by JoAnn Chaney
“So what are you going to do?” she said. She caught a look at herself in the rearview mirror and found she couldn’t look away. Her face was ashen and drawn, her eyes sunken into her skull. It was the way she looked when she was sick. A man had once told her she had eyes that were amber colored in a certain light, beautiful, nearly gold—but there was nothing beautiful about them now, she thought. They were the eyes of a crazy person. A lunatic.
“What are we going to do?” she said, looking right into the mirror. Square into her troubled gaze. She’d always talked to her reflection like this, as if it was a friend in the mirror instead of herself, as if she were two instead of only one. “Right now. What are we going to do, right now?”
CHAPTER THREE
August 28, 2018
Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
There were patches of dappled shade along the trail, pools of dark cast by the overhanging pine branches and arms of jagged rock, spots where the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. Marie was stopped in one of them now, shifting the straps of her backpack to ease the weight digging into her shoulders. It wasn’t hot out—not that it was ever really hot at this elevation, at least not compared to most anywhere else. But it was late summer now, they’d been hiking the entire day, the sky was clear and blue, the air was damp and muggy since there’d been so much rain over the last few weeks—the most the state had seen in recorded history, in fact—and Marie had been slick with sweat for the last five miles or so. The sweat was bad enough by itself, dripping out of her scalp and running down her face and the back of her neck, but to make it worse her knees were aching, especially the left one. It felt like a tiny, throbbing sun had replaced the cartilage behind her left kneecap, radiating awful pain when the bones ground together. The doctor had said cortisone injections would help, but the thought of a long needle sliding into her knee was enough to set her teeth on edge and she’d decided to pass. For now. If the pain kept getting worse, she might give it a shot, no pun intended.
So she’d been forced to make frequent stops to rest her knee, despite Matt’s obvious impatience. He’d sigh and walk ahead, tap his foot and make little mouselike noises in the back of his throat so she’d know how irritated he was, how he wished she’d get the lead outta her ass, as he so elegantly put it, but she ignored him.
She’d gotten good at ignoring her husband over the years.
“Are we in a hurry?” she asked as she stooped over, massaging her kneecap and grimacing. Matt was farther up the trail, his back to her. “Matt? Did you hear me? We got an appointment or something?”
He turned. His cell phone was in his hand. It seemed like phones had gotten smaller and thinner over the years, but Matt insisted on getting the biggest, the one that made it look like he had a book pressed to the side of his head when he made a call. Go big or go home, that’s what Matt liked to say. He’d built up an arsenal of those kinds of phrases over the years, he used them with his sales team and at home, too. She hated them all. Step up to the plate. Reach for the low-hanging fruit. Consider your biggest opportunity.
“No service out here,” he said.
“Do you need to call someone?”
“No.” He shot her a look she wasn’t sure how to decipher. “I was just checking.”
This trip had been his idea to begin with, although she’d been the one to make all the arrangements. She’d chosen the location and decided the details, but he’d been the one to first bring it up. A spur-of-the-moment trip into the mountains, sleeping in a romantic cabin at night, hiking through the gorgeous park during the day—she’d jumped all over it, because when was the last time Matt had suggested anything like this? Never. Family vacations had been one thing—he’d always found the time for those, especially when the girls were little—but when was the last time they’d gone anywhere alone, as husband and wife? She couldn’t remember. They’d driven up late on Sunday, avoiding the weekend tourist rush, and had rented a private home that backed up to the forest and had one hell of a view. There wasn’t all that much to do in the town itself—you couldn’t exactly call Estes Park a hub of exciting goings-on, not unless little ice cream shops and antiques got your motor running—but Marie had enjoyed it so far, she always did like coming up here. Matt had never been, although over the years she’d come plenty of times with the girls and for overnights with friends, and sometimes even for a day trip alone, plenty of water and sunscreen in her pack, to hike one of the trails or take a rock climbing lesson. There was something about the outdoors, something about the tall, scraggy trees and the impossibly blue sky. And there was the quiet. Not that it was exactly quiet, with the sound of birds and humming insects and the whoosh of the river, but it was different. Out here, quiet was good, the silence wasn’t something that could drive a person crazy the way it did at home, when she always had the TV on or her phone blasting music. At home, silence was something to be afraid of and she tried to get rid of it. She’d tried to explain it to Matt, who just seemed confused. Silence, noise, chaos—it was all the same to him. It was always all the same to him.
Like this: there’d been a half-dozen elk outside their front door this morning, taking slow, deliberate bites from a shrub and watching Marie take photos with unimpressed eyes.
They’re just deer, he’d said.
Elk, they’re elk, she’d said. Isn’t it neat? It’s not as if we see elk every morning at home.
But Matt hadn’t been interested. He’d spent the night before in the cabin’s kitchen, carefully organizing their gear, stuffing the packs full of the granola bars and water and sunscreen they’d bought in town the day before. He’d been full of nervous energy yesterday, and he’d made her nervous, too—enough that she’d hardly enjoyed the tour they’d taken through the Stanley Hotel or their leisurely walk down Main Street. During dinner Matt confessed he was excited to go out hiking the next morning, he was looking forward to getting outside and stretching his legs.
