Chasing River

by K. A. Tucker

  “So . . .What have you seen so far?”

  “Umm . . . Wicklow Mountains, Trinity College, the Guinness factory . . .” I start rhyming off all the things I should have seen by now, had I not sequestered myself while recuperating, both mentally and physically. I lost track of how many times I bolted upright in bed the last two nights, after a loud thump or car backfiring on the streets below. “You know, stuff.” I shove a piece of bacon into my mouth to avoid talking. The rest of my thrown-together breakfast stares back at me, growing cold. The fridge is full of food that I bought the evening that I arrived here, hoping to avoid eating out as much as possible. I’ve barely touched it.

  “Stuff,” he repeats, and I can almost see the weak smirk touching his lips. “Sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity alright.” Gabe Welles never traveled in his youth, joining the Deschutes County Police Department fresh out of school. He and Mom didn’t even leave Oregon for their honeymoon, a fishing trip in the wilderness. To say he doesn’t understand my need to hop on planes and listen to foreign languages and see the world outside of Sisters, Oregon, would be accurate. He tried to dissuade me right up until the night before I left, grumbling about how I wasn’t being responsible.

  My dad sighs. “We miss you here. The Felixes are getting fat and lazy without you to ride them.”

  I smile at the mention of the horses next door. It’s been almost four weeks since I left home with one turquoise suitcase and plans to make a lifetime’s worth of memories. “Tell Jesse to give them a run.”

  A deep chuckle fills my ear. It’s so rare to hear him laugh. “I’ll be sure to suggest that to him.”

  My twin brother, Jesse, has avoided the stalls since a horse hip-checked him and he landed in a pile of manure that had yet to be mucked. We were eleven then and, if it weren’t for Alex, I’m guessing he still wouldn’t step inside that barn today, fourteen years later.

  “Mom working tonight?” Dad was surprised to get my call at nine p.m. Oregon time. It’s still yesterday back home. Here, it’s five a.m. and I’ve already been up for an hour, unable to sleep.

  “Of course. They need to hire more doctors. At least the new cardiologist they found to fill Aaron’s spot is working out well.”

  My stomach clenches with that name.

  After a moment of silence, Dad offers a quiet, “Sorry, hon.”

  “It’s okay.” I quietly push the painful reminder aside. “I’m sure Mom’s heavier work schedule may also have something to do with a retired sheriff lingering around the house with too much time on his hands.”

  He grunts in response.

  “Is Alex around?”

  “Trying to get rid of said retired sheriff so soon?”

  “Never.” I smile. He’s been driving my mom nuts, leaving the kitchen splattered with grease and filled with dishes in his attempts at making dinner each night for her.

  “Listen, Amber . . .”

  “Yes, Sheriff Welles?” I laugh, knowing that he just rolled his eyes. I only call him that to his face when I’m on the offensive. Particularly, an offensive to his coming lecture. Not that I’m never unreceptive to it. My dad may have been hard on us growing up but he was always fair, his staunch belief in right and wrong a thing to be admired. That doesn’t mean I always agreed, or that sometimes I didn’t wish he would just not share his opinion for once, but it’s always been his voice in the back of my mind, helping me see through ambiguity to reason. My father is just one of those guys who can do no wrong, even when he makes mistakes, because his heart and his morals are always in the right place.

  “Hearing about that bombing on the news, about an American girl with long brown hair, in her twenties . . . it scared us. The kind of people who are willing to do that sort of thing are dangerous, and you won’t even be able to pick them out of a crowd.”

  The attempt to keep my identity out of the media was successful. All the newspapers could get was what the first witnesses could tell them, which wasn’t much since I was fortunately too shocked to make the mistake of giving them my name. The reporters filled the rest of the articles with the description of the scene and comparisons to past bombings. Talk of the city’s gang problem, extortion and retaliation shootings, the heroin and cocaine epidemic. The IRA. Or the RIRA. I don’t understand the difference. I do understand the word terrorists, though, and the articles mentioned that more than once.

