by Erin Bartels
Twenty minutes later, Josh stopped and pointed toward the water. “Greenstone Falls.”
They followed him a little farther downstream and down to the river, where again they had to turn back to look in the direction they had come from in order to experience the beauty. Perhaps fifteen feet wide, Greenstone Falls was a picturesque cascade dropping a gradual six feet over rounded rocks and boulders into a swirling pool of foam and leaves. Though it was still cloudy, the yellow trees that framed the waterfall seemed to shine with a light of their own.
Beside her, Melanie was taking more pictures.
“Why don’t I take a picture of the two of you?” Josh offered.
“Oh, yes! Thank you,” Melanie said, handing over her phone. She sidled closer to Olivia. “Take that pack off, for goodness’ sake. It’ll be a better picture without it.”
“But then I’ll have to put it back on again.”
Melanie snapped open the waistband strap. “Just take it off. I’ll carry it the rest of the way.” She was yanking it off before Olivia could do much to stop her.
Josh took the pack from her with one hand and leaned it against a rock.
Melanie pulled Olivia close. “You’re all sweaty.”
“Of course I am. You would be too.”
“Turn this way,” Josh commanded. He framed the shot. “Smile.”
Olivia obliged, but the smile felt fake. She had utterly lost control of this trip that she had so meticulously planned. Wrong turns, lost trails, uninvited guests. And now she was being told to smile.
Josh handed the phone back to Melanie. “Not much further now.”
Olivia tried to snatch her pack back up, but Melanie beat her to it. She stumbled a little under the weight. “Holy cow. This is so much heavier than mine. Olivia!”
“It’s just because you’ve been walking without one for a while. It always feels heavier to put it back on.”
“No, it’s because you’ve taken more than your fair share of the weight. No wonder you’re limping. Either you let me carry the tent tomorrow or at least break it up half and half. And what else is in here that’s so heavy—besides your other can of SpaghettiOs?”
Josh laughed. “SpaghettiOs?”
Olivia rolled her eyes. “I don’t need any further critique on those, thank you very much.” She walked back up to the trail and took the lead position. Melanie and Josh followed.
A moment later, they passed the first cabin, followed by a wooden bridge leading across the river to the second cabin. Less than ten minutes later, Olivia came upon a cleared area right on the river’s bank with a fire ring.
“Here we are,” Josh said as he and Melanie came up behind. “See, plenty of room.”
“But where’s your tent?” Olivia said.
“I don’t have one.” He pointed off toward the woods. “I’m a hammock guy.”
There, strung between two sturdy trees, was a lightweight green-and-black zip-up hammock. Beside it, hung on a tree and nearly blending in with it, was a compact backpack.
“You travel light,” Olivia said. “Where’s the bear pole?”
Josh indicated a spot in the trees. “Over there, but I don’t use it.”
“What do you do with your food bag?”
“I don’t have one. I just fish and do a bit of foraging.”
“But what if you don’t catch anything?” Melanie said, dumping Olivia’s pack at her feet.
“I have some flatbread in my pack. But when I go fishing, I always catch something.”
“And you don’t worry about bears?” Olivia said. “You know you’re supposed to hang that stuff on the poles. It’s super dangerous to keep it in your pack.”
“Oh, I just hang the pack a ways away at night. I’ve never had a problem with bears.” He slid Melanie’s pack off his back and leaned it on a makeshift log bench by the fire ring. “Need some help setting up your tent?”
“Sure,” Melanie said at the same time Olivia said, “No thanks.”
“We’ve got it,” Olivia said.
“Suit yourself. I’ll get a fire going and prep this fish.” He walked into the trees and down toward the river.
“That was rude,” Melanie said.
“Listen, we’re perfectly capable of setting up our tent—I did it on my own last night—so why would we need his help?”
“He was just being polite.”
“I’m not interested in feeding his ego or his hero complex. We’re not two damsels in distress.”
“We kind of were,” Mel broke in.
“No,” Olivia said as she started to unpack the tent, “we figured out what we needed to do on our own with limited tools and resources. We found the river, just as I thought we would, and we would have been perfectly fine without this guy. Other than carrying your pack, which he didn’t have to do, he’s done absolutely nothing for us, which is fine because we don’t need any help anyway.”
“Oh? How much further is it to our reserved campsite?”
Olivia unrolled the tent in one violent motion and laid it on the most level piece of ground. “Three miles, which we could have done.”
“We would have been setting up the tent in the dark,” Melanie said, pulling out the poles and stakes.
“I have no doubt that we would have managed just fine.”
“I don’t think I would have been collecting firewood in the dark. So we would have been eating in the dark, in the cold, and then we would have just gone right to sleep. Sounds super fun.”
“I don’t want to argue about this anymore. You got your way. Here we are, risking our lives with some random guy, just like you wanted.”
Melanie threw up her hands. “Random? Of all the places we could have reached the river, of all the possible times we could have reached it, we come out of the woods right there, right then, when a nice, helpful person is there, way off the trail. How can you think that was random?”
