The Way Back Home

by Barbara Freethy

  “I can’t believe they’re going to go out on the river again after everything that happened,” Russell said, interrupting her thoughts. “They should be stopped. They’re dangerous.”

  Habit brought defensive words to her lips, but pain kept her from speaking them. Six months ago, she would have been the first one to jump to Alicia’s defense. The Haydens had been her second family, especially after her dad passed away. George had been a father figure to her, while her mother had been like a mother to Alicia. There had been times they’d joked about setting up their parents, but they’d never managed to get George or her mother, Lynette, on board. Not surprising, really. George spent more time on the river than he did in town.

  “I didn’t think George was in any condition to lead river trips,” she said. “He must be doing a lot better.”

  “He still walks with a cane,” Russell said.

  “You saved his life.”

  “Not so he could go back out on the river and kill someone else,” he said tersely, anger lining his face.

  She frowned, realizing that Russell didn’t look too good. He’d put on a few pounds around the belly, and his face had that flushed look that usually came when he was drinking too much. His brown hair had also receded, thinning out on the top, too. Brian’s death had taken a heavy toll on him.

  “You need to let it go, Russ,” she said, worried about his overwhelming anger. “Nothing will bring Brian back.”

  He blew out a breath. “I know. I didn’t mean to get into this with you the minute you got back. When is your mom having surgery?”

  “Next week.”

  “I’m sure she’s happy to have you back. Everyone misses your food. Nora is a good cook, but she doesn’t compare to you.”

  “Thanks, but Nora taught me everything I knew.”

  “What’s happening with your job in Sacramento?”

  “I took some time off.” She paused. “I am going back, though. River Rock isn’t my home anymore.”

  “Before you leave, I want to have you over for dinner. My parents would love to see you, and so would Amanda.”

  “When are you going to put a ring on that girl’s finger?”

  “I’m getting around to it,” he said with a sheepish grin.

  “You should do it soon. She’s a good one.”

  “The best—probably too good for me.” He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “I’m glad you’re back. Call me, and we’ll set something up.”

  “I will.” As she walked away, she wished she could be happy to be home, but her brief run-in with Alicia had reminded her that this place could never be home again.

  Alicia glanced over at Gabe, who had been silent since they’d left the hardware store. She’d needed a minute to regroup, and he’d given it to her. “When Kelly didn’t come back for Rob’s funeral, I didn’t think I’d ever see her again,” she said. “She moved to Sacramento and got a job as a chef in a restaurant there. She’s an incredible cook. Her mother owns the Blackberry Inn on the other side of town, and Kelly grew up working in the kitchen.”

  “We need to talk about the accident, Alicia.”

  “I’m working up to that.” She pulled onto a narrow dirt road, driving under towering trees until she came to a grassy landing. She stopped the car and got out. “Come on, I want to show you something.”

  She led him down a footpath to an old wooden bridge that was about a hundred yards long. Below the bridge, the river splashed through a boulder-filled fork that no one could get a boat through. The bridge had been closed off years ago, too rickety for foot traffic.

  “This is nice,” Gabe said. “Unless you brought me here so you could push me off.”

  “For the moment, you’re safe.” She sat down on the ground and stretched out her legs. She’d thought she could handle the river from this point, but the sound of the water pounding through the rocks put her on edge. It was a different sound from the calm flow that ran in front of her house. This part of the river reminded her of the accident, especially the sharp, jagged rocks.

  Her heart began to pound, and she jumped to her feet.

  Gabe stood up, too, grabbing her arm. “Alicia?” he asked with concern.

  “I shouldn’t have brought you here. This isn’t a good spot.”

  “You’re safe with me.” The strength of his grip and the confidence in his eyes reassured her to some extent but also reminded her that Gabe could be dangerous to her in ways that had nothing to do with the rushing water below.

  “Talk to me,” he commanded. “Tell me what happened on your last trip down the river.”

  She pulled loose and backed a few feet away, then sat down on the grass, feeling better a little farther from the edge.

  Gabe sat next to her.

  “I haven’t talked about that day to anyone.”

  “Not even your brother?”

  “I didn’t want to tell Rob, because he would have been upset, and he needed to focus on his job so that he could stay safe. My dad was injured. He didn’t really know what happened after he went into the water. And Kelly was too distraught about Brian to talk to me. I didn’t want to scare Justin, either, so I just kept my thoughts to myself.”

  “What about Keith?”

  “I didn’t know Keith then. We met in September, and the accident was in August.”

  “But still …”

  She didn’t like the question in his eyes. “I will talk to him about it. I just haven’t gotten around to it. It hasn’t been important.”

  “Are you serious? You can’t even look at the river from way up here, but you think you’re going to get out on it in two weeks?”

  “I’ll be fine. I just need to get my head around the idea.”

  “You’re not fine.”

  “I will be.”

  He gave her a doubtful look, then said, “Tell me about that day.”

