Because of Audrey

by Mary Sullivan

  “There’ll be lots of people there. More than at the gym.”

  “That’s the point. You need to talk to more people than just me.”

  “No.” He fell right back into his old recalcitrant self. He couldn’t do this.

  “I don’t know anyone in town, and I want to get to meet people.” She touched his hand where it sat on the sofa arm. “You could introduce me to them.”

  He softened.

  “Please,” she said, and it clinched the deal.

  Jeff stood. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Teresa parked the truck on Main Street and walked around to Jeff’s side. His pulse beat hard in his veins.

  Lord, what had he gotten himself into?

  After he got out, Teresa twined her fingers with his. He was getting used to the feel of her hand, to the reliability of her touch, as though her hand belonged in his. They walked down the street together. He was walking on Main Street for the first time in, what? A year?

  “Are people staring at me?” Jeff asked.

  “Nope.” She opened the door of the café. “Oh, my goodness, it smells incredible in here. I’m gaining weight just inhaling.”

  “Do you worry about your weight?”

  “Jeff, every woman of a certain age worries about her weight.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Fifty-eight.”

  Jeff didn’t remark on that because someone called his name.

  “A bunch of men on the far side of the room are waving you over,” she said.

  “Who are they?”

  “I don’t know.” She laughed. “That’s why you’re here. To introduce me.”

  He didn’t like that, but so what? She could see whoever she wanted to. “Are you looking to find yourself a man?”

  “No. I just want to meet people, and the people beckoning to you are men.” His grip relaxed. He didn’t own her. “Let’s go over there.”

  She led him to the table, and all of the men greeted Jeff, their voices warm, and it felt good.

  He introduced Teresa, maybe a little reluctantly because he hadn’t figured out yet who all was there. That Angus was a good-looking man. Jeff thought women found him attractive.

  After a bit of shuffling, they found a couple of chairs and made room for Jeff and Teresa.

  “What do you want, Jeff?”

  “A coffee and one of Laura’s cinnamon buns, if she has any left. If not, carrot cake.”

  “You got it. Any of you gentlemen need refills?”

  After a round of nos, Teresa went off to place their orders. By the time she came back with the food, Jeff was immersed in a conversation about local politics, feeling as if nothing had changed since the last time he’d sat here with his friends.

  A man didn’t need to be able to see to express opinions or to listen. Jeff’s mind hadn’t changed. He was as sharp as ever, still interested in debate.

  A revelation.

  After Teresa set up Jeff’s food in front of him, she said quietly, “Coffee’s at three o’clock and a cinnamon bun at twelve.”

  “Jeff, how does that macular degeneration affect your eyesight?” He recognized Walter’s voice. “What can you see?”

  Jeff stiffened, because he was afraid of pity, of well-meaning sympathy.

  Teresa elbowed him. “Answer the question.”

  Bossy woman.

  Jeff explained because he wanted to, because he’d known Walter all of his life, and not because Teresa told him to.

  “That’s the pits, Jeff.” He recognized Harold’s voice. “Is it operable?”

  Jeff explained that an operation might not work.

  “At least with me,” Harold said, “once I get my hip replacement, there’s a pretty good chance I’ll be able to walk again without these damn crutches.”

  “Wish they had an operation that could fix the arthritis in my hands.” Louis. He remembered Louis had hands and knuckles the size of pineapples. “They’re becoming a pair of claws. Useless.”

  Jeff relaxed. They were treating him like one of them. “When is the hip operation scheduled, Harold?”

  “Next month. Can’t wait.”

  Harold might be brave enough to risk an operation, but Jeff wasn’t. No way, no how.

  They stayed for an hour and a half.

  At the house, Jeff walked hand-in-hand into the living room with Teresa, but before he sat he squeezed her hand.

  “Thank you. You’re a lifesaver.”

  “Go on, Jeff. I haven’t done much.”

  He squeezed her hand harder. “I’m saying that you’re saving my life, and I mean it.”

  “Well, okay. Thank you.” Her voice sounded different, warm and maybe shy.

  He smiled all the rest of the day.

  CHAPTER TEN

  IT TOOK A few days, but Gray finally gave in to the inevitable. He decided to go into a cave with Audrey.

  The memories she’d brought back of their time trapped in the well fractured his equilibrium and changed the way he viewed the world and his parents. Had they been justified in hiding so much from him, in not forcing him to deal with what had happened? He’d carried a burden of grief for nearly thirty years, underground, in shadows as black as the well in which he’d been trapped, and hadn’t had a clue. How many times in his life had he been controlled by fear and not known it? How many decisions had he made that could have been different with knowledge and an understanding of what drove him?

  Today, he chose a new path. He might not get rid of his fears easily, but he would at least start.

  Audrey humbled him with her purity and strength and vitality.

  Worse, she shamed him without even meaning to. Compared to her, to the unusual mature grace she’d shown that day in keeping him calm, imagining those small arms wrapped around him and those tiny hands patting his face, that sweet voice singing to comfort him, he saw himself as weak.

  That was the only reason he would go into a cave with her—not to heal, not for anything feel-good like closure—but to know inside himself that he could be brave.

