by Drew Jordan
“I’m from Sioux City,” she said. “Came up here fishing and met my husband and that was it. I never looked back.”
“We met in Fairbanks,” Trent said. “Last spring. I finally talked her into visiting and she decided to stay.”
As the conversation continued I felt less afraid of being caught in a lie and more intrigued by what Rhonda might say. She knew the stranger. They were acquaintances, anyway. What would she reveal to me about him? A past wife? His name? A personality trait?
But Rhonda disappointed me. All she said to me was, “Make sure you wear sunglasses. You don’t want to get crow’s feet like me.”
That was it. I gave an awkward laugh. “Will do, thanks.”
That was the reality of it, wasn’t it? She didn’t look at me and wonder who I was or where I came from or why I was with him, not really. After her mild curiosity was appeased with very ordinary answers that required no thought, she immediately looked at me and thought of herself. My youthful face reminded her of her aging one. She coveted my collagen and the past, while most likely enjoying the present.
It wasn’t about me.
Which summed up so many aspects of my reality back in Seattle. It wasn’t about me. Yet here, with him, it was. Sure, it was about him, but he was about me. I was his focus. It was a good reminder that while I had lost a lot, what I had gained was actually something I’d craved my entire life.
So I opened my mouth and confessed the second Rhonda went back into the kitchen.
“I brought my phone,” I blurted.
He had been dragging his fry through a puddle of ketchup and he paused. “What do you mean?”
“I brought my phone with me because I wanted to look at the pictures on it.” I pulled it out of my pocket and held it up for him to see. “I turned it on in the bathroom but it only has five percent battery so I turned it back off.” I couldn’t read his expression. “I just wanted you to know because… I don’t keep secrets from you.”
“Your secrets are yours to keep. Though how long was your phone on?”
“Two minutes tops.” I frowned. That wasn’t the response I was expecting.
“You better hope it wasn’t long enough to ping off a cell phone tower. Or whoever might be looking for you will know exactly where you are. Is that what you want? Someone to find you?”
“No one is going to look for me,” I said. The only person who would was my stepfather and he was in prison.
“What about your friend?”
“I’m sure he thinks I’m dead. I’m sure everyone thinks I’m dead.” It was a bizarre thought. But even if Michael didn’t think I was dead, would he really look for me?
The door to the laundromat and restaurant pushed open, the bell jingling the arrival of a customer and I had my answer.
Michael walked through the door.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I was so shocked I just stared at him. I hadn’t seen Michael in person in a dozen years but I was very familiar with his adult face from pictures. Besides, he stood out from the other people I had seen in Rush. He looked fresh. New to the bush. His jacket was still crisp, his boots stained from snow, but still unbroken. He was clean-shaven and good looking, a walking advertisement for LL Bean. He stomped his boots in the doorway and then looked up.
Our eyes met.
He started. Then he shook his head, clearly exasperated, before breaking into a huge smile. “Laney!”
“Michael. Hi.” I wanted to stand up, go to him, but I looked at the stranger. He was assessing Michael and then turned to watch me. His eyebrows rose in question.
“I’m so glad you’re okay, Jesus Christ, Laney. I thought you were dead.” He came towards us with huge strides.
Now I did stand up because I had the overwhelming urge to stave him off. Keep him over there. I had heard people use the phrase ‘two worlds colliding’ but holy shit, this was that in spades. It felt like a woman must feel when her husband and her lover end up in the same room. The cocktail party that overlaps two men she fucks. The awkward attempt to behave normally, the meaningful glances with the lover, or the even more obvious attempts to completely ignore him. The ignorant husband, laughing and joking with friends while she stands there and aches for the lover, her panties growing damp with her dirty little secret.
It felt like that. Or the way I’d felt with my mother and Dean.
Panicky, nervous, yet kind of excited.
“I’m not dead,” I said. “Though no one else survived the crash. This is the first time I’ve been able to get to town. What are you doing here?”
My voice sounded high-pitched. Manic.
“I’m looking for you.” Michael reached out and pulled me into a giant bear hug. He squeezed me. Hard. “I’m so glad you’re okay.” He kissed the top of my head. “Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re alive. I was here to find your body, honestly. I didn’t think there could be any way you’d be alive.”
“It’s me, in the flesh.” I hugged him back, because he was Michael, and I had intended to marry him, but at the same time, I felt the stranger’s eyes on me, watching. So I carefully disengaged from him. “The pilot and the other passenger died. It was terrible, Michael. I feel so bad for their families.”
“Yeah, I know. The plane was found. The assumption was that you were injured, wandered off, and died of exposure.” He took a step back and swept his eyes over me, still holding both my arms. “Where have you been? You look like hell.”
I frowned. I didn’t look like hell. I looked alive. I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but the stranger spoke first.
“She’s been with me.” He slid his chair out and stood up too, rising with an easy possession, but a caged intensity that I recognized. “She was injured, but she’s recovered now. We had to wait for the river to freeze over before we could travel. I live a few miles from the crash point and I found her.”
Michael took it all in and didn’t register any suspicion on his face. He put his hand out. “Well, then, thank you for saving her life. I’m Michael St. Clair.”
