“Leonard!”
If he heard Jake he gave no indication. Jake called again; again no response. Another forty yards. Then a stop, hands on knees, gasping, waiting for his wind to return. Jake turned and looked across the lake to where his friends would soon be rising to make coffee and breakfast. Not good.
If they were up when he got back, that meant Ari would be up as well. And even though he’d left his pants on the dock, what if she was on the deck above and saw him? What if she was down at the dock?
Stupid. Why was he thinking about something so asinine as her seeing him, when the disaster of the corridor should be at the forefront of his mind?
“Leonard!”
This time the man turned and gazed down on him. But only for a moment, then he turned back to whatever he was working on high above the lake. Jake continued his trek up the side of the hill, pausing just long enough to gather the strength to continue upward. Ten steps. Rest. Fifteen steps. Rest. He couldn’t see Leonard any longer as an outcropping of rock blocked his view, but in a few minutes he’d reach the man and demand answers.
Twenty more yards. Come on. The air seemed to thin as he slogged on. One hundred more steps. Keep going. Almost there. And then he was. Jake stepped around the corner of the craggy rock and readied himself to confront his old friend.
But Leonard was gone.
“Leonard! I know you’re close. You have to be. Talk to me!”
He scanned the area where the old man had stood minutes earlier. But there was no one. Nothing but browned grass and jagged rocks pushing through the soil in stony patches.
Nothing to do but head back down, return to the house across the lake, and pray they were all still asleep. He glanced at the sun. Probably seven by now, maybe later.
As he trudged back down the hill, all the emotions of the past three hours seeped out of him and left a dull kind of despair that throbbed at the back of his mind. He wasn’t looking forward to faking his way through the day, trying to create answers as to what had happened. No explanation would come close to satisfying his aching soul.
When he reached Leonard’s dock ten minutes later, Jake slipped back into his kayak and paddled across the lake toward the rental house, dreading what he was about to face.
Someone sat in the spot where he and Peter had talked the first night. Still too far away to tell if they were male or female. A few minutes later he could tell it wasn’t Peter or Andrew. Too small for either of them. But no clue yet which of the women it was. If it was Ari, what would he say?
Hey, can you toss me my pants? Once I get them, I’ll paddle far enough away that you can’t see me, then put them on and paddle back before getting out of my kayak. I’m sure you’ll understand, because you see, I’m too embarrassed for you to see me as I really am.
Jake clenched his teeth, paddled forward, and shot up a prayer. “Please let it be Susie. Camille even. Just not Ari.”
Another minute and he’d know. He dipped his paddle in the water again and pulled hard. If it was Ari, he’d figure out a way to get ahold of his pants without looking like a moron.
Forty-five seconds later relief flooded him. It was Susie.
“Thank God.”
She waved at him. He waved back and eased his pace. His arms were still trashed from the slog between the end of the lake and Leonard’s place. When he was still twenty-five yards offshore, she called out, “Where have you been?”
“Just out for some time by myself.”
Should he tell her? Without Susie, he wouldn’t have ever discovered the meadow. He laughed sarcastically inside. Exactly. Without her he wouldn’t have found the corridor and his heart wouldn’t currently be in a blender. There would be time to tell her later.
“Hey, are you listening to me?”
Jake looked up. “Yeah.”
“Where’d you go for this alone time?” Susie hugged her coffee mug with both hands, face full of anticipation.
Jake glanced up toward the house, even though he couldn’t see it through the trees as he pulled up to the shore. “Can you do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Go grab my pants? They’re on the dock.” He pointed to the shoreline. “I’m going to get out here.”
Susie was gracious enough not to ask him why. She shuffled down to the water’s edge and held out her coffee mug. “Hot cider. Want some?”
Jake shook his head.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. I’m good.”
She marched off as Jake got out of his kayak and tied it up to a branch hanging over the water. By the time he clambered up the bank and settled into one of the four Adirondack chairs, Susie had returned from the dock with his pants.
“You want these?” She dangled them from her outstretched hand, just far enough away that Jake couldn’t grab them.
He leaned forward to take the pants but Susie drew them back.
“Oh, you do want them.”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me about whatever it is I see in your eyes.”
“There’s nothing to tell. Went for a long paddle, got some time to think about my mutated life, came back, and here we are.”
“Okay.” Susie draped the pants over her shoulder and started to walk away. “See you up there.”
“Fine. I’ll tell you.”
Susie stopped.
As he looked at her, one of the few people in the world he still trusted, the mask Jake had been wearing shattered.
“Oh my gosh, you went back, didn’t you? Did a little more exploring without me?”
“Why do you say that?”
Susie tilted her head and gave a thin smile. “You’d never make it in the World Series of Poker if I was playing. I know you too well. You held it together for a good three minutes, but that’s about your limit.”
“All right.”
As Susie studied his face, hers slowly shifted from one of curiosity to one of wonder. She set her cider on the arm of her chair as she plopped into the seat, and her voice jumped half an octave. “No, are you serious? You found it, didn’t you? You did.”
