Chapter 7
Marissa
I wake up and do something I haven’t done all week. I don’t check my phone for a text from Levi.
I check the laminated itinerary instead.
It’s the last full day. Tomorrow Claire has an early flight.
Tori has a shift at the hospital the day after.
Jules is flexible but she’s been away from her business for a week.
Jenna needs to get home and process the hundreds of photos she’s shot.
Paige doesn’t have a deadline (summer break, teacher’s schedule) but she’ll ride with whoever’s driving to the airport.
The itinerary says: Group Hike, Ridgeline Trail, 9am. I wrote this in January from my apartment in Atlanta. Six months ago I planned today without knowing what it would feel like to arrive at it.
I get dressed. I make coffee. I organize the group. This is what I do.
“Everybody up. Hiking boots. Sunscreen. Water. We’re doing this.”
Five women groan from five different rooms. I love every single one of them.
~~~
The trail is wide enough for pairs and the morning is perfect.
Clear sky, warm sun, the kind of air that smells like pine and warm dirt and something green that doesn’t have a name in Georgia.
We’re moving at Claire’s pace, which is deliberate, because Claire believes hiking should be done with proper pacing and hydration intervals.
For the first thirty minutes nobody mentions Levi. Nobody mentions staying. Nobody mentions anything except the trail, the view, the absurdly good weather, and Jules’s footwear.
“They’re Timberlands from 1997,” Jules says. “They have provenance.”
“They have zero ankle support,” Tori says.
“Fashion requires sacrifice.”
“Fashion requires an orthopedist.”
This is us. This is what we sound like when we’re just us. Six women on a trail, giving each other a hard time, the noise comfortable and constant and exactly right. I organized this trip for exactly this sound.
Paige is near the front. She’s been hiking stronger than any of us all week. But today she’s just walking. Looking at the view. Breathing.
“I feel like myself again,” she says.
She says it to the mountain as much as to us. But we all hear it.
“The version of me that existed before I was someone’s fiancée and someone’s problem and someone’s project.” She looks back at the group. Her eyes are clear. “I forgot her. I forgot what she sounded like. And then I came here and the river knocked her loose.”
Nobody says anything for a few steps. Because Paige said it simply and simply is the only way it should be received.
“I’m glad,” I say. My voice is doing something I don’t love. I clear my throat. “I’m really glad.”
She smiles. The real one. The one I’ve been waiting all week to see stay.
We keep walking. The trail climbs and the view opens up.
The canyon below, the river winding blue-green through red rock.
I’ve seen this view from the raft, from the overlook where I shot Levi’s website content, from a waterfall that belongs to a man who said “stay” and meant it.
But I’ve never seen it with all five of my best friends beside me. It hits different.
Tori falls into step with me. She’s been quiet today, which is unusual. Tori is direct, not quiet. She says what she means and she doesn’t let silence do work for her.
“I lost a patient last month,” she says.
I look at her.
“Seventeen. Car accident. We did everything right and it wasn’t enough.” She’s looking at the trail, not at me. “I haven’t told anyone that.”
“Tori.”
“I’m fine. I’m always fine. That’s the job.” She pauses. “But I came on this trip because I couldn’t breathe anymore. The ER was taking everything and I was letting it because if I stopped moving I’d have to feel it.”
She looks out at the mountain. Wide and quiet and big enough to hold whatever you bring to it.
“I can breathe here,” she says. “For the first time in months.”
I put my arm through hers. Tori doesn’t do touch easily. She lets me.
We walk like that for a while. The trail beneath us. The mountain around us. The quiet between us that isn’t empty.
Further back, Jenna has been shooting. Of course she has. She’s been photographing this mountain all week with her phone and the creative frustration is visible.
“I need to come back,” she says. “With my real camera. Real lenses. There’s a trail deeper in the backcountry I read about online. Past where we hiked yesterday. The light up there is supposed to be incredible in late summer.”
“By yourself?” Claire asks.
“I do my best work alone. Just me, the camera, and whatever I find.”
“In the backcountry. Alone.”
“Claire, I’ll be fine. I’ve shot in worse conditions than Montana in July.”
“Name one.”
“Iceland. February. Solo.”
“That is not comforting.”
“The photos were extraordinary. That’s what matters.”
Jenna looks at the canyon and I can see her composing the shot she can’t take with her phone. She’ll come back. I can feel it. This mountain has something she wants and she won’t rest until she’s captured it properly.
