Even if it was a blessing that had come with what had felt like such a huge price tag.
Fourteen years wasted for two months of doing whatever I wanted to do. And still more than enough money in my bank account that I wouldn’t have to work for… a while. But I knew that time was over.
There was no point in waiting to settle in to get my life back on track.
But getting to catch up with my old friend gave me hope that maybe… there was something for me here. Or at least that if I gave it some time, I could make there be something here for me. There were bones, and that was more than I could say for just about every other place in the United States that wasn’t Cape Coral or Nashville.
Why not here? Ran through my head all over again.
If my mom had been able to live here with no family and a few friends, why couldn’t I?
I pulled my car into the driveway like my navigation instructed and spotted two vehicles in front of the house. The Bronco and a truck that said “Parks and Wildlife” on the sides. Lights blazed through the big windows of the main house, and I wondered what the father and son were doing.
Then I wondered if there was a girlfriend, wife, or mom in there with them too. There might be a sister. Or even more siblings. Maybe not though, because if he had thought about trying to pull off renting out the garage apartment, it would’ve been a lot harder with a sibling who could rat him out.
I would know. My cousins used to pay me not to tell my aunt and uncle about things that would get them in trouble. Who the hell knew though?
I could snoop and perv from a distance. I was a sucker for a gorgeous face—usually dog faces or baby animals but human ones too from time to time. It wouldn’t be a hardship to check out my landlord.
Parking my car alongside the garage apartment, I picked up the envelope with cash that I’d gotten from the bank and got out. Not wanting to get caught by the hot dad who didn’t want to know I existed, I pretty much ran to the front door, knocked on it, then stuffed it halfway under the mat before I got caught.
I collected the bags of groceries I’d bought after leaving Clara and Jackie, grabbed the right key, and hustled for the door.
What had been supposed to be a quick trip to the grocery store ended up taking almost an hour since I had no idea where anything was, but I managed to get more sandwich supplies, cereal, fruit, almond milk, and things to make a few quick dinners. Over the last decade, I’d mastered about a dozen versions of quick, easy dinners I could make with a single small pot—most of the time I would rather eat my own food than what I could have gotten through catering. Those recipes had come in handy over the last two months when I’d gotten fed up with eating out.
Closing the door with my hip, I glanced toward the house and spotted a familiarish face through a window.
A young face.
I paused for a second then waved.
The boy, Amos, lifted a hand shyly. I wondered if he was grounded for the rest of his life. Poor kid.
Back upstairs, in my temporary home, I put my groceries up and made a meal, basically inhaling it. After that, I pulled my mom’s journal out from my backpack, setting the leather-bound book beside a spiral one I’d bought the day after I’d decided to head to Pagosa. Then I found the page I already had memorized but felt like seeing.
I’d driven by the house we’d lived in after the grocery store, and it had left me with something that felt an awful lot like indigestion in the center of my chest. It wasn’t indigestion though. I’d gotten so familiar with the sensation that I knew exactly what it was. I just missed her extra today.
I was lucky because I remembered a lot about her. I’d been thirteen when she’d gone missing, but there were a few things I could recall a lot more clearly than others. Time had softened so many details and watered other memories down, but one of the brightest memories of her had been her absolute love of the outdoors. She would’ve killed it working at The Outdoor Experience, and now that I thought about it… well, I guess it was the most perfect job I could have gotten. I was already planning on doing her hikes.
Maybe I didn’t know anything about fishing, camping, or archery, but I’d used to do some of that stuff with her, and I was pretty sure if I’d hated it, I wouldn’t have forgotten. That was something to consider.
Another thing I remembered as well was how much she had loved to catalog things she did. That included keeping track of what had been her favorite hobby in the world: hiking. She used to say it was the best therapy she’d ever found—not that I’d understood what that meant until I’d gotten a lot older.
The problem was, she hadn’t written things down in order of easiest to hardest. She’d done random ones, and over the last two weeks, I had already done the grunt work of finding the ratings for their difficulties and figuring out how long each trail was.
Because I wasn’t used to the altitude, and I didn’t know yet how long I was going to actually be here, I had to start with the easiest and shortest and work my way up from there. I knew exactly what hike I would do first. Clara and I hadn’t talked about long-term scheduling, but I’d eyed the shop’s hours on the way out and saw it was closed on Mondays. I figured that for sure would be my day off, obviously. Now I’d just have to see what other day I could get too. If she wanted me to only work part-time, that was good. We’d… see. And that was perfect.
My plan was to start jumping rope tomorrow to give my lungs some exercise in preparation. I’d been walking and jogging almost every day lately, when I wasn’t driving somewhere new, but I didn’t want to give myself altitude sickness my first week here—at least that’s what all the travel forums I’d read had warned against. There really wasn’t anywhere to walk around here though, other than driving into town to a trail or settling for the side of the road, which didn’t exactly sound safe.
