Tailwinds Past Florence

by Doug Walsh

  Her heart pounded in her chest, but she refused to ask him to slow down. Not again, not so soon.

  They were in Denmark, the Jutland Peninsula to be exact. A two-day ride out of London brought them to the seaside town of Harwich, where they boarded an overnight ferry to Esbjerg. Now they were headed north, not deeper into Scandinavia, but retracing earlier miles thanks to Edward’s stubbornness, in search of a detour.

  To her left, an earthen levee restrained the North Sea. To the right, cattails jutted from a narrow marsh, beyond which stretched an emerald field, wavering in the wind like velour brushed by an invisible hand. Towering windmills ticked by like mileposts, breaking up the landscape, the monotony, and distracting her from the brackish stink.

  At least the wind was with her.

  She knew the tailwind would become an obstacle soon enough, but for now it helped speed her along the trail back the way they came, in a country she hadn’t intended to visit.

  Kara was surprised by Edward’s decision to skip Scotland. His suggestion to take a ferry to Denmark shocked her even more, given the nightmares he’d suffered while cycling around Lake Superior. She thought he’d developed a phobia of the water at the time. But unlike herself, Edward slept fine aboard the ferry.

  The cawing of the Danish shorebirds carried Kara’s thoughts across the North Sea and the Atlantic, all the way to Canada—and Jean-Benac. It wasn’t the first time. Two nights earlier, Kara took a midnight stroll around the ferry’s deck. She’d leaned over the railing, staring at the inky darkness splashing below, wondering if Jean-Benac was safe—if he somehow survived the treacherous seas that plagued Edward in his sleep. She also wondered about Claudette. The grave. It had to have been a coincidence, she reasoned. After all, how could Kara remind someone of a woman who died in 1739? Nevertheless, thoughts of the grave marker led her to recall the innkeeper’s story about finding Jean-Benac, naked in the snow and wild with terror, calling out for Claudette.

  Back on the bicycle, in Denmark, she looked up in time to see Edward lower his hand, his palm facing Kara at a shallow angle. He was slowing. Finally.

  They stopped in front of the fence they passed earlier. Kara waited as Edward backed through the spring-loaded gate and yanked on the handlebars, tugging his bike like an obstinate bull. Once through, he held the gate for Kara. She pushed past without looking at him, then leaned her bike against a signpost.

  “Well, that was a fun extra six miles. You know how much I love backtracking,” she said, stretching her legs.

  “Sorry. I didn’t know there’d be a river,” he said with a smirk that begged to be slapped.

  She stared at him in disbelief, her gaze narrow, and pointed at the sign where NO PASSAGE TO GERMANY was written in three languages, English included.

  “I thought the warning was only for cars, that we’d find a way through.”

  “We’re on a bike path, Ed,” she said, her arms raised and hands flailing, as if trying to ward off the stupidity she was hearing. “There aren’t any cars!”

  Kara knew he was practically incapable of admitting a mistake. Where most people would shrug their shoulders and accept that they screwed up, Edward would double down, determined to make any miscalculation seem more the casualty of his genius than the result of his blunder. It was the thing that irked Kara most about him, but what really pissed her off was that she went along with it. She let out a sigh that could have turned a windmill. “Why didn’t you listen to me?”

  “I thought it’d be a shortcut,” he said.

  Kara chortled. She couldn’t help herself. He was in such a hurry, he wasn’t even making sense. “This isn’t a race. Nobody’s waiting to give us a trophy if we get across Europe a few days faster.”

  Edward looked away, but not as a concession. He was avoiding her, concealing something. Kara stared at him, waiting. Something felt off, but she didn’t know what.

  “At least we got a bit of tailwind out of it,” he said, offering a conciliatory smile.

  Kara shook her head, ignoring his blatant attempt to change the subject as she mounted her bike. She led the way to a road angled inland, to the south.

  Progress was a poultice and Kara quickly forgot her frustration over the errant detour as she pedaled into northern Germany. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that Edward was hiding something from her, especially when he accelerated past, his derailleur shifting into a taller gear.

