Chapter Thirty-seven #2
After all this time, this long intermission is almost over. The Entré Act music is swelling. At 8:17 p.m., the curtain will rise for Act II and reveal its players.
Earlier, if Noah stays true to pattern.
If Noah stays true.
I close my eyes, aiming a heavily weighted whisper toward the sky, and then head for the gate.
“Ready, girl? Let’s go.”
Janey races ahead, moving with pup-like excitement through the stacked logs that serve as the entrance gate. I follow, smiling at my dog’s exuberance to be leash-free in an old, familiar place.
Nose to the ground and curved tail in constant, happy motion, Janey ventures ahead, doubling back now and then to make sure I haven’t strayed off the path.
The trail cuts through heavily timbered hills, down into washed out gullies, and back up again.
It’s kind of a mess. As I negotiate overgrown weeds, ruts, and natural debris along the trail, I start to wonder if my memory has failed me.
I don’t remember the path to the creek as being this long, even from the entrance gate. Did I take a wrong turn somewhere?
Just when I’m about to whistle for Janey and turn around to make my way back to the entrance and start over, the trail curves around an old oak tree.
I know this tree.
My gaze roves slowly up the trunk and back down.
At its base, deep orange fungi with ruffled edges ring the tree, each wider than a dinner plate.
They’re beautiful, like some sort of other-planetary, science-fiction flowers, and they make the tree seem as if it’s been professionally landscaped by God.
I suppose it was.
I inhale, closing my eyes and opening my mouth. Yes, there it is. The loamy mushroom aroma I remember.
Janey nudges my palm with her nose. She knows this isn’t our destination.
At the bottom of the next hill, I veer off the trail and toward the creek, hidden beyond the brambles. We walk along the bank, searching for the best place to go down, into the creek bed.
I’m not as familiar with this side of the creek.
Finally, we find a less-severe incline with some decent rocks peeking out of the dry clay bank for footholds.
But for a few stagnant pockets, the creek is dry and much easier to travel along than the trail had been. In a wetter season, I would hear the waterfall long before reaching it. Now, I come upon it in silence only broken only by the buzz of insects.
It isn’t really a waterfall, of course. Not in August. Tonight, it’s only a waterfall in theory. It’s probably been weeks since even a drop of water has trickled over this ledge. Tonight, it’s just a precipice. A dark, dry cliff.
An empty stage, awaiting its players.
I sit on the ledge awhile, letting disappointment tighten my throat.
Despite the absence of a car at the entry gate, not to mention the earliness of the hour, a small part of me expected Noah to be here, sitting on the ledge, waiting for me.
Just as he so often was when we lived on the same continent.
I pull out my phone and check the time. It’s just past six-thirty.
It’s darker in the woods than the hour allows elsewhere. My gaze roves the twilit bank. I stand. Pace.
Yes, to the naked eye, the waterfall looks empty. But for me, this place is filled with him.
“Noah.”
His name rides the current of my breath, and the sound of it is a punch in the gut.
Emotions surge with such force that I’m almost forced to take a step back.
In November, it will have been three years since we met here, atop this waterfall.
Not a day has gone by in which I’ve not thought of Noah Spencer.
Dreams of him, of us, dangle from this ledge, where they’ve waited two years this side of our goodbyes.
I press my palms to my eyes. I’m not crying, but . . . I’m wrecked.
To be here, now, back in the place where it all began, where it could end, if he doesn’t come . . . the memories are sharper. Clearer.
Does he think of me as often as I think of him? Does he think of me . . . at all? What changes have these years brought to Noah’s life? To Noah’s heart?
My hands tremble. So much can change in two years.
I’ve changed.
I’m sure he has, too.
Will I even recognize him when he comes? And what will he think of me after all this time? I swallow and relieve my pacing legs, setting them dangling again.
When I was sixteen, Noah said I was beautiful. But I’m sure he’s met many more sophisticated beauties in London than the simple Iowa girl he once loved. And we agreed. If one of us fell for someone else, we were under no obligation to return tonight.
What if he . . . ?
“Please, God,” I whisper. “Please, let him come.”
