The last of the switchbacks put me at the bottom of a steep ravine. I pushed off an angled slab of granite, made a grab for a birch sapling, and missed. My knee hit stone and I felt an electric-white jolt of pain shoot up my leg. I sat down slowly and slipped my water bottle out of my pack. After a long sip, I filled my lungs with the crisp mountain air, tipped my head back, and bellowed: “Aidaaaa!” I heard nothing but the wind blowing through the birches lining the trail.
Fifteen minutes later, I almost ran right by her. The trail had leveled off, and I was in a flat-out sprint when I caught a flash of Aida’s orange tank top from the corner of my eye. She was just off trail, on her hands and knees in a mossy patch of ferns, coughing hard enough to crack a rib.
“Aida, where’s your inhaler?”
She started at the sound of my voice but didn’t look up. I took a knee beside her and fumbled with the zipper on her fanny pack until I found it. I waited for a break in her spasms of coughing before I got her to take a puff. She coughed most of it out, then tried again. After a third puff, she grew quiet, sitting back on her heels and wiping her face before the tears came. I didn’t try to stop them; I just sat by her side while she sobbed till her tears finally ran dry.
“You wanna go back?” I asked. “We’re not halfway yet. We’ll get to camp quicker if we hike back to the car.”
“No,” she said, getting to her feet, “I want to go on.”
This time, I took point. She was shaky at first, but she got her balance back quickly. We hiked in silence for the rest of the climb, stopping only once for water before finally breaking tree line. A few minutes later, we were standing on the northern summit of the twin peaks. I turned east and took in the view. Wave after wave of green mountains spilled away below us, fading to purple as they drifted toward the horizon. A few cottony cumulus clouds floated low over the trees, with nothing but an achingly blue brilliance above. I looked over and saw Aida hugging her shoulders, trembling slightly as she stared off into the distance.
“Here,” I said, as I grabbed a fleece jacket from my pack. “Put this on.”
She took it, and I saw my niece do something I’d never seen her do before: Aida smiled.
She shrugged into the jacket and looked out on the wild world beneath us. “It’s so beautiful,” she said. Then the tears came again.
This time, I didn’t watch in silence. “Aida,” I asked, “what’s going on?”
She turned her face to me with a look so fragile and open that I could see the girl I’d missed—that lightning-quick flash of years between her birth and the woman she would soon become. She closed her eyes, her chin trembling under tight lips before they finally parted. “It’s my dad,” she began. Then those clear green eyes opened and stared straight into mine. “He’s cheating on her.”
In the thin blue stillness we shared, I could almost see the weight of that secret lift from her shoulders to settle upon mine.
17
Happy Hour
I got the full story on the way down the mountain. With Aida taking point, there was no way for me to read her face while she told it, but I think that’s why her words flowed so freely.
It started on a celebratory Saturday. Kim had taken her to the DMV, where Aida aced her driving test. After lunch at their favorite restaurant, Aida dropped her mother off at church to work on her sermon. But instead of driving home, Aida got an idea she doubted her mother would approve of. Robert was holed up in his office in Boston as usual, so she decided she’d drive into the city and surprise him with her news.
She picked the right day for her maiden voyage into Beantown. The traffic was light on a Saturday, and her iPhone directed her straight to the sleek glass tower where Robert Fell worked. The sleepy sentry on duty at the front desk told her he’d have to call up. But when she told him her story and showed him the newly minted driving license bearing the same name as the company on the thirty-fourth floor, the man smiled and tipped his head toward the elevators.
There was nobody at the front desk of Fell Insurance on a Saturday. Aida made her way to her father’s office but found the door locked. As she walked away she heard noises inside. She was about to knock when she realized what they were.
Aida was pretty good at painting the whole picture for me. Her father’s office had a large, sandblasted glass wall. It kept the view inside private, but there was a foot of clear glass at the bottom. Aida crouched down to peer through it. She found herself staring straight at the closed eyes and open mouth of a woman she’d never seen before. The woman sat on the floor with her back against a couch, her blouse open and legs spread wide. Aida’s father’s head was between them.
I kept my mouth shut while we made our way among the roots and rocks, glad for the physical work that provided some distraction for both of us while Aida told me the rest. I didn’t really approve of the next part, but I wasn’t about to reproach her for it, either.
Aida had gone snooping. Her mother’s forgetfulness over Internet passwords was a family joke, one her father ended when he shared his simple strategy at dinner one evening. “Just do what I do and keep a list,” he told her, “someplace off your computer.” It didn’t take Aida long to find it. It was in the top drawer of his home study, right under the laptop he parked there every night. She dug through his e-mails until she got the whole picture. Eva Capatello’s name matched the company name of her father’s client. Her father was not only sleeping with the wife of that client, but from what Aida could deduce from the mix of business and pleasure they shared in their messages, it looked like they were screwing Eva’s husband’s company as well.
We didn’t talk much after that. The trail leveled off, and there was another long walk through the woods before we finally came to its end near Kidney Pond. But as my niece and I walked the road back to camp together, I sensed that we were now connected by something more than just the secret we shared.