They’d started early and had spent the entire day on the move. Around lakes and up steep trails and down hills, only stopping to take photos of wildlife and to eat a quick lunch of tuna dug out of foil pouches with plastic spoons. They’d planned this to be their last hike of the day, even though they’d had to get back in the car and drive to the other side of the park to get to the trailhead, but the view from the cliff at the top was incredible. Not to be missed. Once they’d parked, Matt had spread the map out the car’s hood, looking it over and tracing the jagged, zigzag path with his finger as hikers went by, shooting them curious looks as they passed.
He hadn’t always been like this. When they were first married he’d been different. Easier. Almost … laid back. They’d flown to Las Vegas to get married, a little over an hour from the tarmac at Denver International, and then they were on the Strip, standing in front of an Elvis impersonator and repeating their vows. And years later, when they’d gone on vacation with the girls, camping and fishing and to theme parks, Matt had been the spontaneous one while she’d been the planner, the one who budgeted the money and prepared meals and made sure the gas tank was full and the plane tickets had been purchased. Back in those days Matt had been—fun? That didn’t seem the right word for it, but it was also the perfect word. He’d been fun and she’d been the stick in the mud, and now it seemed their roles had reversed. But they were both getting old, maybe that was it. And when people got older they changed, didn’t they? Years ago she’d been the one wound tight as a drum, but she’d come to accept how things were, and that put her at peace. Part of that was having the girls—Hannah and Maddie, both of them away at college now, starting their own lives—because there was nothing like kids to help you realize how unimportant everything else was. The other part of it was age. She’d matured over the years, she’d grown up. Tried to think before she acted. Plan things out. That’s how getting older worked. You got patient. You got wise.
“All right, I’m ready,” Marie said, slowly straightening up. They should’ve slept in, she thou
ght. Taken it slow. Woke up late and had omelets and mimosas and then come out, but it was another case of them not seeing eye-to-eye on things. She wanted some time to relax, Matt wanted to get out. And as usual, Matt had gotten his way.
“Good, let’s go,” Matt said. He was already on the move, fifteen feet ahead, his boots planting confidently on the loose gravel. They’d always been an outdoorsy family—hell, you couldn’t live in Colorado and not be outdoorsy—but she suddenly wished she were back in the cabin, parked in front of the television with her feet propped up on the coffee table, sipping a glass of red wine. She was tired, she was hungry, and she didn’t want to do this. Not anymore. “We still have a ways to go before it gets dark, don’t we?”
“All right,” she said. She took a small, shuffling step, and then another. It didn’t seem right that her knee hurt this damn bad, not when she exercised every day—she ran at least four miles every morning, did yoga three or four times a week. She was in the best shape of her life, her body as tight and taut as it’d ever been, but that didn’t keep her stupid knee from acting up, especially on days like today, when there was sure to be rain. Her knee always ached when there was moisture in the air, she’d said that to Matt during the drive into the park. “I’m coming.”
Matt didn’t answer, and he might not have heard her at all. He was too far ahead, walking, his hands flopping loosely at his sides. Marie grimaced again and rubbed her knee. It felt like it was full of sand, or broken shards of glass.
A couple went by in the opposite direction, on their way down to the trailhead, and one of the women gave Marie a sympathetic smile as she passed, then looked back at Matt, the ghost of a frown creasing her forehead. There was something about that man, the woman thought—but she shook it off. It’s nothing, she told her girlfriend when she asked what was wrong. A chill, that’s all. A goose walking over my grave.
But less than two hours from now she’ll see that man again, coming down the trail, huffing for breath and shouting for help. My wife, he’ll say. I think she might be dead.
CHAPTER FOUR
It was so green up here in the mountains, not like Denver, where the color palette always reminded her of Thanksgiving. Browns and yellows, that was Denver all year long. Parched, except this past summer, when it’d stormed almost every afternoon. The news had said rivers were full to overflowing, that several people had gotten too close to the rushing waters and been swept away, their bodies never recovered. No one was used to all that moisture, especially in the city, or how often the sky was a dismal gray. It was because of climate change, people said. Or maybe it was El Niño. Or maybe it was just a stretch of unusual weather that everyone would forget by the next year.
Marie remembered when she first moved to Colorado from back east, and it’d taken her a few weeks to get adjusted. The air was thin and cold, and it was so dry her lips wouldn’t stop cracking open and bleeding until she started slathering petroleum jelly all over her mouth, carrying a small tub of it tucked in her purse. She’d gotten used to Colorado after a while, but wasn’t it true that a person can get used to just about anything, given enough time? She thought so.
“It’s starting to rain,” she said. Matt was still ahead of her, but not as far as he’d been before. In the last twenty minutes he’d slowed to a creep, one small step in front of the next, until she’d caught up and was staring at the back of his old hiking boots. He was getting tired. It’d been a long day and it was finally catching up with him.
“Should we take cover and wait it out?” he asked.
“It’s okay, we’re almost there,” she said. Ahead of her, Matt ducked under a dead tree that’d fallen across the trail. He paused, waiting for her to do the same, held out a hand to help her straighten back up again. “Once we get to the top we’ll find a spot and camp out until it stops.”
