Mia got up and came to him, resting a compassionate hand on his forearm, where she caressed his ‘family’ tattoo. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. The soft way her amber eyes looked at his tore him apart from the inside out.
“Don’t be sorry, Mia. The important thing is that we’re here now,” he said. “We can let the past stay firmly in the past.”
“No, I mean about your son,” she said. “Sometimes kids can grind on our last nerve and make us say awful things we wish we could take back. You shouldn’t blame yourself for that.”
“Ah…” he said and stood. So many things he wanted to say in response to that, but he held back and shoved on his jacket. “I’m heading back now. So, you gonna hang here, or what?”
“Have I said something wrong?” Mia asked.
He shrugged and left her, strolling to the lake. He would get to Glenda, tell her to stay away from Nate, and end the drama for the day.
But it wasn’t enough. Mia was bursting out the bushes behind him, her voice chasing him, “Why did you just leave like that?”
“Mia, we can’t just waste time lying in the bushes all day. There are people to find and people to warn.”
“Is that how you see me?” she said. “As a waste of time?”
“I see you as someone who wants to be distracted,” he admitted, a little more bluntly than he would have liked him to say. “I see you as someone who doesn’t want to let go and doesn’t want to make difficult decisions.”
“Ouch.” She glared at him.
“You asked me and I’m telling you.” He shrugged.
“I only asked you if you see me as a waste of time. I didn’t ask you to analyze and brutalize me, as you’ve made it abundantly clear you’re not my therapist.”
“Oh? You want my analysis?” he said. “Because believe me, that was no analysis.”
“Yeah,” she seethed. “I do. I want your analysis.”
“Here it goes. We’ve both lost our only children. We’ve both become shittier people as a result. All we can do now is hang onto the barely tangible hope that Brendan is out there, so that we can go on living in a state of perpetual blame and self-loathing. If Brendan is at that cabin like you dream he is, we’re both saved. If he’s not…then it’s game over.”
Her eyes flooded with sadness. Maybe he’d gone too far. Shit, he always went too far with these things. The overwhelming compulsion to reach out and comfort her and take back his words with physical affection consumed him. He refused to budge.
“You’re wrong,” Mia whispered.
“I don’t think I am,” he said. “I think we both depend on Brendan being alive, in a sick, dysfunctional way. I mean, I can see it in myself and you and I have the skills to do something about it, to change it, but I don’t, because the guilt gives me some weird comfort.”
“No,” she said. “You’re wrong about the part that we lost our only children.”
“Well, maybe you had more kids that you’ve lost, but I sure as hell have not.”
She slowly shook her head, her eyes welling with tears. She plunked herself down on a rock and helplessly knotted and unknotted her hands.
“You’re totally losing me,” Leo said. The dramatics, the crying. He didn’t have time for it and wanted to get as far away as possible. His ability to sympathize with random histrionics was fast dwindling. “I’ll catch you back at camp.”
“You have another child,” she called as he walked off. He stopped, and turned back to look at her. Confused.
He’d been careful over the years, he’d never been one to mess around and make babies he’d forgotten about. “How so?”
“It’s why I left you when we were seventeen,” she said. “Because we had a baby. We had a son, Leo.”
The words took forever to register in his mind as he stared at her. It was like they assorted themselves one by one in a lineup, backwards and forwards, and still didn’t make any sense.
“I have another child?” he heard his own voice saying from some faraway place. His face felt cold and clammy and his knees buckled with each syllable, “Another son who is not dead and is still alive out there somewhere?” Another son who I haven’t unintentionally murdered with my own neglect?
“Yes,” she said.
*******
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Mia watched Leo as he strode fifty steps ahead of her on the path, his shoulders square in their refusal to turn back to see her.
They made their way back to camp just as Nate and Glenda were entering from the trail on the opposite side.
“Where were you guys?” Glenda bounded up to them. “Did you find any clues about Penelope?”
“No. There has been a change of plans,” Leo announced. “We’re heading back to town to get help. All of us.” It was the only time he would turn to look at Mia, to deliver her a stern look.
