He was quiet for a minute, but his face did the talking.
“Yeah. They told us right after they decided to hire you. Something about you being in a car crash coming back from the mountain and it took you a long time to recover. I have to say though, I never would have known. I mean, you seem normal to me.”
That stung a little, and he realized it right away.
“Sorry. That was stupid. What I meant was, the way they told us, I thought it was really serious. I was expecting you to have lots of scars, you know?”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” I said. “And they didn’t tell you anything else?”
“They also told us about your friend. The guy who died in the accident. I’m wondering if that’s the guy you were talking about. You know, when I first asked you out to dinner.”
My heart took off as I tried desperately to hold back the tears that were pooling in my eyes. I looked at Ty and nodded.
“Yeah,” I said. “Jesse. We’d been best friends since fourth grade.”
We sat quiet for a moment, both sinking in my deep pool of sadness. I stared out the window watching people walk by and trying to pull myself together.
“I’m so sorry, Abby,” he said. “You can always talk about him to me. I’m your friend.”
I nodded, but kept my eyes outside. I didn’t want to talk to Ty about Jesse, but I was glad that he offered and that he knew who Jesse was now. And how much I missed him.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be right back. I promise I won’t leave.”
I stood up and tried to smile. When I turned the corner I ran to the bathroom, washed my face, and tried to calm down. In a few minutes, I was okay and walked back out. Ty was waiting up at the front and had already paid the bill.
“Hey, I thought I was taking you out to dinner, remember?”
“No way,” he said. “This is my treat.”
“Thanks,” I said. “How about that hike?”
“Oh, yeah, I’d love to if you still want to go.”
“Let’s go.”
I wasn’t done talking. I decided to tell him everything else. That’s what good friends did. They told each other their stories.
CHAPTER 23
“You want to walk up the trail or take the road?” I asked, handing him a water bottle from the back seat. I always kept a large supply of them for soccer. I took one too and we started walking toward the trail signs.
“Not the road,” Ty said. “Unless there’s some sort of advantage.”
“Only in winter when there aren’t any cars. Let’s go up the trail.”
We started climbing.
“I still can’t believe you haven’t been up to the top of Pilot Butte yet. You never even drove up?”
“No,” Ty said. “I’ve been meaning to, just haven’t had the chance. I did watch the firework show earlier this month.”
“It’s intense at the beginning, but it’ll get better in a few minutes,” I said.
Ty smiled. He didn’t seem to be struggling at all.
It was only about a mile to the top. We kept climbing and rounding the butte and in about 20 minutes we were standing up at the observation platform. Three cars were parked and a few tourists were taking pictures. We read all the signs identifying the landmarks in the distance.
It was a perfect evening. The sky was still light and there were no clouds.
“Jeez, you can see so many mountains from up here. It must be the entire Cascade Range spread out before us.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a great view.”
I pointed out some other things.
“This is amazing.”
As we headed back down, I started telling him more about the accident. I told him about the lake I had drowned in, and about being dead before Dr. Mortimer brought me back to life. I told him how I couldn’t see colors anymore and about how for more than a year I could only walk. And about how I barely finished my senior year in high school.
Ty listened and didn’t say much of anything while I talked. We had made it almost all the way down by the time I finished.
“So you had one of those near death experiences?”
I checked on his energy waves. They were the same, white and shooting off around him. He wasn’t upset or bothered about any of it. He wasn’t making any judgments. I was relieved.
“Yeah,” I said. “Kate was at the hospital, sitting with my body and waiting for the morgue guy to come and get me when I woke up.”
“Oh, my God, that’s some serious stuff right there.”
I unlocked his door and walked around and got inside. As I started the car, Ty reached over and put his hand on mine.
“Thanks for telling me,” he said. “I mean it. That is something crazy you went through. Honestly, I had no idea. I’m really, really sorry about throwing you in the water. Now it’s making more sense. I feel like an idiot. I had no idea. They just said you were in a car accident.”
“No worries,” I said.
We drove back over to the rafting company, listening to the radio and not saying too much. When I pulled in next to his car and parked, he leaned over and gave me a hug.
“Thanks, Abby.”
“Hey, I’m the one who needs to thank you for dinner.”
“No, I mean thank you for telling me what happened,” he said. “It means a lot that you shared all that with me.”
I was glad that he knew now. It was a hard thing to talk about, especially with people I didn’t know so well. But Ty was different. It felt like he was a real friend and that I could trust him. Completely.
CHAPTER 24
Kate was leaving for Portland early Monday morning and Dr. Mortimer was going to be dropping off his stuff sometime during the day. She had already given him a key and the alarm code and stocked the refrigerator with some sort of green juice he liked to drink before work.
“Bye, Abby,” Kate whispered, sticking her head through my bedroom door.
It was still dark outside.
“Wait,” I said.
I got up and walked over to my desk and handed her a sketch of the woman I had drawn the night before. It wasn’t great, but at least it would give her an idea about what she looked like in a general sort of way.