  Kara spent the week trailing Edward as they crossed the Elbe River west from northern Germany to the Netherlands. Their destination: Amsterdam. The winds were favorable, the weather sunny, and Kara had a list of hosts lined up for them to stay with, arranging them an easy day’s ride apart before leaving London. She expected some of the most pleasant, relaxing days of the entire trip.

  But Edward had other plans.

  She held her tongue as they raced across the apple and onion country of the German-Dutch borderlands, averaging eighty miles per day. The roads were flat and the daylight long. Edward thought it best to take advantage of it. “There’s not much to see,” he reasoned. “The faster we get through the countryside, the more time we’ll have in the cities.”

  Kara believed the wonder of bicycle touring resided in the spaces in between but swallowed her objections. She was in shape and could handle the miles, she told herself—all in effort to keep the peace.

  Towns passed like billboards on the side of a highway. Saint Peter-Ording, Bremerhaven, Grosse-Meer, Leek, and Lelystad, all places they could have spent a day or more exploring, all towns Kara would retain no memory of.

  Instead, they rode until dusk. They camped on the side of fields, under bridges, and tucked in the woods, out of sight, hoping to avoid detection, like teenagers secreting away to drink shoplifted bottles of liquor. And while Edward hunched over their camp stove cooking the nightly batch of pasta, Kara stewed.

  One night, at a campground a day’s ride from Amsterdam, suspicion birthed an idea: Maybe he had some sort of trophy waiting for him. She replayed the past two months in her mind, cataloging the times he pushed for longer days, overruled her suggestion, or downright ignored her and skipped ahead. The flight out of Boston still hurt every bit as much as his decision to skip Scotland surprised her. There had to be a reason.

  He’s up to something.

  She snatched her toiletry bag and change of clothes, turning the idea over in her mind as she marched to the shower. There, under the tepid trickle of water, she once again felt the excitement of the tour slipping through her fingers. But it wasn’t just the trip. It was their marriage. She’d been lonely before, but never angry. Never wanting to slap him. Or curse him out at the top of her lungs.

  Maybe it was the twenty-four seven contact, she thought, wondering when she last had a day to herself. Or having to wash their clothes in a bucket, only to pull on underwear that was still damp come morning. Or the endless string of cold, dirty, campground showers. Kara rinsed the shampoo from her hair and bent to shave. She didn’t get halfway up her calf before the razor nicked her, as if right on cue.

  Kara bit her lip, grimacing from the sting, as blood trickled down her gooseflesh leg. She hurled the razor at the floor. Her chest convulsed, ringing months’ worth of emotions from her heart, but no tears came. She was too tired to weep.

  “We were supposed to be in Cape Cod,” she croaked.

  She leaned into the stream of water and rested her forehead against the cold tile, beating her palm against the bathroom wall, drumming up the courage to confront Edward. It was like February all over again, she realized, thinking back to the day she dialed up the nerve to ask for a divorce. And with that memory, the tears finally came in waves.

  Things had to change. She couldn’t do this anymore.

  They reached Amsterdam the following afternoon. Kara, exhausted and emotional, stayed on guard, ready to blow the whistle at the first sign of Edward trying to speed them out of town. To her surprise, he said nothing when she checked them into the hotel for three nights.
Nor did he demur when she told the receptionist they might extend their stay. And later that evening, while she watched with side-eyed suspicion, he didn’t flinch when she suggested taking a full week off the bikes when they reached Paris. For every trap she set, hoping to snare his intent, Edward skirted it with ease, calming her bated breath, disarming her doubts.

  She wondered if he was simply tired, or if he truly preferred the cities to the farmscape. Maybe he’s just humoring me. Her lingering angst refused to dissipate. Instead, it bubbled amid her confusion like vinegar in oil.

  That night, she slipped into bed with a heavy sigh, too exhausted to confront him and unwilling to risk an argument. Edward climbed into bed minutes later and reached for her thigh. She rolled away, pulling the covers tighter around her.

