Luke leaned down over the bed, speaking fiercely. “You will do it. It’s what I want. It’s what I deserve.” He swallowed, a visible chug in his throat. Then he said, “And Craig would’ve wanted it too. Of all people, Craig would’ve wanted that for you.”
Luke backed out of the room, whoever waited for him in the hallway descended, and then they were gone.
• • •
Doug’s tears didn’t start until they could no longer hear a last echoing footstep. Natalie turned toward her husband, startled by the sudden display, like a thundercloud erupting. She wrapped her arms around him, and he rocked and shook against her.
“We had a rough start, Nat,” Doug said once he could speak.
“The roughest,” Natalie agreed. “Probably who does the dishes will seem like small stuff after this.”
Doug caught her hand, stroking it with his thumb in the way that he did, which set all her nerves to tingling. “Would you do it again?”
A series of images, too proximate to be called memories yet, streamed across the mental screen of her mind. Her cheek and its surgical stitching, Doug’s speared foot and the escape attempt they’d made, the relentless march of Kurt through their lives. And then other images enabled her body to uncoil, stop preparing for the next strike. Water arcing in a silvery sheet from Doug’s paddle, their lovemaking by the river, the curl of the rapids as they captured their boat. Doug eating the berries first, and jumping from the log. How their truest joining only took place after they’d nearly been separated for good.
“Every single day,” she told him.
“Knock, knock,” someone said, and an orderly walked into the room. “Here to get you ready for PT.”
Doug was assisted into a wheelchair, but as the orderly began to roll the chair toward the bathroom to help Doug get dressed, Doug stuck out a hand and stopped him. “I’m thinking you can’t get me out of this thing and onto my knees?”
The orderly frowned, as if unsure whether a joke was being made.
Natalie looked at her husband.
Doug gave a nod, answering his own question. “Then this may be the closest I get for a while,” he said.
He scooted the chair forward, extending one arm toward Natalie.
She reached down and took his hand.
“Natalie Abbott Larson,” Doug said.
Natalie caught her breath, inclining her head.
“Will you marry me?” Doug asked. “Again?”
One Year After
Natalie didn’t get home until after her family had already arrived.
Claudia and her husband were sitting on the front porch, where a row of chairs had been set up, looking out over the woods. It was the only finished portion of the house. Inside was a complete disarray of needed repairs, partially renovated rooms, and unpacking left to be done. Natalie loved every inch of it.
She waved as she climbed out of her new/used car. Couldn’t get away with having just one vehicle up here—luckily the parking was plentiful—and Natalie loved her battered Subaru. “Sorry, I got held up. Welcome!”
It was the first time everyone was seeing their new home. Until now, Natalie and Doug had been making the trip down to the city for visits. They weren’t really set up for company yet, plus Natalie’s niece kept resisting the drive north.
“Nurse’s hours,” Claudia called back, smiling.
“Student’s hours,” Natalie corrected, mounting the porch steps. “I don’t think I’ll ever finish this rotation.”
The front door swung open, and Mia emerged.
“Hi, Aunt Nat,” she said in her new, husky voice, not the lighthearted, girlish whoop she once would’ve given, if not yet a woman’s sure tone. Mia was holding an ivory-wrapped package in her hands. She walked over to Natalie and gave her a hug. Mia was tall enough now that she had to lean down to do it.
Natalie smiled. “What’s this?” she asked, indicating the box.
Mia extended it. “It’s from Val,” she said. “She says she’s sorry she missed some year deadline or something for sending presents. And sorry for a lot of other things too.”
Natalie swallowed, staring down at the package as Mia put it in her hands. Finally, she blinked and took a good look at her niece. “You’re beautiful,” she said, and Mia was. Everyone had always thought that Mia looked older than her years, but that had been for relatively superficial reasons. Her height, her habit of borrowing her mother’s clothes. But now Mia truly did look mature. Her eyes were shaded with a certain wisdom, and an overlay of wariness. She was someone who had faced the worst and survived.
