by Kay Bratt
The question was, Could it already be too late to bridge the distance? Or was it truly time for her to let Tom go? Allow him to find his own light? He deserved happiness. That much Sadie knew. And it would hurt, especially now that she realized what she’d be giving up.
She knew then what she had to do. Her gift to him would be to let him go.
That was the least that she could do for him now. The tears came again, this time for the loss of the only man she’d ever loved. Lauren held her, letting her cry, making Sadie feel weak and childish but unable to stop.
When she’d finally let everything out, she quieted, pretending she was asleep until she felt Lauren relax, then go completely still.
The thoughts swirled in her head. Sadie couldn’t sleep. She tried everything. Counting sheep, then bears, then mouthing the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Nothing worked.
Finally, she eased away from Lauren and quietly slipped out of the shelter.
The fire was low, and Sadie moved around the campsite, collecting small twigs and branches, piling them on until the flames licked higher. She lowered herself to sit beside it, keeping the shelter and Lauren in her sights. She heard something farther back in the trees and froze, watching the dark area it had come from, listening to her heart pound.
A mosquito landed, and she swatted at it. Then another.
She planned to stay up all night. To watch over Lauren.
Settling in, she thought of all they’d been through and the sudden dramatic turn her life had taken. It was quite surreal, she thought, as she gazed at the flames and rocked back and forth, hugging her legs. Just a short time ago she’d been moving through her days as though in a dream, bored and lonely, embracing her sadness a little more every day that Lauren was gone. She’d felt useless, unwanted, and sure she was facing a solitary future.
Now here she was, somewhere in the middle of Yosemite National Park, lost and miserable but at least feeling alive. She’d gone through the gamut of emotions. Fear, guilt, anger, and even remorse. And that was the key—she was allowing herself to feel, welcoming her emotions for the first time in a long time.
It was crazy, but she didn’t regret coming to California. And though she never wanted Lauren to feel any pain, she couldn’t say she regretted even their ill-fated walk. She’d known leaving home that it was time to make changes. That much had already been decided.
But now she was at peace with that too.
Another thought came to her, and she looked up into the trees, wondering if he was there. When she found the yellow eyes staring down at her, she sighed.
Yes, he waited.
Silent. Reproaching.
Guarding.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The next morning Sadie opened her eyes and for a moment was confused about where she was. She’d been unable to keep up her vigilant watch and had finally left it up to the owl to sound the alarm if needed. Despite her own misery, she was thankful that somehow Lauren had avoided getting sick from the water. Sadie had crawled back in with her and fallen into a restless sleep just before dawn, her thoughts on Tom and even on Jacob, letting her heart examine the memories she’d tried to bury for too long.
She remembered now that Jacob had been in her dreams. No longer did he watch her wistfully from an unfinished painting, but rather he grinned at her as he paddled against the soft ripples of the lake, enjoying life in her dream as he’d done so valiantly in his short time on earth.
In her sleep, she had smiled. His memory was finally free. With every chain that fell away, she felt lighter. It was as though she’d transformed into the person she used to be, before Jacob had left her. With the reversal, she felt a new closeness to Lauren.
The release of so much buried pain had given her a new sense of urgency too. After checking to be sure Lauren’s chest was rising and falling as it should, she rose, taking care to be as quiet as one could be crawling out of a pile of leaves and needles.
She looked around their camp, searching for evidence that it had been disturbed. She still didn’t trust that the bear hadn’t followed them, but without finding prints or droppings, she decided she could leave Lauren. Instead of digging for the straw and chancing waking Lauren, she grabbed the whole bag, swinging her arms into it as she left the camp.
The dew was thicker on the bigger tree leaves, so she went into the grove first, sucking what little moisture she could find from a few places. Though she didn’t care to be rained on and suffer from the cold, part of her wished for a light sprinkle to give them more of a chance to gather water.
As she left one tree, her eyes on her straw, she tripped over a rock and nearly fell. The close call had her heart pumping, and she rested for a moment, her eyes on the offender, when an idea came to her.
It was hard to believe neither she nor Lauren had thought about it when they’d found themselves at the dead end at the top of the falls, but it wasn’t too late to make up for it.
So Sadie searched. And painstakingly she gathered stones, some so heavy that in her weak state she could only lift them inches above the ground or roll them, bringing them to the edge of the granite slab she’d chosen just a few feet from the raging water. The slab made for the biggest opening through the trees and, if someone flew over, would be the first spot to catch their eye.
It took a lot of time, and the rocks got heavier with each one Sadie found, but as she worked, she found an inner strength that had somehow been hidden. It was difficult, but she placed them strategically, interspersing them with fern fronds and branches to spell out the word H-E-L-P. She made it as large as possible in the hopes that by some miracle, a passing plane or helicopter would spot it.
She rested often.
It had been a while since she’d had water, and Sadie knew by her lack of desire to urinate that she was dehydrated. Lauren was too. Possibly critically so. They needed some sort of sustenance, and they needed it quickly. When she finished the letters, filling them out as much as she could, she returned to their shelter, grabbed the backpack, then walked down to the creek and sat on the bank.
