34. Colt
COLT
Alice wears a bright orange life vest that’s too big for her small frame, but it’s all they had left so late in the day. Her hair is pulled back into a high ponytail, reminding me of what she used to look like coming home from tennis practice.
“You good?” I check.
She nods, her smile eager in the fading light. “Yep!”
I push her kayak off the muddy bank and it thunks into the water, where she immediately begins paddling toward the middle. Once she’s off, I slide my own kayak into the tea-colored water and jump in. The life jacket is a comfort against my body, a ghost of plate carriers I wore for many years.
As I paddle, my eyes drift toward the sky.
We’ve got maybe an hour of light left, then we’ll need to pull out.
It took longer than expected to get the rentals sorted, but the river is glassy and calm, reflecting the loblolly pines and bald cypress trees that line the bank, and now that we’re out here, I’m glad we came.
Alice is a few feet ahead, though I catch up easily enough.
She smiles when our boats become parallel.
It’s too wide, that smile, not quite reaching her eyes.
But I smile back, knowing last Saturday impacted her more than she lets on.
I’d like to think she’s doing what she always does—focusing on the positive—but this feels different.
She’s fidgety, anxious, and earlier, when she’d opened the door for me, I knew she’d taken her parents' disapproval—of her bookshop, of me—even harder than I’d feared.
I guess I did too. I still find it difficult to breathe when I think about how sideways everything went.
She put in so much work, and then it all got fucked up…
because of me. I want to hate Warren, and a part of me does.
But he’s also my brother, and always will be.
We came from the same situation, but I joined the Marines.
For eight years, I was surrounded by men, many of whom shared a similar background to mine.
The Marines offered us a clean slate. A chance to start again.
We fought hard, did what we were told, and in the end, more than anything else, we gained self-respect.
We earned that.
But Warren never had that transformation.
He became a firefighter, but I don’t know what he did before that.
I don’t even know if he’s still doing that.
What I do know is—despite how physically challenging and mentally taxing firefighting must be—it doesn’t require the same radical reset that the Corps demands.
And so I have to wonder how he’s dealing with our past.
Alice stops paddling and looks around. “It’s so beautiful out here, don’t you think? I always thought Holly River was prettiest in the fall.”
I nod to that, pausing my own paddle to hear a bullfrog croaking in the reeds. Up ahead, a Great Blue Heron wades in the water, releasing a dinosaurian cry.
“Only eleven days until the Fall Festival,” Alice reminds me. “You’re going to love it.”
“You think so?” I watch as she trails her fingertips through the water. “And yet you still won’t tell me what you’re planning. You know, I could help if—”
Alice shakes her head, laughing. “Nope. You’ll have to wait. I want it to be a surprise.”
I smile because, for a moment, she seems genuinely happy again. “I’m sure I’ll love it.”
“What’s your favorite thing about Holly River?” she asks suddenly.
I shake my head. “What’dya mean?”
“Like, what’s your favorite thing about living here?”
I paddle, thinking on her question. I know what Alice is doing, but the truth is I don’t have a lot of good memories about this place before I lived with the Sinclairs.
The first memory that springs to mind is the summer carnival.
Warren and I went every year because it was free to walk around.
But we never rode the Tilt-a-Whirl or Zipper.
Never had money for candy apples or cotton candy.
To me, Holly River wasn’t the postcard town Alice knows it as.
“I like how much you like it,” I say finally.
Alice returns to rowing, faster than before.
Watching her—her graceful neck, adorned in a simple gold necklace—I find myself thinking about Mr. Sinclair, a man I’d thought of as a father figure.
Even after the evolution I experienced in the Marines, returning to Holly River challenged the man I’d become.
Reminded me with crystal clarity what I used to be.
I was slapped with that reminder when Alice’s dad openly opposed me dating his daughter.
But I understood it.
She’s his little girl, and he wants the best for her.
Though I imagine I’m doing better financially than he realizes, I reckon if he were picking a partner for his daughter, he’d want someone with a college degree.
Maybe a future as a doctor, or an attorney, or as the founder of some promising company.
Two well-to-do parents who’d make for solid in-laws.
The kind of partner whose upbringing and future prospects matched or exceeded her own.
