Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (166 page)

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too,” I said. “It’s okay now. Everything’s okay.”

CHAPTER 32

The week drifted by in an achy fog as I got back to the business of my life.

It took a while, but Alberto’s grudge ran its course and he went back to yelling at Hector instead of me. I worked the breakfast shifts at the diner and the late shifts at Back Street, cracking eggs for locals by day and serving syrupy sweet cold coffees to tourists by night.

More and more, that day, the fire, the rescue, all of it, began to slip into a memory. Time closed like a door behind me and sometimes the whole thing felt like a dream. My legs had recovered and although I had decided to ease back on my training, I was running a few miles a day again.

An unseasonable cold front had swept into Central Oregon and helped with the fire. The smoke cleared out of town and the view of the mountains returned. Light on wind and lightning, the storm dumped almost two inches and gave firefighters the hand they needed to finally get the blaze under control.

But not all the news was good.

More than a dozen homes were lost along with twenty-thousand acres in and around the Deschutes National Forest.

Half way through the week, I found out about my Jeep.

It was gone, too, burned to a crispy shell. The gas tank going up must have been one of the many explosions I heard that day. The sad part was that if I had parked across the road, it would have been okay. The fire in that area stopped at the highway.

I cried when I got the call. 

And Thomas Richardson, the injured hiker, was still in the hospital and still in a coma.

I stopped by a few times after work and it always left me feeling sad. He just looked bad, lying there on those white hospital sheets with tubes and wires connecting him to a machine. They had performed a second surgery, inserting a plate to replace the shattered part of his skull. His head was one large bandage. His eyes were closed and his face was pale and the doctors said it could go either way but looking at him there, it was hard to envision a happy ending.

I found out who the two men were.

They were from the Bay Area and had been friends since high school. They started their trip in Yosemite and were planning to make it all the way to Mount Rainer in Washington. They had been planning the trip for years. They were both in their early forties.

Thomas Richardson was divorced. Bradley Peterson, the dead man, left behind a wife and a 9-year-old daughter.

They had a blog dedicated to their trip, posting several updates with lots of photos as the journey unfolded.

On my last visit to the ICU, I found a man sitting by Thomas Richardson’s bed. He was reading to him. Not wanting to intrude, I stayed behind the glass. I lingered for a few more minutes and turned to leave. But something off to the side caught my eye.

I jumped back when I saw what it was.

Standing in the shadows in the corner of the darkened room was the ghost of Bradley Peterson, staring at me with narrow, grim eyes.

He shook his head.

Too solemn, too somber to offer any hope.

CHAPTER 33

I finally got in touch with Ellis Frazier.

“There you are,” I said. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you.”

A sad, bluesy trumpet played softly in the background.

“Sorry about that. I couldn’t remember where I packed my charger. I was afraid I had left it in Montana.”

I remembered he was moving back to Baltimore.

“Where are you now?” I said.

“Heaven. I mean, Iowa. God’s gift to corn and white folks.” He let out a small chuckle. “Ever driven cross country?”

“No.”

“It’s an amazing experience. You should. While you’re still young. Like most things, it’s better when you’re young.”

I said I would try and then gave him an update on the two hikers.

“It was just like in your dream,” he said.

“Pretty much.”

“Well, I’ll be.”

It sounded like Iowa was rubbing off on him.

“So the Sheriff’s people were able to reach out to you?”

“Not exactly but, you know, that’s how it goes sometimes. They can’t all be Ellis Frazier.”

“That might be a good thing.”

“I doubt that,” I said. “Anyway, we got to them in the end. I think the one guy pretty much died instantly and the other one… Well, I don’t know if anything would be different if he had been rescued a day or two earlier.”

We talked a little more and then our pauses grew longer.

“Do you like baseball?” he asked.

“Sure. These days I like the idea of it more and more. There’s supposed to be no crying in baseball, right?”

“If you believe Tom Hanks.”

“I’d like to believe him,” I said. “Because there’s a lot of crying in soccer. Sometimes it feels like it’s mostly crying. I could use a break.”