“Because how could it not be?” Olivia pushed a pole through a sleeve on the outside of the tent. “There’s no other logical explanation than that it was a coincidence.”
Melanie caught the pole from the other side and affixed it to the metal eye ring attached to the corner of the tent. “Can’t you see how crazy that is? If everything is just coincidence, you know the mathematical chances of anything existing at all? Let alone a planet as full of diverse, complex, interrelated life as Earth is?”
Olivia stuffed another pole through another sleeve, jabbing it toward her sister but saying nothing. She clipped and tied and pulled and adjusted.
“It’s just strange,” Melanie continued, “that someone as smart as you are, with all those expensive degrees, wouldn’t see how unlikely it is that all this came from nothing on its own with absolutely no guiding force.”
Olivia snapped open the fly and fixed Melanie with a look. “So, you don’t think anything at all is just a coincidence?”
Melanie shrugged. “No.”
“You believe everything that happens is something God or the Universe or whatever has orchestrated?”
“Yes.”
Olivia gave the fly another snap and picked up the last pole. “You realize that if that were true, it would mean that this same God or force or whatever orchestrated the accident, right? That it wanted our parents to die.”
Melanie caught the pole on the other side of the sleeve and stared at Olivia.
“You can’t just believe in the good stuff without dealing with the bad, Mel,” Olivia continued. “If fate sent you to meet a guy in the woods because he uses a hammock and therefore has plenty of room for your tent at his campsite, then fate also sends one car on a collision course with another. It’s not exactly an accident if it was planned out from time immemorial. And I can’t believe in any kind of God who would do that.”
They finished setting up the tent in silence. Olivia was sure that Melanie must be running through arguments in her mind, but so much time passed that it was clear she couldn’t think of any retort. Because there w
asn’t one. Believing in nothing was better than believing in something that brought comfort when it was convenient but left you out in the cold when it came to the hard stuff in life. Her parents had died because of the unfortunate fact that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nothing more.
When she had pounded the last stake into the ground, Olivia stood up. Josh had gotten the fire going. Melanie was nowhere to be seen.
fourteen
MELANIE LEANED AGAINST the rough trunk of an enormous pine tree and shut her eyes. Why did every conversation with her sister have to be like that? It hadn’t always been that way, had it? They had once had so much fun together. They used to tell each other secrets and laugh until their stomachs hurt and conspire with each other against babysitters. Olivia used to stand up for her. Now it just felt like she was stomping all over her.
The worst of it was, Melanie had never actually thought through the full implications of her belief that there were no coincidences, and now, without all the online friends and followers who stood at the ready to buoy her spirits, she didn’t know what to do. Anytime she ran into something hard in life, she’d just post about it on Twitter or Facebook and her community would pounce on her with encouragement and positive vibes, even quoting her own words from her coaching videos back to her. Justin too had largely been supportive—even if he’d seemed less apt to agree with her on the finer points and more likely to stay silent on spiritual matters since he started attending a church. No one ever just came right out and told her she was dumb for believing what she did as Olivia had.
As she had to Olivia.
Why had she done that? It was breaking her one rule—never go negative. Negative statements hurt, no matter how well reasoned or carefully delivered. She never told her clients they were wrong. How was that helpful? And here she’d told her sister—the lawyer—that she hadn’t thought something out. When the truth was it was Melanie who hadn’t thought something out.
Had the Universe chosen her parents for destruction? Her kind, civic-minded parents who never hurt anyone? Could some things be coincidence and other things not? That didn’t seem very consistent. Though consistency had never concerned her before. She believed a bit of everything because a bit of everything felt true and right.
“There you are.”
Melanie jumped and put her hand over her heart.
“I think your sister’s worried about you.” Josh stood a few feet away to the right. He had removed his waders and his hands were in his pockets. “We’re about ready for dinner. Just waiting on the flames to die down a bit. Are you hungry?”
“Oh, sure.” Melanie stood straight and brushed off the back of her pants. “Though you’re wrong about Olivia. We’re kind of in a thing right now. She’s probably happy for a few minutes without me.”
Josh stepped aside to let Melanie pass. “If you don’t mind my asking, what’s the problem?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said as she picked her way back toward the tent. “Just sister stuff.”
“I know we just met,” he said, “but can I make a suggestion?”
“Fire away. I will always take a bit of advice.”
“Assume the best about her.”
Melanie stopped walking. “I always assume the best about people. And anyway, I don’t think she’s a bad person. We just don’t see eye to eye on something and we’re arguing about it.”
“I’m not talking about whether she’s a good person or a bad person. I’m talking about how she’s feeling inside.”
“I don’t really get what you mean.”
“Whatever you’re fighting about, where is she coming from? Is she coming from a place of pride, where she feels she has to be right?”
“Definitely.”
“Or,” Josh continued, “is she coming from a place of fear, where she’s afraid to be wrong?”
Melanie thought for a moment. She couldn’t imagine Olivia being afraid of anything.