I fight my fear, my disloyal-feeling doubt, but it comes anyway, eking its dulled coldness into my blood. This date, this place—they’re sacred.
Eight, nine. Eight-seventeen.
But will those numbers mean anything to Noah Spencer across the chasm of two discarded calendars and an exciting life abroad?
“Hold on,” I whisper over the ledge.
He said he would come.
A flash of brightness catches my eye and turns my head. What is that? A flashlight?
I suppose it is dark enough on the trail by now to need one.
Hope rises, and so do I. “Noah?”
The sun still gives the evening light, but it’s set well below the tree line. I look up and west, expecting the oranges, purples, and pinks of sunset . . . but there is only streaked gloom and dark gray. Farther up, the high clouds are puffy and full. And they’re moving, fast.
Another flash. I groan. The light was not from a human invention, but a more celestial source.
“Ouch!” I slap at a tiny pinch on my arm that leaves a mushy fly in its wake. As a distant rumble resonates through the sky, I flick off the nasty remains and wipe my arm with the corner of my shirt. What was it Grandma Maddie used to say? “Flies only bite when it’s going to rain.”
The air is thick with humidity. Too thick.
I know how fast a hot August day can turn on you around here.
I’ve known the temperature to drop twenty degrees in a quarter of an hour, just before the sky rips apart.
If that’s the sort of change moving through the darkening sky, if a cold front meets this heat, it’ll result in one wallop of a storm.
“God, please. Not tonight. I know it’s dry. I know people around here are probably praying for rain. But if you could please, please hold off that storm. Just until eight-seventeen. No, nine. Nine would be better. That way we’ll have a little time to get out of here.”
We, I pray, believing.
I pace.
I sit. I stand.
I pace some more.
I check the time on my phone.
7:47.
Half an hour to go.
Noah is always early.
Drawing my legs to my chest, I hug them, resting my head on my knees. After a moment, I need to lift my head to catch my breath, but my inhalation lacks the control of normal respiration.
The air is too thick, too wet, for a place this dry.
A twig snaps from the direction of the trail. Janey perks up, and a low growl rumbles from her throat.
“Easy, girl.”
It’s a simple command to give, a more difficult one to obey myself. As I stand, I tighten my ponytail and smooth my hair. Butterflies fiesta through my midsection.
Backing away from the ledge and toward a better vantage point, I dab the hem of my t-shirt across my damp forehead and then rub my sweaty palms against the fabric of my shorts. I wait for Noah to appear.
A hesitant step or three later, only a young doe stands at the turn in the creek. My shoulders drop. I click my tongue, and the doe scampers up the bank.
Thick quiet descends once again.
I pull the phone from my pocket. In the upper right corner of the screen, a small shape blinks.
Low Battery. Wonderful.
“It’s almost eight, Janey. But I guess he could be running late.” I snort a laugh. “Or on time.”
Janey tilts her head, her unspoken question reinforcing what I already know.
Turning away from where the doe fooled me into hope, I resume my post at the ledge of the waterfall, cracking open a bottle of water for me and one for Janey as well.
The breeze is stronger now. Cooler. The flashes and rumbles are steady, though. Not too close yet. Maybe the storm will go around us. That would be awesome, God.
Far above the absent cascade, the breeze’s attentions are fickle. Like a homecoming queen candidate the week before the vote, it moodily flirts with the treetops. High, sun-scorched leaves whisper like oracles of hope and doom.
My heart vacillates between the two.
He’ll be here.
He’s forgotten me.
He’ll be here.
He’s forgotten me.
I check my phone.
8:09.
I cap my empty bottle and stand.
Pace.
People change. Just because someone was unfailingly prompt two years ago, doesn’t mean they’ve kept the habit.
8:16.
My phone emits three loud beeps, startling an unnaturally high-pitched bark from Janey. In turn, her bark causes me to almost drop my phone.
The battery icon blinks at me, empty. The display blackens, but I don’t need to see the numbers to know what they would have said within seconds, anyway.
“Well, Janey,” I whisper, “I guess he’s not coming.”
I need to sit down, and do—right where I stand.
Cross-legged on the rocky creek bed, the phone rests between my hand and head as if it can support the weight of my loss.
Blackout.
And, scene.