  She took a deep breath. “It was a Friday, and the weather was beautiful. We scheduled an all-day trip on a run that had two Class Four and one Class Five rapids. Class Six is the top, basically unrunnable. Class Five is very challenging but doable with skilled guides on board. We’d made the run a couple of times before. There were three rafts with four people and a guide in each raft. My father was on the lead raft, I was on the second, and Simon, one of our most experienced guides, was bringing up the rear. The morning run was great. We broke for lunch along the river, and everyone was laughing, talking, having a wonderful time. In the afternoon, the wind picked up, and the river was running faster. It was higher than normal, but we weren’t too concerned. About an hour into the run, things fell apart. We hit what they call the roller-coaster chute, because it goes up and then steeply down. And sometimes it spins you around, which is what happened that day.”

  She paused, images flashing through her head: the splash of water in her eyes, the speed of the boat increasing, and then the cries from up ahead as her father’s boat flipped over. “I saw my dad go into the water. He never ever got flipped out. I was stunned, and I didn’t react fast enough. Suddenly, we were airborne, too. Almost flying. And then I was in the water.”

  She could feel the cold, the iron grip of the current tugging her down and away, the sense of futility as she kicked and kicked—

  Gabe’s hand came down on her thigh. “You’re not in the river, Alicia. You’re on solid ground.”

  She turned to him, his gaze anchoring her back in reality. “Russell Farr, Brian’s brother, was in the first raft with my dad. He managed to pull him over to some rocks. My dad was unconscious, and he would have died if Russell hadn’t gotten to him.”

  “What about you?”

  “I was swept downstream. I could hear shouting. Or maybe it was just the pounding of my heart, the rush of the water; it was so loud. I tried to swim, to grab the boat when I could see it, but it was always just out of reach. I did everything I’d been taught to do, but nothing was working. Finally, I somehow managed to make it to the shore. By then, I was a quarter mile down
the river. The raft was even farther away. It was headed the wrong way, straight toward the falls.” She cleared her throat, knowing she had to get through to the end. “I didn’t think anyone was on it, but later I had the hazy image of someone being dragged down under it. At the time, I didn’t know what I was seeing. I looked back, and most of the guys were on the rocks, so I thought everyone had made it to shore. But when we finally managed to regroup, we couldn’t find Brian. We couldn’t find him anywhere,” she whispered. “Now I know he went over the falls with our raft. He must have gotten tangled up in something, I don’t know what. He had on a life jacket, but there were a lot of rocks, and one of the other guys said he saw blood in the water.”

  Gabe’s eyes filled with compassion. “Do you want to stop?”

  She shook her head. “There’s not much else. They didn’t find his body until the next day. It was four miles from where we went into the water.” She drew in a shaky breath. “He had a gash on his head. It was believed that he got knocked out and then drowned, not that that’s a comfort to anyone.”

  “Maybe it is a comfort. He didn’t know what was coming. He didn’t feel anything.”

  “I hope he didn’t.”

  Gabe stared back at her. “It sounds like an accident, Alicia. Why do people blame you? Why do you blame yourself?”

  “There were a lot of theories about what happened. Someone suggested that the rafts were underinflated or in poor condition. We weren’t the richest rafting company. We didn’t have the best equipment. Other people questioned my experience, my father’s age, the wisdom of taking that run at all under those river conditions.”

  “So there was a lot of second-guessing. What do you think?”

  “I’m not sure. We found a leak in the raft afterward, but I believe it happened when it was flung against the rocks.”

  “Sounds reasonable.” He gave her a thoughtful look. “You’re not telling me something.”

  She fidgeted, debating how far she wanted to go. “It’s just a feeling. Brian was acting a little funny after lunch. A couple of the guys were being a little too loud, too wild. I don’t know if the adrenaline rush was making them cocky. But it seemed like they weren’t listening very well. They weren’t following my instructions like they had been in the morning.”

  “Were they drinking?”

  “Alcohol is forbidden on the trips, but everyone had water bottles. I didn’t check them. The guys in the group were friends. I trusted them.”

  “There must have been an autopsy. It would have showed if there was alcohol in Brian’s bloodstream.”

  “The autopsy didn’t happen for more than twenty-four hours. If there was alcohol in his system, it was gone by then. So we’ll never know.”

  “Did you talk to any of the other guys?”

  “Are you kidding? No one wanted to talk to me, Gabe. And I was busy dealing with my dad. He broke his leg in three places and fractured a couple of ribs. He needed a lot of attention. I didn’t have time to investigate anything, and I wouldn’t have even known where to start. The chief of police from River Rock was on the trip. He investigated. At the end, it was deemed an accident, but there are still people in town who don’t believe that.”

  “The only person who really needs to believe it is you, Alicia.”

  “I just wish I could remember everything more clearly, but I only saw part of what happened. That’s the problem. We were all struggling for survival. No one was watching from above. No one saw the whole thing. We each lived just a part of it.”

  “So you have the pieces of a puzzle but no way to put them together.”

  “Exactly. And even if we did put them together, it won’t bring Brian back.”

  “But it might help you get past your fear of the river. Your dad has no idea, does he?”

  “No.” She hugged her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs. “At least, he’s pretending not to. He’s always been of the mind-set that if you get thrown off the horse, or the raft, you get back on. That’s the only way to do it—face your fear.”

