The Middle of Somewhere(69)

“What do you think happened to their father?” Dante said.

Liz pictured a desiccated souvenir—an ear, or a finger—then chased the image from her mind. Her imagination was running ahead of the evidence, and beyond common sense. “They could have scared him off, or turned him in. For some reason, they want us to think the worst.”

“It’s working.”

They removed their packs at the top of the pass and had a quick drink and a snack. Looking north the way they’d come, they were relieved to see the McCartneys a good distance ahead of the Roots who, having run out of passersby, had abandoned their troll-like position on the trail.

Liz said, “Let’s camp well off the trail tonight.”

“To hide from them?”

“Yes. As a precaution.”

“What about Paul and Linda?”

“They’ll be fine. The Roots don’t seem interested in them.”

Dante frowned. “You think that boulder was meant for us?”

“Maybe.”

He paused, considering. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to be cautious.” He stashed his water bottle and put on his pack. “Shall we?”

? ? ?

To the south lay a surreal vista. A barren basin spread a thousand feet below, two miles wide and long, dotted with small blue-green lakes and nothing else. Liz and Dante began the descent along switchbacks carved in a vertical wall. With each turn, the desolate floor grew nearer, but no less foreign. A miniature lake, as green as an emerald, appeared at the base of the wall. The angle of the light created sparkles floating above the surface like hovering dragonflies. The scene was stunningly beautiful, but haunting in its lifelessness. Aside from the path, whatever humans had undertaken here had left no trace.

Liz crossed this rocky void, propelled from behind by her memory of the hostile stances and dark whisperings of the Root brothers, and pulled by the empty trail ahead of her, as if a gigantic winch sat atop Mount Whitney, reeling her in, ever southward. She felt the pull in her belly, and lower, as a cramp. An unseen knuckle pressed and twisted, releasing an ache that pulsed like a small beating heart.

She stumbled.

The tip of her pole screeched across a flat rock. Her arm collapsed and her knee hit the ground. The pack slid sideways and she toppled backward onto it.

She regarded the empty sky. That Color.

Dante appeared above her. “You okay?”

She nodded, but wasn’t certain. She unclasped her pack and wriggled free. Dante pulled her to standing.

“What happened?” he asked, scanning the area for clues as to how she could have fallen on level terrain.

“A moment’s inattention.” She brushed off her knees. “Doesn’t take long to be careless.”

? ? ?

She’d gone to the doctor to confirm the results of the home pregnancy test, but she hadn’t thought through what she would say at her appointment. Each day since the home test, she expected her period. She was due to start the John Muir Trail in three weeks. Her plans were set. Her menstrual cycle would resume, she would marvel at her lucky break and walk into the wilderness.

A nurse appeared holding a clipboard and called her name. As Liz set the magazine on the side table, she imagined the doctor watching her for a reaction to the news that was not news, but a denial of her denial. She could not anticipate her own reaction. Either she or the doctor would glance at her ringless hand.

She put on the gown and folded her clothes neatly upon the chair. The nurse returned, took her blood pressure and checked her pulse. The word “procedure” winked on and off in Liz’s consciousness, helped along by the tray of metal tools beside the sink and bare stirrups at the end of the exam table. Intellectually she knew the scene was identical whether you welcomed the baby or not, but her history in such rooms (and they were all the same) was only ever about preventing pregnancy and sexual diseases. On the wall to her left, an innocuous painting of a house among windswept dunes evoked nothing.

Naked under thin cotton, she felt more child than woman. “Mother” she could not imagine. Her own mother came vaguely to mind, then wandered off, distracted.

She could not swell with life. Much of the time she barely managed to blow warmth to the edges of her own existence. She hadn’t given up on love—not yet—but neither could she support another life. She would cave.

The doctor knocked and entered. Liz remembered Dante had business in Atlanta the following week. By the time the doctor returned the speculum to the tray and asked her to sit up, she knew what she would do.