The Things We Do for Love (18 page)

“What are you going to do during your time here?” Jacqueline Billingham asked his mother.

“Well, I always love to go to the state park this time of year and see the fall colors. I know it’s not as brilliant at the end of November as when the leaves are still on the trees, but I love the bare branches, too.”

Cameron said, “Mary Anne and I will be there this weekend, too. Caving.”

“Oh, are you a spelunker, Mary Anne?” Evelyn Corbett asked gaily.

“Definitely not,” Mary Anne said. “I’ve been assured this is a large cave and there’s nowhere I can get stuck.”

“I wish you girls wouldn’t do that,” her mother said. “It’s not very safe.”

“Cameron’s experienced,” said Jon Clive Drew.

“And Mary Anne’s cautious,” Mary Anne chimed in. “Not to mention, inherently terrified.”

“Are you claustrophobic?” Graham asked.

“I suppose if I have a phobia, that might be it,” Mary Anne mused. “But, no, I don’t think I’m that scared. Do you have any phobias?”

“My heavens, yes,” said his mother.

“It’s not
that
bad,” Graham said.

“Oh, yes, it is,” Evelyn Corbett retorted. “When you were a boy, you wouldn’t even go out in the garden alone to help with the weeding.”

Graham blushed and looked at Mary Anne. “Snakes.”

Mary Anne’s mother shuddered. “I don’t blame you a bit.”

“As an adult,” he confided, “I have worked my way up to going hiking. I just wear heavy pants and leather boots.”

“Remember that black snake down in our basement the one year?” Nanna said. “Louise went down and saw
it and came up to get her daddy, and when they went back down they couldn’t find it at first.”

Aunt Louise echoed her sister’s shudder. “It had gone under the laundry. But Daddy killed it.”

Graham wished the subject hadn’t come up. He could do without any more snake-in-the-basement stories.

Mary Anne said abruptly, “Let’s talk about something else.”

“T
HAT WAS VERY NICE
,” Graham’s mother said as the two of them walked home together. “I like your friend Mary Anne.”

“So do I.” He didn’t trust himself to say more.

“Her father puts a bit away, doesn’t he?”

“Oh, yes.”

Back at his house, his mother removed her suit jacket and settled on the couch. She gazed across the room at the photo of Graham and Briony on the mantel and sighed.

Graham glanced at her.

“I don’t suppose you meet many women here,” his mother remarked.

“Are you hinting that I should marry again?”

“Of course not. That’s your business, honey. I just don’t want you to be lonely.”

“I think I’d rather be alone than go through what I did after Briony’s death.”

“Well, that’s a shame,” she answered, “thinking that way. It hurts awfully to lose someone you love—”

“The person I lost was myself,” Graham interrupted heatedly.

“But you found yourself again, now, didn’t you?” she replied, unmoved by his tone. “Imagine if I’d never mar
ried your father, just because I was afraid of losing him someday. It’s the silliest thing I ever heard.”

Graham thought coolly of how Mary Anne had once told him that
her
mother didn’t understand her. Well, she wasn’t the only one whose mother didn’t get the picture. He wanted to call her on the phone and tell her himself.

But he wouldn’t call her. Not now. Not ever. His mother didn’t understand his feelings, but he did. And he would honor them.

“N
O TAKERS FOR CAVING
at the end of November,” Mary Anne said cheerfully as she and Cameron waited in her car outside the women’s resource center, where Cameron had arranged for would-be cavers to meet before their outing. “Surprise, surprise.”

“Give it a minute,” Cameron said. “I put up lots of posters.”

Mary Anne remained hopeful that no one would show and
she
wouldn’t have to venture into Big Jim’s Cave. The main reason she was here was to support Cameron. Well, that was the first reason. The second was to get an admission from Cameron.

Watching the entrance to the parking lot, she said, “Okay, fess up, cousin. It was Paul, wasn’t it?”

“What?” Cameron’s head snapped around. “What was Paul?”

Mary Anne gave her a pitying look.

Cameron said, “If you tell
anyone
…”

“You’re going to tell
him,
aren’t you?”

“Eventually. He’s not stupid, so if he sees me at seven months it might occur to him that maybe he had something to do with it.”

“My new little cousin,” Mary Anne said, “is going to
be a
beautiful
child. And who knows—maybe it will be a girl with her grandmother’s gifts.”

“Please don’t say that ever again,” Cameron begged.

“I’m just kidding! Obviously, the love potion didn’t work, and I doubt your getting over Graham had anything to do with whatever Bridget gave you.
And,
” Mary Anne added before Cameron could say it, “if you’re going to tell me you think that little vial you drank had anything to do with your sleeping with her brother, I won’t believe that, either.”

“Believe what you want,” Cameron snapped and reached for the door handle as a white Camry turned into the lot.

Mary Anne watched her cousin cross the lot, and the driver rolled down her window. Cameron bent to speak with her, then turned and gave Mary Anne a thumbs-up, meaning the cave trip was on.

Which was when Mary Anne saw the driver.

Angie Workman.