“You too,” Mia said, depositing a kiss on Natalie’s cheek.
The cut Natalie suffered in the woods had indeed left a scar, although Mia’s assessment of its cool factor was almost enough to convince Natalie: a minuscule arrow shot across the bow of her face.
“How was the trip up?” Natalie asked. Meaning, not the traffic out of the city, but what was it like to come back here?
“Easy,” Mia said, holding Natalie’s gaze. “Surprisingly easy.”
She turned and opened the door to the house, allowing Natalie’s father to pass through. Mia now carried herself with a hint of command. She was getting straight A’s in school, and Claudia had told Natalie that Mia had her first boyfriend. They’d met through a hiking Meetup for teens.
Natalie’s father stepped onto the porch, gripping a tray full of sandwiches.
Natalie stared at him in disbelief. “You cooked? In that kitchen?”
Her father smiled. “Well, it’s not like I attempted anything as bold as the stove.”
“You’ll have to come up here more often. Doug and I have been depending on the kindness of neighbors and a paucity of restaurants.”
She and Doug had already exhausted the menus at all three options in town—a diner, a wood-fired pizza place, and a retro bistro—giving them all five stars. Doug joked that they benefited by comparison. Nary a chipmunk dish in sight.
Natalie started to reach for the tray, but left the task to her father when Doug’s SUV swung into the drive.
She took the porch stairs at a run. Even through the worst of a Wedeskyull winter, with snow piled up beyond the sills of the first-story windows, Natalie had run to greet her husband every day.
She’d been tired most of those days, fatigue the most enduring symptom of her ordeal. The fatigue was in part due to the nightmares that plagued her. In her dreams, Natalie was never in the woods; in fact, the woods were a sheltering parent, Mother Nature herself. They were the one place Natalie truly felt safe in this new life she and Doug had created. So Natalie would instead be inhabiting some spot whose danger hadn’t emerged until too late—bars they used to frequent, the human resources office where she’d toiled a few scant months, a busy, crowded restaurant—and Kurt would suddenly appear, machete in hand. Natalie would jolt awake, covered in blood that turned out to be perspiration. The first dream-free night she spent didn’t take place until after snowmelt in June, when Doug led the two of them on a short day hike to the summit of Jay.
The man who killed Craig had never been found, although the investigation was still ongoing, just one addition to a series of drug-related deaths of which Natalie had gained more than a passing knowledge, and more than she’d ever wanted to possess.
Doug had spent most of the winter serving out his probation, not physically ready for the kind of work he wanted to do. Luckily, the cost of living up here was sufficiently low that gifts from their wedding had given them a buffer, allowing them freedom not to rush into jobs that would only grind them down.
And by this point, Doug was back to normal—actually, more fit than ever.
He twirled Natalie around in his arms, lifting one hand to wave to everybody eating and rocking and chattering on the porch.
“Good day?” Natalie asked. “You’re all wet.”
Doug’s hair was glistening, and he smelled of the river he’d just come from.
Her husband scrubbed one hand over his head and wiped damp from his beard. “That couple wanted to test out a few whitewater runs before they put-in next week. Ben suggested I show them a few advanced strokes.”
Ben was Doug’s new boss at Off Road Adventures.
“Oh, right,” Natalie replied, walking hand in hand with her husband back toward the farmhouse. “I remember.”
Doug looked at her.
Natalie took a breath. “The ones who are going on their honeymoon.”
Reading Group Guide
1. On the day of her wedding, Natalie witnesses her soon-to-be husband, Doug, arguing with two strange men. If you were Nat, how would you handle the situation? Would you try to get to the truth, or let it go to enjoy the day?
2. Natalie and Mia are extremely close. What do you think draws them together? Do you have an older family member or friend with whom you have a special connection?