  He’d grown into a strong man, dammit, and he intended to prove it.

  He could do this.

  First, he had to get the proper gear.

  * * *

  NOAH’S SHOP SMELLED like mothballs and incense. This wasn’t usually the kind of place Gray picked up his clothes, but Audrey had suggested he buy hiking boots at the Army Surplus.

  When Gray tapped the bell on the counter, Noah stepped out of the back room with a smile on his face, which dropped the second he saw Gray.

  “What can I do for you?”

  Oh, Lord, a businessman-hating hippie. Noah hadn’t changed much since high school.

  “I need hiking boots. Audrey’s taking me caving. She told me you could show me the right boots to buy.”

  “Yeah.” He walked, bobbing onto the balls of his feet, to one side of the store to the shoes and boots. “You need something with a really good tread, like these.” He picked up a pair of sturdy hiking boots.

  Noah fitted Gray into the right size, and they strode to the counter, with Gray snagging a pair of thick socks on the way. After he paid, he turned to leave.

  “About Audrey,” Noah said.

  At his cold tone, Gray stopped and raised one eyebrow. It had been known to leave employees quaking. Not so with Noah.

  “You hurt her in any way and you’ll have me to answer to.” All traces of professionalism were gone, and the gloves were off. “Are we clear?”

  “We’re clear.” Gray walked out, knowing that a showdown was inevitable, because, yes, he would be hurting Audrey, exactly where it would do her the most damage.

  He had no choice.

  * * *

 
; THERE TRULY WAS a hell and Gray was in it.

  On Monday morning, Audrey’s shop was closed and they stood at the mouth of Fulford Cave in White River National Forest in Eagle County, the beauty of the surrounding Rockies stunning but almost lost on Gray.

  “I’m insane,” he whispered. “I never should have agreed to do this.”

  Gray glanced dubiously at the entrance to the cave, a metal culvert. The descent looked maybe forty-five degrees with a ladder for climbing down. The metal tube had a circumference of maybe two feet.

  “I never thought you would be sadistic, Audrey. Why choose this?” He swallowed bile. “Caving is already trial by fire without making me climb down that.” At least it didn’t drop straight down.

  “I know,” Audrey said grimly. “It’s a lot like going down into a well, but the natural entrance won’t work for a first-timer. We would need climbing gear. There is another entrance, but that one’s tricky, too. This culvert is the safest way in and an easy cave for you to start with.”

  Gray glared at her. “To start with. This is a onetime thing, Audrey.” His voice shook, not surprising, given that his hands and legs did, too.

  “You’ll get the bug,” she said. Maybe she didn’t get how deeply disturbed he was by darkness, or maybe she was just so high on her own enthusiasm that she’d lost sight of why they were here.

  She took his hand and squeezed, compassion lighting her face. She was aware.

  “This is a wild cave,” she said. “There won’t be any lights or paths, but I’ve been in here many times and know my way around.”

  “There are caves with lights and paths?”

  “Yes. They’ve been set up so tourists can walk through and experience some of the beauty of the caves.”

  “Why didn’t we go to one of those?” Desperate to get away, he said, “Let’s go now.”

  “One of those caves wouldn’t do you any good. They’re too well-lit.”

  “Sounds great to me. I don’t have to bury myself to heal.”

  “Yes, you do, Gray.”

  “At this moment, I hate you, Audrey.”

  She winced.

  Gray bit down on his tongue. That had been nasty. But maybe true.

  They’d suited up in insulated coveralls, as well as helmets with headlamps.

  “I’m about to die of heatstroke,” he said. It was the first week of September, and a beautiful sunny day. Summer moved inexorably forward while he had yet to get that land sold.

  “It will be a lot cooler underground,” Audrey said. “You won’t get too far down the culvert when the temperature will drop to forty degrees.” Audrey handed him gloves. “You’ll need these.” She also gave him extra light sources for his backpack—an extra lamp, but also a candle.

  “A candle?” Gray asked. “Really? Not very high-tech.”

  “We’ll use that while we eat lunch to conserve the batteries in our headlamps.”

  Gray swallowed, but, mouth dry, nothing went down. “We’ll be eating underground?”

  “Yep.”

  “I didn’t know we’d be down there that long.”

  “Gray, your fears have been moldering inside of you for years, rotting. It’ll take more than ten minutes underground to get rid of them.”

  He had his doubt they’d get rid of anything today outside of his breakfast and his dignity.

  Audrey stepped onto the ladder and climbed down, casting him a reassuring glance before disappearing.

  He put his foot onto the top step of the ladder and his brain exploded.

  Murkiness. Shadows. A melancholic, endless, persistent gloaming. Mind-shattering panic.

  Hunkered forward, he breathed through his nose.

  “Gray?” Audrey called.

  Too winded to answer, he concentrated on controlling his hyperventilation so he wouldn’t pass out.

  “Gray?” Audrey called again. “Are you okay?”

  Facing the inevitable, he moved forward, but the second he stepped into the culvert and put his foot onto the ladder, he stopped breathing. He’d have to start again soon or he’d keel over.

