The Middle of Somewhere(67)

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She hadn’t seen or contacted Mike since before Gabriel’s accident, so he could not have known she’d admitted the affair to Gabriel, and used the past tense when she did. She hadn’t consciously decided to arrive at her workplace at lunchtime. Mike was on his way outside and stopped short when he saw her. He motioned to the bench where they had often sat together. Liz nodded and followed him. Her limbs felt suspended on strings, like a marionette.

“I wanted to call,” he said.

“It’s okay.”

“You look like shit, Liz.”

She met his gaze and held it. “I am shit.”

The words hit him hard, and he winced. “What can I say that would help?”

“It’s not a situation for words. It’s a situation for get-the-hell-out.”

He nodded. He wasn’t going to bullshit her, and she was grateful. A pang of regret, in anticipation of missing him, shot through her, and was immediately and convincingly clobbered by a barrage of guilt.

He said, “Knowing you, you don’t want to hear this—”

“I hate speeches that start that way.”

“But I might not get another chance. Or I might get one and not take it, so please listen.”

“Okay.”

His expression held her fast. “Don’t give up. Promise me you won’t give up.”

She stared at the ground and shook her head.

“You’re not going to promise? Then try this. Promise me you will remember that I asked you not to give up.” He leaned down to see her face. “Can you do that?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I promise.”

Valerie wanted to share her two-bedroom condo in Mountain View, but Liz declined in favor of a one-bedroom rental in the same complex. Her friend was right about the prevalence of medical device companies in the area. Liz applied for five openings and was offered three. She decided on Paradynamics because it afforded the best chance to develop her skills and improve the lives of amputees. Several months in, a pharmaceutical giant gobbled up the company. Liz began spending more time in meetings than at the bench, so she moved to Kinesia Labs, where she headed up her own research unit.

She’d been working there a year before she met Dante. Over the next eighteen months, they went from regular weekend dates to seeing each other three times a week. She left a few things at Dante’s house, as a practicality. In January, shortly after they returned from Oaxaca and the radish festival, the owner of Liz’s condo put it on the market. Before she could decide whether to rent or buy, Dante asked her to move in. He had plenty of room, he said, holding her hand in his. Too much for one person. He must have seen fear flash across her face, because he added, “And I love you very much.” Her hand jerked from his grasp, then paused in midair. She remembered her promise to Mike.





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE





At Palisade Lake frost coated the tent and a skin of ice had formed on the water bottles they’d left outside. Liz hopped from one foot to the other waiting for the water to boil. The rustle of nylon against nylon from the tent told her Dante was awake and getting dressed.

Paul came from behind the stand of trees dividing the campsite. “Knock, knock.”

She waved him over. He informed Liz that he and Linda would be continuing on at least as far as the junction with the trail to Kearsarge Pass, two days from here. Another trail led out of the Sierra before the Kearsarge trail, he said, but it was very steep and not well maintained, and ended at an obscure trailhead. If Linda couldn’t complete the trip, they’d go over Kearsarge and catch a ride into Independence.

“It’s sad to think you might not finish,” she said.

“We promised each other when we started that we wouldn’t endanger ourselves. It’s the journey, right?”

“Absolutely.”

Liz and Dante left first, having told the McCartneys they’d meet at Lake Marjorie, just shy of Pinchot Pass, if not before. Dante led. The trail followed the shape of the lake, on a high traverse. Liz’s legs were chilled, and stiff from yesterday’s ascent of the Golden Staircase. She thought of Linda, imagined her stitches would pull as she walked, but doubted it would slow her down much. Was there something in Linda’s history that had made her so determined? And in Paul’s, to be so daring in his love for her? Perhaps it was simply their personalities, and not life that had sculpted the McCartneys along the way. Who was to say she herself would have turned out differently if she’d been blessed with a doting mother, a devoted father and a houseful of siblings? At nearly thirty, she wasn’t sure the answer mattered. Whatever the admixture of nature and nurture, it was her life, and her mess. She could bemoan the lack of scaffolding she’d been provided in building her life, but it was immaterial. She focused her attention on the trail at her feet.