“Thanks. This will help. Remember, I’ll be sending over the pictures tonight, so look at them when you can and let me know. Also, if I were you, I wouldn’t… well, how should I put this?”
“I know, got it,” I said. “Don’t talk about any of this ghost business with Dr. Mortimer.”
“Yeah, it’s probably for the best. At least for now, if you know what I mean. Otherwise, he’ll ship you back to Dr. Krowe while I’m gone.”
I smiled.
“And remember that I’m staying with Erin. You have her phone number, right?”
“Yeah, I have everything. Say hi for me.”
“Okay. Ciao for now. I’ll be back tomorrow night. Hopefully we’ll learn some new things about your ghost.”
I was too wired to get back to sleep, so I poured a cup of coffee and sat in the living room watching the morning light fill up the room. It was exciting to think that we might actually make some progress and find out about the ghost.
I thought about Ty as I got ready for work. He had texted me a couple times over the weekend just to say hi and tell me what he was doing. I had liked going out with him. It had been a good dinner and hike and I found myself thinking about him often. He really was a nice guy and I hoped that we could be friends. I hoped that it would be enough.
I got to work and saw him hanging out by the van.
“Hey, Abby,” he said, smiling.
“Hey.”
I helped him load up some gear as the other guides arrived. We got into the van and drove up to the river.
In my first group, a friendly family from Kansas with parents, three little kids, and a grandma were in my boat. I had a little trouble with the second group. Two teenagers were loud and obnoxious, but Ty helped me out with them, pulling them
aside when we were scouting. I could hear him whispering that he would leave them there if they didn’t shape up. The boys stared at the river while he talked. I could tell they really wanted to go down the rapids and promised to behave.
I was a little tired as we pushed off for the final run. There were three couples from different states in the raft. They were all pretty quiet and reserved, but I didn’t mind. I could save my wildlife speech for the groups in the morning.
I noticed instantly that the water felt rougher and stronger than it had all day. Wild. Faster. Unsettled.
A strong current pulled us down the first set of rapids and I saw a new whirlpool forming on the right as we flew by. My stomach tensed and my heart raced.
“Be careful out there,” Ty whispered after pulling off to scout Big Eddy. “It feels different. Try to follow where I go and remember what we talked about at dinner. Keep your eyes open and prepare for the unexpected.”
“Got it.”
I still felt confident. I would have to be careful, but I was determined to get through the rest of the run smoothly.
We got back into the rafts and Ty went first. I followed from a distance. As I back paddled, I saw something flash up ahead in the thin layer of mist right before the big drop.
It was her. Standing in the middle of the river, her eyes large and furious, staring at me.
“Oh, my God,” I whispered, trying to catch my breath.
And then trying to breathe. The current was sweeping us forward. My stomach crashed as I stared at her. We were headed right toward her. She just stood there, in the middle of the river, full of fury, with those eyes. Those eyes.
I had to refocus and tried just to pay attention to getting in the right channel and shooting through Big Eddy. But I started thinking about our training and what they had told us about a raft from another company hitting a boulder at a bad angle in these rapids and flipping. One of the tourists had nearly drowned and a kid broke a leg.
But it was too late to turn back. I had to figure it out, had to go forward.
A huge wave suddenly pulled us to the left sharply, rocking us and banging the raft up against the big boulder before the first drop, close to where she was standing. I yelled at my group to paddle and steered us straight again.
“Harder,” I shouted over the deafening sound of the water.
We had passed through her, but then she was up ahead again, standing on a large rock, overlooking the last drop. I whispered to her, pretty sure nobody on the boat could hear.
“We’re working on it,” I said. “Leave me alone.”
But she just glared.
Suddenly the raft tilted and then turned around. We were backwards on the river. I pushed the paddle down into the water, trying to get us straight. But it was too late. I had to stop trying, because if we went down sideways now, the river would flip us.
My heart pounded in my chest. There was no choice but to go downriver backwards and blind and hope for the best.
“Paddles out,” I yelled at the tourists.
I turned around in my seat, watching and paddling the best I could. Water crashed over the sides of the raft. I couldn’t see anything, just large white waves flying up all around us. Then we dropped, listing badly to the right as we went full speed into the next wave.
“Damn it!” I said.
I knew it was out of my hands. The fast water took us down and there was nothing more to do but hope that we didn’t land in the whirlpool or hit a large boulder.
But I wasn’t as scared anymore. My breath was even now, and my nerves under control.
“We’re not going into the water,” I said to myself in a low voice. “Not today.”
Another drop.
“Everyone lean to the left,” I shouted. “Quick!”
We all leaned just in time. The final wave took us and spit us out into the calm section of the river, still facing backward.
Everybody cheered, including me, as I turned us around.
Ty had been watching us. He must have known I was having some trouble.
“Good job,” he said.
