Over the Falls

by Rebecca Hodge

Bryn got up and came over to me. “Try not to worry. I’m sure your mom is okay.”

  She gave me a quick hug, but it wasn’t anything like Mom’s hugs. Mom’s hugs were so fierce on my ribs it made it hard to breathe, and they smelled nice like the flowers in her perfume. This ordinary hug hardly felt like a hug at all, and it just smelled like plain old tomato sauce.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Bryn

  A restless night left me tired and frazzled. I was frustrated, I was worried, and most of all I was angry. Not an ordinary who-dinged-my-truck anger; this was hot, murderous anger, deep-rooted anger, the kind of anger that sizzled in my head and made my hands twitch. Josh’s arrival had reignited the Del-Sawyer inferno I thought I had damped down to cold ashes, and I wasn’t feeling very rational. Normally, I would calm down by heading for the nearest lake with my kayak to let a quiet hour of paddling work its magic, but instead I had to stay here at home and decide what to do about Josh.

  Josh, the personification of Sawyer’s bitter betrayal.

  Josh, the irritant forcing me into action.

  Josh, the teenager caught in the middle, who hadn’t meant to destroy my precarious balance. He was alone. He was family. I needed to help if I could.

  The sun was barely up, but I rolled out of bed, pulled on a shirt and jeans, and checked on my nephew in the living room. I had settled him on the couch with a quilt and a pillow, but he had moved to the floor in the night and was sound asleep with one arm wrapped tight around Tellico’s fuzzy chest. His face was smooth, all tension and worry gone, and in that moment he looked deeply vulnerable. An unexpected sympathy forced my frustration back into its cage.

  I’d responded that way to Del when she was a baby—she’d been helpless and needy, a beautiful doll who smiled and cooed whenever I held her. I would have done anything to please her and even more to protect her. But that was a long time back. Now, if Del herself had been on my doorstep asking for help, I would have slammed the door and thrown the deadbolt.

  Even though she’d disappeared, it was hard for me to get seriously worried. It had only been a week, and her track record of reckless decisions made it likely she was simply off partying somewhere. The real question at the moment wasn’t whether I believed she was in trouble; it was how much I was willing to invest in her son. Their son.

  I headed to the kitchen for my first mug of hot tea. I tried to be quiet, but Josh wandered in behind me, sleepy-eyed and yawning.

  “Want some tea?”

  He looked appalled, as if I’d offered something toxic. “A Coke? Coffee?”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. Del had never been a poster child for healthy choices. “I’m sorry, I don’t have any soda. I think I’ve got some coffee somewhere.” I rooted around in the cupboard for my ancient jar of instant and stirred up a rather murky-looking cup.

  He took a tentative swallow, made a face, and pushed the cup aside. “What’s for breakfast?”

  I’d heard that teenage boys were bottomless pits. Fruit and yogurt weren’t going to cut it. “How about some eggs and toast?”

  “Sure.” He glanced around the kitchen, where I’m sure he noticed there was zero evidence of food in progress .

  At the moment, I couldn’t do anything about finding his mother, but at least I could tackle breakfast. “Come on. We’ll get the eggs.”

  I grabbed an empty basket, and Josh followed me out the door with quick steps and a surprised expression. Tellico bounced along the path ahead of us, snuffling for evidence of any rabbits that had passed by overnight.

  Cumulus clouds drifted across a Crayola-blue sky, shifting the light into a moving patchwork at our feet, but Josh didn’t seem to notice the day’s beauty. A mourning dove gave its distinctive coo, and he jumped and looked around for the source, not even noticing the bird on a nearby stump. I wasn’t sure where he and Del had been living, but it must not have included much time away from the city.

  Mornings were when I most enjoyed being alone, and the presence of a clueless teenager left me uncertain how to act. My normal routine was to check the creek before going to the barn. Who knows? Maybe he’d learn something. “Come this way. I want to show you something before we go for the eggs.”

  I veered right, away from the barn path, and paused under the ancient black gum tree to listen. “Hear it? That soft humming?” It hadn’t yet warmed enough to lure the workers out, and the sound was the hum of pent-up energy.

