And I was thinking about all this when Mr. Rhodes said in his rough voice, “What’s on her list?”
Of hikes? “Probably too many. I want to do them all, but it depends how long I stick around.” Which was longer now than I had expected a couple weeks ago since he’d invited me to stay. If I kept being a good guest, then who knew how long he’d rent the garage apartment out to me.
Wishful thinking. Then I’d have to decide whether to rent or buy a place, but all that depended on how things were going here. If I had enough of a reason to stay… or if this would turn out to be another place with no roots to hold me down any longer. “She did all of them when we lived here, but I know for sure she had Crater Lake Trail on there.”
“That one’s difficult. You can do it in a day though if you pace yourself and start early.”
Ooh. He was offering suggestions and information? Maybe he had gotten over the incident with the bat.
I threw out another trail in Mom’s book.
“Difficult too. You have to be in good shape to do that one in a day, but I’d say spend the night or be prepared to be sore.”
I winced.
He must have noticed it because he asked, “You don’t want to camp?”
“Honestly, I’m a little scared to camp by myself, but maybe I’ll just do it.”
He grunted, probably thinking I was an idiot for being scared.
But whatever. I’d watched a movie about an immortal Sasquatch that kidnapped people in the wilderness. And hadn’t he said there were millions of acres of national forest? Nobody could really know what was out there. When I’d go camping with my mom a million years ago, it had just been fun. I’d never worried about some ax murderer possibly coming up to our tent and getting us. I’d never even worried about bears or Sasquatches or skunks or any of that.
Had she?
I named another one.
“Difficult.”
Exactly what I’d read online.
“Devil Mountain?”
“Difficult. I don’t know if that one’s worth it.”
I glanced at him. “She had a couple of funky notes for that one. Maybe I’ll put that one at the bottom of the list if I get bored.”
“Didn’t we take a UTV up that one when you first moved back here?” Amos asked.
When you first moved back here. Who the hell had Amos lived with? His mom and stepdad?
“Yes. We got the flat tire,” Mr. Rhodes confirmed.
“Oh,” the boy said.
I rattled off more names of trails off the top of my head, and fortunately, he said those were intermediate hikes so those seemed more doable. “Have you done any of those?” I asked Amos just to include him.
“No. We don’t do anything since Dad works all the time.”
At my side, the man seemed to tense.
I was blowing it.
“My aunt and uncle, who raised me, worked all the time. I pretty much only slept at their house. We were always at the restaurant they owned,” I tried to soothe, thinking back on all the things that had driven me crazy when I’d been his age. Then again, it didn’t help that I’d been so heartbroken over my mom at the same time.
But looking back on it now, I think they had kept me occupied on purpose. Otherwise, I probably would have just stayed in the room I’d shared with my cousin and moped the whole time. And by moped, I really meant cried like a baby.
Okay, I’d still cried like a baby but in bathrooms, in the back seat of whatever car I was in… pretty much anytime I had a second and could get away with it.
“Do you go hiking a lot for work?” I asked Mr. Rhodes.
“For searches and during hunting season.”
“When is that?”
“Starting in September. Bow hunting.”
Since everyone was asking questions…. “How long have you officially been a game warden?” I asked.
“Only a year,” Amos offered up from the back seat.
“And you were in the Navy before that?” Like I didn’t already know.
“He retired from it,” the boy answered again.
I acted surprised like I hadn’t put it together. “Wow. That’s impressive.”
“Not really,” the teenager mumbled.
I laughed.
Teenagers. Seriously. My nephews roasted me all the time.
“It’s not. He was always gone,” the kid went on. He was looking out the window with another funny expression on his face that I couldn’t decipher that time.
Had his mom tagged along with them? Is that why she wasn’t around? She got tired of him being gone and left?
“So you moved back here to be with Amos?”
It was Mr. Rhodes that simply said, “Yes.”
I nodded, not knowing what to say without asking a million questions that I would more than likely not have answered. “Do you have more family here, Amos?”
“Just Grandpa, Dad, and Johnny. Everybody else is spread out.”
Everyone else.
Hmm.
* * *
I’d like to think that the ride to the trailhead wasn’t the most awkward trip of my life, what with no one saying a word for the majority of the trip.
Well, with the exception of me pretty much “ahhing” over just about everything.
I had no shame. I didn’t care. I’d done the same thing on the other hikes I’d done, except I hadn’t seen all that many animals on those occasions.
A cow!
A baby calf!
A deer!
Look at that huge tree!
Look at all the trees!
Look at that mountain! (It wasn’t a mountain, it was a hill, Amos had said with a look that was almost amused.)
The only comment I’d gotten other than Amos’s correction was Mr. Rhodes asking, “Do you always talk this much?”
Rude. But I didn’t care. So I told him the truth. “Yeah.” Sorry not sorry.
The drive alone was beautiful. Everything got bigger and greener, and I couldn’t find it in me to mind or even notice too much that my passengers weren’t saying anything. They didn’t even complain when I had to stop to pee twice.