***
We found Robert, Aaron, and Mara sitting on Sentinel’s back porch. Mara was working on her needlepoint while Robert drank from a big plastic mug. Aaron was collapsed in the chair next to him.
“Finally!” said Robert.
Aida walked past him and went into the cabin. Robert bent down and grabbed a bottle by his chair. He poured a healthy measure into his mug before holding the bottle out to me. “Eighteen-year-old Glenmorangie,” he said with a smile.
“Thanks, but I think I’ll just grab a beer.” I walked over to the cooler, snagged a cold can, shut the lid, and sat on the cooler.
Robert’s smile fell. “A hundred and ten bucks a bottle,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re missing.” He took another long pull of his drink, turned toward the cabin door, and gave a yell. “Aida!”
She pushed the screen door open and stood in the doorway a moment later. She’d run a brush through her long, red hair and pulled it back from her face into a tight ponytail. As I looked at her, I had a flash of that same familiar feeling that had startled me when she glared at me from her front porch in Dover a couple of weeks before.
“What?” she asked her father.
He eyed her for a long moment. “Not what—why. Why’d you take off?”
“I wanted to get to the top.”
He looked at Aaron. The boy was still slumped in his chair, but his eyes were open now. “See, buddy, you need a little more of your sister’s kind of gumption.” Robert turned back to Aida.
“Still,” he told her, “I didn’t appreciate being ditched.”
“You got back here in one piece,” Aida shot back.
Robert slammed his plastic mug on the armrest of his chair. What must have been five bucks of the pricey hooch sloshed out when he did. “Damn it, Aida, someday that mouth of yours is going to get you into real trouble with someone who doesn’t have my good nature.” Aida’s eyes narrowed before she replied. “Your good nature—”
“Ya know, Aaron,” I said, standing up, “you look beat. Why not take a dip in the pond?” Aaron looked past me
to his sister. “Mom asked us not to go in,” she said.
I could see that Robert wasn’t done with Aida, but this news threw him. “Why the hell shouldn’t you go into the pond?” he demanded. Neither of the kids replied. I looked over to see that Mara had stopped stitching and was looking at Robert. When I did the same, I saw his face change as he began to understand. He took another drink. It quenched a bit of his anger, but he still looked bitter. He turned to Aida. “What about the canoe? Didn’t you tell me you got pretty good in one at camp last summer?”
“I did, but nope. Mom said that’s out too.”
“Well, Mom’s not here, is she?” he said. The kids exchanged another look.
“I’m here,” said Mara quietly. Robert’s eyebrows rose, but his expression softened.
“Come on, they’re kids. Swimming and paddling is what kids do in a place like this.” He bent closer toward her and spoke more softly. “I know you don’t swim, Mom, but you don’t want your grandkids to be afraid of the water too, do you?”
I don’t know why, but it shocked me to hear him call Mara that. And to tell the truth, it pissed me off too.
“I don’t,” Mara replied. “But it’s not about me. It’s about their mother, and she asked them not to go in the water.”
“Well, I’m their father.” he said. “And I say they should go.” He turned to Aaron. “Go!” The boy jumped like he’d been poked. In the next instant, the cabin’s back screen door slammed, and I saw that Aida had disappeared inside. A moment later, the front door slammed too. Robert was up in a flash, running down the porch steps to circle round the cabin and chase after his daughter. I probably shouldn’t have—but I followed him. I caught up with them in the field. He was ten paces behind her when he yelled again. “Aida!” She kept her back to him and kept walking. I touched Robert on the arm. He wheeled around so fast that I took a step back. The look he gave me showed me exactly where Aida got her anger from.
“We could use a little help here!” The call came from the far side of the field. It was Cassie. She had her shoulder under Kim’s arm as Kim hopped on one leg. I let Robert take the lead as we jogged toward his wife, but Aida got there first. She took a spot under her mother’s other arm to help her hobble across the field.
“What happened?” Robert asked. I looked down to see that Kim’s running shoe had been removed. The ankle above her bare foot was puffy and blue.
“I think it’s only a sprain, but it looks like a bad one.” Cassie replied. Kim’s face was white, but she forced a smile. Robert looked from her foot to her face and shook his head.
“You just had to get your run in, didn’t you?” he said.
18
Red and Blue
Change was coming.
I stood at the canoe landing the next morning and looked across the pond to see a single crimson spark burning amid the green.
A lone maple along the shore had turned color while the boughs of its brothers were still cloaked in the dark, verdant shades of late summer. But though it may have been the first day of autumn on the calendar, it wasn’t on the pond. The weather was still warm, and the stacks of hardwood in the woodshed behind the ranger cabin still towered high. I scanned the rest of the pond’s perimeter and saw nothing but green.
I put a paddle and life jacket into the empty canoe I’d found sitting on the shore. I was a bit peeved that whoever took it out for his early morning trip finished only half the job of putting it away. But I gave the truant canoeist the benefit of the doubt—he may have returned the paddle to its spot on the library porch and simply forgotten to come back to haul the boat on the rack and flip it over next to the others waiting there. Right before I launched, I noticed his tracks around the boat: a curious pattern of concentric circles that his small shoes had stamped into the sandy soil.