  Josh’s forehead crinkled, and he peered into the branches, looking for the source. “What is it?”

  “Bees. This old tree is hollow, and they’ve been busy in the orchard. I haven’t figured out a way to get the honey without breaking my neck or destroying the tree, but I haven’t given up yet.”

  Josh pulled his arms in tight as if protecting himself from a possible sting.

  “It’s okay. They won’t attack if we leave them alone. Come on.”

  I led the rest of the way down the path to Walker’s Creek. The water was high from heavy spring rains, and it tumbled noisily over and around the large granite boulders that dotted the streambed.

  Josh kicked at a stone and looked downstream. “I saw your boat on your truck. Can you take it out here?”

  “This creek is too shallow to paddle. In about a half mile, it joins the Tellico River, and that’s big enough for the kayak.” Josh glanced at Tellico, and I nodded. “I found him as a puppy along its banks a few years ago, half starved and covered in mud. It’s how he got his name.”

  Josh took a few pictures of the creek with his ever-present cell phone. “My mom told me once that my dad used to kayak sometimes.”

  Sawyer had kayaked more than “sometimes.” Sawyer was world class, had lived for the water. He was the one who taught me to love paddling, and in our four years together, we’d camped our way up and down the Appalachians, going wherever there was good whitewater.

  “Life is not a spectator sport.” He’d lived the motto, repeating it a thousand times, urging me to take risks and try new things. But I’d learned the hard way that life was far safer on the sidelines.

  I swallowed the caustic memories and tried to keep any bitterness out of my voice. “Yes. He was one of the best paddlers I’ve known.”

  Josh whirled to face me, one hand lifting in my direction as if asking for more. “You knew my dad?”

  I’d blown that one. If Josh hadn’t known I existed, of course he wouldn’t know the rest. Now that I’d opened that doorway, I was stuck. “I knew him.”

  “How did you meet him? What was he like?”

  “We met in college. He was nice. You remind me of him.” Josh reminded me of the Sawyer I’d loved. Not the Sawyer who haunted me now.

  I talked fast to avoid further questions. “I wanted to show you this creek because it’s fine to come down here whenever you want, but don’t get in the water.” Josh frowned, not liking my change of subject, but he let me get away with it. “The current is faster than it looks, and once you get farther downhill, you hit whitewater. There’s a small waterfall where you could get hurt.”

  Whitewater. Yet another thing Del had stolen from me. The weekend after I learned about her and Sawyer, still reeling from their deception, I’d gone on a whitewater trip with friends. Sawyer and I had planned to go together, and his absence was a disturbing presence every minute of the day.

  I made mistakes. Read the river wrong. Flipped, got trapped, nearly drowned.

  My companions had dragged me to safety, but there had been a black moment when drowning felt right.

  The two events—the crushing weight of the broken engagement and the killing pressure of water against my chest—became so tangled in my head I couldn’t think of one without getting stuck in the other. For the past fourteen years, I’d paddled my kayak only on the calm surfaces of the local lakes, leaving the whitewater thrills to those who didn’t understand the risks.

  I’d let my silence go on too long, and Josh opened his mouth as if he was determined to ask more abo
ut his father. I cut him off. “Here. Let me show you something else.” I led him upstream to where a muddy patch gave easy access to the water. “Animals like to come here to drink. There are almost always new tracks in the morning. Let’s see what we can find.”

  That distracted him, at least for the moment. I pointed out several sets of deer tracks and a jumble of marks where a raccoon and her babies had washed their dinner. A fox had wandered by and so had a pair of rabbits. Josh picked up on the details fast, and when he found more deer tracks on his own, he gave me a triumphant grin.

  “There’s a bobcat around here too,” I said. “I’ve seen his tracks for months, but I haven’t spotted him. They tend to be pretty solitary.”

  Josh looked around him, wide-eyed, then scanned the nearby low-hanging tree branches as if he expected to find a cat lurking there, ready to pounce. “A real bobcat? You’re making that up, right?”

  “Don’t worry. They only go after small animals.” Like me, they preferred to avoid people, and like me, they were damn good at it.