My muscles tensed and I waited, not sure what the response would be.
“I’m Trent,” the stranger said, an easy smile about his lips. “Laney said you’re childhood friends?”
Always so smooth, my stranger. Nothing rattled him. Unlike me, everything sending my nerves jangling, my words tumbling out of my mouth in panic. At least, before anyway. I was stronger now. Here. With him. I’d grown.
“Sit down, Michael,” I said, gesturing to the table. Rhonda was back and she was watching us with interest. Besides, I wanted a chair to hold my weight. My legs felt like matchsticks, ready to snap. “I can’t believe this.”
I couldn’t believe he’d come all this way to look for my body. To retrieve me. Maybe he did love me. Maybe everyone had been wrong in suggesting I was an idiot to pin my hopes on him. Even a nice guy wouldn’t poke all over the bush looking for a corpse. What would be the point? Only someone who genuinely cared about me would do that. I pushed my fingernails into my palms to ground myself.
“I can’t believe it either.” Michael sat heavily into a chair. “I need a beer.” He glanced around. “Do they serve alcohol here? It doesn’t look like a happening town.”
“They have beer,” Trent said. “So why did you think you could find Laney if the authorities couldn’t?”
It sounded rude. Michael unzipped his jacket and gave Trent a long look. “The authorities weren’t looking for her. It was a closed case when they found the plane and her next of kin was notified. I was also notified because they found my address in her purse. They assumed I was her destination.” Michael gave me a long look. “I assume I was her destination as well.”
I stared back, defiantly. Silent. So I hadn’t told him. It was supposed to be a surprise. Surprise, Michael.
“I didn’t really expect to find your body,” he told me. “I just wanted confirmation that no one had seen or heard from you. It seemed odd to me that your cell was gone bu
t your body wasn’t found immediately around the plane. I didn’t think you could get far without help. I guess I was right.”
“They notified my mother?” I asked Michael. “Did you talk to her?”
He nodded. “Yes, but I haven’t talked to her. I don’t really remember your mother all that well. I wasn’t sure what to say to her.”
Of course he didn’t remember my mother. That was during her spa phase, when Michael and I were spending all that time together. She kept taking spa vacations on Dean’s dime, which were actually more like hotel rooms in warm places where she could easily buy drugs, but regardless, she hadn’t been home much. I hadn’t cared.
“I understand.”
What I also understood was that you can’t escape the past, even when you crash into a forest and are rescued. It was there, sitting across from me, in the flesh. The past, the present, and the future were rubbing up on each other, getting awkwardly acquainted.
“Would you like some lunch?” Trent asked Michael. “We’re about finished eating, but I could go for a beer myself.”
He sounded so strange. So casual. So friendly and polite. I hated it. I wanted to wrest him from this restaurant and have him be normal again. I wanted him to grab me by the hair and murmur seductively in my ear while I felt sure of myself.
“Thanks, I think I will order something.” Michael lifted his hand for Rhonda to come over. He asked for a menu. When she left to retrieve one he bent closer to me. He was seated next to Trent, so at a diagonal from me. “I did call Dean,” he murmured. “He was extremely upset.”
My blood felt hot and sluggish, stuck in my veins, building up until I exploded. My skin splitting and all of my insides bursting out for everyone to see. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. Because what else could I say?
I still had Dean’s last email to me. I had read it a million times.
I’ve met someone.
He’d met someone.
I’d met someone.
We’d all met someone.
For the first time since the crash I felt as if I’d left my body. That I was in that weird space where I was saying the right things and doing the right things, but I wasn’t really truly present. It was a skill I was good at. I had floated away to that hazy place where passive Laney liked to twirl her hair and daydream about nothing in particular. Seeing Michael and hearing him speak out loud about my life had sent me into retreat and I didn’t like it.
“So what have you been doing?” Michael asked. “I have a hard time picturing you hunting and fishing.”
“I have been. I know it’s hard to believe, but sometimes I surprise myself.” That was certainly true.
He turned to Trent. “I’ve only ever seen her in floral dresses. Laney has always been such a girly-girl. Everyone always thought she was so cute.”
They had. Until they hadn’t.
But fuck cute. They could keep it.
The stranger thought I was sexy.
“She is cute,” he said. “But she’s a lot more than that.”
My cheeks heated. The way he said that… there was no question we had been intimate. It sounded so obvious to me, but maybe it wasn’t to anyone else.
Rhonda returned and said, “What can I get you?” to Michael after Trent ordered himself a Budweiser.
“I’ll take a burger, medium rare. And whatever beer you have in a bottle.”
“None,” she said flatly. “Just cans.”
“Okay, that’s fine. Whatever you have.”
Her lips pursed but she just nodded. “Busy day today. All kinds of folks in town. Huh.”
We had finally caught the interest of a local, but only in so much that we were all noteworthy. I didn’t think Rhonda was going to press. I was no longer worried about the clerk in the general store blabbing that I was an abused wife either. He was the least of my problems compared to Michael sitting at the table with us.
“How is Victoria?” I asked.
“Dean said she’s fine. He hasn’t told her about you yet. Which is good actually, because now he doesn’t need to.”