After parking, Amos led us over the deceptive looking trail that started from a decent parking lot, giving you the illusion that it would be easy.
Then I saw the name on the sign and my insides paused.
Fourmile Trail.
Some people said there wasn’t such a thing as a stupid question, but I knew that wasn’t correct because I asked stupid questions all the time. And asking Mr. Rhodes if Fourmile Trail was actually four miles, I knew was a stupid question.
And part of me honestly didn’t want to actually know I was going to hike four times the amount I was used to. I didn’t exactly look out of shape, but looks were deceiving. My cardio endurance had gotten better over the last month of jump roping but not enough.
Four miles, f-u-c-k me.
I glanced at Amos to see if he looked alarmed, but he gave one look at the sign and started.
Four miles and four waterfalls, the sign read.
If he could do it, I could do it.
I’d tried to talk twice and had ended up panting so bad both times that I immediately stopped. It wasn’t like they were excited to talk to me. As I wound my way behind Amos, with his dad taking up the rear, I was just glad to not be alone. There had been a handful of cars parked in the lot, but you couldn’t see or hear anything. It was beautifully quiet.
We were in the middle of nowhere. Away from civilization. Away from… everything.
The air was clean and bright. Pure. And it was… it was spectacular.
I stopped and took a couple of selfies, and when I called out to Amos to stop and turn around so I could take a picture of him, he grudgingly did it. He crossed his arms over his thin chest and angled the brim of his hat up. I snapped it.
“I’ll send it to you if you want,” I whispered to Mr. Rhodes when the boy had kept on walking.
He nodded at me, and I
’d bet it cost him a couple years off his life to grind out a “Thanks.”
I smiled and let it go, watching every step as one mile turned into two, and I started to regret doing this long hike so soon. I should’ve waited. I should’ve done longer ones to lead up to this.
But if Mom could do it, so could I.
So what if she was way more fit than me? You didn’t get in shape unless you busted your ass and made it happen. I just had to suck it up and keep going.
So that’s what I did.
And I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me feel better that I could tell when Amos started slowing down too. The distance between us got shorter and shorter.
And just when I thought we were going to the end of the fucking earth and these waterfalls didn’t exist, Amos stopped for a second before turning to the left and hiking up.
The rest of the hike went by with me having a huge smile on my face.
We finally walked by other hikers who called out good mornings and how-you-doings that I answered when the other two didn’t. I took more pictures. Then even more.
Amos stopped after the second waterfall and said he’d wait there, even though each one was just as epic as the last.
And surprising the shit out of me, Mr. Rhodes followed behind me, still keeping his distance and his words to himself.
I was real glad he did because the path after the last of the four waterfalls got undefined and I turned in the wrong spot, but fortunately he caught sight of the path better than I did and tapped my backpack to get me to follow him.
I did—looking at his hamstrings and calves bunching the whole incline upward.
I wondered again when he got a chance to work out. Before or after work?
I took more selfies because I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask Mr. Rhodes. And when I turned as he kept hiking upward, legs stretching as he made his way up the loosely graveled trail, I aimed my camera toward him and called out, “Mr. Rhodes!”
He looked, and I snapped the picture, giving him a thumbs-up afterward.
If he was irritated with me taking a picture, too bad. It wasn’t like I would share it with anyone but maybe my aunt and uncle. And Yuki if she scrolled through my pictures one day.
Amos was exactly where we’d left him, shaded by trees and boulders, playing a game on his phone. He looked way too relieved to be leaving. His bottle of water was mostly gone, and I was just about finished with my own, I noticed.
I needed to get a straw, some tablets to purify water, or one of those bottles with a built-in filter. The shop carried all of that.
I was too busy trying to catch my breath on the walk back that none of us said anything then either, and I took the tiniest sips along the way, regretting like a motherfucker that I hadn’t brought more.
What felt like an hour later, something tapped my elbow.
I glanced back to find Mr. Rhodes just a few feet behind me, holding his big, stainless steel water bottle toward me.
I blinked.
“I don’t want to have to drag you out when you start getting a pounding headache,” he explained, eyes locked on mine.
I only hesitated for a second before taking it, my throat was hurting and I was beginning to get a headache. I put it to my mouth and drank two big gulps—I wanted more, I wanted all of it, but I couldn’t be a greedy asshole—and handed it back. “I thought you finished yours too.”
He slid me a look. “I filled it back up at the last waterfall. I have a filter.”
I smiled at him a lot more shyly than I would have expected. “Thank you.”
He nodded. Then he called out, “Am! You need some water?”
“No.”
I looked at his dad, and the man just about rolled his eyes. At some point, he’d put a cap on his head too, just like his son, pulled low so I could barely see them. I hadn’t seen his jacket, but I’d bet he’d rolled it into his pack at some point.
“Will you drag him out too or would you carry him?” I joked quietly.
I was surprised when he said, “He’d get dragged too.”
I grinned and shook my head.
