River's End (8 page)

She also knew she was lucky. Nearly fourteen years, she mused. The length of their marriage was a not-so-minor miracle in Hollywood. They’d had bumps and dips, but they’d gotten through them.

She’d always been able to depend on him, and he on her.
And the other not-so-minor miracle was that they loved each other.

She slipped back into her robe, belting it as she walked to the deck doors and threw them open to the night. She stepped out, to listen to the wind sigh through the trees. To look for Julie’s star.

“How many times did we sit out on nights like this and dream? We’d whisper together when we were supposed to be in bed. And we’d plan. Such big, shiny plans. I’ve got so much I dreamed of, so much I wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t had the big dreams first. I might never have met David if not for you. Would never have had the courage to start my own company. So many things I wouldn’t have done, wouldn’t have seen if I hadn’t followed after you.”

She leaned on the rail, closing her eyes as the wind toyed with her hair, the hem of her robe, shivered along her bare skin. “I’ll make sure Livvy dreams big, too. That nothing stops her from grabbing hold of what she needs most. And I’m sorry, Julie. I’m sorry I had a part in trying to make her forget you.”

She stepped back, rubbing her arms as the air turned chilly. But she stayed outside, watching the stars until David found her.

“Jamie?” When she turned, his eyes warmed. “You look beautiful. I was afraid you’d gone to bed while I puffed cigars and told lies with your father.”

“No, I wanted to wait for you.” She stepped into his arms, nestled her head on his shoulder. “I waited just for this.”

“Good. You’ve been quiet tonight. Are you all right?”

“Hmm. Just a little lost in thoughts.” Too many she couldn’t share with him. A promise had been given. “Tomorrow it’ll be eight years. Sometimes it seems like a lifetime ago, and others like yesterday. It means so much to me, David, that you come with me every year. That you understand why I have to be here. I know how hard it is for you to juggle your schedule to carve out these few days.”

“Jamie, she mattered to all of us. And you . . .” He drew her back to kiss her. “You matter most.”

With a smile, she laid her hand on his cheek. “I must. I know
how much you love tramping through the woods and spending an afternoon fishing.”

He grimaced. “Your mother’s taking me out on the river tomorrow.”

“My hero.”

“I think she knows I hate fishing and makes me go out every summer to pay her back for stealing her daughter.”

“Well then, the least her daughter can do is make it worth your while.”

“Oh yeah?” His hands were already sliding down to mold her bottom through the thin robe. “How?”

“Come with me. I’ll show you.”

Olivia dreamed of her mother and whimpered in her sleep. They huddled together in a closet filled with animals who stared with glassy eyes. She shivered in the dark, holding tight, so tight because the monster raged outside the door. He was calling her name, roaring it out while he stomped on the floor.

She buried her face against her mother’s breast, pressed her hands over her ears as something crashed close, so close to where she tried to disappear.

Then the door burst open and the closet bloomed with light. In the light she saw the blood, all over her hands, all over her mother’s hair. And Mama’s eyes were like the eyes of the animals. Glassy and staring.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Daddy said, and snapped the scissors that shined and dripped.

As she tossed in sleep, others dreamed of Julie.

Images of a lovely young girl laughing in the kitchen as she learned to make red sauce like her grandmother’s. Of a much-loved companion who raced through the woods with her pale hair flying. Of a lover who sighed in the night. A woman of impossible beauty dancing in a white dress on her wedding day.

Of death, so terrible, so stark it couldn’t be remembered in the light.

And those who dreamed of her wept.

Even her killer.

It was still dark when Val knocked briskly on the bedroom door. “Up and at ’em, David. Coffee’s on and the fish are biting.”

With a pitiful moan, David rolled over, buried his head under the pillow. “Oh, my God.”

“Ten minutes. I’ll pack your breakfast.”

“The woman’s not human. She can’t be.”

With a sleepy laugh, Jamie nudged him toward the edge of the bed. “Up and at ’em, fish boy.”

“Tell her I died in my sleep. I’m begging you.” He pushed the pillow off his head and managed to bring his wife’s silhouette into focus. She smiled when his hand closed warmly over her breast. “Go catch fish, and if you’re very good, I’ll reward you tonight.”