G
RAHAM WAS RELIEVED
his mother hadn’t again brought up the subject of him and Briony or the advisability of marrying again—or not, as she claimed she had no interest in that end.

They’d spent Friday together shopping in downtown Logan, having lunch and coffee together and picking out some things for his guest room. The errands made him think of Mary Anne and the furnishings he’d never picked out with her because the two of them had been so keen to get into bed together.

He found himself wishing Mary Anne was along on the shopping trip.

By Saturday, however, he was almost normal again.
His mother put on casual clothes and he put on the heavy canvas pants and boots he’d mentioned at Thanksgiving—though by now all the snakes in the vicinity should be well and truly asleep—and he and Evelyn Corbett set out for the state park.

His mother said, “Let’s try to do that whole Limestone Trail this year. It’s just three miles. I think I can finish that, and I want to see those rock formations again.”

Graham tried to remember what cave Mary Anne and Cameron were supposed to be exploring this weekend and if it was on the Limestone Trail. He had no idea, but his mother was showing a strong preference for the trail. Anyhow, he and Mary Anne still had three radio shows to complete together. It wasn’t as if he was never going to see the woman. Whether he saw her or not, he would eventually get over her. That was all.

“The Limestone Trail it is.”

M
ARY
A
NNE FOUND IT
wasn’t as awkward being with Angie Workman as she’d feared, once they were all riding to the park in Mary Anne’s car. Obviously, her presence was as much of a shock to Angie as Angie’s was to her.

But as they drove, Cameron queried Angie on what had attracted her to the excursion.

“Well, you hung up the sign at the Blooming Rose, and I kept looking at it. I used to love to go in caves when I was little, but I almost got lost once and my nerve sort of disappeared. I thought I’d give it another try, now, and learn safe techniques.”

“Great!” Cameron said with real enthusiasm.

Mary Anne was glad she’d come, glad Cameron was doing this. Like Mary Anne, Cameron needed to get her
mind off her own problems for a while. Helping Angie Workman learn spelunking technique—and feel stronger within herself—was clearly just the ticket.

By the time they were all in the first room of Big Jim’s Cave, Mary Anne felt almost as comfortable with Angie as if they’d never had a wordless tug-of-war over a man. They were all wearing coveralls—Angie was borrowing an extra pair of Cameron’s as they were close to the same size—and helmets and headlamps. And they were all wearing packs, Cameron’s being the heaviest. Mary Anne had asked if it was too heavy for her cousin, but Cameron had just laughed and given her a look that said she hoped that was the last mention of the subject.

Cameron had a cave guide and she’d mapped their route. “We’re going to Boulder Gulch,” she said, “and there are no tight squeezes. The important thing is to be very sure of every rock before you put your weight on it.”

They started through the cave, over a dry trail already bearing the prints of a few feet. Under Cameron’s instruction, they made an effort to step in each other’s tracks.

They saw a colony of bats hanging from the ceiling in White Alley and near a small pool Angie spotted a blind salamander. She exclaimed, “Aren’t the creatures of this world wonderful?” She was full of enthusiasm for the cave environment, and Mary Anne remembered her earlier thought that Angie had nothing in common with Jonathan Hale. She still felt that way. Her dates with Jonathan had been oriented toward watching movies and his attempts to get her into bed. There was something distinctly spiritual about Angie.

She was still thinking of this as she followed Cameron and Angie over the first big rocks of Boulder Gulch.

“We’ve got a drop on the right,” Cameron said, “so be careful. There are so many crevices over there with passages close to the surface. I think they’ve explored…”

The rock beneath Mary Anne shifted, and she immediately tried to jump to her left, but the rock she landed on shifted, too. She fell backward, into blackness, and landed hard, with an audible crack. A wave of nausea rolled over her. The pain in her tibia was unlike anything she’d ever felt, and she vomited and after that she didn’t try to move because she knew moving would cause more pain. That was when she realized her shoulder felt wrong, too. She started to move that, and the nausea returned—stronger.

There was sound around her, like cicadas. Her headlamp had come free from her helmet and the light was several feet away. She did not reach for it because if she moved she’d throw up again.

“Mary Anne?” The lights above her, blinding her, seemed to come from a distant source. It was probably only eight feet away, but it felt like a hundred.

Beside her, something moved. Something alive.

Oh, God.
It was probably a cave snake or something disgusting.

The buzzing seemed to slow, then restarted.

She turned her face away from the blinding lights and saw what their beams touched.

Rattlesnakes.

Not one or two. Too many to count. Curled up together like a happy family. Mary Anne saw coils one foot from her face.

“It’s winter,” Cameron said from above her. “Don’t move, and they won’t do anything. I swear it, Mary Anne.
Remember that guy in South Africa who spent like half a year or something in a room with cobras and black mambas? Just don’t move. These guys aren’t even active.”

“That’s why they’re rattling,” Mary Anne said weakly.

Cameron said, “I’ve got a rope, and I’m going to lower it to…”

“You can’t! I can’t move. I think my shoulder’s dislocated, and there’s a boulder on my leg.”

“No, there isn’t,” Cameron said with firm denial.