First she listened as she rested, taking in the bubbly sounds of the water moving and the litany of songs the birds around her sang out. With the sunlight reflecting off the small swirls and swells of the current, her fear from the night before was gone.
It was peaceful there.
Almost sacredly so.
Years had passed since she’d been what anyone could call religious. Or even spiritual, for that matter, even though she preferred that word if she was going to be considered anything. After everything, organized religion had turned her off, and she didn’t even attend services any longer. Tom went without her. Sadie had gone for a while after Jacob had died, but it had gotten harder and harder for her to understand how if there was a God, he could’ve taken what meant the most to her in the world. It hadn’t been long before she’d begun to sit in the pew feeling like a complete hypocrite. Sure, she said quick prayers here and there, but there wasn’t really any feeling behind them. She didn’t think anyone was up there listening to her anymore.
So she’d stopped going.
Tom had told her she was asked about. What he probably meant was that she was gossiped about by those who probably thought she’d finally completely lost it from her grief or possibly wondered what was going on in the Harlan marriage. They somehow thought they were better than she because they put aside their lives one day a week to gather together under that sacred roof. But she’d told herself that going to church didn’t make any of them a Christian any more than standing in their garage made them a car. They could judge her all they wanted.
Maybe she’d been wrong. About all of it.
She acknowledged now that she missed going. She’d let herself forget how, if done the right way and led by the right people, the church could fill an excruciatingly lonely spot in a person’s life and become the family or friends that someone was lacking. How that one hour a week could be a salve to the previous six da
ys of sufferings and challenges. She hadn’t even considered until now that when she’d dropped that part of her life, the hardships all had melded together with no respite, making it just one long, mundane existence.
Now she closed her eyes and bowed her head. She prayed. Not just a quick plea this time either. For the first time in a long time, she started out the way every prayer should begin—thankful—giving gratitude that she and Lauren were still alive. Then she expressed her relief for the release of so many years of pent-up pain and the daughter who had led her to it. And though she didn’t speak aloud, she put everything she had into her thoughts, listing the many things she should’ve given thanks for way before now.
Like Tom staying with her for so long.
She knew she’d been unappreciative, so steeped in her own grief that it had led to selfishness and an inability to see all the blessings she’d been given since Jacob had left them. He probably didn’t even want to hear from her now, but she asked for forgiveness anyway for all the stupid things she’d done over the last years.
When her transgressions stopped popping into her head, she moved on to asking.
This time she didn’t ask for a rescue. Instead she prayed for guidance and for what she was supposed to learn from this experience to be totally revealed. For if there was a God—and now she was realizing she still believed—then why would he lead them out to the wilderness if not to teach her a lesson? And if there wasn’t a God, then she could blame the universe, but she could still hope for some kind of enlightenment, couldn’t she?
When her prayers turned to mindless silent babbling, she rose from the bank. Her pants were wet now, but she didn’t care. For the second she’d opened her eyes, she knew she was going to bring Lauren something to eat. In her mind, she’d seen the contents of the backpack and had an epiphany.
She opened the bag and dug in it for the spiral notebook. Lauren would have to get over it, but Sadie felt sure that if she was able to deliver breakfast, it wouldn’t take long.
The metal was twisted at the end, and Sadie pulled. The cover of the notebook flipped open, and she saw her daughter’s handwriting.
November 1st, it read. Then, Anniversary of Jacob’s death.
There was a page of writing beneath it, but Sadie only read a few words, something about call Mom and take her mind off of the day, before she flipped it shut, her pulse pounding. She wouldn’t break Lauren’s privacy, but she stared at the journal in disbelief. She’d never thought for a moment that her son’s death could so seriously impact a sister he’d never known, more than a decade after he’d gone.
Was this the enlightenment she’d prayed for?
She couldn’t think about it right now.
Her heart was heavy, but she went back at the metal, pulling the spiral until it came free. It took her a while and a few jabs to her fingertips, but she straightened it, then turned the end of it up into a little hook. She studied it, surprised at how long it was when stretched. She would still have to crouch at the bank or bend over the water, but maybe she’d have a lucky shot at snagging something.
First, she needed bait.
Anything would do.
She looked around, trying to spot a grasshopper or a beetle in the tall patches of grass here and there. She really didn’t want to dig for worms, but when any other insects failed to present themselves as a sacrifice, Sadie went back to the bank. She set the metal fishing line aside and began digging.
The first few spots she tried yielded nothing but dirt under her nails. Sadie felt primitive, wondering if the Native Americans that had once roamed the land had dug there just like her. They probably had better methods, she thought. And tools.
By the time she’d dug down into more than a dozen places, she finally decided to go deeper, digging until she felt the temperature of the soil change from chilly to downright frosty. The ground was hard, and the work excruciating on her stiff fingers, but she continued, determined.
And it paid off.
She almost missed it since the worm was nearly the same color as the dirt, but she snatched it up just as it was making its escape into the sidewall of her little trench. It was a healthy one too. At least four inches long and a fat little sucker.
It squirmed, trying to get away, but she held tight, cringing with horror at the feel of life under her fingers.