“Because in my experience, when it comes down to it, most people are ultimately operating from a place of fear, not a place of assurance. It makes them defensive, makes it hard to listen to other points of view. Just food for thought. And speaking of food . . .” Josh swept his hand toward the fire, inviting Melanie to continue the walk back to camp.
As they came out to where Olivia could see them, Melanie examined her. Her hands were planted firmly on her hips and her mouth was set in a line. When they got closer Melanie could see the two deepening wrinkles between Olivia’s eyebrows that had been there since college. She didn’t look afraid. She looked irate.
“Where were you?”
“I was just over there,” Melanie said, pointing, then she continued on to her pack and got out her food bag and a water bottle.
“I don’t have plates,” Josh said as he poked at the fire and positioned a small folding grill rack over the glowing coals, “but I do have pita bread that works just as well.” He laid the two fillets of the fish he had caught and dressed on the grill and then pulled out a compact travel salt-and-pepper shaker.
“Melanie doesn’t eat meat,” Olivia said.
“I’m fine with what I’ve got in my pack, thanks,” Melanie said.
“What about you, Olivia?” Josh said.
“Oh, she eats meat,” Melanie offered.
“Great. Have you ever had fish that was caught just a couple hours ago?”
“I can’t say that I have,” Olivia said.
“You’ll love it,” he said.
Josh tended the fish, then got out the pita bread and passed it around. Melanie took some to be polite, though she normally tried to be gluten free in solidarity with those who had celiac disease. Their host parceled out some fish between Olivia and himself and looked in Melanie’s direction once more to offer it to her. She shook her head and smiled.
“Tell him why you’re a vegan,” Olivia said.
“She doesn’t have to explain herself to me,” Josh said.
“It’s because she believes in reincarnation and she doesn’t want to accidentally eat our—anyone she knew.”
“That’s not—” Melanie started.
“Oh, and also just in case animals have souls. She’s covering her bases.”
Melanie stared hard at Olivia until her sister met her eyes. Olivia stared right back and raised her eyebrows as if to say, Am I wrong?
“What do you believe about that, Olivia?” Josh said.
Olivia broke away from Melanie’s stare. “I don’t believe in reincarnation. And I don’t believe animals have souls. Or people, for that matter.”
Josh nodded, but not in agreement. Melanie knew that nod. It was a noncommittal nod, one that said “I hear you but I don’t agree with you, and I don’t want to get into it right now.” She got that nod from people a lot.
They ate in silence for a minute. Melanie waited for Josh to add his opinion to the discussion, but he remained quiet.
The light was beginning to dim a little. Night was approaching. Their second night on the trail. Not where they were supposed to be. Not sharing their deepest thoughts and longings like she’d hoped. Just sitting on a log, a foot away from one another. A foot that might as well be a mile.
“Why do you come out here all alone?” she heard herself asking.
Josh put another chunk of fish into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully for a moment before swallowing. “I like to spend time out in God’s country.”
“But why don’t you come out with friends or family?”
“That’s a rude question,” Olivia said.
“No it isn’t,” Josh countered. “I enjoy spending some time alone now and then. And like I said, I always meet new people out here.”
Melanie tore a small piece of pita off the whole. “What do you do? Like, your job.”
“I do a bit of everything. I build things, I fix things, make things beautiful.”
“Like houses? Do you build houses?”
“Sometimes. I build tables and mantelpieces. Cabinets.
I fix plumbing and engines.”
“You do all that in Paradise?” Olivia said. “Seems like too small of a town to sustain that kind of business.”
“Most of my work is outside of Paradise. I travel all over.”
Melanie spoke around the pita in her mouth. “Do you have a website? I could look you up when we get back to civilization.”
“No website.”
“How do you run a business without a website?” Olivia said.
“It’s mostly a word-of-mouth thing. People just tell other people about me.”
Melanie laughed lightly. “It’s like you’re from another era. My whole business is online.”
He waited for her to continue.
“I’m a life coach. I do it mostly through my blog and videos on YouTube and social media and stuff. Just sending out encouragement to people, you know?”
“And what do you do, Olivia?”
“I’m a prosecuting attorney.”
“She’s very good,” Melanie piped in. “You know that story a while back about the guy who had swindled a bunch of old ladies out of their life savings, pretending to be investing for them? She sent that guy to prison. And a bunch of others. She hasn’t lost very many cases.”
Olivia looked at her. “How do you know?”
Melanie shrugged. “Just because you don’t know what’s going on in my life doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s going on in yours.” Even as she said it, she hoped it was true. If Olivia really knew what was going on in her life, it would get real ugly real fast.
Soon the last bites of dinner were eaten and night was closing in. Josh put some more wood on the fire and blew on the embers. It flared up, and Melanie basked in the heat. Olivia went off to hang up the food bags, brush her teeth, and use the facilities, such as they were, before it got pitch-black, then she disappeared into the tent. Melanie stayed close to the fire. She didn’t want to go into the tent with her sister. She didn’t want to start fighting again. Being near Josh was better. He seemed like the calm center in their sisterly hurricane. Across the fire his face glowed a warm orange in the darkened woods. She couldn’t decide if he was handsome or not.