  “Do you think he has some fear, too?”

  “No, he loves the river. He refers to it as a woman who challenges him and tests him and makes him feel like a big strong man. I guess once my mother left, all he had was the river.”

  “Why did she leave?”

  “That’s another long story, and I think I’ve talked enough. It’s your turn.”

  He stiffened. “I can’t tell you what happened to Rob.”

  “You can’t expect me to spill my guts and you say nothing.”

  “It’s an entirely different situation.”

  “Can you tell me anything? Did Rob have any last words?” It was hard to ask the question, and once it was spoken, she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know the answer. If Rob had said something important, then that meant he knew he was going to die, and she couldn’t stomach the thought that he might have been in pain, might have known what was coming. She jumped to her feet. “Never mind. I don’t want to do this now. I have bills to pay and supplies to order and guides to track down.”

  Gabe stood up. “Alicia. Look at me.”

  She slowly turned around. “What?”

  “Rob wanted you to know that he loved you very much. And I told him that you already knew that.”

  Her eyes blurred with tears. “You’re right. I did.” She bit down on her bottom lip. “I want to apologize for what I said when you first arrived. I know you didn’t let Rob die. I just wanted to blame someone, and you were there.”

  “I wasn’t the one who was supposed to come back,” he said, a hard note in his voice. “I get it, Alicia.”

  “It’s not that I wanted anything bad to happen to you, Gabe. I wanted you both to be safe. And blaming you was unfair. I was doing to you what everyone has been doing to me, blaming me for something I couldn’t control. I’m sorry.”

  “There are things I wish I had done differently.”

  “Me, too,” she agreed. “But sometimes there aren’t any second chances.”

  “You’re right.”

  “So what now?”

  “We need to get you back on the river. How about a short trip, just you and me?”

  Her pulse leaped at the suggestion. “I—I don’t know.”

  “You wouldn’t have to pretend not to be scared with me. We could go at your pace.”

  “I’ll think about it. But if I don’t get the business going again, we won’t have any river trips to worry about.”

  “What was Rob going to do to help when he got back?” he asked as she started walking toward the car. “What was going to be his role?”

  She stopped by the car. “Rob was going to charm the socks off all the doubters and haters in town. He was going to use that smile of his to bring everyone back into the Hayden camp. Rob was loved by everyone. He would have been able to persuade them to trust us again.”

  “So you need a front guy?”

  “Yes, and no offense, Gabe, but you’re not exactly the outgoing, gregarious type.”

  “I can be charming on occasion.”

  She gave him a doubtful look. He was sexy as hell, but more in a bad-boy, moody-loner kind of way. “If you want that job, go for it. You certainly can’t make anyone hate us more.”

  “Then that’s where I’ll start.”

  “What will you do?” she asked, feeling a bit nervous now that Gabe was taking her up on the challenge.

  “Not sure yet. I need to come up with a strategy, identify the key targets, and determine how to neutralize them.”

  “This isn’t a war, Gabe.”

  He smiled. “You’re wrong, Alicia. It’s going to be a battle to win back your reputation. Where did you say Kelly was staying?”

  “The Blackberry Inn, but I don’t want you to talk to her. She doesn’t need any more problems. She’s still grieving the loss of her fiancé.”

  “I’m surprised you’d protect her after what she’s put you through.”

&nb
sp; “She was my best friend. I still love her. Leave her alone.”

  “Fine. Where does all the gossip happen in town?”

  “Burt’s Diner or Mullaney’s Bar and Grill.”

  “Then drop me off in town. I’ll start with those two places.”

  “How will you get back to the house?”

  He grinned. “I’ll use my charm.”

  “Then I hope you like to walk,” she grumbled as she got into the car. Gabe might have a killer smile when he chose to use it, but she doubted that he could change anyone’s mind.

  Kelly walked up the steps to the Blackberry Inn, a beautiful manor house situated on three acres of meadow and forest about five miles from downtown. A small creek ran alongside the property, flowing into the river a half mile away. A big porch sprawled around three sides of the four-story house, and in the back courtyard was a brick patio with comfortable chairs, a fire pit, and a hot tub. The inn offered ten guest bedrooms plus three guest cottages and an attic suite on the top floor where Kelly had lived since she was a teenager. Her mother and her brother had moved into one of the cottages a few years ago, eager to have a little more privacy than could be found in the main house. But she’d loved her attic room too much to move, and she hadn’t felt the need for more space. Once she’d started dating Brian, she’d practically moved into his apartment.

  As she entered through the front door, the familiar furniture and smells brought back a wave of nostalgia. She’d missed this place. She’d also missed her family and Nora, she thought as she pushed open the door to the big kitchen at the back of the inn. Nora and Kelly’s mother, Lynette, had started the inn together fourteen years earlier, right after Kelly’s dad died. It was from Nora that she’d learned how to cook. She’d been the sous chef at the inn’s restaurant since she was fifteen, finally taking over when Nora fell in love at the ripe age of fifty-seven and decided to travel around the country in an RV with her new husband.