Chapter Ten #2
“Don’t worry,” Bree whispered to her. “Noah won’t let the details get too out of hand. Although the way Sam got excited about that snake, I think he could probably handle details about a bear attack.”
“Oh.” Marilyn relaxed. “A bear attack. Right. Yeah, Sam can handle that.”
Marilyn hadn’t been worried about the topic, Bree realized.
“You know Noah would never hurt Sam, right?” she whispered.
Marilyn gave a shaky laugh. “I know that. Of course, I know that.”
“Oh, my gosh, really? That’s awesome!” Sam’s excited voice called out from next to Noah, who was obviously imparting some vast wilderness secret to the boy. “It’s so gross! Mom would never do it.” Sam belly-laughed.
They watched as Noah leaned his head closer to tell Sam something else.
“I don’t want him to live his life scared,” Marilyn whispered. “I already hate myself enough for what I let them witness happen to me. I don’t want to spend their whole childhood hovering over them and making them afraid to try new things and befriend new people.”
Bree ran a hand along her friend’s back, the gesture coming so much more naturally now than it would have a year ago, since she now had so many people in her life teaching her how to give and receive love.
“The world isn’t always a safe place. Your kids learned that early, and, yeah, that’s a tragedy of gargantuan proportions.
But look at them, Marilyn.” She gestured first at Eva, who was holding Tanner’s hand and pressing her face close to a tree so she could see the critter, giggling every few seconds.
Then over to Sam, who was staring at Noah with huge, wide eyes, obviously completely entranced with whatever the man was saying.
“Yeah?” Marilyn asked. “They don’t seem to be doing anything particularly amazing.”
Bree smiled. “Exactly. They’re kids getting excited about caterpillars and probably some gross story about peeing on a tree to keep away a bear. And they’re fine. Whatever you did, whatever you suffered through to protect them? It worked.”
“I’m totally going to try that!” Sam yelled.
Noah chuckled. It was the first time Bree had heard him laugh. Even Tanner turned around at the sound.
“We’ll check with your mom first. And you definitely have to make sure there is an adult around.”
Noah looked over and winked at Marilyn, causing her to blush. Bree bit her tongue to keep from teasing her about it.
“Noah and I have been spending a little bit of time together,” Marilyn said so softly Bree could hardly hear her.
“Spending time together as in dating?”
Marilyn flushed even more. “Not really. I mean he did have dinner with us once last week before the fire.”
Bree nudged her hip against her friend. “That sounds a little bit like a date.”
“Mostly he comes by after the kids go to bed at night.”
Bree tried not to do a double take at that news.
Certainly, they were both consenting adults, and although Marilyn may be technically still married to Jared on paper, it was safe to say the marriage had ended sometime around when he’d dislocated her shoulder, broken her nose, cracked her ribs, fractured her wrist and sent her into a coma.
If Marilyn could find a little bit of happiness with Noah—and vice versa—then damn all the people who would judge her for it. But Bree was still a little surprised.
“Good for you. I say get as much action as you can.”
Marilyn’s jaw dropped and her eyes got wide. “Oh, my God, it’s not like that. Noah doesn’t come over to have sex.” Although the woman didn’t look too distraught about that idea. “He’s been teaching me self-defense moves.”
Now, that sounded like Noah.
“Well, there’s no one better you could learn them from,” Bree said, meaning it.
“I know.”
“And heck, that sort of is dating for Noah.”
“I know,” Marilyn whispered again.
Tanner and Noah got everyone moving forward again, focusing more on the smaller, gentler animals rather than predators. They answered any questions the kids or Barb or Francis had, while Bree and Marilyn brought up the rear.
They’d gone about another thirty minutes when Tanner stopped and pointed out a group of marmots lying out on a rock, far enough from the humans not to be threatened. Noah handed everyone his binoculars so they could take a closer look at the large ground squirrels.
“Marmots are pretty cool,” Tanner said. “They eat grass and flowers and live in groups of between ten and twenty. During warm weather, they pretty much spend all day eating and lying out in the sun, getting fat.”
“Sounds kind of boring,” Sam said.
