Baggage Check (20 page)

Rebecca hung up with Marci, blow-dried her hair, and stretched her sore muscles. She wondered what to do with the day off she had given herself. She sat on the couch for a bit and flipped through the channels before snapping off the TV. In her apartment at home, sitting quietly on the couch and watching Atlanta go by below her was one of her favorite activities. But here, the quiet was too quiet. Her father's house had few windows, and the ones that were there were dirty and viewed only the dirt driveway in front of the house or the thick woods on the other three sides.

She paced around the tiny house, opening and closing cabinets and drawers and finding many of them empty or partially so. Either he had not brought much with him when he moved out of her mother's house, or he had moved much of it to Sonia's, or both. There were a few books on the shelves, mostly the spy novels that had always been his favorites. She selected one called
Deadly Games
and flopped back down on the couch.

She was two chapters in, following the main character through a harrowing scene in the South American jungle, when a knock at the door startled her. Being alone in her dad's house in the middle of nowhere made unexpected visitors a nervous thing to say the least. Her heart was still racing when she got to the peephole and saw Deputy Alex Chen standing outside, in frayed cargo shorts and a T-shirt. He apologized as soon as she opened the door.

“I should have called you first,” he said. “I don't have your number in my phone.”

Reflexively, she smoothed down her hair. “No problem. What's up?”

“I'm off today, so I went by your mom's to see if you needed any help.” He gestured at his clothes and she saw he also wore construction-style work boots. “You weren't there.”

She smiled. “No, I'm not. Where were you yesterday? I worked my ass off by myself. I'm taking the day off today.”

He looked at her thoughtfully, and then up at the sky. “Any plans?”

“Just reading,” she said cautiously.

“Go put on some good shoes,” he said. “I have an idea.”

*   *   *

The waterfall was a fifteen-minute drive from her dad's house. Alex drove them, chatting easily about the area as he navigated down the hilly two-lane highway and a few mildly scary narrow roads. Alex seemed to know everything about St. Clair County, Alabama, from when the railroads had come through to which industries and crops had been prominent at various times in the state's history. Rebecca closed her eyes as she listened. Both windows were down, and she liked the morning sun on her skin and the breeze in her hair.

He parked in a shady gravel lot next to a couple of pickup trucks and an RV with a motorcycle strapped to its rear. There were running shoes and bottles of water in his trunk. He quickly changed the boots and handed Rebecca a water. A trail map behind the wooden fence showed various trails marked in bright colors. “Do you still run?” he asked her. “You ran cross-country, right?”

“I can't believe you remember that. No, I don't. I haven't much since college, anyway.”

He pointed to a curvy blue line on the map. “Well, there's an easy path here to the bottom of the falls, for city girls with sore muscles who don't want to chip a nail. It's paved, so if you hurt yourself I could bring a wheelbarrow up for you.”

“Or?”

“Or we could take my jogging path—the yellow trail. It goes out through the valley here and then works up the back side of the ridge. You actually get a better view of the falls from this peak. Six miles, round trip. If you think you could keep up.”

Rebecca looked at the opening in the trees where the trail started and could see the point about a hundred yards ahead where the yellow blazes split off from the paved path. It was a shady trail with the sun filtering down through the trees, which seemed to curve inward to make a tunnel. The scene looked enchanted, and she wondered how she had never been here before. “Six miles?” she asked.

“Yeah. You know what? It's okay, we'll do the short path. I know you're tired from cleaning.”

She knew he was baiting her, but it worked anyway. She smacked him lightly on the chest and hoped her sore calf muscles would not snap as she took off running for the first time in years. “Try to keep up,” she called back at him.

Alex had no trouble whatsoever keeping up. After a half mile of running next to her, he went full speed ahead when she stopped to walk, clutching at her side. She wondered briefly if he'd left her, but found him just around the next bend, coming back toward her down a steep hill like a mountain goat. He was not even sweating. “Show-off.” She scowled.