  I push aside my guilt for lying to my dad, reminding myself that my reasons are valid. Between their careers and the past year with Jesse and Alex, my parents have dealt with enough stress to make them stronger than most. Still, I don’t want them worrying about me more than necessary. “I’m perfectly fine.”

  “I’m glad you are. I’m glad this American girl is, too. I’m sure her parents just want her home now.”

  Oh, no doubt they would.

  He pauses, and I can almost see him standing at the edge of the garage’s concrete pad, peering out over the three mountain peaks that earned our town its name, his hand on his hip. “If it hadn’t been for that man who knocked her down . . .”

  “Thank God for good people,” I whisper, my throat suddenly going dry.

  I haven’t forgotten about “that man.” In fact, he’s occupied my thoughts over the past two days more than anything else about that fateful morning.

  Wondering why he ran, if Garda Duffy is right and he could be involved. And if O’Brien is right and he just saw me as a pretty face that needed to be saved.

  But, mostly, just wondering if he’s okay. On the drive home, O’Brien and Duffy reiterated how lucky I was. While the bomb was apparently small and not filled with nails and the usual stuff, the scattering of shrapnel from the pipe that they found was enough to seriously harm me, had I been caught upright in its crossfire. But that guy . . . the blood spots on his back tell me that he wasn’t as lucky.

  I’m remembering more now. Just bits of the puzzle, really.

  A golden scruff coating his jaw.

  Strong, solid-looking shoulders.

  A stag on the front of a T-shirt the color of green clovers.

  I’ve held Duffy’s card in one hand, the phone in my other. But I haven’t called him yet, haven’t admitted to recalling more information. The memory of the guy’s pleading eyes keeps stalling my fingers.

  It’s an odd feeling to have a complete stranger save your life and not be able to thank him. I know he’s out there somewhere right now. Some nameless face I’ll decide I need to search for one day, five or ten or twenty years down the road, whenever I’m back home and not fearing my father’s reaction. I’ll take out a random ad in search of him, or post a message on Facebook, or whatever social media tool will be most prevalent then, and I’ll recount the day that an American girl was saved by an Irish boy in St. Stephen’s Green.

  And if I never find him? I’ll probably still be thinking about him when I’m old and gray and lying on my deathbed, wishing that I had not hidden from the media, but had used them to express my gratitude. I guess I still could . . .

  “One of the articles I read suggested that the guy was actually involved. What do you think?” I ask casually.

  “Who knows. I’ve seen a lot of crazy things in my day.” A moment of dead air hangs between us. “Okay, well . . .” Dad heaves another sigh. “Three more months, is it?”

  “It could have been eleven, so count your blessings.” When I started adding up costs, I realized that my original plan to travel for an entire year was too lofty. My only options were to either shorten my trip or downgrade to backpacker hostels, and, well . . . I shortened my trip. Four months abroad is still plenty of time.

  “Have fun, Amber.”

  “I will.”

  “And watch out for thieves. Don’t carry your passport with you. Store it somewhere safe.”

  I roll my eyes. “Dad, I’m not clueless.”

  There’s a pause. “And get that Skype thing working so I can see your face next time.”

  My eyes flash to the dre
sser mirror facing me. To my purple-and-blue mottled shoulder and bicep where the guy’s body collided with mine. I could have hidden it under a jacket or long-sleeved shirt, but the gash on my bottom lip is impossible to explain. Plus, he would have noticed my slow, stiff movements. When I woke up yesterday, I started to worry that something was broken. I couldn’t turn my head without cringing.

  “Sure thing, Dad. Love you.”

  I listen to the shuffle as the receiver is passed off, relieved that that conversation is over and that he didn’t figure out what happened. It’s better this way, for everyone involved.

  “Hey.” Alex’s soft voice fills my ear and my heart. Of everyone back home, I think I miss her most, which is funny because she’s not even my blood.

  “Hey, Alex. How are things?”

  There’s a clatter in the background, followed by Jesse swearing. She chuckles. His normal broodiness doesn’t seem to bother her. Probably because it vanishes the second he lays eyes on her. “You know.”