Claire, meanwhile, has been doing something on her phone at every rest stop. I assumed it was work email.
“Montana has no state sales tax,” she says.
Everyone stops walking.
“I’m just noting it. Informational purposes.”
“Claire,” Jules says. “Are you researching Montana tax codes on a hike?”
“I’m observing fiscal data. I’ve been working from the cabin porch all week and my productivity is up fourteen percent. I tracked it.”
“You tracked your productivity. On vacation.”
“It’s not vacation if I’m working. It’s remote work. And remote work in a state with no state sales tax and a significantly lower cost of living is fiscally interesting.”
“Fiscally interesting,” Jules says. “Is that CPA for ‘I’m thinking about moving to Montana’?”
“It’s CPA for ‘I’m noting data.’ Don’t extrapolate.”
But Claire doesn’t research things casually. Claire researches things she’s going to act on. She investigates before she leaps, and the investigation is always the first step. I file this.
We reach the ridgeline. The view is wide and absurd.
The kind of view that makes you feel small in the way that’s actually comforting.
We sit on a flat rock and drink water and look at the world spread out below us.
Six women on a mountain. Five years since we threw our caps in the air and scattered. This is what we came for.
Jules sits next to me. She’s been waiting for this. I can tell by the way she’s been walking just behind me for the last quarter mile, timing her approach like a closer entering a negotiation.
“So,” she says. “Are we talking about it?”
“Talking about what?”
“You. Staying. The mountain man who said ‘stay’ and meant it.” She pulls her knees up. “I’m not asking to be difficult. I’m asking because you’re my best friend and you’ve never made a decision without a spreadsheet and I want to know this is real.”
“It’s real, Jules.”
“Vacation real or real real? Because vacation real is a thing. You go somewhere beautiful and the air smells good and the sex is amazing and then you get home and reality walks in and you realize you reorganized your entire life because a man had abs and a crooked smile.”
“It’s not about the abs.”
“I know it’s not about the abs. That’s why I’m asking. What is it about?”
I look at the canyon. The river. The mountain that’s been making its case since Day 1 without raising its voice.
“My sister lives here,” I say. “My work is remote. The marketing project with Outfitters is real. It could grow into something.” I pause. “And Levi told me the worst thing about himself and then asked me to stay and meant it with everything he has.”
“You’re a planner, Marissa. You plan things. You’ve never once in your life made a decision this fast.”
“I’ve been making it all week. I just didn’t know I was making it until it was already made.”
Jules is quiet. Jules is never quiet.
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay?”
“Okay, I believe you.” She bumps her shoulder against mine. “But I’m visiting constantly. And I reserve the right to say I told you so if anything goes sideways.”
“It won’t go sideways.”
“Your itinerary didn’t include falling for a river guide and that went sideways.”
“That went exactly right.”
She looks at me for a long beat. Then she smiles. Not the sharp one. The real one. The one she saves for the moments when she means something too much to make it funny.
“Yeah,” she says. “It kind of did.”
~~~
The Burning Tree at night is louder than I’ve ever heard it.
Leena and Noah saved a table in the back. When we walk in, my sister stands up and the look on her face is the one she gets when I arrive anywhere: half thrilled, half bracing for impact. We’re a lot when we’re together. The Dodson sisters don’t do quiet.
“You survived the mountain,” she says, hugging me.
“I thrived on the mountain. I always thrive.”
“It’s your most annoying quality.”
She pulls back. Holds me at arm’s length. Looks at my face. She’s reading me the way she reads charts and lab results: with precision.
“You look different,” she says.
“I’m sunburned.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Noah is behind her. Tall, quiet, warm. He gives me a nod and a smile and that’s Noah’s version of a bear hug.
“Leena said you’ve been having a good trip,” he says.
“Leena told you more than that.”
“Leena told me everything. I’m choosing to let you bring it up when you’re ready.”
I like Noah. He’s the exact right amount of person for my sister: enough to hold her, not so much that he crowds her.
My friends pour into the space around the table.
Leena knows them from FaceTime and group chat screenshots and the endless information relay that runs between sisters.
She hugs Paige for a beat longer than the others because Leena knows about the engagement and Leena communicates care through hug duration.
Then the crew arrives.
I remember them from New Year’s. The lumberjacks who work this mountain, who drink at this bar, who build things and cut things and fix things and take up entirely too much room while doing it. Noah’s people. And now, maybe, mine.