Chapter Twenty-Two Mary
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mary
Four and a half years ago
I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop—for Leo to call in the reserves, the rangers, the backwoods po-po or whoever it is you’re supposed to call when identical twins land a catfight in a raft on Class IV rapids.
But he never did, even though he probably should have.
It didn’t look good, him coming down hard on Richard for putting his hands on Sam, but not on Sam for putting her hands on me.
Not that it would have been just Sam. If she went, we went.
After everything that we’d been through, I wasn’t about to leave her on her own while I finished the course without her.
Instead, we got off with a stern warning and having to travel in separate rafts for the remainder of the course—which came faster than I could have imagined.
Halfway through week ten, we were preparing for our final test, a thirty-six-hour solo expedition.
Everyone would be on their own to implement all the skills we’d learned over the course of two and a half months.
We had to plot a route to our assigned spots, navigate our way there, set up our own camp, cook our own meals, and spend the night before hiking on to a predetermined meeting spot, where we’d have one last night together before heading back to North American Wilderness Academy headquarters.
“I don’t want to go out alone,” Nan (a.k.a. Nantucket) whined as she stirred the big pot of vegetarian chili. She’d turned out to be considerably less pretentious than her name, but she was a serial fretter. “What if something happens?”
“What do you think’s gonna happen to you?” Sam asked from the table where she was preparing a box of brownie mix. “Are you afraid aliens will abduct you? Or that there’ll be some disfigured, hatchet-wielding murderer waiting to carve you up like a Thanksgiving turkey?”
“Not helping, Sam,” I muttered.
“No,” Nan said, “of course not . . . Well, okay, maybe the axe guy—a little. But what if there’s a bear? Or if I accidentally set my sleeping bag on fire? Or—”
“Oh my God, Naaaaaan!” Sam groaned, drawing out the other woman’s name in exasperation.
“Stop already! You know where you’re going and how to get there.
We’ll all be within a quarter mile—we’ll probably be able to see one another’s campfires!
Hell, we’ll probably be able to hear you if you yell, and Leo even said he’s going to hike around and check on everyone.
Besides, wasn’t this the whole point of the last ten weeks—to be able to do this on our own? ”
“Yeah, but I get it,” Martin interjected as he brought over another armload of firewood. “It’s different out there alone. And if we don’t find our way back to base camp, we don’t pass our solo excursion. If we don’t pass our solo excursion, we won’t get our credentials—”
“Oh, for fu—” Sam threw up her hands in irritation, stopping herself before she could drop the f-bomb—another condition of our probation after the river brawl. “Will you all please just chill already?”
“You got this, Nan,” Martin agreed as he sidled up beside her and draped one of his arms across her shoulders.
Sam and I looked at each other.
“Uh, something you guys wanna tell us?” my sister asked.
Nan looked besotted. Martin looked sheepish.
“Yeah, we’ve been kind of together for a few weeks now. We didn’t want to say anything till we were at the end, though. It’s kind of frowned upon—having relationships while you’re out on the course.”
“Three weeks?” I echoed incredulously. “How on earth did the two of you keep it quiet for so long?”
“My question exactly,” Sam piped up, waggling her eyebrows suggestively. “How did you keep it quiet? I mean you’re never farther than ten feet away from someone out here.”
Nan’s face heated with the inference.
“Where there are woods, there’s a way,” Martin quipped with a wolfish grin.
Out here—on the final solo test of the program, miles from the rest of the group, with no instructor hovering nearby, the silence had a way of loosening memories I’d spent years packing down tight.
Maybe it was the high Oregon air or the knowledge that, for the next two nights, every decision was mine alone.
Maybe it was just the strangeness of being out here without anyone else’s fear or expectations pressing in.
But something about the sharp, resinous smell of the pine needles under my boots cracked open a door I hadn’t touched in ages.
I suddenly remembered the night my dad pitched a tiny tent in our backyard because I’d announced, with very serious fourth-grade conviction, that I was “old enough to camp.” The wilderness in question was forty feet from our sliding-glass door, but he treated it like the Cascades.