  “Anything . . . new?” I don’t have to elaborate. She knows exactly what I mean. We’ve been through so much in the time since she arrived at the hospital that my mother and I work at, near death from a brutal attack, only to wake up with no idea what had happened or who she was. To be fair, I had no idea who she was either. Or more importantly, who she was to my brother. I should have known he’d be somehow involved.

  More than a year later, she still doesn’t remember everything, but I think that might be for the best.

  “A few things.” Her vague answer tells me that they’re memories she isn’t going to share with me. We have an odd relationship. I consider her my family—the sister I always wanted—and she probably outranks any of my childhood friends as my closest confidante. But the Alex I know comes with a do-not-pass door into her past, and what truly happened the night she should have died. She may not remember it all, but she carefully guards what she does remember.

  At first I took it personally. I was with her through the months after the attack, caring for her in the hospital. I was with her the day she discovered what my brother had been hiding. If anyone, she should feel that she can trust me. That’s what I assumed at first: that she didn’t trust me. Finally, I decided to just go with it, figuring she’d tell me when she was ready.

  Every once in a while, she’ll mention something. It’s always inconsequential, but for her, I’m beginning to think it’s more a matter of safety. I don’t know who her husband was, beyond the fact that he was a maniac with a psychotic temper. But I think silence is her way of protecting me. And Jesse. And, honestly, who knows who else.

  So I just let her be, appreciating the present Alex in my life, because that girl is an inspiration.

  “So? What’s new? What’s Ireland like?”

  “It’s beautiful,” I answer honestly, at least the little bit that I’ve seen. My face was pressed to the glass in awe as the plane descended into rich, grassy hills speckled with tiny white and black sheep.

  Gravel crunches on the receiver. I can picture Alex strolling along the driveway, her cornsilk-blond hair hanging free and natural. She’s probably heading toward the barn. She spends a lot of time around the horses. “And the trip?”

  I smile at my reflection, though the smile isn’t as wide this time. I’m not sure if that’s on account of my injured lip or my recently doused spirits. “Still worth it.” No one believed I would get on that first plane. They thought that I’d find an excuse, a reason to not leave Sisters—my place of comfort, the town I came back to after college when many of my friends didn’t.

  I almost didn’t. I’ve been saving for this trip since I landed my full-time nursing job right out of school. When Alex first met me, it was all I talked about, working extra shifts to earn more money. And then a thirty-three-year-old cardiologist by the name of Dr. Aaron Janakievski came into the picture and changed everything.

  I had noticed Aaron around the hospital. Blond, attractive, rumored to be single . . . every nurse in the hospital had noticed him. The few single female doctors had, too. One day last June, Aaron turned around in the line at the cafeteria and asked if we could eat together. I held my breath and nodded, suddenly nervous that I’d say something stupid. I mean, the guy performs open-heart surgery!

  I guess I didn’t, because that one lunch in the cafeteria quickly became three, which escalated to dinners off-shift, and evenings at the movies . . . and nights at his condo in downtown Bend. By Christmas, we were tangled in sheets and talking about me moving in with him. It was fast, but he was charming and youthfully attractive and smart and . . . a doctor. Oddly enough, we had a lot more in common than I would ever have believed. Both of my parents had already given their approval, even with the eight-year age difference between us.

  I was so sure that Aaron was it.

  Just as quickly, though, our relationship crashed and burned. In late February, Aaron suddenly announced that he was moving to Boston, to work at one of the top cardiology hospitals in the country. He’d never even told me that he had applied, or that, during his trips out east to visit with his parents, he was also interviewing for the position. He told me over dinner at his place, and my mind’s wheels immediately started churning, thinking about what life in Boston would be like. If I could get a job there, how much I’d miss Oregon and my family.

  There was no need. Aaron ended things with me that same night.

  He said that I was beautiful and funny but I was too young, and had lived an isolated existence. I couldn’t possibly know what I wanted in a spouse yet. He was looking for someone with more life experience. What I heard was that I wasn’t good enough for him, something no one had ever suggested to me before. It was a huge hit to my ego.

