Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Existential Pain in the Woods
GHOST
I t was definitely about to snow, and the impending weather added pressure to the mission we were on. I had no idea what we might hope to find out in the woods around an old sign, but this was pretty much the way the hunt went. We stumbled around and sometimes we got lucky. And I did think that Emily’s fresh perspective could help.
Aside from her perspective, I found myself glad to have her along. She was unassuming and kind, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit she was beautiful. There was a softness about her—not just the curves of her very attractive figure—but about her personality, her way of being. She was accepting and open, and it was refreshing. I didn’t feel so much like I had to put on a show around her, or try to be any version of myself I didn’t think I actually was anymore, something I’d found myself doing for my friends. Something that was exhausting sometimes.
I slid a look toward her now, charmed by the way her dark eyes scanned everything out the windows of the car, as if it was all brand new to her. Her enthusiasm made me see things in a fresh way too.
Of course she didn’t know the whole truth about me. She didn’t know why I’d left the navy, or why I’d ended up basically hiding out at seven thousand feet in Colorado. But that was actually part of what attracted me to her, I knew. She brought fresh eyes to everything—even me. But at some point, I’d have to tell her. At least, I would if we decided that whatever was between us would last longer than this week—and that was a big if, given that we’d kissed once.
The thing was, with every minute I spent around this woman with the dark hair and inquisitive eyes, the more I thought there was a real reason she’d come to Kasper Ridge. I’d never been a big believer in fate—when you’d had terrible things happen in life it felt better to believe they were random, not part of some master plan. But Emily? Emily might make me believe in something bigger than myself. And so, at some point, I would have to tell her the truth.
You didn’t take a man’s life and just shove the fact aside and go on with your own.
And when I did tell her? I knew it might change things. It would definitely change the way she looked at me, and I was in no hurry for that.
“Next left, Arch.” Aubrey had a habit of backseat driving.
“Yeah, saw the sign.”
“Just making sure. There’s nowhere to turn around for miles.”
“Thanks, Aubrey.” I stuffed down annoyance at my sister’s need to control things. I was used to it.
“Here!” I slowed and turned across the road into the turnoff, which had a small sign I’d never paid attention to before, reading “Lutheran Camp.”
We bounced down an old, paved road for a little way and then it shifted to packed dirt, which was no less bumpy. Finally, the road widened into a clearing that held parking berms and a sign indicating that the camp was closed for the season.
I threw the big car into park, and for a moment no one moved. The forest was tall and dark on all sides of the little clearing, and with the clouds descending, it felt almost otherworldly. A shred of doubt rose in me, a hesitation about exploring when I knew weather was coming any minute. I felt responsible for my sister, for Emily. But I pushed the worry aside. This was not an aircraft carrier, we were not at sea. My fear was disproportionate to the situation. I steeled myself and opened the driver’s door. Everyone else followed suit, though no one spoke until we were gathered at the front of the car, peering around us.
“It feels like we’re a million miles from anywhere,” Emily said, her voice low.
“Let’s look around,” Wiley suggested, taking Aubrey’s hand.
We headed toward the stacked firewood and tent platforms scattered around a central clearing, and I spotted the arched sign at the back of the area. A little flicker of excitement burst to life within me, and I placed a hand on Emily’s lower back as I pointed. “There it is!”
Aubrey and Wiley moved toward the arch, and my sister looked up at the words “Kasper Ridge Worship” with wide eyes. Emily and I followed, and she stayed close by my side, almost tucked into me.
It was odd, seeing the arch standing there at the edge of the clearing. In my mind it had become part of the Kasper Ridge lore, just one more bygone artifact of my great-uncle’s time. But it was still here, and it looked sturdy and proud.
I moved around the arch, running my hands down the logs on each side of the overhead sign, looking for anything that would seem to be a good reason for having come all this way.
“There’s this,” Emily said, pointing to a spot halfway up one of the posts. I moved around to look at where she was pointing, Aubrey and Wiley just behind me.
There, carved into a heart were the initials MK and LL. “Marvin Kasper and Lola Lowe?” I asked.
“Must be,” Wiley said.
It was odd, seeing the lines carved into the wood, knowing my uncle had likely been the one to work a blade there to create them. I ran my fingers over the outline of the heart, thinking about what he must have been feeling as he stood right here, with the woman he loved, making an indelible mark that would outlast even him.
There were a few other sets of initials carved into the wood, but surprisingly few. I imagined the counselors didn’t appreciate that type of vandalism—even if it was in the name of love—and most of these carvings looked weathered and old, as if they’d been made before this was a camp. I was sure Uncle Marvin’s fit that description.
“What is this?” Aubrey asked, tracing her finger along a deeply carved line that led from the heart around Uncle Kasper’s initials and ended in an arrow. It looked like an afterthought, like maybe it had been added later.
“An arrow,” Wiley said. “Where is it pointing?”
We all circled the post, looking for something at the terminus of the arrow, or in the direction it indicated, but there was nothing else on the post we could find. Frustration dug into me as the cold began to make its presence known. We couldn’t stay out here much longer without winter coats and gloves. I glanced at my sister, who was beating her hands against her legs, as if trying to regain circulation.