“Sex doesn’t buy everything,” he said with some dignity, then crawled out of bed. “But it buys me.” He tripped over something in the dark, cursed, then limped to the bathroom while his wife snickered.

She was sound asleep when he came back, gave her an absent kiss and stumbled out.

Light was filtering through the windows when the shakes and whispers woke her. “Huh? What?”

“Aunt Jamie? Are you awake?”

“Not until I’ve had my coffee.”

“I brought you some.”

Jamie pried one eye open, focused blearily on her niece. She sniffed once, caught the scent and sighed. “You are my queen.”

With a laugh, Olivia sat on the side of the bed as Jamie struggled up. “I made it fresh. Grandma and Uncle David are gone, and Grandpop left for the lodge. He said he had paperwork to do, but he just likes to go over there and talk to people.”

“You got his number.” Eyes closed, Jamie took the first sip. “So what are you up to?”

“Well . . . Grandpop said that I could have the day off if you wanted to go for a hike. I could take you on one of the easy trails. It’s sort of practice for being a guide. I can’t really be one until I’m sixteen, even though I know all the trails better than mostly anyone.”

Jamie opened one eye again. Olivia had a bright smile on her face and a plea in her eye. “You’ve got my number, too, don’t you?”

“I can use my new backpack. I’ll make sandwiches and stuff while you’re getting dressed.”

“What kind of sandwiches?”

“Ham and Swiss.”

“Sold. Give me twenty minutes.”

“All right!” Olivia darted out of the room, leaving Jamie to take the first two of that twenty minutes to settle back and enjoy her coffee.

It was warm and bright, with a wild blue sky of high summer. A perfect day, Jamie decided, to think of what is rather than what had been.

She flexed her feet in her ancient and reliable boots and studied her niece. Olivia had her hair tucked up in a fielder’s cap with the R
IVER
’
S
E
ND
L
ODGE AND
C
AMPGROUND
logo emblazoned on the crown. Her T-shirt was faded, the overshirt unbuttoned and frayed at the cuffs. Her boots looked worn and comfortable, the backpack brightly blue.

She had a compass and a knife sheath hooked to her belt.

She looked, Jamie realized, supremely competent.

“Okay, what’s your spiel?”

“My spiel?”

“Yeah, I’ve hired you to guide me on the trail today, to show me the ropes, to make my hiking experience a memorable one. I know nothing. I’m an urban hiker.”

“Urban hiker?”

“That’s right. Rodeo Drive’s my turf, and I’ve come here to taste nature. I want my money’s worth.”

“Okay.” Olivia squared her shoulders, cleared her throat.
“Today we’re going to hike the John MacBride Trail. This trail is an easy two-point-three-mile hike that loops through the rain forest, then climbs for a half a mile to the lake area, which offers magnificent views. Um . . . More experienced hikers often choose to continue the hike from that point on one of the more difficult trails, but this choice gives the visitor . . . um, the chance to experience the rain forest as well as the lake vistas. How was that?”

“Not bad.”

It was, Olivia thought, almost word for word from one of the books on sale at the lodge gift shop. All she’d done was to focus on bringing the page into her head and basically reading it off.

But she’d fix that. She’d learn to personalize her guides. She’d learn to be the best there was.

“Okay. As your guide, and the representative of River’s End Lodge and Campground, I’ll be providing your picnic lunch and explanations of the flora and fauna we see on our tour. I’ll be happy to answer any questions.”

“You’re a natural. Ready when you are.”

“Neat. The trailhead begins here, at the original site of the first MacBride homestead. John and Nancy MacBride traveled west from Kansas in 1853 and settled here on the edges of the Quinault rain forest.”

“I thought rain forests were in the tropics,” Jamie said and fluttered her lashes at Olivia as they moved toward the trees.

“The Quinault Valley holds one of the few temperate rain forests in the world. We have mild temperatures and a lot of rainfall.”

“The trees are so
tall!
What are they?”

“The overstory of trees is Sitka spruce; you can identify them by the flaky bark. And Douglas fir. They grow really tall and straight. When they get old, the bark’s dark brown and has those deep grooves in it. Then there’s western hemlock. It’s not usually a canopy tree, and it’s shade-tolerant so it’s understory. It doesn’t grow as fast as the Douglas fir. You see the cones, all over the place?” Olivia stooped to pick one up. “This one’s a Doug-fir, see the three points? There’ll be lots of them inside
the forest, but you won’t see saplings because they’re not shade-tolerant. The animals like them, and bears like to eat their bark.”