He grinned and returned to her side to walk next to her. “I know, I'm sorry. Cute girls have always had that effect on me.”

“I forgot you were in the army,” she said. “You could probably do this run in your sleep.”

“Well, not asleep maybe, but I did it drunk once,” Alex said.

“What?”

“For the record, I do not recommend it. I think I sprained both ankles that night. Of course, that was for a cute girl, too.”

“Was she impressed?”

“I think so. She married me. Of course, it helped that I had knocked her up a few months before that.”

Rebecca had many questions in response to this, and settled on, “So, you're divorced?”
Thank you, Captain Obvious.

“Yes. For a long time. My ex-wife, Shondra, had a pretty serious drug problem. Still does, I imagine, if she's still alive.”

“You don't know where she is?”

“No one does. Not even her parents. Last time any of us heard from her, she called from Chicago six years ago to ask for bail money. I didn't have it to give her even if I'd wanted to, and my in-laws were just done with it. Not that I blame them. She swore she would never speak to any of us again. So far, it's the first promise she's kept.”

“That's awful,” Rebecca said.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I knew she had some problems. But she had been clean for a while when I met her. Then our daughter Honey was born, and I don't know. I guess the stress was too much for her. I was still in the army then, and got deployed, and Shondra moved back in with her parents. She was trying to finish nursing school and work at the same time, and … babies are really hard. I know it sounds stupid to say that, but I just don't think Shondra was wired for motherhood, you know? She started doing amphetamines, I think to stay awake and study, but then she moved on to crystal meth and it just spiraled from there.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Me, too.”

“So Honey lives with Shondra's parents?”

He nodded. “It started out as a temporary thing, while I was deployed. But then when I got out of the army, I started working for the sheriff, and with the crazy hours and the risky job and everything … it just seemed easier if they had primary custody. Honey needed stability, and they had lost their daughter. I couldn't take away their granddaughter, too. Not when I wasn't even sure I could raise her alone.”

“That's a hard choice,” Rebecca said. “Brave.”

Alex scaled a large boulder that jutted out into the path from the side of the mountain and held a hand down to help her up. She glanced at the path's walk-around option, which would take her a good twenty feet to the left and back again to where he stood. She gave him her hand to help her scrabble up the rock.

“You have to do what's best for your kids,” he said. “Even if it's hard for you.”

“Do you miss her? Honey, I mean. Do you wish she lived with you?” she asked.

“Sometimes, yeah.” He ducked beneath a low-hanging branch and held it up for her to pass under. “They've been great, though,” he went on. “My in-laws. Ex-in-laws. They love Honey and she loves them, and I see her pretty much whenever I want.”

“That's nice.” This was so outside her realm, Rebecca was unsure what else to say.

“I take her camping and fishing and go to the Daddy-Daughter dances with her. I try hard not to miss the big milestones. It's not perfect, but she's a great kid. Young woman, really. She'll be a freshman this fall. Softball. Volleyball. Honor roll.”

“You sound really proud of her.” Rebecca thought of Jake and little Bonnie, and found it was hard to imagine that wobbly little round-cheeked toddler as a “young woman.”

“I am,” he said. “What about you? You ever wanted kids?”

“Is that your one question for the day?”

“What? You're still counting? You just asked me like forty. I thought we were just having a normal adult conversation.”

She laughed. “Fair enough. No.”

“Just no?”

They were cresting the top of a rise now, and Alex stepped aside to allow her over the top first. “No,” she repeated as she passed him. “Does that make you think less of me?”

Without waiting for an answer, she hoisted herself up and gasped. Before her was a gap in the trees through which she could see the rolling green hills and farms below. They created a hilly little patchwork that made it look like God had spread a quilt over the earth—all shades of green stitched in black asphalt and rusty clay roads. The little river that must flow from the falls to their right emerged to the south and wound through the hills before disappearing on the horizon. “It's beautiful.”