“Well, maybe you could swing by Baltimore on that trip of yours and we can catch a Bird’s game.”

“Bird’s?”

“An Orioles game.”

“I would like that,” I said.

“It’s a date then.”

“Bye, Ellis. And good luck with everything. I’ll be thinking of you.”

“Take care, Abby.”

***

Lieutenant Willis walked into Back Street one afternoon. I didn’t think he was there for coffee.

“Ah, hell,” I whispered under my breath, considering my options.

“Miss Craig,” he said, walking up to the counter. “Do you have a minute?”

It was pretty slow and Mo nodded her approval.

“Can I get you something?” I said.

“No, I’m fine.”

“I’ll be with you in a minute then.”

He walked over to a corner table and sat down, and I thought about going out the back door. Instead I let out a long breath and went over and joined him. The paranoid part of me waited for him to go for his handcuffs.

“We typed up your statement and need your signature,” he said, opening a folder. “You still maintain that you didn’t know these men prior to the rescue?”

“Just in my dreams.”

He nodded slowly and slid the statement toward me. I read it. It was pretty accurate in terms of what I had told them. Close enough anyway. For a second I considered whether I should have a lawyer look at it, but then went ahead and signed it.

“Have you always had those kinds of dreams?”

“No,” I said. “They started after the accident. I drowned about six years ago.”

Color drained from his face and he leaned in closer, staring at me like he had that day in his office.

“Where? Here in town?”

“No, up at one of the lakes. We were driving home from Bachelor. The car hit some ice and crashed. I was thrown into the water.”

“Son of a bitch,” he said and smiled. “You’re that girl. I knew there was something familiar about you. I was
there
. I worked in the field back then. I was on duty that afternoon, when the call came in. I was on the rescue team.”

I sat there in shock.

“I don’t expect you’d remember,” he went on. “You were DOA when we brought you in.”

It was true. There was still so much I didn’t remember of those forty-four minutes I was dead and the hours and days that followed.

“Thank you,” I said finally. “For what you did.”

“You know, working on something like that keeps you going. It gives you hope. I think we talked about you at the station for months. I’m sorry we couldn’t save your friend.”

“Me, too.”

I stared off, thinking of Jesse.

“So ever since then, you get these dreams, huh, these visions?”

“Yeah,” I said, looking back at him. “It took me a while to realize it, but it’s something good that came out of the accident. Besides, of course, being alive.”

“I still can’t believe it,” he said, standing up. “That it’s you.”

“Me, too.”

“Well, take care of yourself, Abby,” he said. “No more charging into fires.”

“Okay,” I said before giving him a kiss on the cheek.

“I see I’m not the only one with a cop boyfriend,” Mo said when I went back behind the counter.

“What? Oh.” I rolled my eyes at her and then smiled. “Yeah, I guess we both must have a thing for authority figures.”

“I guess so.”

Later I drove home thinking of the strange coincidence and feeling like in some ways it wasn’t strange at all. How my life was full of patterns and connections, and how people drifted in and out, but somehow all for a reason. With a purpose. As if we were all in this together.

CHAPTER 34

As Ty and I stepped outside everyone cheered.

“Kate, this is crazy,” I said, finding her in the crowd. “It’s too much.”

I looked around, my jaw hanging open. The backyard had been transformed. There were tables and chairs covered in linen, small white lights hung from trees, and caterers carrying silver trays full of fancy hors d'oeuvres and champagne flutes. There was a bar in the corner and Sinatra came through the speakers, singing about love.

“Wow,” Ty said.

Kate grabbed some champagne and put it in our hands.

“I thought we were having cake and a few friends over.” My voice trailed off as I stared at the candles floating on the pond. “Seriously, this is way too much.”

“Oh, nonsense,” she said. “Besides, it wasn’t all me. David brought in the bartender.”

Ty and I walked around and greeted the guests. Everybody was there. David and Erin, Paloma and Lyle, Mike and his family, Mo and her new boyfriend, Ty’s friends from the pub, and some of the people we still stayed in touch with from our river guiding days. Even Dr. Krowe, my old shrink, was sitting in the corner by the tomato plants talking to a woman.