“Okay,” he said. His hand was strong and lean, the fingers long, the knuckles sharp and bony. At one time she would’ve recognized her husband’s hands anywhere, the look and feel of them, even the scent of his skin—but would she now? She wasn’t so sure, and that hurt a little.
“I love you,” she said.
His eyebrows went up.
“Do you?”
She nodded and squeezed his hand before letting it go. She did love him, although she hated him, too, sometimes. He gave her a small smile. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually smiled at her. Mostly, he ignored her. And when he wasn’t ignoring her, they were fighting. About the way he’d put the empty carton of ice cream into the sink instead of the trash can; the way she wouldn’t wind up the vacuum’s cord when she was done but would just toss it over the handle. Little things, usually, but they weren’t always little. Sometimes they argued about big things, parts of their past that kept rising back up to the surface. It was like flossing your teeth and unsticking a chunk of food from a meal you’d had a week ago. It was gray and smelled awful, and you’d never be able to figure out how you’d lived with it so long without even knowing.
She’d thought maybe things had been tense between them because the girls were both grown now, and the only time either of them ever called home was for their bimonthly duty check-ins or if they wanted money. They’d both stayed at school over the last few months instead of coming home, busy with summer classes and jobs and internships and boyfriends, involved in their own lives. The girls had needed her for so long, and now they didn’t. She’d once known both of them better than she knew herself, and now they were strangers. And where did that leave her? She’d been a housewife for twenty years, her days had been busy with making meals and shopping and cleaning and the PTA, and now there was a lot of empty space and she couldn’t figure out how to fill it. Oh, she kept herself busy at the gym and with books and she still volunteered at the high school, although it’d been two years since their youngest graduated. Marie had tried to tell Matt all this, to talk about her feelings like the marriage counselor had told them to do. She’d tried to tell him how awful it was to not be needed, that she’d always thought the girls would grow up and she’d be free, but the freedom had just ended up being loneliness. And it wasn’t as if Matt needed her, either, and she’d known it for a long time. He’d put her neatly aside for a younger woman—younger women—slipped around behind her back and she pretended not to notice what was going on, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew, and she’d accepted it all, turned her head and looked the other way. Let it go. Like the time a few years back when she’d been digging through her underwear drawer and fished out a pair of panties that didn’t belong to her. She was sure of it. They were the wrong size—far too small—and they were sexy white silk, something she’d never buy in a million years. They didn’t belong to either of the girls, either; they were both too young for anything so flashy. But when she’d dangled them on one finger in front of Matt’s face and asked if he’d seen them before, she would’ve sworn there was a flash of panic in his eyes.
At least, she’d thought she’d seen panic. But in the days afterward, she’d started to second-guess herself. Because it was gone that fast. So fast that she’d begun to wonder if she’d imagined it altogether, and if it’d only been Matt’s bland, confused face staring back at her the whole time.
“Those are yours,” Matt had said. “Don’t you remember? You bought those over at Park Meadows that time we had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory right before Christmas.…”
And Matt told her about how they’d been shopping for the girls, how he’d had to run bags out to the car twice, even what they’d eaten for lunch. It made her think that maybe she had bought those panties for herself and had just forgotten—not that she ever forgot many things, but stranger things have happened, haven’t they? So she’d tossed those panties back in her drawer, thinking that Matt must be right; she’d forgotten that she’d bought the little scrap of silk, and then she’d forgotten she’d forgotten.
But still. Something about the whole thing seemed wrong.
Because she knew, deep do
wn, she would’ve never forgotten buying those panties; she would’ve never bought herself the wrong size and even if she had she would’ve taken them right back to the store; but mostly it was Matt. He’d become quite the salesman over the years, and he made his living with the words that came out of his mouth. He sold businesses, he sold products, he sold the American Dream, and he sold her the story of how those panties had ended up in her drawer.
Maybe he was telling the truth.
Maybe he was lying.
She wasn’t sure, and after a while it seemed silly to bring it up, because what if she was wrong? Besides, it was easier to accept it and move on rather than argue. It always was. She knew everything, and she had to accept it and deal, because what other choice did she have? When you were a woman who’d been taken care of for the last twenty years, when you had no education, no job experience, hardly any life experience, this is how you ended up. Dealing with your husband’s crap. You could be a feminist, you could rally and hold up homemade placards and march through the streets shouting for equal rights while wearing your knitted pink pussy hat, but in the end you’d still go home and pop the meat loaf in the oven and run a load of clothes through the wash and be trapped like a desperate animal in a cage. You could call it Stockholm Syndrome, or you could call it marriage.
Tomayto, tomahto.
“Is this it?” Matt said, swerving off the trail and into a clump of pine trees. He wiped the rain from his eyes and peered up the hill. There was green moss growing on one of the trunks, thick and soft as carpet. She’d done a lot of hiking over the last two years and had told him about this particular trail she’d found the year before, one that didn’t appear on any map. It was a steep climb up to a cliff, though, maybe not the best idea if they were tired. But he’d insisted on going up after she’d told him about it. We can watch the sunset from the top, he’d said.