3. Natalie agrees to a backcountry honeymoon in the isolated Adirondack region, even though Doug is the avid outdoorsman of the two. If you were Natalie, would you agree to Doug’s honeymoon plans? If so, why? If not, what would you want to do instead?
4. Describe Nat and Doug’s relationship at the beginning of their honeymoon. What do you make of their dynamics? How does their relationship change over the course of the novel?
5. Doug puts both himself and Natalie in danger out of loyalty to his friend, Craig, who is in financial trouble. Do you think this is a good enough excuse? Do you have any friends for whom you would risk anything?
6. Natalie and Doug must battle the elements, which ends up being almost as dangerous as the man stalking them in the woods. If you were in their situation, what would you do to survive? Do you have any basic outdoor survival skills? How did you feel while reading about Nat and Doug’s struggle?
7. Describe Kurt. What makes him so dangerous? Why do you think he is fixated on Natalie and Doug?
8. Compare and contrast Natalie and Kurt. Do you see any similarities between them?
9. If you had to choose, which would you prefer to face: Kurt and his booby traps or the natural elements of the Adirondack region without any supplies or directions?
10. How does Natalie change over the course of the novel? What about Doug? Do you think their relationship will succeed once the story ends? Why?
11. Describe Mia. Why do you think she sets off on her own to find Natalie and Doug? If you were Mia and you knew a family member was in danger, what would you do?
12. Who do you think is the hero of the story: Natalie, Mia, the search-and-rescue team, or a combination of the three? How did you feel reading about Nat and Doug’s rescue? Does any moment particularly stick out?
13. Why do you think, after the rescue, Natalie and Doug decide to change careers and move out to the Adirondack region? If you were in their situation, would you do the same?
A Conversation with the Author
What was your inspiration for Wicked River?
For me, the wilderness is like a siren’s call, beckoning with a whisper to write. What darkness hides in the woods? What secrets lurk there? That said, the first inspiration for Wicked River had to be my own backcountry honeymoon, which, uh, didn’t go so well but didn’t go nearly as bad as Natalie and Doug’s journey did. My husband and I came home after one day of canoeing and promptly hightailed it to France, paying (or not paying) for the trip with the first credit card either of us had ever owned. I never stopped asking myself “What if we hadn’t turned back when we did? How much worse could things have gotten?” The answer to those questions became Wicked River.
Your novel brings to life the dense, beautiful, and dangerous Adirondack region. Why did you decide to set Nat and Doug’s story there?
The Adirondack Park consists of more than six million acres, and there’s just something about that kind of vastness, that kind of space. So many things can go wrong there. As I write this response, there is a seventy-seven-year-old hunter who’s gone missing south of the park. A twenty-six-year-old ice fisherman just plunged through the ice on a pond near Lake George and died. I feel such sorrow for the missing and the families of the lost. These stories are so tragic and so untimely. People perish while trying to feed themselves or enjoying a little recreation. At the same time, the land we’re talking about has to be some of the most majestic in the world. Jagged peaks and crystalline streams and alpine meadows. Each season of the year is beautiful in some way—wildflowers with petals soft as baby skin in the springtime, the green and blue and yellow of a brief Adirondack summer, the kaleidoscope burst of fall foliage, the hushed quiet of a land swathed in snow. Somewhere within those two poles, danger and beauty, lived Nat and Doug’s story.
Are you an avid outdoorsperson yourself?
Oh gosh. See my first response. I am an aspiring outdoorsperson. I wish to greater skills than I have. I love the idea of a starlit night and a trip devoid of civilization. But when I actually get any distance away, or even begin planning such a trip realistically, I become aware of all the dangers and think, Hey, what’s so wrong with a real bed and air-conditioning anyway? In some ways, I think that being able to write a book like Wicked River is mutually exclusive with being a true outdoorsperson. For me, the stories are all too real.
The story unfolds from three different points of view: Natalie, Mia, and Kurt. Which character did you relate to the most? Which was the most fun to write?