  Josh gave another nervous glance around him. It was nice to have someone to show this stuff to, even if his arrival had screwed up my day. But between bees and bobcats, I wasn’t making him very comfortable.

  We walked back to the barn without any further mention of Sawyer. I let the chickens out of the coop and propped open the gate to their pen.

  “Won’t they run away?” Josh stepped out of their path, and the flock bustled out and headed toward the orchard, where they did a great job of catching bugs.

  “No, they forage, but they don’t go far.”

  As usual, Annabelle, my geriatric Rhode Island Red, hunkered down in a sunny spot just outside the fence instead of scurrying off with the others. I went over and scratched her back, my fingers sliding easily over her smooth feathers.

  Josh ran a cautious finger along her neck. “Why doesn’t she go with the rest?”

  “She’s my oldest, and she sticks close to home nowadays. She’s the only one left from my first year of raising hatchlings, when I gave them all names starting with A. Her name is Annabelle. This year’s youngsters are all H’s: Hilda, Henrietta, Helen, and Hermione.”

  “I didn’t know chickens liked being petted.”

  “Don’t tell the other chickens, but Annabelle is my favorite. She loves people.”

  I gave her a final scratch, and she ruffled her feathers. “Come on, I’ll show you how to collect eggs.”

  We gathered more than a dozen from the nest boxes, and Josh peppered me with questions along the way: Aren’t there chicks inside? Doesn’t it make the chickens mad to take them? Are they safe to eat? At least it seemed to sidetrack him from thoughts of his missing mother and long-dead father.

  I turned Kudzu out to graze. “I’ll keep Thistle in for a few days with her babies. Do you want to feed her?”

  “Okay.” Josh headed for the open bale of hay and tossed in enough for five goats.

  I had to laugh. “You sure you gave her enough?”

  Josh turned pink, scuffed his toe through the dirt, and patted each of the kids in turn. “She’s eating for three, right?”

  “Good point. Come on. Let’s go fix that breakfast.”

  We walked toward the house, but the familiar rumble of Landon’s truck coming up the driveway slowed my steps. It had been four weeks since I’d seen him. I missed our usual visits, but I wasn’t at all sure what to expect. No one liked rejection, and he had every right to be pissed. At best, this meeting would be awkward, but maybe having Josh there would keep things civil. “Hang on a minute.”

  Josh gave me a questioning glance and stopped beside me. I couldn’t decide whether the flutter in my belly was apprehension or excitement.

  Landon parked in the same spot he always did, and got out.

  “Morning.” His cautious voice matched his hesitant smile. I guess I’d given him plenty of reasons to doubt his reception, but maybe his presence was a step toward at least a baseline reconciliation.

  “Hi.” It was all I could manage.

  Landon gave Josh a curious look, went to the back of his truck, and lifted out the ice chest I’d loaned him a year earlier. “Thought you might be needing this.”

  He knew damn well I didn’t need that ice chest—he was only looking for an excuse to test the waters. Well, fair enough. We couldn’t go forever without speaking.

  “Thanks.” The word came out sounding reasonably sincere, and I gave myself credit for good acting.

  Landon headed for the back door without another glance in my direction. Josh and I followed him inside, and he placed the chest in the pantry.

  He turned to Josh and reached out for a handshake. “Hi. I’m Landon Mitchell. I live on the farm next door.”

  Josh looked surprised, as if he wasn’t used to being treated as an adult, but he shook Landon’s hand. “I’m Josh, Bryn’s nephew.”

  “Nephew?” Landon gave me a quick “what’s up?” look. One late night, after far too much merlot, I’d told him the whole saga of Del and Sawyer, so he knew I made no claim to being an aunt.

  He composed his face and turned back to Josh. “Good to meet you. It’s great you can visit with your aunt. Where are you from?”

  And that’s all it took to draw Josh in. He started explaining his situation in detail, every word tinged with his worry about his mom, the worry I couldn’t yet embrace. Landon focused on Josh to the exclusion of all else, as if what he was hearing could fundamentally change his world. When I was on the receiving end of those intense looks, I always ended up sharing more than I intended.