I weakly returned his thumbs up. My mouth was bone dry and I sat there, unable to move for a minute. I thanked everyone for listening so well. I could tell they were happy to be done with the rapids. I couldn’t blame them. I felt the same way.
But fear surged through me as I thought about her. She had seemed so angry and had distracted me right before the biggest set of rapids on the river.
Had she done that on purpose? Had she wanted me to flip into the river? Or worse?
I caught my breath, scooped some water in my hat and dumped it over my head. I thought about what Kate had said when she asked if the ghost was dangerous. When she asked if she had done anything to me.
I wasn’t sure anymore.
I had never been so happy to see the take-out spot. I said goodbye to my group, trying to act casual. All of them had gray energy around them. It hadn’t been fun, going backwards down the rapids. If they had been those teenage boys, it would have been a different story. But I was pretty sure that some of these people would complain back at the office.
We watched the bus take them away. I was exhausted and still shaking a little and eager to get home. I grabbed some paddles and loaded them.
Ty came up to me.
“Abby, you did good. Really good. It was pretty mean out there and bottom line, nobody took a bath.”
I shrugged.
“The raft just turned around so quickly. I didn’t have time to get it straight again.”
“Just like I said, you have to be prepared for anything. And you did great. It might not have been the prettiest river run ever, but you got through it and nobody fell in and nobody got hurt. You did exactly right.”
I started shaking hard and he rubbed my shoulders. Then he went into the bus and came back with a sweatshirt that had the University of Montana mascot on it.
“Here, put this on,” he said. “You’re freezing.”
I put it on and, still shivering, walked over to a sunny spot and stood there for a few minutes. Then I helped them load up. I wanted to get home. I wanted to look through those pictures.
It was time to get her off my back.
CHAPTER 25
As I pulled up, I saw Dr. Mortimer’s black BMW in the driveway.
I was still shaking from seeing her ghost and going backwards down the rapids. I didn’t know what it meant, didn’t know if she had really tried to hurt me. But whatever the reason for her being there, I felt a new urgency about finding her. I hoped she would be in the pictures that Kate was sending over.
As I collected my stuff, I thought of Jesse. More and more I questioned whether I had really seen him. He didn’t look like a ghost. He didn’t look like her. He wasn’t terrifying.
She had been angrier than ever, her face burning with a desperation and intensity that I hadn’t seen before. It had been a little while since I was up on the lava cliff. Maybe she thought that I had forgotten. Or I had changed my mind. Maybe she didn’t know that I had been going through files and pictures, trying to find out who she was and learn her story.
I wasn’t going to tell Dr. Mortimer about it, or even Kate for that matter.
I put a smile on my face and opened the front door.
“Dr. Mortimer,” I said, trying to sound normal.
“Abby,” he said.
He got up from the sofa.
I threw my bag down by the coat rack and walked into the living room with him. He had been watching the news. The weather guy with the giant shirt sleeves was saying that it would be hot the next few days, with plenty of blue skies.
Blue skies. It had been so long since I had seen a blue sky.
“So how was the river today?” he said.
His voice was a little off and I figured he must have picked up on something. I probably wasn’t doing such a great job at hiding the fear I was feeling inside. I tried harder.
“It was a tough one, actually
. Most days are great. But, you know, can’t always please everybody. Some lady lost her hat and gave me a hard time.”
We sat down and I slid off my sandals.
“I have that too, at the hospital all the time. It’s a drag, sometimes, huh? Dealing with unhappy people.”
“You lose people’s hats too?” I said, working in a joke.
He smiled.
“We lose all sorts of things. You don’t want to know, trust me.”
I just remembered that I had planned on cooking dinner for him, but I really didn’t feel like it at all. I needed a nice cup of tea that could chase away the chills still crawling all over my insides, and then a good, long black and white movie.
“I’m going to change and then make you dinner. I hope you’re hungry.”
“Oh,” Dr. Mortimer said.
He looked a little sad.
“I’m sorry. I was just trying to help out. I ordered a pizza. I figured you’d be tired and hungry when you got home. It’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“I can’t even tell you how great that sounds,” I said. “I’ll be back.”
I got up and walked toward my room.
“So, you’re all set up in Kate’s room and everything?” I asked, turning back around.” Do you need anything?”
“I’m good. I have to leave in about an hour, though.”
“Okay, I’ll be fast.”
I was already feeling better, and realized that maybe it was because Dr. Mortimer was here. It was nice having someone at home when I came back at the end of the day. Kate was hardly ever able to do that.
Although I was anxious to take a quick look at my email, I didn’t. I headed back out to the kitchen. Dr. Mortimer had set the table with plates, poured sodas, and was dishing out the slices already.
“Do you ever get used to that crazy night shift schedule?” I asked.
“No, not at all actually. When I first started out I thought, no problem. I’ll be used to this in a few weeks, maybe a month. But all these years later and I’m not even close to being used to it. I still have trouble falling asleep in the daylight and I have a heck of a time not yawning a blue streak after three in the morning.”
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