Jake gave an almost imperceptible nod. “I got through.”
“What!” Susie clutched both legs and leaned forward, astonishment splayed across her face. “What . . . what . . . what are you saying . . . are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Tell me, tell me!”
He reached out for his pants. “Give them over first.”
Susie handed Jake his pants as her face burst into a full-on smile. “Tell me every detail.”
“I don’t know where to start, Sooz.” Jake slipped the pants over his trunks and drew the string tight. “It was heaven and hell. More of the latter than the former.”
“How can it have been . . . both?”
Jake started to tell her, then stopped and drove his teeth into his lower lip. It was one thing to shell out the facts of a remarkable discovery, but another whole can of meatballs to describe the agony of having your greatest hope be crushed just as it was about to be gloriously reborn.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure I want to relive the pain.”
“This is me, Jake. You know sharing it will be a kind of catharsis. You need to talk to someone about it. I don’t know if I can offer anything, but I can listen.”
Jake locked his hands behind his head, pressed his elbows together, then let his arms fall to his sides. “I got healed, Sooz. I mean completely healed. Everything from my waist down was restored. No, I’m not kidding.”
Susie’s lips parted and her gaze slowly moved from Jake’s eyes to his legs.
He snorted out a bitter laugh. “Didn’t take. So fun to have God toy with me.”
“What . . . what happened? Everything.”
Jake told her about finding the corridor, then finding it again and the story of the healing. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I should have. I just—”
�
��I’m so sorry, Jake. It makes no sense.”
“I know.”
“Are you going back?”
“Yeah. Tomorrow morning.” He gazed at her. “You want to go, don’t you?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“All right, then it’s done. We go back together. Now that I know where it is, we can find it again—doesn’t matter what Leonard says.”
“But I can’t.”
“What? Why not?”
“That was my dream, Jake, the one I told you about. I dreamed about the corridor. That you went through. I had an overwhelming sense there was danger there, but also incredible hope. I didn’t see what happened in the end, but one thing was certain: you were there alone and no one else was supposed to be with you.”
He started to protest, but before he could, the sound of footsteps along the path from the dock stopped him.
“Hey, guys.” Peter and Camille stepped into the clearing. “Ready for breakfast?”
“Sure,” Susie said.
Susie glanced at Jake and told him with her eyes she wouldn’t say anything to anyone.
“What about you, Clark?”
Breakfast? Go up and pretend that everything was normal? Nah.
“I think I’m going to take the day to get out of here, spend some time thinking about life. Need it.”
Camille frowned. “How are you going to drive the boat today if you’re not here? You have to drive the boat.”
Jake stood and shuffled past Peter and Camille. “Nope. Don’t.”
“You okay, Jake?” Peter’s voice floated toward him as he strode away. Jake flashed a thumbs-up but didn’t turn around.
He spent the rest of the day exploring the roads in the area, finding nothing remotely interesting, but that might have been influenced by the fact that he couldn’t get his mind off the corridor for more than two or three minutes at a time.
By the time he arrived back at the house late that night, the only person up was Ari. She sat out on the deck reading a book under the star-blotted sky. In another age he would have joined her. For a short time that morning he had stepped into that other age. And if there was any way to figure out how to make the healing stay, that age would come again.
Sleep that night came in starts and stops, but when his cell phone alarm buzzed at four the next morning, he was ready to roll.
25
Jake was about to push off from the dock at four fifteen when a voice floated down on him from somewhere on the stairs and he froze.
“Wait up!”
No. Please no. Heat shot through him. It was Ari. Halfway down the stairs.
His body went numb, as if he’d taken a swim in Novocain. Where was she when he’d left the house? He’d heard nothing as he got ready to go and prepared a snack in the kitchen. Heard nothing on the stairs as he slipped into his kayak. But now she appeared out of the predawn light like a ninja.
She clipped down the rest of the stairs till she reached the boating storage shed and reached for the kayak hanging on the back of it. She pushed up, but only one end of the kayak moved. They weren’t heavy, so one of the cords holding the kayak in place must have been caught on something.
“Would you like to give me a little help here?” Ari stayed focused on the kayak.
“Did you see me?”
“See you what?”
Jake’s heart throbbed in his ears. He tried to speak casually, but the question came out like he’d just stolen the last brownie at church camp. “See me get into my kayak as you came down.”
She frowned at him as she struggled with the kayak. “What? See you, what do you mean see you? I see you right now. I saw you sitting in your kayak. Of course I saw you.”
“Did you see me get in?”
Ari let her kayak go and it knocked against the boathouse. The boom was loud enough to reach the house sixty steps above them. She scowled at him and shook her head.
“Did I see you get into your kayak? That’s the pressing question on your mind right now.”
Jake pulled back and tightened the grip on his paddle. “Yeah.”
Ari rolled her eyes as she untangled the cord, regripped the kayak, and lifted it off the wall.
“Is that illegal in these parts? Watching someone get into a kayak?”
“No, I just . . . I just wondered how far behind me you were.”