  I scrambled eggs and toasted half a loaf of bread under the broiler. Those two settled at the kitchen table and worked their way through Del’s disappearance, Josh’s Uber saga, and the successful delivery of the twin goats. Josh’s description of the delivery emphasized the grosser aspects of the process, but I was impressed by the details he’d noticed.

  I kept glancing their way while I cooked. It wasn’t often that I watched Landon from the sidelines, out of the direct beam of his personality. Tall, tanned, and athletic, he looked like the farmer he was, but many who’d known him for years in that role didn’t realize he was also a master woodworker—a true artist.

  The furniture he crafted sold in galleries for premium prices, and I always felt I should apologize for my houseful of yard-sale rescues. He’d given me a beautiful walnut bowl inlaid with tiny flecks of turquoise that I used for my apples. It sat center stage on the counter, a glowing contrast to the rest of my well-worn kitchen equipment, and I thought of him every time I saw it.

  He was even more of a homebody than I was, and avoided travel as if it was contaminated. He preferred to read about the rest of the world instead of exploring it, focusing instead on his livestock and his wood creations, and that was an attitude I had no problem understanding. I wasn’t much different—home was the space I could control.

  I’d lost plenty of sleep since I’d met Landon, indulging in carnal imaginings while being careful not to act on them. The casual relationships I drifted in and out of never matched the intensity of what I suspected Landon had to offer, and the temptation to make something happen between us was a constant pull. But Sawyer had taught me too much about heartbreak, and I kept my relationship with Landon firmly platonic.

  Four weeks earlier, Landon had rocked our uncomplicated friendship and possibly damaged it beyond recovery.

  He spoke the words that tore me up right here in this kitchen, a confession that came out of nowhere. I thought he’d come by just to say hello, and I was happy when he stayed to help stack hay. We came in for a drink. He gave me a searching look and then calmly said, “I’ve fallen in love with you.”

  “What?” I momentarily lost my balance and cracked my hip hard on the edge of the counter. Not the most romantic response I could have given, but he’d caught me off guard. I’d worked hard to convince myself such a thing was out of bounds, and now the blunt option of romance had my head spinning. />
  “I’ve fallen in love with you, and I want to be more than friends.” This time, he said it with more determination. He came closer. Much closer. He took my hand.

  His touch was an electric shock. A sexual promise that hit every nerve ending.

  He leaned in for a kiss, and I met him halfway, my body overruling my brain. The next few electrified minutes proved my imagination was only a feeble imitation of reality. It was a serious kiss. A promise, not a ploy. That kiss galvanized every fiber and every cell, a disorienting jolt I hadn’t felt in years.

  Was it two minutes? Five? He pulled back at last. I was so dizzy, his arm around my waist was the only thing that kept me from falling.

  “We’d be great together, Bryn.” Landon ran his thumb along the line of my jaw and gave me a look that should have melted all hesitations. “And I’m not talking about farm chores.”

  Part of me wanted to grab hold of him and never let go. Ravish him on the kitchen floor like a scene from some low-budget movie. I could see what our lives could be like together. Friends. Lovers. True partners.

  But instead of feeling a rush of joy, my chest tightened. I couldn’t breathe. Thoughts of Sawyer’s betrayal swelled fast, and a wave of sheer panic took me out. I slipped out of Landon’s arms, my lips still tingling. I gave him my answer. No.

  I had hoped we could turn back the clock and stay friends, layering some sort of pretend-it-didn’t-happen veneer over the whole brief encounter. But Landon quit calling and stopped coming by. I hadn’t realized how empty my life would feel without him until he was gone.

  Now, here he was at my table, patiently answering Josh’s questions about goats. Acting like nothing was wrong.

  Good. We were moving on. Maybe we really could go back to the way things used to be.

  I served breakfast, pouring coffee for Josh and tea for Landon and me. The goat discussion wrapped up, Josh started wolfing down food, and Landon pulled the conversation back to the matter at hand. “So, Josh says you’re going to phone around to see if anyone knows about your sister, and then go talk to the police. That’s the plan?”