  The following morning, Kara stood beneath the hot shower, testing ways to approach Edward about spending the day apart. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but knew a day alone would do her well. Him too.

  She pulled the shower curtain back and startled, nearly slipping on the wet porcelain, as Edward’s reflection stared back at her in the cramped bathroom’s mirror. Can’t I even use the bathroom by myself?

  Kara toweled herself off and waded gingerly into the conversation, probing for the proper it’s-not-you-it’s-me balance before diving in. “What would you say to sightseeing separately today?” Then, before he could react, she added, “It’s nothing personal, just that we haven’t had much time to ourselves since we left home.”

  She watched him brushing his teeth in the mirror as she spoke. To her surprise, the spark in his eyes went dim as his face appeared to melt. The toothbrush dangled from his mouth, limp in his grasp. “We don’t have to. I just thought it might do us some good,” Kara said, backpedaling.

  Edward appeared to weigh her words carefully, then bent and spit into the sink. When he straightened, she could see the wheels turning in his mind as he began to nod. “That sounds fine,” he said, smiling. “So long as you’re not trying to get rid of me.”

  She grabbed him by the chin and squeezed. “Not unless you have another week of eighty-mile days planned.”

  Kara bounded from the hotel thirty minutes later, tourist map in hand, and hurried off to the Anne Frank House. It was the first attraction she thought to visit, the place she most associated with Amsterdam, and she didn’t want to waste a minute mulling over the decision. The queue already stretched down a neighboring street, and she was in no mood to wait. She looked up at the house, imagining the interior of the famous attic, recalling the face of the girl whose diary became obligatory reading half a world away. The slightest bit of shame rose within her, but she extinguished it quickly. This was her day, and she’d spend it doing the thing Anne couldn’t: enjoying the city at her leisure.

  Kara stuffed the map into her pocket and walked off, not caring where she went. She wanted only to float along, like a leaf adrift on the city’s canals.

  She meandered slowly, aimlessly, crossing dozens of bridges as she wended her way through the medieval city center. Kara bought herself a multicolored bouquet of tulips at the flower market and carried it past dozens of museums, cafés, and boutiques, occasionally lifting it to her nose. She wandered for miles, from the gauntlet of bicycle racks outside Amsterdam Centraal station to the dirt trails of Vondelpark, to the Van Gogh Museum. There, while standing in front of the ticket booth, she caught herself thinking about Edward: What was he up to?

  She wanted the day to herself, but only needed a few hours. For as much as she wanted time alone, she hated the thought of creating memories without him. The museum would wait until tomorrow. They’d visit it together.

  Kara retrieved the map from her pocket, noted the circle the receptionist had drawn, and hurried back to the hotel, hoping he’d be there.

  Edward nearly jumped from his seat at the touch on his shoulder. Guilt and panic surged within him as he heard Kara’s unmistakable giggle over his shoulder. His hands darted out, grabbing mouse and keyboard, closing the browser window with the speed of a mongoose striking a cobra.

  “It’s just me, silly.” Kara laughed. “When did you get back?”

  Back? He looked around the room for a clock. “I … I didn’t leave,” he stammered.

  “Seriously? It’s almost four o’clock. It couldn’t have taken that long to route us to Paris.” She swatted him playfully across the back with a bouquet.

  He shrugged, hoping she didn’t notice his concern. “Guess I lost track of time.” Paris? She saw the screen, one of a hundred routes he’d spent the day drawing on Google Maps. But which one? And how much of it? He’d been plotting far beyond Paris. He glanced at the screen again, checking to see if he left any other windows open.

  Kara gave his shoulder a friendly squeeze. “Let’s get a drink. I want to tell you about my day.”

  A week later, in the Belgium town of Dinant, Kara caught her reflection in a bakery window. Turning to admire the definition of her bronzed legs, she couldn’t get over the bump of her calf, the ridge along her thigh. She twisted and gazed over her shoulder, barely recognizing the transparent lookalike standing before an audience of éclairs and profiteroles.