“But what about Blueflower?” Glenda pressed.
“Blueflower is off the table now,” Leo spoke with an unusual harshness. There was a jagged edge to each word that made everyone visibly recoil. “Nate, pack up everything and let’s head out within the hour.”
Nate watched him without moving. Blinking. Startled.
“Nate, did you hear me?” Leo barked.
“Yes! Goodness jellybeans. Sorry, Dr. Lawson. I will pack up right now.”
Glenda stormed into the tent and Mia hurried after her to find her yanking open her vitamin bottle and gulping down the pills with fervor. Mia came to her and wiped her hair from her eyes. “Are you all right? Did anything happen while we were gone?” She checked over Glenda for signs of injury. Glenda brushed Mia’s needy hands off her.
“I’m fine,” Glenda sighed. “But Nate, on the other hand…”
“What happened with him?” Mia asked. She looked out the tent door to sternly regard the strange man as he waddled around the campsite, wringing his hands and muttering to himself. “Did he hurt you?”
“He’s just a creep; he refused to give me the equipment,” Glenda said, sending him a glare on fire. “Can you imagine he forced me to call him Silky Monkey?”
“Silky Monkey?” Mia scrunched up her nose. “What does that even mean?”
“Who knows? He also he tried to…”
Mia’s felt her heart sink. Please say he did not do the unthinkable.
“I don’t know if I can say it.” Glenda turned her eyes bashfully away. “It’s just too awkward. Please just forget it.”
“Glenda, it’s so important that you tell me,” Mia begged. “If he has done something to you. But if you don’t want to talk about it—”
“To add insult to injury, he forced himself on me,” Glenda hurried. “He, um… he put his dick in my mouth.” Glenda whisked back out of the tent to where the men were standing to make sure they didn’t hear.
“He what?” Mia fell backward. Her mouth fell open to a stuck O shape. She realized Nate was a bit off, but he seemed the type that was too nervous to even masturbate to Glenda’s selfies in the privacy of his own home. “You cannot be serious.”
Glenda’s turned back to face her, eyes twisted into a display of emotions: anger, fear, sadness. She rolled through them all and then laded back on her default blank expression. “He said he would rape me if I told you.
Glenda calmly coiled a string of crimson hair around her finger and gazed up through the tent door at the treetops as she spoke. “Hey, there’s that raven. I keep seeing him following us. Aren’t ravens an omen of impending doom or something?”
Mia glanced up and saw an empty dark blue sky above the trees with no bird of any sort. She shook her head, dismissing it, getting back to the subject at hand. “We need to tell Leo what Nate did to you. And we need to get you back to town.”
“Leo? You mean the therapist you’ve been fucking?” Glenda snorted. “Um, thanks, but no thanks.”
“Excuse me?” Mia gulped a handful of dry air. She and Leo had taken meticulous measure to be so discreet, how had Glenda found out?
&nb
sp; “Come on, Mia,” Glenda said. “Seriously? I am not going back to town with them. We are going to Blueflower. Come hell or high water.”
“Glenda, it’s just a silly dream, and the trip could be potentially very dangerous,” Mia said. “I can’t involve you in that. I have to go alone.”
“Is that what fuckboy over there has been telling you? That your visions have all just been a delusion? I bet he tells you that you’ve been writing your own threatening notes too, huh?”
“Well, they are in my own handwriting…”
“Bullshit!” Glenda shouted. “It’s bullshit and you know it. You’re being followed, stalked, harassed by someone. You need to find answers. Your dreams have those answers. Brendan is the answer, and we have to go get him.”
Glenda’s eyes blazed wild, as she balled her fists at her side and her skin flushed an unhealthy red. Redder than the sweaty long hair that streamed around her face. Red enough to look like she was going to explode from a heart attack right at Mia’s feet. Glenda curled her lips up, exposing a row of teeth that might otherwise be fangs prepared for an attack. She seethed, her cold, vicious warning, “I am not heading back to town with them. I am going to Blueflower with you.”
Startled by this unexplained rage, Mia stepped away from Glenda, locking eyes with her. A heavy sick weight drenched the air.