“That’s good. I worry about her.” I did. She wasn’t fragile, not like I had been at that age. But she had been disappointed so many times by people who should know better, her life’s foundation quicksand. She wasn’t good at putting down roots, or sticking to one thing, instead flitting like a butterfly between activities and friends and loyalties. She cared about everyone, she cared about no one.
“So where are you from?” Michael asked Trent.
“Alaska. You?”
“Seattle, like Laney.”
Rhonda had arrived with the beers and two glasses and she paused in setting them down. “I thought your name was Laura.”
And so the house of cards started to shake. “It is,” I said.
Michael looked at me, his mouth open in astonishment. His eyes shifted to Trent, as if seeing him for the first time. “What kind of injuries did you say she had?”
“Sprained ankle, some lacerations. Mild concussion. A little exposure.”
He nodded, slowly. He reached across the table, touched my hand. “Are you okay? I know things have been hard lately and now all this… are you holding up okay?”
“Yes.” I was, and I resented the question, the sympathy I saw in his eyes, because it was dangerously close to pity. I wanted to flick his hand off of mine. It felt cold and heavy and damp, the touch of someone who knows what is best for me, who thinks I need advice. But I didn’t. “I have to say that this has actually been good for me. I’ve had time to reflect on my life.”
Could I sound any more ridiculous? Any more trite? This had been more than zen-like reflecting. What had happened had been empowering and life-changing.
“That’s good. I’m impressed with how well you’re handling this. But you’ve always been a survivor.”
I suppose he was right. I had. If hiding in the dark corners of my life was survival. “Thanks. That means a lot to me.”
He squeezed my fingers again before releasing them. “You have a great heart, Laney.”
There it was again. He was being so caring that it confused me. Made me believe maybe he had wanted our relationship as much as I had. The thought warmed me. Pleased me.
“I’m going to go wash my hands, excuse me.” He stood up and went to the restroom.
I watched him go, taking in his confident walk. He was a good man, Michael. Truly.
“Just friends?” he asked. “I thought you told me you were just friends.”
“We are.” That wasn’t the whole truth though and he clearly knew it.
“I don’t give a shit if you rubbed your knees raw sucking him off for seventy-two hours straight, just don’t lie to me. Ever.”
“I’m not lying.” His tone should have frightened me, but I enjoyed the jealous undertone. It made me shift on my chair. “We’ve never had sex, real or virtual.”
“Do you want to?”
I thought about that. I remembered the feel of his hand on mine. “No. I don’t.”
“He’s going to assume that you’ll leave with him. You know that, right?”
“Yes.” What I didn’t know was the stranger’s feelings on that. He didn’t look like he gave a shit whether I did leave or I didn’t. “What do you think I should do?”
That was a pathetic sort of request for affection. I despised myself for saying it.
“I think you should go to Fort Yukon with Michael and convince him that neither one of you belongs in the bush. You should move to Fairbanks, to a nice suburban split level and you should have nice sex and push out nice pale babies and have a nice life.”
“That’s really what you think?” I asked, angry. He couldn’t possibly see that as my future. He was just mocking me, his pale blue eyes hypnotic.
“Yes, that’s what I really think.” He reached out and slid his finger lightly up and down the length of my forearm. “But before you go I’m going to carve my name in your skin so you never forget where you tru
ly belong.”
I shivered. “You could just take me right now while he’s in the restroom. Kidnap me and take me back to the cabin.” That’s what I wanted him to do.
“I don’t think so. That’s too easy. You have a choice, Laney, and I want you to make it. Not me. I know you can be obedient, but I also know you can think for yourself.” He didn’t need to lean closer for me to feel his presence. I already felt invaded by him, in every sense of the word. “You can do anything you set your mind to. I believe that.”
He believed it more than I did. I sat there, troubled, uncertain as Michael returned and ate his food and made small talk. He talked about the salmon run and dog teams and the price of fuel in Ft. Yukon. They sounded so normal. But nothing was normal.
“So how do you feel about heading back with me?” Michael asked softly at one point. “I feel like I should take you to Fairbanks, have a doctor check you out.”
The thought nauseated me. My pasta sat heavy and hard in my gut. “I don’t think I need a doctor.”
“Why don’t you come back to the cabin with us, spend the night?” Trent said. “Laney can get her stuff and then tomorrow you can leave at first light. The days are getting short. We should be heading back soon today.”
I wasn’t sure what stuff he was referring to as mine. The only thing I owned was my cell phone in my pocket. Everything else was his, including the panties and razors and toothbrush he had bought me in the grocery bags at his feet.
“I would like the chance to say goodbye to Laney,” he added. “She’s been good company.”
There was a world of innuendo in that sentence and Michael was smart enough to pick up on it. “Right. Of course. I don’t want to just yank you out of a safe place, Laney. Does that sound good to you, leave tomorrow?”
“Yes,” I said, because I was hurt that he didn’t say he wanted me to stay. That he merely wanted a chance to say goodbye. Him. Not Michael. Him. My everything. Yet he was going to let me go without any sort of protest or fight.
No one ever stopped me when I left.