Either way, I set the two notebooks in front of me and reread my mom’s entry. The one I was looking for was toward the middle. Mom only did entries for new hikes, but continued doing her favorites over and over again. She had started this particular journal after I’d been born. There were older journals she’d done before me, but all those had been extreme hikes and ones in other places she’d lived before having me.
August 19
Piedra Falls
Pagosa Springs, CO
Easy, 15 minutes one way, clear trail
Come back in the fall to get in the river!
Would do it again
There was a heart drawn next to it.
Then I read it once more even though I’d already read the entry at least fifty times and had it memorized.
There was a photograph of Mom and me doing this hike when I’d been around six years old in one of the photo albums I’d been able to keep. It was an easy, short hike, only about a quarter of a mile in, so I figured it would be a good starting point. Tomorrow I’d talk to Clara about days off to be on the safe side and plan to work around them… if she didn’t fire me an hour in because I had no clue what the hell I was doing.
I dragged my finger along the outside of the journal; I didn’t do it over the words anymore because I was worried about smudging them or ruining them, and I wanted her notebook around as long as possible. Her handwriting was small and not all that neat, but it felt a lot like her. The book was precious and had been one of the few things that had never left my side.
After a little while, I closed it then got up to shower. Tomorrow I should take my tablet into town and go somewhere with Wi-Fi to download some movies or shows onto it. Maybe Clara had Wi-Fi at the shop. Stopping at the only other window in the house that I hadn’t opened as soon as I got into the almost too-warm apartment—I’d forgotten most places around here didn’t have air conditioning—I paused and glanced at the main house again.
It was even more illuminated than it’d been when I’d arrived. Light pierced through every huge window along the front and side. This time though, the Parks and Wildlife truck was gone.
For the second time, I wo
ndered what my landlord’s significant other looked like.
Hmm.
I mean, I was already right here, where there was service. Plus, it wasn’t like I had anything else to do. I grabbed my phone and went back to the window.
I typed “TOBIAS RHODES” into the Facebook search box.
There were only a few Tobias Rhodes, and none of them were based in Colorado. There was one with a picture that looked a little old—and by old I meant maybe ten years or so from how blurry it was, like an old cell phone picture—of a little boy with a dog beside him. It said he lived in Jacksonville, Florida.
I wasn’t sure why I clicked on, it but I did. Someone named Billy Warner had posted on his page a year ago with a link to some article about a new world record fish that had been caught, and after that was a post with an updated profile picture of an even younger little boy and the dog. There were two comments, so I clicked on them.
The first one was from the same Billy Warner, and it said: Am got my looks
The second comment was a reply, and it was from Tobias Rhodes: You wish
Am? As in… Amos? The boy? His skin tone was about right.
I went back to the posts and scrolled down. There were barely any. Three actually.
There was an even older profile picture of just the dog, this big white one. And that had been from two years before that.
The other post was from the same Billy person with another fishing link, and that one had comments too.
Being as careful as possible, because I was going to die if I accidentally liked an old post—I would literally have to delete my account and legally change my name—I clicked on the comments. There were six.
The first one was from someone named Johnny Green, it read: When we going fishing?
Tobias Rhodes responded with: Whenever you want to come visit.
Billy Warner replied with: Johnny Green, Rhodes is single again. Let’s go.
Johnny Green: You broke up with Angie? Hell yeah, let’s do it
Tobias Rhodes: Invite Am too.
Billy Warner: I’ll bring him.
Who Angie was, I had no idea. Chances were, it was an ex-girlfriend or maybe even a current girlfriend? Maybe they had gotten back together? Maybe it was Amos’s mom?
Who Billy or Johnny were, I had no idea either.
There was no other information on his page though, and I didn’t trust myself to snoop through other profiles without getting caught.
Hmm.
I exited out of the window before I accidentally clicked on anything.
I’d just have to snoop through Picturegram and see what I could find. That was a good plan. Worst case, maybe I could invest in some binoculars to snoop on the outside.
Deciding that was a good idea, I went to take a shower.
I had a busy day tomorrow.
I had a life to start building.
Chapter 3
A gallon of water even though it was less than a one-mile hike? Check.
Brand-new hiking boots I had only tried breaking in walking around the apartment that were more than likely going to give me blisters? Check.
Two granola bars even though I’d just eaten breakfast? Check.
Two days later, I was ready to go. It was my first day off since Clara had hired me, and I was going to try and knock out the short hike to the waterfalls. I’d been guzzling down so much water in an effort to avoid getting altitude sickness that I’d woken up three times last night to pee. I didn’t have time to get hangover-like symptoms.
Plus I was hoping that the hike would get my mind off how useless I was at the shop.
Just thinking about the shop got me to stop with the Spice Girls lyrics I’d been singing under my breath.
My first and only day had gone just as bad as I’d worried it would, as I’d warned Clara it could. The shame of staring blankly at one customer after another when they asked questions hurt me. Literally hurt me. I wasn’t used to feeling incompetent, to having to ask one question after another because I literally had no clue what in the world the customers were referring to or asking for.
Beads? Leaded weights? Recommendations? Just thinking about how bad yesterday had gone made me cringe.