There’s a theory of fiction that says every character has a piece of the author inside him or her. But I find it works in the opposite way for me. In order to write a character, I have to take a piece of him or her and let it live inside me until I become that person for a while. It’s very method. So I related to all three characters—Natalie, Mia, and Kurt—though none of them are really like me. They were all deeply gratifying to write. Not fun precisely—but it was exhilarating to become a young bride again, a teenage girl, both living in a world staggeringly different from the one I inhabited during those stages of life. Cell phones and GPS and texting, oh my! And learning where Kurt’s hurt, hidden places were, why, despite the abhorrent things he did, he was really weak and wounded himself, was a revelation I felt privileged to observe.
Kurt is a psychologically complex and layered character. What kind of research did you do to bring him to life?
Here’s a little secret about my writing: I do almost no research at all. I hate to admit this, because it seems like to be a Real Writer, you must do research, right? Yet many of the writers I admire most—Lee Child, Stephen King—don’t do a lot of it, or warn against its hazards. In terms of Kurt specifically, he suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder, with grandiose features, and having worked as a psychotherapist, I gained at least a passing knowledge of how that diagnosis will manifest. But for the most part, he, like all my characters, arose organically, came to life on the page, and I sat back and watched him move. He told me about his parents and how their behavior shaped him into the man who terrorized Natalie and Doug, which was not his intent. Kurt worked against himself; he brought down on himself his deepest fear—solitude—by alienating everyone in his life until the only place left for him was in isolation.
What draws you to the thriller genre?
Time for another secret—I don’t actually consider myself a thriller writer, although I love thrillers. In a way, I think the fast pacing of my stories, the fear and the stakes, serve to camouflage what’s also there. The first elements to register in my work do bespeak thriller. And fear certainly drives many aspects of my life—the awareness that just a subtle twist of the knob could change it all, rid a person of everything, plunge her into a horrifying scenario she might not have the ability to survive. But what drives me in my writing is the potential and promise of triumph, the chance for a weak and flawed character to overcome her deficits and
emerge victorious. More than anything, I would say I am a fairy-tale writer.
What do you ultimately want readers to take away from Wicked River?
A bookseller in Olympia, WA, once told me: “I feel a little stronger as a person myself when I am reading one of your books.” That’s what I hope every reader of Wicked River takes away—that in each of us lies the potential for strength we never knew we had.
Acknowledgments
Every novel is a journey, and this book takes the reader on a literal one. It took its author on one too. Things didn’t get quite as thorny for me during the process of bringing Wicked River to you as they did for Natalie and Doug, but…it was hairy there for a while.
For expert shepherding of my career, and passionate devotion to every book, my agent, Julia Kenny, deserves unending gratitude and thanks.
Everyone’s tearing their hair out these days, wondering how best to publish books. I found an oasis of calm, knowledge, creativity, and enlightenment in the home I was given at Sourcebooks. Shana Drehs and Margaret Johnston saw right to the heart of what this novel wanted to be—and helped me get it there. Seven massive revisions. Each scene, every line of dialogue, almost every single word pored over. Their skill and devotion shine like suns. Lathea Williams, Stephanie Graham, Valerie Pierce, and the entire publicity and marketing team prove every day that there really is a method to the madness and a wisdom behind the wins. The art and design wizards deserve huge props for finding the exact perfect ornament to evoke rapids and creating one of the most eye-catching covers I’ve ever seen. Thank you, Dominique Raccah, for all that you’ve created in your authors’ lives and the lives of booklovers and readers everywhere.
The independent publicity team of JKS Communications has been behind every book I’ve written and also behind Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day, the latter out of the sheer goodness of their book-loving hearts. There are no better independent publicists on the planet. Outside-the-box thinkers, with a Rolodex like a box of fine chocolates, Julie Powers Schoerke, Marissa Curnette, and Sara Wigal, I love working with you.
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