  Breathe. He couldn’t.

  Light-headed, he took another step down into the bleak interior, into the suffocating restriction of the cold corrugated metal.

  There wasn’t enough room for him to descend with his pack on his back, so he held it above him while the culvert swallowed him whole like a baby being sucked back into the womb, but a hostile one.

  He couldn’t take another step into that greedy darkness. A moment later, he felt a hand on his leg, Audrey reassuring him without words that he could do this. She’d climbed halfway up the ladder to meet him.

  Nearly thirty years later, underground together again, she was still the strong one and he still the sniveling little boy—and that was unacceptable.

  He refused to repeat history.

  Forcing himself, he descended the rest of the way. On the bottom rung, he stopped and leaned one hand against the cool rock wall, and concentrated on gulping great inflated balloons of oxygen into his lungs.

  His heart already pounded hard enough to feel like a heart attack. But of course, he wasn’t dying. Only badly hurting. In extreme fear.

  It’s only fear, Gray. It isn’t death.

  “This is the eighth largest cave in Colorado,” Audrey said, her face barely lit by rays from her headlamp reflecting from the rock walls around them. “We’re at an elevation of almost 10,000 feet.”

  He didn’t give a hoot about elevation or the size of the damn cave in which Audrey wanted to entomb him!

  He was dying. He had to get out.

  He grasped the ladder and pulled himself back up a couple of rungs before Audrey stopped him by grabbing his calves.

  “You can do this, Gray.”

  Could he? Maybe he wasn’t strong enough. Maybe he was a coward through and through.

  “Stop,” Audrey said. “Breathe.”

  He hung suspended but did as she instructed. He wasn’t dying. This wasn’t the end of the world. This was only fear, and fear could be controlled.

  He dropped to earth with a graceless thud.

  Slowly, as though afraid to spook him, Audrey reached to his forehead and switched on his headlamp. He could see her clearly now, rather than as a shadowed entity below the lone circle of light of her own lamp. Her calm face became a lifeline, something dear to hold on to in his panic.

  Her faith in him calmed him. A bit. Enough for him to say, “Let’s do this,” his voice not as confident as he would have liked, but them’s the breaks. He was here, wasn’t he? That was the best he could do.

  Audrey smiled, bringing light and love to this underground prison, as she had all of those years ago with her songs and her comforting hands in the well.

  Lord, he was falling hard for this woman.

  “Give yourself time to adjust. Look up.”

  He saw the ceiling was white. “What kind of rock is that?”

  “Moonmilk. Aggregates of fine crystals. It never hardens to stone. Much of the walls should look like that, too, but there’s too much human traffic that comes through here for it to develop.”

  They strode forward into the cave. Audrey strolled, at any rate. Gray inched along, his hand on the cold wall. At least, he could walk upright. At least he wasn’t jammed in beside Audrey like two fragile little square pegs into one round hole.

  In the past few days, a floodgate of memories had broken loose, horrible and frightening.

  He shook his head to clear it of those dark images, and concentrated on other revived memories, good ones, of Audrey, and what a sweet friend she’d been, and the hours of happy play they’d had together, in their homes and at Turner Lumber. And in the wide-open spaces around Accord.

  She was ri
ght. He had loved to run, to be free. He’d embraced all of nature.

  Once, they’d found an injured rabbit and had taken it home. Dad had gotten it fixed up at the vet’s and had built a small home for it, and Mom had taught them how to feed and care for it. Then one day, when it was healthy again, they’d held a release party in a field and sent if off into the wild again.

  Gray used to be a half-wild creature, too, loving the outdoors and freedom. He could get some of that back. He should add balance to his life. Work less. Live more. Get outdoors again. Run free.

  The memory bolstered him. He wished he could share it all with Mom and Dad. But he couldn’t think about them now without sadness. “Look,” Audrey said, pointing to a small hole behind a large rock. “There’s a small room in here.”

  She leaned forward. “Put your head beside mine, so both of our lamps are pointing into the room. See the stalactites and stalagmites?”

  He did, their eerie beauty almost making up for what Audrey was putting him through by dragging him down here. Almost.

  “Which are which?”

  “Stalactites grow down and stalagmites up.”

  She launched into a travelogue of the cave, mentioning minerals—baryte, manganoan calcite, dolomite. “There’s also quartz down here, but it’s not that exciting. It’s kind of dull.”

  He didn’t care, just wanted to inhale and exhale normally for a few minutes, but the walls were crowding him.

  “Audrey?”

  “Yes?”

  “This isn’t helping.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” She walked ahead of him, and he couldn’t see her face, but she sounded sheepish. “I know. I’m geeky and weird.”

  “You’re...okay.” He sounded winded, as though he’d run a marathon.

  Audrey touched his hand and he jumped.

  She grasped his fingers. “Inhale, Gray. Deeply.”

  “Hard.”

  “I know.” She did know. Her compassion, her empathy, astounded him, especially considering that his plans for her were no secret. She knew he would destroy her. He had no right to her goodwill and her generosity. He had no right to her.

  But he wanted her, all of her, including her respect. He had to do this.