their tent. When the Prestons migrated away from the burning embers, Christopher and Mom carried the conversation, talking about their favorite places to go and favorite things to eat and favorite books. Hadn’t they already had all these conversations? Zena chimed in sometimes, but Tempest mostly stared at the fire, the flickering golden light dancing over the angles of her face and throat.
“Well, honey.” Christopher stood from the folding chair and stretched his legs. “I’m spent. I can’t hang with these young kids anymore.”
Mom got to her feet and took Christopher’s hand. She looked over at the three left around the fire. “Y’all got what you need? I’m sorry about the tent. I thought it would be bigger.”
“That’s what she said.” Leo glanced at Tempest in time to catch her fleeting chuckle.
“What?” Mom frowned.
“We’re fine,” Zena said.
“I’m so glad we’re all here together.” Mom looked to each of them in turn. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Leo said.
“Good night.” Firelight gilded the smile Tempest gave his mother.
Mom and Christopher shuffled to their tent. The only sound in the clearing for a long time was Jo’s loud whispers telling her kids to hush, Christopher peeing not at all far from camp, the sound of nylon shifting, then Mom and Christopher helping each other get comfortable. Christopher put his sweatshirt under her sore hip. How sweet. When the sound of lips smacking started up, Zena growled.