She hefted the vessel over her head and clomped down the three stairs next to the shed and then down the ramp that led onto the dock. Ari set her kayak on the dock, squatted, and smiled at him. “You’re a strange one, Jake Palmer.”
Jake took a furtive glance to see if there was a chance of her seeing his legs. No. Safe. For now. What was wrong with him? All he needed was to stop caring what she would think. Stop letting every moment of her presence fill him with a stupid spark of excitement. Sure. Easy. Might as well grab a sponge and mop up the water coming over Niagara Falls.
“You mind having a guest this morning?” She smiled at him as she put on a dark red life jacket.
“Um, well . . .”
“Great.” She grinned as she studied him. “I wouldn’t want to intrude if you didn’t want me here.”
Her eyes told Jake she’d be coming no matter what he said. Didn’t mean he couldn’t try.
“You sure you want to come? My life is extremely boring these days. I kid you not. I’d feel really bad if my droning on and on about nothing made you fall asleep and you ended up in the water. It’s cold.”
“I see.” Ari eased her kayak off the dock and into the water. She slid into it like she’d grown up around kayaks, despite her comments when they’d first met about being new to the sport, and smiled at him again. She shifted her life jacket, tightened it, and plucked her paddle from the edge of the dock. “Where are we going?”
Jake stared at her, dumbfounded. “Uh, I was trying to hint that I was thinking about being alone.”
Ari stretched out her arm, snagged Jake’s kayak, and pulled herself parallel. “You know what I think, Jacob Palmer? I think you like being around me. I think you have a civil war going on inside right now. One side wants to be alone, the other is almost excited I showed up here unannounced this morning. And I think one side has already won the battle—that is, if you’re man enough to admit it.”
Ari tilted her head and bathed him in one of her nova-bright smiles and Jake’s heart stuttered. Not fair. Bad enough that she nailed him, worse that he couldn’t bring himself to shove her away.
“But hey, if I’m wrong, let me know and whatever direction you head, I’ll go the other way. No hard feelings whatsoever. Just give me the word. My ears are wide open.”
Jake gripped his paddle tighter. Through gritted teeth he muttered, “A few minutes might be okay.”
“Thanks, Jake.” Ari flipped her dark hair back over her shoulders, pushed off from him, and took five quick strokes that propelled her across the dark water.
“I promise I won’t ask any penetrating questions about why you’ve built a glass wall around yourself that you think no one can see into.”
Oh yeah. Loving this. As if things couldn’t get any worse, she zings me with that frameable one-liner. Why didn’t she come right out and say she knew his secret? That she’d seen his legs as he clambered into his kayak?
Jake sighed, shoved himself forward, and dug into the water hard. Twelve strokes later he passed her. For the next three or four minutes there was no sound but the dip of his paddle into the water, no sensation other than the drops of water that ran down his black paddle with each stroke, then freed themselves and splashed onto the nylon skirt covering his legs.
Another ten hard strokes and he rested his paddle on his kayak and let himself coast into the unmarred surface of the lake. The sound of Ari’s paddle carving the water drifted toward him, but he didn’t look back, didn’t look to his right when she came alongside him.
“I could be wrong.”
“About what?”
“Both. The wanting me to be with you
and the glass wall. So say the word, and I’ll peel off and head for the other end of the lake.”
Jake formed the words in his mind, but his heart hijacked them and he let out a deep sigh through tight lips.
“I’ll take that as an invitation to stay.”
All over the lake, the surface of the water popped as fish fed on flies darting too close to the surface.
The sun rose over the top of the mountain and their shadows—millions of miles long—shot out in front of them, their arms in unison as their paddles tore into the glass. Jake dug harder into the water and pulled ahead, but only for an instant as Ari matched his pace and they fell into synchronized strokes. The rotation of their paddles and the ripple of the water as they cut two paths through it would have been a rush if he hadn’t been distracted with the task of cursing his stupid heart.
He dug deeper. So did she. His body started heating up from the exertion, but he didn’t care. Jake increased his pace and his breath came in bursts. He glanced at her and spotted a bead of sweat on her brow. So she wasn’t Superwoman after all.
He braced himself for her to kick into conversation, to ask him all kinds of penetrating questions he’d ignore or stumble through answering, but their first five minutes passed in silence. Then ten. Then twenty. By this time they were within sight of the end of the lake and the thick cluster of weeping willows that guarded the corridor.
What had he been thinking? This was the last place he wanted to be with someone else. And if he had to bring someone, Ari would be the last on the list. And what if she spotted Leonard? There was a good chance he’d be here, hidden, waiting and watching.
Jake stopped paddling and his kayak slowed, then drifted away from Ari. She lifted her paddle and slowed as well.
“What’s at the end of the lake?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I can see it on your face. I think it’s where you’re going after we part company.”
Her always bright eyes turned dark and seemed to pierce into the deepest parts of his soul. Jake clenched his jaw, hating himself for feeling so vulnerable. So weak. So exposed.
The Long Journey to Jake Palmer Page 17