“Bears!
Eek!
”

“Oh, Aunt Jamie.”

“Hey, I’m your city-slicker client, remember?”

“Right. You don’t have to worry about bear if you take simple safety precautions,” Olivia parroted. “The black bear lives in this area. The biggest problem with them is they like to steal food, so you’ve got to use proper storage for food and garbage. You never, never leave food or dirty dishes unattended in your campsite.”

“But you have food in your backpack. What if the bears smell it and come after us?”

“I have the food wrapped in double plastic, so they won’t. But if a bear comes around, you should make lots of noise. You need to be calm, give them room so they can go away.”

They stepped out of the clearing and into the trees. Almost immediately the light turned soft and green with only a few stray shimmers of sun sneaking through the canopy of trees. Those thin fingers were pale, watery and lovely. The ground was littered with cones, thick with moss and ferns. The green covered the world in subtly different shapes, wildly different textures.

A thrush called out and darted by, barely ruffling the air.

“It looks prehistoric.”

“I guess it is. I think it’s the most beautiful place in the world.”

Jamie laid her hand on Olivia’s shoulder. “I know.” And a safe place, Jamie thought. A wise place for a child to go. “Tell me what I’m seeing as we go, Livvy. Make it come alive for me.”

They walked at an easy pace, with Olivia doing her best to use a tour guide’s voice and rhythm. But the forest always captured her. She wondered why it had to be explained at all when you could just see.

The light was so soft it was as if she could feel it on her skin, the air so rich with scent it almost made her head reel. Pine and damp and the dying logs that were the life source for new trees.
The deceptively fragile look of the moss that spilled and spread and climbed everywhere. The sounds—the crunch of boots over needles and cones, the stirring of small animals that darted here and there on the day’s business, the call of birds, the sudden surprising gurgle of water in a little stream. They all came together for her in their own special kind of silence.

It was her cathedral, more magnificent and certainly more holy to her than any of the pictures she’d seen of the glorious buildings in Rome or Paris. This ground lived and died every day.

She pointed out a ring of mushrooms that added splashes of white and yellow, the lichens that upholstered the great trunks of trees, the papery seeds spilled by the grand Sitka spruce, the complicated tangle of vine maples that insisted on growing close to the trail.

They wound between nurse logs, shaggy with moss and sprouts, brushed through feathery crops of ferns and spotted, thanks to Olivia’s sharp eye, an eagle lording it over the branches high overhead.

“Hardly anyone uses this trail,” Olivia said, “because the first part of it’s private. But the public trails start to loop there now, and you begin to see people.”

“Don’t you like to see people, Livvy?”

“Not so much in the forest.” She offered a sheepish smile. “I like to think it’s mine, and no one will ever change it. See? Listen.” She held up a hand, closed her eyes.

Intrigued, Jamie did the same. She heard the faint tinkle of music, could just make out the slick twang of country and western.

“People take away the magic,” Olivia said solemnly, then started up the upward slant of the trail.

As they climbed, Jamie began to pick up more sounds. A voice, a child’s laugh. Where the trees thinned, sunlight sprinkled in until that soft green twilight was gone.

The lakes spread out in the distance, sparkling with sun, dotted with boats. And the great mountains speared up against the sky while the dips and valleys and gorges cut through with curves and slashes.

Warmer now, she sat and tugged off her overshirt to let the sun play on her arms. “There’s all kinds of magic.” She smiled when Olivia shrugged off her pack. “You don’t have to be alone for it to work.”

“I guess not.” Carefully, Olivia unpacked the food, the thermos, then, sitting Indian style, offered Jamie her binoculars. “Maybe you can see Uncle David and Grandma.”

“Maybe Uncle David dived overboard and swam home.” With a laugh, Jamie lifted the field glasses. “Oh, there are swans. I love the way they look. Just gliding along. I should’ve brought my camera. I don’t know why I never think of it.”

She lowered the glasses to pick up one of the sandwiches Olivia had cut into meticulously even halves. “It’s always beautiful here. Whatever the season, whatever the time of day.”