  Her back and shoulders rippled beneath her sleeveless jersey with the muscles of a rock climber. Kara smiled as she spun around, relishing in her newfound physique, strong but feminine. Wrestling an eighty-pound bicycle around the world wasn’t easy, but it certainly had its benefits.

  The smell of fresh-baked baguettes sent her mind wandering ahead to Paris. She twirled in place, daydreaming ahead to a stroll along the Seine with Edward, her lithe body glowing in the sun. Kara lifted the hem of her shorts, exposing a swath of skin as white as meringue. She recoiled in disgust and cursed her ridiculous tan lines. “So much for a minidress.”

  After a picnic lunch in Dinant, under the shadow of the town’s clifftop citadel, they continued thirty-six miles to the famed brewery town of Chimay. It was their last night in Belgium—a detour of Edward’s choosing—and their second brewery in as many days. But Kara happily obliged, in too good of a mood not to. The past week rolled by in soft-focus tranquility. Ever since Amsterdam, he’d slowed his pace, agreed to shorten their daily mileage, and embraced the trip as vacation, as if he had read her mind.

  They crossed into France the following day, bumping along a web of dirt roads through the rural Champagne-Ardenne region, seeking passage south. Tilled fields rolled like waves to the horizon, masonry farmhouses floated like buoys, and Kara and Edward pedaled along the array of roads, adrift on shifting winds. They rode for hours, their view often blocked by walls of corn, hoping to reach the city of Reims by sunset.

  Stopped for a check of the map, Kara leaned over Edward’s shoulder, chatting, when a voice called out behind them.

  “Hello. Are you lost?”

  She and Edward exchanged a puzzled look and turned as an aging man, as thin as a rake, approached the stone wall bordering the dirt road. He wore a floppy brown hat and a wrinkled dress shirt stained in the sweat and dirt of a man who didn’t dress down to work hard.

  “You speak English?” Edward asked.

  The man nodded. “I was in the French Air Force and worked with many American pilots. They taught me English.”

  His mention of the military reminded Kara of where they stood: the Ardennes, the Western Front of World War I. Kara scanned the fields, trying to visualize the trenches, the constant bombing, the millions of soldiers who died. But the bucolic modern landscape refused to be overlain with such horrors. Her brain wouldn’t allow it.

  “Now I farm. And this is my orchard,” he said, motioning to the twenty-odd trees behind him, planted in rows. “I’d offer you some apples if they were ripe, but harvest isn’t for months.”

  Kara and Edward broke into simultaneous laughter.

  “What is it? Did I speak incorrectly?”

  “Not at all,” Edward said. “We’ve been hearing we were two months early since March.”

  “You beg
an your trip in March?”

  “Yep. We started in Seattle,” Kara said.

  “That’s incredible. And where is your destination today?”

  “We were going to Reims, but we had to take a detour due to bad directions—”

  Edward interrupted with a snort. “Thanks, Google.”

  “Reims is still fifty kilometers away,” the man said, pronouncing it Rance, rolling the R. Kara made a note to stop saying Reems.

  “What do you think?” Edward asked, looking at Kara with his eyebrows raised.

  “I don’t have another thirty miles in me today.” She turned toward the Frenchman. “Do you know of a campground nearby?”

  The man stroked his chin briefly. “I’ll be going out for the night, but you are welcome to tent in my orchard.”

  Kara took a sudden interest in a pebble near her foot, expecting Edward to decline the offer, saying it was too early to stop for the day.

  “That’s very generous. We’d love to,” Edward said, much to her surprise.

  The man who never offered his name, nor asked theirs, opened a gate in the stone wall and showed them where they could set up their tent. He pointed out a spigot on the side of a barn and bid them adieu, turning back to his house.

  “Excuse me,” Edward said, catching the man’s attention. “Would you mind if we used your bathroom before you left?”

  “Yes, yes, of course. I will show you,” he said, smiling.

  Kara and Edward followed and, an hour later, they were not only changed into their camping clothes, but clean from a shower too. Kara need only get caught glancing at the shower to coax an offer to use it. She felt a little guilty over social engineering additional hospitality from the man, but he seemed happy to offer.