She had the choice of two possible hells.
The first choice: return to town with Leo, who clearly hated her now and would, thus, make every step of the trip back as awkward as possible. Mia inwardly cringed at the idea of what possible small talk could ensue after nights of scorching sex and then, in the glow of post-coital bliss, casually mentioning, ‘Oh yeah, by the way, we had a kid together. But it’s cool because it was, you know, a long time ago and everything.’
Yeah. No.
Or, her second choice, even less appealing: She could head up to Blueflower to chase a dream that likely didn’t exist and with a potential stalker still in the woods. Not to mention a grizzly the size of a car that was hovering way too deep within the boundaries of what Mia would consider a safe distance to be from a beast that size.
Mia drew the other hand to her throat and choked down impossibly dry air.
No third choice, huh?
“How much further is it for us to get there?” Mia finally exhaled. Not even able to believe what she was asking. “To Blueflower.” She walked across the tent to grab the bag of smoked salmon sandwiches she had made earlier, and slung it on her back. It would be a long trip up there; they would need fuel.
Glenda’s face relaxed into a mellow sunbeam and all tension evaporated. She reached deep into the hollows of her pocket and retrieved two mangled pieces of paper that had seen far crisper days. One of them she quickly crumpled, and the other she spread open. “I brought a detailed map; I had a feeling Nate and Leo might have ditched us by this point.”
“Why would you assume that?”
Glenda ignored the question and pointed to a tiny trail on the map. “We’ve been sticking around at this campsite for a long time, waiting for Penelope, so we haven’t made much progress. But if we take Lavender Pass Trail, here, and don’t waste any time, we could get there by tomorrow.”
“And if we’re sensible human beings who take breaks and not weirdo superheroes who can hike for hours without rest?”
“Two days,” Glenda said. “If you want to be lazy about it.”
“I want to actually survive,” Mia said and snatched the map from her. It was so buttery soft and worn, it almost melted in her palm. “If that’s all right with you.”
“I don’t mind,” Glenda said and added with urgency, “But we should head out now. Before the guys try to stop us.”
“Mmm, yeah, sure,” Mia gazed across the map. It had been years since she’d been to her grandfather’s cabin. It must be swollen thick with wild weeds and colonized by a vast assortment of animals by now. She wondered how Glenda even knew where it was. She didn’t even remember telling her about its exact location.
Glenda left the tent and Mia scampered behind her, watching her, horrified.
As if sensing their desire to flee, Leo approached them outside the doorway of the tent, chiseled face doused with a hot grimace. Nate shuffled behind him, his hands still twisting, his mouth muttering nervous nonsense. Leo refused to address Mia, and turned his angry question on to Glenda as if she spoke for both of them. “Are you ready to go now?”
“So, yeah, dude, here’s the thing,” Glenda announced. “Mia and I have decided to continue up to Blueflower. You and Nate can head back to town to get help finding Penelope.”
“Like hell. You two are not going up there alone without equipment,” Leo fired back.
“Whatever.” Glenda slid a hand on Mia’s arm and guided her toward the trail that headed north. “Come on, Mia. Let’s go. We can’t waste any more time on these idiots—”
“No!” Nate blared, his volume stabbing through the clumsy niceties. “Don’t go with her, Mia. Don’t do it!” His hands clapped to his mouth and his eyes bulged as if horrified by the utterance he’d just let escape.
“If anyone is a threat here, it’s you.” Mia bounced the bag of sandwiches on her back; it was starting to feel heavy already. “After what you did to Glenda. When we get back to town, we’re going to call the police and report you.”
“What did he do now?” Leo roared. “Nate? What’s going on?”
“Damn straight, we’ll call the police,” Glenda said. “You’re going to jail. Jackass. You probably killed Constable Barter too. You know how many years in prison that’s gonna be for you?”
Hands still clapped on his mouth, Nate shook his head wildly. He looked to Glenda, saucer eyes and purpled face. “No,” Nate mumbled insistently into his palms.