Mom brought us hot chocolate in mugs with cartoon bears.
Dad taught me how to check for “wild animal tracks,” which turned out to be the neighbor’s cat.
He never laughed at me.
Not once.
He took my big, brave idea seriously.
He made it real.
I hadn’t thought about that night in years. Maybe I hadn’t let myself.
But here—under real trees instead of the backyard maple—I could finally feel what it had meant:
They’d seen me.
They’d supported me.
We had been a family that worked, once.
Before everything fractured.
Before reputation and fear and other people’s voices got between us.
It had been a very long time since I’d had a memory of them that didn’t ache.
It steadied me.
It was still warming something in my chest as I stepped into the small clearing along the riverbank—my assigned campsite.
I pitched my tent, stowed my gear, then circled the perimeter, gathering firewood.
I wanted to be sure there was enough so I wouldn’t be stumbling around the forest in the middle of the night after the fire died out.
I made myself a nice pot of beans and rice and chased it down with a cup of campfire cocoa and a few s’mores made with some freshly charred marshmallows.
After a little stargazing, I put out the fire and retired to my tent with a headlamp-style flashlight strapped to my head and a book.
I’d only been able to bring a few thinner volumes along on the course, and it was my third time through this particular steamy billionaire romance.
I’m not sure when I dozed off, but I awoke with a start, the book on my chest, lamp still on, illuminating the corner of the tent where my head was facing.
Sitting up, I took a moment to reacquaint myself with my situation and my surroundings.
Thanks to Sam, every little creak and crunch conjured images of ravenous bears and horror-movie-style bad guys lurking in the depths of the forest. I hadn’t been creeped out before, but I was now as I waited for whatever it was that had pulled me out of a sound sleep to reveal itself.
I didn’t have to wait long before I heard a low, throaty groan that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up on end.
But what the hell was I supposed to do? Ignore it? Pretend I didn’t hear it and try to go back to sleep? Hope it didn’t happen again?
Too late. There it was, but more desperate this time. Like someone in pain.
I had to do something.
Slipping back into my boots as quickly and quietly as I could, I threw on my jacket and grabbed the can of bear spray I had tucked into my pack on the off chance I came in contact with the rare insomniac bear during hibernating season.
It took a few minutes to locate the direction of the noise, but once I locked onto it, I moved through the trees as quickly and quietly as I could.
My heart felt like it was going to pound right out of my chest, but all I could think about was .
. . What? What was it that had me rushing toward the scary frightening sound in the middle of the woods in the dark?
Sam. It sounded like Sam.
Once the thought took hold, it wouldn’t let go, sending my imagination into a downward spiral of gruesome scenarios and images .
. . She’d had an accident—maybe broken her leg and was trying to crawl toward help.
There really was a murderer out here, or a wild animal.
I drew the line at the possibility of aliens, but that still left enough to spur me on, crashing through the leaves, ducking low-hanging branches and dodging fallen trunks until I was within a hundred feet of the noise, which had grown to a fever pitch.
Moaning. Groaning. Panting. Grunting.
When I came bursting out into the clearing, I looked from side to side, the beam of my headlamp sweeping the area until I located the source.
I’d been right: It was Sam, and she was in trouble.
A primal scream ripped from me as I raised the can of bear repellent and ran straight for the hulking figure who had her pinned to the ground, shirt up around her neck, pants down around her ankles as he pumped away on top of her.
He looked up, shocked, just in time to get a face full of the repellent.
And then he was the one screaming, hands on his face as he managed to disengage from my sister and stumble a few feet away before sinking onto his knees again, wailing in agony.
“Mary?” Sam shrieked. “Oh my God, what did you do?!”
She crawled, half naked, across the frozen ground—toward her assailant.
Toward him?
That’s when it hit me like a frying pan to the head.
My stomach lurched. Horror gave way to something far worse: confusion, betrayal, a sick disbelief that made the edges of my vision blur.
Leo wasn’t her assailant. He was her lover.