“Great, huh?” Alex said behind her. “It's why I'll always come back here.”

He led her a few feet along the ridge to a spot where a rock outcropped over the trees and they sat, drinking water and gazing into the distance. She stood and stretched, her left calf twinging, and inhaled deeply of the morning air. She let it back out as a long, slow sigh. “I can't remember the last time I felt so peaceful.”

“That's got to be a good thing,” Alex said. He took off his shirt, rolled it up under his head, and lay back with his eyes closed to soak up the midmorning sun. Rebecca stole a quick glance at his bare chest before turning back to the landscape. She blushed at the memory of shirtless Alex the other morning in her hotel room. Now she could see more clearly. There was a tattoo on his left arm, lettering she could only assume was Chinese, and he had just the merest suggestion of a late-thirties belly, softened by too many nights drinking beer and singing karaoke. Otherwise, his upper body was smooth and muscular, nearly perfect.

Stop it, Rebecca. This guy has a teenage daughter and lives in the middle of nowhere. Worse than the middle of nowhere—it's the
last
middle of nowhere I want to be.

Still, she had to admit the beauty of the landscape was alluring. She picked her way to the edge of the rock and sat carefully so that her legs dangled over the side. The scene before her was like a painting, or a perfect photograph, except that it was not entirely still. Birds flitted and chirped, and every few minutes, she heard a distant motor of a truck or tractor scaling one of the large hills across the valley. The breeze came periodically and lifted the baby hairs on the back of her neck. She lost herself in thoughts of her mom, her dad, and even poor fluttering Sonia. She wondered idly how crazy Valerie was making whoever was subbing for her at the airline.

“The answer is no,” Alex said behind her.

“What?” She'd thought he might be asleep, he'd been quiet for so long.

“You asked if I thought less of you because you don't want kids. The answer is no.” He was still lying on his back with his eyes closed; Rebecca was unsure if he was starting a new conversation or had just remembered the question.

“Okay,” she said.

“Everyone is different. Kids are damn hard.”

“Yes, they are.”

More silence. She could not figure Alex out. He seemed interested in her, and he certainly didn't seem like the type to play games. But he was offering her nothing else; he had not made a move on her. Not that she wanted him to.
Obviously.

After several minutes more, Alex stood and stretched. He walked to where Rebecca sat and extended his hand again. “You always assume I'm just going to take your hand,” she challenged.

“You're right,” he said. He withdrew the hand and began walking in the other direction. “See you at the falls.”

She gaped at him momentarily, until he ducked back into the woods on the far end of the ridge and convinced her he was not returning for her. “I have to be careful what I say to this guy,” she muttered, as she dusted herself off and set out to follow him.

The falls were another ten-minute walk away, over easy rolling landscape in the woods atop the ridge. She caught up to him about fifty feet in, and kept pace behind him as he weaved among the trees and bounced over roots and rocks. He knew this path by heart, she saw, and even affectionately patted a large cottonwood that had fallen across the path at an angle, forcing them to duck beneath it.

They heard the falls before they could see them—a steady rain through the pine needles. Rebecca was ashamed that the sound reminded her instantly of the white noise machine Valerie used in large city hotels, rather than some other more natural sound.
I should really get out more.

When they got to the next big clearing, Alex took a step to the side so Rebecca could see for herself. They were on the side of the mountain, with the top of the falls less than thirty feet away. The water rumbled over the top and out a little way into midair before dropping in great white sheets. There was a light spray coming off the falls that hit them when the breeze blew in their direction. From where they stood, she could not see the bottom, but she could hear the water roaring on the rocks below. It awed her that the microscopic droplets she could barely feel, and the powerful mass of water that could easily carry her away to drown, were all part of the same magnificent whole. She thought about all the times she had flown over the ocean without giving a second thought to all the water beneath her—how beautiful, life-giving, and dangerous it was all at once.