“He’s used to the altitude now. You’re not,” he said behind me, as if trying to explain why he’d offered me fluids. So I wouldn’t get the wrong idea.
I slowed down my walking, so he was closer before I asked, “Mr. Rhodes?”
He grunted, and I took that as my sign to ask my question.
“Does anyone ever call you Toby?”
There was a pause, then he asked, “What do you think?” in the closest thing I’d heard to a pissy tone.
I almost laughed. “No, I guess not.” I waited a second. “You definitely look like more of a Tobers,” I joked, glancing over my shoulder with a grin, but his attention was down on the ground. I thought I was hilarious. “Would you like a granola bar?”
“No.”
I shrugged and turned back forward. “Amos! You want a granola bar?”
He seemed to think about it for a second. “What kind?”
“Chocolate chip!”
He turned and held out his hand.
I tossed it at him.
Then I tipped my head up toward the sun, ignoring how tired my thighs were, and that I was starting to drag my feet because each step was getting harder and harder. I already knew I was going to be hurting tomorrow. Hell, I was already hurting. My boots hadn’t been broken in enough for this and my toes and ankles were sore and chafed. Tomorrow, I was more than likely barely going to be able to move.
But it was going to be worth it.
It was worth it.
And I said quietly, filling my lungs with the freshest air I’d ever smelled, “Mom, you would have liked this one. It was pretty amazing.” I wasn’t sure why this one hadn’t been in her notebook, but I was so glad I’d done it.
And before I could think twice about it, I jogged forward. Amos glanced over at me as I threw my arms around his shoulders, giving him a quick hug. He tensed but didn’t push me away in the one-second embrace. “Thank you for coming, Am.”
Just as quickly as I hugged him, I let him go and turned around to go straight for my next victim.
He was big and walking forward, his face serious. Like always. But in the blink of an eye, that rabies-raccoon expression was back.
I got shy.
Then I held up my hand for him in a high five instead of a hug.
He looked at my hand, then looked at my face, then back to my hand.
And like I was ripping out his nails instead of asking for a high five, he lifted his big hand and lightly tapped my palm with his.
And I told him quietly, meaning every word, “Thank you for coming.”
His voice was a steady, quiet rumble. “You’re welcome.”
I smiled the entire way back to the car.
Chapter 12
When Clara’s mouth dropped open at the sight of my face a few days later, I knew that the concealer I’d used on my bruises that morning hadn’t pulled off a miracle like I’d hoped.
I mean, yesterday I’d figured they were going to be awful, but I hadn’t anticipated they would be so bad.
Then again, I’d had a bat house fall right on my face so….
At least I hadn’t gotten a concussion, right?
“Ora, who did that to you?”
I smiled and then instantly winced because it hurt. I’d slapped an ice pack on my cheek and another over my nose after I’d stopped seeing stars—and after I’d been able to finally catch my breath because, let me tell you, falling off a ladder hurt. But the ice hadn’t done much other than maybe keep the swelling down. Something was better than nothing.
“Me?” I asked, trying to play dumb, as I locked the shop door behind me. We still had fifteen minutes left before opening.
She blinked, set down the money she’d been counting into the register, and asked, almost cryptically, “It looks like you got punched.”
“I didn’t. I fell off a ladder and had a bat house fall on me.
”
“You fell off a ladder?”
“And dropped a bat house on my face.”
She winced. “What were you doing putting up a bat house?” she gasped.
It had taken me days, at least five hours of research, and a whole lot of staring at the Rhodes’s house and property to set up a plan for battling the damn bats. Then my shipment had gotten delayed before finally arriving.
The problem was, I had never considered myself to be afraid of heights, but… the second I’d climbed up on a ladder leaning against a tree that I’d walked by countless times, I realized why I had felt that way.
I’d never been on anything taller than a kitchen island counter.
Because reality was, as soon as I’d been about three feet off the ground, my knees started shaking and I started to feel kind of ill.
And no amount of telling myself to buck up or reminding myself the worst that would happen would be that I’d break an arm, did… anything.
I’d started sweating, and my knees shook even worse.
And for what I needed, I needed to go as high up as possible—twelve to twenty feet, according to the instructions.
But all it took was the memory of the bat flying over my defenseless head while I slept… and the reality that I hadn’t actually slept more than thirty minutes on and off since Mr. Rhodes had saved me because I kept waking up paranoid, to get my ass up that A-frame ladder even though I was shaking so bad it jiggled with me, making it worse.
But it was either climbing up a tree close to the Rhodes’s property—and honestly tucked a little away because I hoped he wouldn’t see it because I had a feeling he might complain about it—or having to pull out the even bigger ladder from around the side of the main house and having to go even higher to find where the hell the bat was coming in from.
I was going to go with option A because I would more than likely pass out and break my neck if I fell off the bigger ladder.
But I’d still screwed it up.
And fallen off, screeching like a fucking hyena, nearly blacking out, and had something that weighed less than three pounds but felt like fifty, fall on my damn face while I’d gasped to catch my breath.
All Rhodes Lead Here Page 17