Now the mental debate with herself ensued.
If it were dead, she could break it up into smaller pieces that would make more bait. But if she let it live and hooked it, then its movement would logically attract bigger fish, wouldn’t it? Or at least, she hoped it worked that way.
And anyway, she didn’t think she could kill it. She believed in the circle of life and the unspoken food chain, but she didn’t have to like it. And how did one go about killing a worm? Pinch its head off? Smash it with a rock? Sadie would rather let it die of natural causes. Like from being eaten by a big fish. Then she wasn’t completely responsible.
At least that was the plan.
Lauren could no doubt point out the best way to go about catching a fish, but again, Sadie felt selfish. She wanted to provide for her daughter—longed to fill the hunger she knew was there. She wanted to present an offering of thanks. Lauren had given her a gift the night before, probably not even knowing how much it was needed.
Sadie decided she’d try first.
Now came the hard part. She apologized to the worm, then stuck the metal through its body, swallowing back her revulsion as she felt the pop and the creature writhing desperately.
She kept her eyes off his struggle as she gazed out at the water, trying to pick a lucky place. When nothing spoke to her, she chose a spot on the bank where she could sit. All the activity that morning had depleted her already-empty reserves. On the bank, she realized she was either going to have to do some bending or get in the water.
The water sounded easier on her aching body. She plucked her shoes off, then her socks, and rolled up her jeans. Careful not to make too much motion or splashing, she waded in deep enough that she could simply hold the wire down until it dangled below the surface.
Time was slow, and she stood that way for what felt like at least half an hour before wading back to the bank to take a break. She lay the wire down beside her and put her arms in the air, stretching to work out the stiffness.
She closed her eyes, breathing deep, trying to bury the frustration. She’d just about talked herself into going back to camp to wake up Lauren when she opened her eyes and saw the wire moving, slipping into the water.
She lunged, grabbing it just before it disappeared. As she began to pull it back in, she saw a fish circling the end. She froze, waiting. Praying.
The fish nibbled and, with the slightest upward motion and the miracle of just the right timing, she hooked it, but not without losing her balance and falling into the water. She hung on, though, even as she belly flopped and hit her knees on the rocks at the bottom. Bloody shins or not—there was nothing that was going to take their first meal from her. She clumsily got up, and wiping the drops from her eyes with one hand, she jerked the fish out of the water with the other. When she saw how healthy looking it was, she let out a rebel yell of celebration, then grabbed her things and climbed up onto the bank. She ran for camp.
Lauren was crawling frantically out of the shelter, her eyes wide with fear, when Sadie arrived.
“What? The bear? What is it, Mom?”
“I caught a fish! Lauren, we’re going to eat!” Sadie danced around her, holding the fish on the wire like a trophy. She still couldn’t believe it.
Lauren rubbed at her eyes. “You scared the daylights out of me. And why are you soaking wet?”
“I got a fish! We have to start a fire. Hurry—get the lighter.”
“Great. But where did you get that wire?” Lauren asked, still trying to come awake.
Sadie cringed. “It’s from your journal. But I promise I didn’t read anything.”
Lauren studied Sadie for a moment, then
turned to limp toward the trees. “I’m going to gather kindling and start the fire. You need to get those clothes off before we do anything,” she said. “I’m not nursing you through pneumonia out here.”
A half hour later Sadie sat wrapped only in Nature Boy’s hoodie and her socks, which thankfully had been safe on the bank during her swan dive. With her hair hanging in damp tendrils around her neck, she was cold and huddled in front of the fire as Lauren turned the fish on a skewer she’d made from a stick. Sadie was impressed at how easily—and with minimal drama—that her daughter had cleaned the fish, using the scalpel to do the job right before cooking it.
Finally, she pulled it away from the fire and scraped the fish onto a flat rock she’d found, then pushed it close to Sadie.
“You get the first bite since you caught it,” she said.
Sadie shook her head. “No way. I was getting it for you.”
“I’m not eating any of it until you do.” Lauren scowled, still grumpy from the abrupt awakening and the worry about how wet Sadie was. She’d taken all the wet clothes and draped them on rocks close to the fire, already flipping them once.
“Fine.” Sadie took a pinch between her fingers and blew on it, then popped it into her mouth. It was hot. Too hot—but still absolutely delicious. “It’s good.”
Lauren took the scalpel and used it to divide the fish in half, pushing Sadie’s portion closer to her. Then she took a small piece of her own portion and put it into her mouth, closing her eyes, her expression ecstatic.
“Oh my God, Mom,” she moaned.
“Watch your mouth,” Sadie said, remembering her come-to-Jesus moment from earlier.
Lauren raised her eyebrows. “Okay . . . whatever.”
“But I’m glad you like it. Eat slowly, and maybe it’ll last longer.”
They finished the fish in silence, relishing every sensation of the aroma and the taste and not mentioning how they’d trade the fish in a minute for a tall glass of clean water. That wasn’t possible, so Sadie was already thinking of trying to catch another fish, though she needed dry clothes first. She felt more confident now and hoped the next time she wouldn’t have to take a dive.