“Is it pointing into the woods?” Emily asked, her arms wrapped around her body as she suppressed a shiver. We didn’t have much time.
“Not super excited about wandering through the woods at the moment,” I said, and I glanced up just in time to see the first snowflakes drifting down. The weight of my responsibility for everyone here became heavier as I thought about what would happen if we got stuck out here. “We should probably go.”
“Oh my gosh!” Emily put her arms out to catch the drifting flakes, her face aglow with excitement. “Snow!”
“Oh!” Aubrey made a startled noise too, but when I snapped my gaze to hers, she forced a smile. “Snow,” she said.
“You’ve seen plenty of snow before,” I told her, something more than my protective instinct flaring to life inside me.
“Always exciting,” she said, and then she moved toward the closest tree outside the clearing. “If it’s pointing off that post, it’d be to this tree or that one there.” She stopped next to a wide trunk and scanned it.
“Anything?” Wiley moved to her side.
They scanned the tree and I should have gone to do the same, but my attention had been captured by Emily’s fascination with her first snowfall. She was grinning up at the sky, and just when I thought she couldn’t possibly be cuter, she tipped her head back and stuck her tongue out. When a flake landed on it, she turned to me with a huge smile. “Got one!”
Her enthusiasm chased away the lingering worry I’d been feeling, and I smiled back at her. “What do you think?”
“How long before we can build a snowman?”
“We’d better be long gone before that much snow piles up out here,” I told her. “But we can build one back at the resort if we get enough.”
“I’ll hold you to it,” she said. Her smile was so open, so contagious, I felt like if I just stayed near her, none of the worries I carried every day would feel so heavy.
“Guys?” Wiley summoned us over to the tree he and Aubrey had been focused on. “There’s definitely something here.” Wiley lifted his hands to the spot she was staring at and scrubbed at the trunk. “Lichen growing over it.”
Emily and I joined them, and the excitement inside me grew bigger as we confirmed there was another carving. It wasn’t as deep as the initials and partially obscured by the moss that covered some parts of the trunks.
“Is it a number?” Emily asked as Wiley’s fingers cleared the green growth.
“Oh!” Aubrey said suddenly.
Wiley stopped and looked down at her. “You okay?”
“I meant, ‘oh look, it is a number,’” my sister said but her voice was off.
“What’s going on?” I asked, turning to focus on her. She wore a strange expression, and I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. Aubrey was pretending everything was fine.
“Read the number,” she said, ignoring my concern as Wiley moved toward her.
“525?” Emily said. “Or maybe 575? Or it could be 515. But those are fives, for sure.”
The snow had begun drifting down determinedly around us, and it was cold enough that the flakes stuck to the ground and held. The road would stay warmer for a bit, preventing much accumulation there, but if it kept up, we were definitely in for it.
“We need to get moving pretty soon,” I said, the worry reigniting inside me. There was something going on with my sister, and I didn’t want to be responsible for a very pregnant woman having any kind of issue this far beyond a paved road.
“Photo,” Emily suggested, lifting her phone out of her jacket pocket and taking a few pictures.
“Let’s head back,” Wiley said, meeting my eyes with the same worry I felt.
“Or,” Aubrey said, drawing the word out. “Or maybe we might want to...oh shit.”
I stared at her, fear spiking inside me as her face went from surprise to worry, and she looked down at her feet.
“What’s wrong?” Wiley asked, his voice higher than usual.
“That was my water breaking, I guess,” Aubrey said.
A decidedly dark spot was creeping down the legs of her jeans. My inner alarms suddenly began ringing at eleven, but Aubrey seemed completely calm, collected.
“That’s it.” Wiley scooped her up and practically sprinted back to the car. “Let’s go, Ghost!”
Emily and I exchanged a wide-eyed look and then followed back to the car. I slid into the driver’s seat, turning to look back at Aubrey. “You okay? What do you need? What do we do?”
“I guess we’d better head to the hospital,” she said, sounding impressively calm.
I glanced at Emily, who looked totally put together given the impending labor and snowstorm. “It’s an hour in the wrong direction. Should we take you back first?”
Emily shook her head. “Of course not. Worry about me later. Let’s go.”
“The baby’s going to be born in an SUV,” Aubrey moaned. “I’m a terrible mother.”
“You’re going to be a fantastic mother,” Wiley assured her as I started the engine and pulled us back onto the rumbly dirt road.
“Should we call the hospital to let them know we’re on the way?” I asked Wiley.
“Should we call an ambulance?” he asked.
“The ambulance would be coming from somewhere down the hill,” Aubrey chimed in. “It would be quicker to get going than to wait for them to come up to drive me back down.”
“Good point,” I said, turning onto the highway that would take us down to Colorado Springs.
For the hour and a half it took us to get down the hill through the building storm, Aubrey made increasingly unhappy noises as the baby made it clear that today was the day.
“Are you in pain?” I asked her several times.
“Existential pain, I guess,” she said. “No contractions yet, but I’m just...” Aubrey’s voice cracked. “I guess it’s okay to admit... I’m just, I’m scared.”