I couldn’t believe it.

But after a while I was able to relax and enjoy the party.

***

“How was Costa Rica?” Ty asked Lyle. “I hear it’s beautiful down there.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Isn’t that where you were?”

“Yes, but I have a hard time seeing the beauty of this world when I’m apart from my Paloma.”

Paloma looked over at me and smiled, shaking her head. Then she smiled some more.

A few minutes later Dr. Krowe came up to me.

“It’s so good to see you happy, Abby. I can admit it now. There were times back then when I didn’t see it turning out like this for you. You know, it’s funny. I was playing with the radio on the drive over and for some reason I stopped on a country music station, which is highly unusual for me. Anyway, I almost moved on, but then I lowered my hand and started listening to the lyrics. I didn’t catch the title but the song was saying something about how every storm runs out of rain. I’m glad that time has come for you.” He held up his glass. “To blue skies.”

“Thank you, Dr. Krowe. I wouldn’t be here without you.”

“I’m not so sure of that. You have something, something deep inside, a kind of resolve, a strength that I don’t see too often in the people I come across. Patients or otherwise. Maybe you always had it. Or maybe you found it at the bottom of that lake.”

He smiled and squeezed my hand and I watched him walk back over to the woman in the corner.

“Abby Craig!” David screamed from behind me. “Did you try these?”

He shoved something in my mouth. I tasted date, gorgonzola, and bacon.

“Is that a balsamic drizzle on top?” I said.

“I don’t know the details. I just know that I need more. These guys know food. They’re from Portland. I told Kate about them. They do our events on the set.”

Another waiter passed by with a new round and we grabbed some.

“Oh, no. Fried goat cheese!” David said, stuffing two in his mouth. “The camera adds ten pounds as it is. And now these things. I wonder if there’s a weight clause in my contract. They’re gonna fire my fat ass. But if I’m going down, I’m going down in flames.”

He paused and looked like he was thinking about what he had said and then started his trademark wheezing. I started laughing, too.

“I’ve missed you, David Norton. How long are you staying?”

“Three days. But we’ll make the best of it. You and Kate have to come shopping with me. You can take shifts, I don’t care, but I’m a man on a mission of shoppin’ till we be droppin’! Hey, where’s your foodie friend, by the way? You know…”

He puffed out his cheeks.

I shook my head.

“If you mean Miguel, he couldn’t get the time off. He says they’re working him so hard, he’s got blisters on his blisters.”

“That sounds terminal. And gross.”

The ringing sound of metal on glass slowly quieted people down. I wandered up to Ty and took his hand as Kate gave a toast. David recited a sonnet from Shakespeare. Lyle was next and he rambled, glassy-eyed, about love and marriage and how lust was in the air tonight. He finished with a large grin and a Phil Collins air drum solo.

A slow Elvis song came on and I pulled Ty close and moved slowly with him under the willow. When the song ended, David joined in, draping his arms over our shoulders.

“Remember, Abby Craig, when you were like, ‘What should I do? Should I date him?’ And I was like, ‘Go for it, girlfriend, he’s a hunk!’ And you were like, ‘You sure?’ And I was like, ‘Yes, yes, yes, Abby Craig. You two
Beautifuls
belong together!’”

He twirled around, keeping the beat as long as he could, before stumbling away.

The party went on like that for hours, a soft breeze swept through, blessing the night. At one point, Ty lead me into the shadows and kissed me.

“I’ll make you happy, Abby,” he said afterwards. “I promise.”

“You already do.”

I stood there gazing into his eyes, taking in short, quivering breaths while chills, the good kind, raced up and down my back. I loved Ty so much and my heart had never felt so full.

CHAPTER 35

Benjamin Mortimer looked the same from a distance, but as he approached I could tell that in the year since I had last seen him up close, he had aged some, looking a little worn around the edges. His energy was slower than I remembered, his hair was sprinkled with gray, and he had thick bags under tired eyes. But his smile was the same, open and kind, and it made me happy to see it.