“Shut up, Nate,” Glenda snarled, snatching Mia’s hand and clasping it firmly against her with two hands this time. A tremor vibrated and danced ever so finely between her words.
“What have you done, Nate?” Leo repeated.
Nate slowly lowered his hands from his mouth. As everyone waited, he lifted a trembling finger to point upward, where the lone raven now circled across a patch of clear sky. He opened his mouth, but no sooner had he begun the first syllable, they were interrupted by the sound of a deep rasping wheeze, a sloshing wet growl. The sound was strong enough to penetrate deep into the ground and vibrate the land under their feet.
Mia dropped her gaze from the raven to the forest behind Leo and Nate. And that was when she saw it.
She opened her mouth to scream, but only breathless terror escaped her lungs.
*******
It was the size of a Volkswagen and it loudly heaved its mass onto its hind legs. Its brown tree trunk arms wielded wide paws the size of hubcaps, barbed with black claws, fully capable of plucking a sycamore like a pimple from the earth and tearing it to ribbons. Its lips lifted to expose rows of white daggers for teeth. Its brown fur was clotted with the dried mud, or perhaps it was the blood of those who had crossed its path.
Mia felt the blood in her brain turn cold and plummet to her toes. She gaped at the bear in speechless horror. This couldn’t be happening.
It was only a hundred feet away from them.
The bear dropped to its front paws, eyes locked confidently on hers, and rolled out one leisurely step of a swagger toward them.
Leo and Nate continued bantering with a defensive Glenda; all three were oblivious to the peril that was fast approaching them.
“Why are you guys listening to this idiot?” Glenda snorted and rolled her eyes. “He collects spices that he doesn’t even use for cooking, for fuck's sake.”
“Guys…” Mia mouthed but only breathless words came out.
Nate and Leo stood with their backs squarely against the approaching bear. Glenda faced it sideways, and if she had turned her face ever so slightly to the right to look past Leo’s shoulder, she would have seen what was coming directly for them.
“If there’s
some sort of problem between you two,” Leo announced to Glenda and Nate, “I suggest we talk about it on the way back to town and sort it out.”
“Guys!” This time Mia’s voice squeaked out of her a little harder, like that of a frightened flea. Barely perceivable by the human ear. But enough to capture Leo’s attention, as he paused mid-lecture and skimmed his annoyed eyes over to meet hers.
“What is it?” Leo said.
The bear took another leisurely step closer. Its hunched back lobbed sideways with this lumbering step. Two ribbons of steam spiraled down from its enormous black nose. It lowered its massive head and watched Mia. Its body wobbled side to side, as if not sure if it should approach them or not. But its chestnut eyes never released their greedy lock from hers.
“No—” Mia rasped and slowly waved her arms to gesture danger to the rest of the group. Her arms, slow-motion, swam through heavy, soupy air. Vomit swirled at her tonsils. She wheezed out each word, breath by breath. “Don’t…move. Stay…where…you are. Where’s…the gun?”
“The gun?” Glenda quipped. “Oh, because you want to shoot Nate in the face for what he did to me. I got your back, girl.”
“No…” Mia breathed with tight precision. “Nate, where. Is. Your. Gun?”
“Gone,” he said.
“What do you mean gone?”
“I threw it away. Off a cliff.”
Mia wanted to curl up and bawl herself into a thousand pieces. This could not be happening.
“Why the hell would you do that?” Leo said. “We needed that gun for protection.”
“I don’t want to talk about that right now.” Nate quivered. “Let’s just say it’s better this way.”
The bear snorted behind them. Wetly. Globs of saliva oozed in glistening cords from its teeth. There was no way they could not have heard that.
Leo was the first to hear and spin to see the bear. He paused, gaping at it. Then he finally muttered, “Oh shit.” He thrust out his arms to protect the other three. “Stay back!”
“Motherfucker!” Glenda shrieked and hurtled behind Leo’s arms. The shrillness of her voice ignited the bear. It kicked up puffs up brown smoky dust and trotted at them, now more hell-bent.
Kiss Her Goodbye: Thriller/Romance with a shocking twist Page 16