“Hon,” Wiley said, and I could see him scooting across the back to take her in his arms. “It’s gonna be fine. We’re together. And if I have to deliver this baby with Ghost and Emily in an SUV, we’ll get it done.”
Aubrey moaned louder.
“Let’s call the hospital so they know we’re on the way. They can get her doctor in and ready to go,” Wiley suggested.
“I can call,” Emily said, already poking at the screen of her phone. “Which hospital?”
Wiley gave her the information and Emily made the call, sounding authoritative and professional as she informed whoever she was speaking with that my sister was in labor and repeated the pertinent details Aubrey dictated to her through the phone. “They’ll be ready for you,” Emily said, as she tucked her phone back into her bag.
“Thanks,” Aubrey said, and I felt the weird tension between my sister and Emily break right then. Whatever reservations Aubrey had faded in the face of the situation we were all in together.
Worry and fear dueled inside me as I forced myself to channel that part of me I’d buried long ago, the part that could compartmentalize emotion and focus completely on the task at hand. I’d flown a jet at speeds most people would never know. I could handle an SUV on a snowy road.
Still, when we arrived at the hospital, my hands hurt from white knuckling the wheel and I felt shaky as the adrenaline began to clear my blood. We pulled up to Emergency and Wiley scooped Aubrey out, practically sprinting into the hospital with her. I looked at Emily and let out a shaky laugh. “Made it.”
“We did,” she said, her easy tone reassuring. She dropped a hand on my forearm and squeezed, the warmth of her touch calming some of the adrenaline shooting through me. “Should we go park?”
“Yeah.” I shook out my hands and we found a spot for the car and then went inside.
They had Aubrey in a wheelchair in front of the check-in desk, and Wiley was answering questions for the registrar, who immediately admitted Aubrey and sent her up to where her doctor was waiting for her. Soon, we were all heading up to maternity, and Emily and I found the waiting room while Wiley went back with my sister.
It was anticlimactic, settling into chairs in the quiet space after the mad dash to get to the hospital. I had a fleeting thought that my parents should be here, that they would be so proud in this moment. But they’d been gone for years, and I was all Aubrey had. For better or for worse. It was one of the reasons leaving Kasper Ridge was something I’d been putting off, even though I knew I wanted to explore.
“You doing okay?” Emily asked, her eyes fixed on my face. It was odd, someone asking me that. For so many years, I’d made a point of being fine. Of not giving anyone any reason to worry about me. It felt good.
I blew out a breath. “Yeah, I think so. Glad we made it.” I wasn’t worried about Aubrey, not really—her sheer force of will got her through most things. Sometimes I envied her that way.
Emily smiled, and her expression helped me relax a bit, easing the accumulated tension from my limbs.
“I saw a vending machine out there. You want anything?” she asked, pointing to the hallway we’d come through.
“No, that’s okay.”
“I’m gonna grab some water.” She rose and I watched her disappear back through the waiting room door. I liked her. A lot. And I liked having her close—something in her very existence was soothing.
When she got back, I realized how far from her planned trip this journey had become. She was missing time with the writers at the conference, with her friend Christine, and stuck here in the snow with me at a hospital. “Hey, I’m really sorry about all this.”
“It’s not your fault at all,” she laughed. “Plus, it’s really exciting.”
I glanced toward the window, which showed the snow falling in a dense veil outside. There was no way we were getting back up the mountain tonight. “I mean, about bringing you down here. I think we’re going to be stuck at least overnight, not just because of the baby, but the snow.”
She followed my gaze and shrugged. “Adventure.”
I laughed. “Right. Will this make it into the article?”
“I’m not going to include your private family moments in an article,” she said, allaying any fears I might have had. Then she tugged her phone out of her pocket, pulling up the photo of the carving and angling it at me. “So. We have time to think. What do you think the numbers mean?”
“We don’t even know Uncle Marvin put them there.” The hunt was a welcome distraction from my concern about my sister, and Emily seemed to know this.
“I guess not.” She squinted at the image on her phone. “Or maybe we do.”
“What?”
“Look.” She pointed to the corner of the screen, where the letters “MK” were clearly visible at the edge of the frame.
“Marvin Kasper. He sure went to a lot of trouble. I wish he’d just written us a letter.” Finally, another clue. It was validating to find that we weren’t completely on the wrong path.
“This is a lot more fun.”
“He left a lot to chance,” I pointed out. The tree could have been cut down. The whole place could have been turned into a parking lot.
“True. But he had faith in you.”
I stared at the number. “I think it’s a one.”
“Five fifteen then. What does it mean?”
“I don’t know. A time? A date?”
“A room number?” Emily asked.
“That could be it. That’d be one of the staff rooms we haven’t renovated yet.” Excitement sparked inside me. That had to be it. But there was nothing we could do about it now, and Aubrey wouldn’t be pleased to be left out of any part of the treasure hunt anyway.
I sent a quick text to Antonio, letting him know where we were as Emily texted her roommate so she wouldn’t worry. And then Emily and I settled back to wait.