  My plans to travel the world were back on with a vengeance, along with a promise to myself to never again divert my life for a guy.

  “So . . . what happened in Halifax?” Alex asks, and I hear the smile in her voice. The last time we talked, I was sitting on a pier for lunch, overlooking the bay. Tables around me were filled—some with entire families, some with couples. One with a lone guy, quietly picking away at a lobster tail, his cappuccino-colored eyes mesmerizing.

  It was my last day in Nova Scotia, and I debated simply walking over, filling the spare seat next to him, and striking up a conversation. Everyone knows a person who can do that. Gillian Flanders, a nurse at my hospital, is one of those people. She’ll go to Cancún for a week alone and return with an album’s worth of wild pictures and a dozen stories. I’ve always told her that she’s crazy, but secretly I’ve envied her. I’ve never been that girl who can just walk up to random strangers and start talking, who can openly flirt with a guy, unafraid that I’ll embarrass myself if he’s not interested in me.

  Back and forth, Alex and I texted that afternoon by the pier, with her encouraging me to just do it. What was the worst that could happen? By the time I had worked up enough courage, the handsome stranger was paying his check and I was still firmly planted within my small comfort zone.

  “I ate lots of seafood.”

  She chuckles. “Yeah, I figured. Next time, maybe.”

  I smile. “Maybe.”

  “Oh! Before I forget . . . In case you want to see a friendly face, Ivy’s in Dublin right now.”

  “Ivy?” That’s not exactly what I’d call a friendly face. The last time I saw that girl, that fateful day a year ago when Alex was getting her tattoo, she looked ready to scrawl foul language across my forehead with her tattoo gun. Probably because I pretended not to recognize her. “I don’t really know her.”

  “Yes, you do,” Alex pushes. “You went to the same high school.”

  “Along with five hundred other kids . . .” I glare at my deep scowl in the mirror and then push the frown line between my brows smooth. “She was a year younger than me, anyway.”

  “Just a suggestion.” A horse whinnies in the background, stirring a touch of homesickness inside me.

  “What’s she doing here?
”

  “Working. She’s been there for a few months now, I think? She wanted a change from Oregon.”

  Well, I guess Ivy and I have one thing in common, then. Pretty much the only thing, aside from both being female. I was a Rodeo Queen and straight-A student in high school; Ivy was the resident graffiti artist. I’ve always embraced my feminine side, primping my long hair in fat curls or silky smooth and straight, and choosing the perfect outfit and jewelry. Ivy showed up to school one day in my senior year with all her hair shaved off. I’m a nurse, helping save people’s lives. She leaves them with permanent scars all over their skin.

  “I didn’t realize you guys talked so much,” I murmur, appraising my limp hair. I haven’t showered since the detectives dropped me off two days ago.

  “You should visit her. She works at her cousin’s shop. The Fine Needle? Or something like that. Anyway, I’m sure you can find it easily.”

  “Sure, if I have time.” Alex can probably hear the empty intentions in my voice. “Talk to you later.”

  “Have fun, Amber. And call me when you cross off number one on the list.”

  I hang up with a snort and then a laugh. One unusually mild night in March, Alex insisted on starting a list for me—Amber’s travel “bucket list.” I had just spent the entire day booking thousands of dollars’ worth of flights and self-medicating my rejection by Aaron with a bottle of zinfandel. It was just the two of us out on the front porch, the creak of that old swing and our cackles disturbing the quiet, wrapped in blankets and warmed by the chiminea that Jesse had lit for us before he bolted, desperate to be free of female emotion.

  The list actually started off as a complete joke, a way to get me excited about the trip. Wine made my suggestions bold, a few outright ridiculous. Guaranteed I’ll return home with half of the lines untouched. And yet I find myself looking at the list almost daily, the opportunity to check something off giving me a small thrill.

  Reaching into my small black travel wallet now, I pull out the folded paper that’s tucked inside, reading Alex’s neat, flowery handwriting with a smile.