What I needed to do was figure out a solution, especially if I was planning on sticking around for much longer. A couple times—mostly when customers were extra kind when I didn’t know things, especially when they were almost condescending telling me not to worry my pretty head because that got under my skin like nothing else could—I thought about quitting, letting Clara find someone who knew more about anything in the store than I did, but then all I had to do was look at the dark circles under her eyes, and I knew I wouldn’t. She needed help. And even if all I did was ring people up and save her two minutes, it was something.
I think.
I had to suck it up and learn faster. Somehow. I’d worry about it later. Stressing over screwing up had robbed me of enough sleep last night.
Down the stairs and out the door, I stopped to lock it and headed around to get to my car, but I caught something moving out of the corner of my eye by the main house.
It was Amos.
I lifted a hand as he sat on one of the deck chairs, a game console clutched in his hand. “Hi.”
He stopped, like I’d surprised him, and lifted a hand up too. His “Hi” wasn’t exactly enthusiastic, but it wasn’t mean either. I was pretty positive he was just shy.
And I wasn’t supposed to be talking to him. Invisible. I was supposed to be invisible.
“See you later!” I called out before ducking into my car and reversing.
At least his dad hadn’t caught me.
* * *
Almost five hours later, I was pulling back up to the garage apartment and giving myself the middle finger.
“Fucking idiot,” I told myself for at least the tenth time as I parked my car and tried to ignore the tightness in my shoulders.
I was going to be hurting soon. Very, very soon. And it was all my fault.
I’d taken for granted the fact that I was tanner now than I’d been in years. Mostly from all the outside time I’d spent in Utah and Arizona. What I hadn’t done was take into consideration the change in altitude. How much more intense the UV rays were here.
Because over the course of the short hike to the falls and back, I’d gotten roasted despite having a base coat. My shoulders were hot and stung like a son of a bitch. All because my dumb ass had forgotten to put sunblock on and I’d spent too much time sitting on a rock, talking to an older couple who hadn’t been feeling so well.
On the bright side, the drive toward the falls was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen, and I’d had to pull over a bunch of times just to take in the wilderness without pissing off the cars behind me. I had also taken advantage of the stops to pee while I was at it.
It was magical. Spectacular. The landscape was straight out of a movie. How had I forgotten that? I had a couple of blurry memories of going there with Mom before, nothing real concrete but just enough.
But none of that compared to the simple feeling and power of the falls. It wasn’t extraordinarily tall, but it dropped so much water, it was pretty amazing to witness. It left me in awe, really. Only Mother Nature could make you feel so small. The trail and falls were pretty packed, and I’d taken pictures for a family and two couples. I’d even sent my uncle some pictures when I’d gotten into cell service reception. He’d texted me back a couple of thumbs-up, and my aunt had called and asked me if I was crazy for crossing the river over a big log that had been draped across it.
“Owwie, oww, oww,” I hissed to myself as I got out of the car and went around the other side. I grabbed my little backpack and gallon of water and shut it with my hip, feeling the heat on my skin some more and groaning.
Like an idiot, I instantly forgot and slipped the strap of my backpack over my shoulder and just as quickly, slid that son of a bitch back off with a cry that made me sound like I was getting murdered.
“Are you okay?” a voice that sounded only slightly familiar called out.
I turned around to find Amos sitting in a different chair than the one I’d last seen him in on the deck, holding his game console in one hand and squinting hard while his other one hovered just above his eyes to block out the sun so he could get a good look at my lobster reenactment.
“Hi. I’m all right, just gave myself a second-degree sunburn I think. No big deal,” I joked, groaning when my shoulder gave another throb of pain from contact with the strap.
I almost didn’t hear him say, “We got aloe vera,” quietly.
I just about dropped my bag.
“You can get some if you want.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. Setting my bag down on the ground after grabbing my Swiss Army knife, I walked toward the house. Up the stairs, I headed over to where he was. In a ratty T-shirt and even rattier sweatpants with a couple holes in them, he gestured to the side, and I could see a medium-sized aloe vera plant in a plain orange pot next to a cactus and something that had once been alive but hadn’t been in a while.
“Thank you for offering,” I told him as I kneeled beside the pot and picked out a nice, thick leaf. I glanced at him and caught him watching me. He looked away. “Did you get in trouble over the garage apartment?” I asked.
There was a pause, then, “Yeah,” he replied hesitantly, still quietly.
“Big trouble?”
Another pause before, “I got grounded.” One more beat of silence then, “You went hiking?”
I glanced up at him and smiled. “I did. I went to Piedra Falls. I got roasted.” The whole thing had felt a whole lot farther than a half mile. I’d started bitching about five minutes in, at how thirsty I was and how much I regretted refilling an old bottle I’d found on the floor of my car so that I wouldn’t have to carry the entire gallon. I’d had a harder time breathing than I would have expected, but it was practice. So I wasn’t going to beat myself up too much about how much I’d been panting and sweating while going through a canopy of trees lining the trail.
All Rhodes Lead Here Page 5