Mary Anne looked, trying to see in the dark, but she could feel the boulder. “I think there is.”

“Then, I’ll come down there.”

“No!” Mary Anne exclaimed.

“
I
will,” said Angie. “Look. I can use that crack right there.”

“I’m going first,” Cameron said.

“No,”
Mary Anne repeated. “Let Angie. If you come down here…”

“All right,” Cameron said. “Angie, we need something to use as a lever to move the rock. I’ve got walking poles, but I doubt they’ll be strong enough.”

Angie was already climbing down to Mary Anne. Two feet above Mary Anne’s level, she stopped, her headlamp sweeping the ground. It was nearly wall-to-wall snakes. “Give me a walking pole,” she told Cameron. “I’m going to have to move some of these guys.”

Mary Anne remembered every thought she’d ever had about Angie Workman that had underestimated the woman. She’d thought her less than intelligent,
boring,
so many things that did no justice to the courage she was showing in this moment.

It seemed to take forever, Mary Anne closing her eyes
as a snake with a body almost two inches in diameter wrapped sluggishly over the walking pole. It had to weigh a ton, but Angie slowly moved the pole over toward the darkness, depositing the snake on top of some of its fellows, who renewed their buzzing.

“Mary Anne, I’m not going to move any of the ones close to you right now.”

“You guys, I’m sure I’m losing circulation in this leg. I’m afraid they’re going to have to cut it off or something, and I don’t think either of you can move this rock. Please go for help. I’ll be fine.”

Angie’s light flashed up to Cameron’s. She said, “You go. I’ll stay with her.”

Cameron went.

M
ARY
A
NNE IS GOING TO DIE
. Mary Anne is going to die, and it’s my fault for making her come. She came because of me, because I was stupid and got pregnant, and now she’s going to die or lose her leg.

Cameron was able to run through the first passages they’d traversed—bad caving technique, but this was an emergency. Her cell phone was in her pack. It should work from the parking lot. Would anybody be at the ranger station or should she call the zoo? She’d call 911 first, and then the people at the park.

She dug her cell phone from her pack and left her pack at the cave mouth, then ran toward the parking lot, opening her phone as she went, looking for a signal.

“Wow, sister!”

She crashed into a male chest. A tall male.

Oh, God, it was Graham Corbett. The snake-a-phobe and his mother.

“Graham, there’s been an accident. Mary Anne’s trapped in the cave. I’ve got to get to a signal.”

“Where is she?”

“Big Jim’s. But don’t go in there. You won’t be able to help.”

“Go,” he told Cameron, and watched her sprint off, braids flying behind her underneath the climbing helmet she still wore.

“Should we help?” said his mother. “What should we do?”

“I’m going,” he said, his voice seeming faint, faraway. “Cameron will come back after she calls for help.” Why hadn’t he asked her where in the cave? He didn’t know these caves. He hadn’t done any caving as a child because of a completely irrational fear that snakes would den there.

“Go ahead,” his mother said. “I’ll follow on my own. The cave’s marked, isn’t it? Don’t go in there and get lost, Graham.”

“No,” he said and started up the trail.

When he came to Cameron’s pack, he realized that he didn’t even have a light. But she would have extra light sources, wouldn’t she? Wasn’t that one of the rules of caving?

He found a flashlight in the top pocket of her pack, switched it on and entered the cave.

He thought he could see which way the women had gone, because the footprints looked more recent down one passage.

He started that way, calling out, “Hello?”

He thought he heard voices, kept moving, and called out again.

Down a white passage with bats overhead.

Mary Anne was trapped.

Cameron actually had looked ill, and there was something disturbing about the way she’d said, “You can’t help.” Something factual and final.

He kept going. Called “Hello?” again.

“We’re down here! I’ll show you the way.”

A woman’s voice. Not Mary Anne’s.

“I’m coming!” he called back.

He saw another light as he reached an area filled with boulders. A small female shape wearing a headlamp was coming over the boulders.

“Stay where you are,” he said.

“Oh, thank God. It’s a man!”

Graham had never heard anyone sing the praises of his sex so fervently. He thought he heard another voice say something else, but he couldn’t tell what. “Mary Anne?” he called.

Mary Anne knew his voice. The coil beside her had moved, and she told herself that what Cameron had said was true. She was not these animals’ prey. They would not recognize her as a food source. If she did not move, there was no reason for any of them to bite her.

Graham was here.

Graham
could
move the boulder.

She had a sudden vision of him refusing to come to the floor of the cave because of the snakes.
Maybe I won’t love him anymore,
she thought stupidly.

“Don’t shine that light in my eyes,” she said.

He said nothing but moved the light, and she registered the planes of his face as something almost invisible in the dark, and she knew he was seeing the snakes.

“She’s trapped under a boulder, and it’s too big for me
or Cameron to move,” Angie was saying. “I’ve been moving the snakes to make a path, but I haven’t actually stepped on the floor yet. If we go down together, I can move more snakes.”

“Yes.”

She saw his flashlight beam find the path down the boulders to the floor, the path Angie already had been down and up twice. He handed the flashlight to her. “Give me some light, so I can see where I’m going.”