He wouldn’t pick an uneducated Marine with a broken-down truck, two problematic parents, and an older brother who wreaks havoc on their home.
And I get that. I think if I had a little girl one day, I might want that for her too.
So what does it say about me that, knowing all this, I still want to keep Alice for myself?
How could I possibly let someone like her go?
Someone who lifts me up and sees the best in the world.
Someone with pitifully small hands I love holding, and a way of laughing that makes me feel like a person again instead of a weapon.
If she’d be better off without me, with someone who could give her a better life, shouldn’t I try to let her have that?
I have to try.
We paddle for a long while, enjoying the scenery and silence. Then, up ahead, I spot the split in the river. To the left, the water remains calm. To the right, it gets choppy. “We should probably get out here. The light’s fading anyway.”
Alice doesn’t slow. She’s staring at the right fork, shoulders tight.
“Alice? Let’s head back.”
“You know,” she says, her voice strangely flat, as if she’s in a trance. “Holly River isn’t perfect. I know that. But have you ever wondered why we have so many festivals and parties?”
She looks directly at me and smiles. It’s a sad smile, and it absolutely shreds me.
“I think it’s because people need it. Life is hard…
for everyone, Colt. Everyone is struggling with things behind closed doors, even if it doesn’t look that way on the outside.
” Her voice cracks, and she pauses. “And I think… I wonder if the people who love towns like Holly River, the ones who call them home, or those who travel to visit them, or even the ones who like to read about them in books… I wonder if those people aren’t the ones hurting the most. And maybe they…
They just need a place like Holly River to try and feel happy again. ”
Alice stops smiling suddenly. It’s there and gone in an instant, as if she’s lowered a mask she’s worn for a decade. And when I see the raw pain in her eyes, it slams into me with the force of a battering ram.
I think about being in the Marines, having brothers in arms. I think about having Dalton, and later Grant, in high school and how them being there helped me survive what would’ve otherwise been unbearable.
I think about Alice alone at an age when having people—when feeling like you fit in—is more important than ever.
I think about being ignored in hallways.
Of sitting alone. Of being whispered about.
Laughed about. I think about her turning towards her parents, hoping they’d fill that gaping hole, only to find them gone.
Or worse, having them question her achievements.
I think about what that would do to someone.
Always feeling inadequate. Unaccepted.
And forcing yourself to smile through it all.
Alice turns toward the river. “I think I’m going to try it.”
My brow furrows. “What?”
I turn and look at what she’s fixed her eyes on. When I realize she means the right side of the river, the rapids—split by a giant, mossy rock—I stiffen. “No,” I say immediately. “We’d need helmets for those rapids. And it’s getting dark.”
“They’re class two,” Alice says without taking her eyes off the split. “It’ll be fine.”
“No, Alice, there’s been rain lately. They’ll be closer to a three. You can’t—”
“Yes,” she snaps. “I can.” She starts paddling, digging into the water. “Get out now if you want,” she clips. “But I’m doing it.”
I know exactly where this is coming from, but there isn’t time to dissect those feelings, because she’s already less than ten feet from the split, paddling faster, shoulder blades working.
And for one asinine moment, I admire Alice’s determination to reclaim a sense of power. I understand it.
I paddle hard until I’ve pulled ahead of her, seconds to spare until there’s no going back. “Okay,” I call out above the rising rush of water. “But follow my lead. If I signal, paddle for the bank immediately. You hear me?”
She nods, a spark of life flaring behind her eyes. “Got it.”
I face forward, shake my head once, adrenaline pumping through my veins. “Alright, then,” I yell. “Let’s go, kid!”
My muscles scream as I propel my kayak into the fast-moving current. The roar of water grows quickly, drowning out the sound of anything else, demanding attention, respect. The transition is instantaneous. The calm, peaceful surface vanishes, replaced by a churning mass of brown and white.
The first drop is a two-foot ledge. I tuck my chin, hit it straight, cold spray hitting my face. I glance back. Alice hits it a little sideways, her kayak wobbling dangerously, but she recovers, working her paddle with a ferocity I didn’t know she possessed.
“Thata’ girl!” I yell, though I doubt she can hear me over the thunder of water.