I got in, pushed off, and settled into a steady rhythm. After a while, the cadence of my strokes quickened as my thoughts traveled to the evening before.
Robert had taken command of the camp stove on the back porch of Sentinel and made a show of cooking dinner while I examined Kim’s ankle. Aaron was drafted as sous-chef, chopping onions to top the chili that was warming on the stove while Aida waited on Kim. I was amazed to see how tender Aida became when her mother needed her.
I held Kim’s foot carefully in my hand to examine it. I didn’t see any deformity around the swelling, but when I gently rotated her foot, Kim winced and sucked in her breath. I guided her foot to the folded towel I’d placed on top of the cooler and draped a bag of ice over it before making my diagnosis. “I think Cassie’s right,” I told her. “Looks like a sprain, but you nailed it good.”
“Maybe we should take her to the ER?” Aida suggested.
Kim looked past her daughter’s worried face to mine, but it was Robert who answered, his back turned to the three of us while he stirred away at the stove. “For a sprain?”
His question hung in the air for a moment before Kim answered. “I’ll be okay,” she said, “but I could sure use a glass of wine.”
I looked up from the memory of last night’s conversation just in time to see the boulder speeding toward my bow. I’d been moving so fast I had to twist the paddle to keep from hitting the rock head on. I caught my breath as the boat swung wide, then back-paddled to turn until I was pointed back toward camp. I let out a long breath, put my blade in the water, and lost myself in the rhythm again.
Kim’s injury put a new wrinkle on the days ahead. After my hike in the woods with Robert, I’d been looking forward to her taking him off my hands. But after a look at her ankle, I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be going far from her perch on the pond. And I knew Robert. The guy would not be happy camped beside his wife with a book, no matter how many bottles of single malt he had parked by his side. If he didn’t keep moving, he’d go crazy and take the rest of us along for the ride.
My eyes returned to the red maple. In this direction I could see a few more touches of brilliant color in the trees that bordered the campground—the first flecks of yellow tucked here and there among the pines. Very soon the world around me would be ablaze with the full fire of fall as every beech, birch, and maple began to shut down in preparation for the hard days ahead. And every one of the billions of leaves they lost would leave a mark of its absence on the branch that bore it, in the form of a tiny, heart-shaped scar.
Paddling on, I felt the rising sun warm my back. I lifted my eyes to the sky, drifted, and drank in the blue. By nightfall, three of my ten days of service to my family would be over. Only a week stood between this evening and the quiet days I’d enjoy while tending to the tasks needed to close Kidney Pond for the season.
I beached the canoe, hauled it up on the log trestles at the landing, and grabbed its end to give it a quick flip. I turned to take a step and stopped. In front of my boot a monarch butterfly lay flat against a gray bed of pebbles. I touched the tip of one wing. When it didn’t move, I slipped my fingers underneath. I took a moment to inspect it, awed by the elegance of its symmetry. The butterfly’s wings glowed like tiny stained glass windows, each mirroring its twin on the opposite side. The thick black band around them traced the scallops of its silhouette. Every pure point of white on that velvet ribbon seemed to glow, forming a curved constellation shining below the arcs of the antennae that crowned it all.
A breeze brushed the pair of thin filaments. They trembled in the wind, but the paper-thin, dead creature held fast to my hand.
19
Snow Rise
“Okay, who’s ready for Katahdin?”
I heard Robert’s question as I came around the back of Sentinel to find him and the family having breakfast on the cabin’s porch. He took his palm from the plunger of a French press sitting next to the camp stove and turned to his kids. Aida and Aaron studied their cereal bowls.
“My whole body hurts,” Aida mumbled.
“Maybe we all need a rest day after yesterday,” Kim suggested, her foot propped on its new place on top of the
cooler. She took a section of the orange Mara handed her while her eyes stayed on Robert.
“What about you, buddy?” Robert asked Aaron. “You ready for a real mountain? We don’t have to do the whole thing, but we could try to get above tree line. It might take some work, but I bet the view would be worth it.” Aaron swirled his cereal with his spoon. After a moment, I realized his silence was his answer, but I’m not sure Robert did.
“Can I make a suggestion?” I asked. It was another long moment before Robert looked away from his son. Finally, he gave me a tight smile.
“Sure.”
“Maybe it’s a good day to fish. We could hike down the Nesowadnehunk from Daicey Pond, take the AT—the Appalachian Trail—and try our luck.”
“How far?” asked Aaron.
“As far as you want. The trail reaches the river in about a mile, after that we—”
“I’m not much of a fisherman,” Robert said. “All that standing around tying knots. I think we should climb.”
“So climb,” said Aida, her eyes still on her bowl.
Robert opened his mouth, but Kim spoke first.
“Robert,” she said, “maybe you could tackle the mountain tomorrow?”
“This is ridiculous!” Robert countered. “It’s a beautiful day.” He turned to me. “Class one—Paul, isn’t that what you call it when the weather’s clear like this, perfect for a climb?”
I nodded.
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