Tanner rubbed the kid’s hair. “The amazing thing about marmots is that they hibernate over half their lives. At least six months out of every year, they’re underground, living inside a hole, just trying to survive.”
“They stay inside a hole for six months?” Eva asked. “They don’t come out to eat or anything?”
Tanner tapped her on her nose. “Nope. They just hunker down, breathe in and out, and survive. That’s it.”
“Boring,” Sam muttered again.
“I have no idea how Tanner knows all this stuff,” Bree murmured to Marilyn. “I’m not sure if it’s the nerdiest thing I’ve ever seen or the sexiest.”
She glanced over at Marilyn, but she was just staring out blankly ahead of her.
“You okay?” Bree asked.
“I’m a marmot,” Marilyn finally said. “Spending half my life living in a hole, just trying to survive. That’s basically what I’ve done.”
She said it so softly there was no way anyone else could’ve possibly heard her.
But when Noah spoke again, he was looking directly at her.
“I don’t think marmots are boring at all.
I think they’re pretty amazing. They don’t really have any true defense mechanisms like other animals do, and it’s just sheer strength of will that keeps them alive during the winter.
They survive because they are determined to. That’s something to be respected.”
Marilyn finally looked away from Noah.
“All right,” Tanner said. “Let’s get going. We’ve got about another mile until we get to the rafts.”
Everyone picked up their pace. The rafting was the highlight of the trip for Sam. He liked the tents and the wilderness and whatever crazy stuff Noah had told him about escaping bears, but rafting was truly exciting.
“We’ll only be on the water a couple hours,” Tanner said. “And there aren’t any real rapids until much farther down the river.”
Sam let out a disappointed groan. Tanner chuckled and ruffled his hair. “How about you get some rafting experience under your belt today and we’ll start building up from there. Everybody has to learn in the safe water.”
“I’ll bet you and Noah didn’t have to learn in baby water like this,” Sam said when they reached the area where the rafts were stored.
“Not only did we learn in water just like this, we learned in this exact water,” Noah said. “Lips wasn’t much more than your age, and I was just a couple years older when our dad brought us here for the first time. So don’t be talking junk about this water.”
Sam’s eyes grew big. “Really? You first went rafting here?”
“Yep,” Tanner said. “And a year later I was already doing class III rapids. So let’s get to work.”
Sam was a lot more focused after finding out this was where his two idols got their start.
Like they’d done everything else, Tanner and Noah carefully explained the logistics of rafting. Noah readily admitted that Tanner was the better raftsman, although Bree was sure he could do it just fine.
Tanner pulled the map out of his backpack and showed everyone exactly where they’d be going.
“At this second fork, we’ll take the left.
Farther downriver is where the rapids get a little more exciting than what we’re looking for today.
” He winked at Sam. “But maybe soon. If it’s okay, Bree Cheese and I and the two rug rats will go down with the majority of the supplies.
Noah will have the honor of escorting the rest of the lovely ladies. ”
Bree was going to offer to trade with Marilyn so she could be with her kids. But when she heard the other woman mutter “no marmot,” she held her tongue. Marilyn was trying to face her fears by allowing the kids to be away from her. Bree wanted to help.
And when Noah gave Marilyn a reassuring nod and a small smile, Bree was even more convinced this was the right thing.
Soon they were on their way. The first hour on the river Bree just sat back and enjoyed herself.
The water was moving at a fast enough pace to keep everybody interested and it felt like nothing could go wrong out here.
The kids kept demanding Noah and Tanner race, and they took turns paddling hard to get in front of each other.
About thirty minutes later they came up on the second fork and Tanner let Noah pull ahead.
“Aw, man,” Sam said. “They’re beating us!”
Tanner just smiled. “Noah’s got to get ahead so he can help us dock and get the supplies out. And come on, you and I both know we could take them.”
“Yeah, we could!”
Tanner slowed them down further with his oar as Noah took the fork. Bree could see why he wanted to have Noah already stopped and ready to help them. The speed of the water had definitely picked up.
She was just about to ask him about it when an odd screeching noise came from the front of the raft. She looked back at Tanner, who was steering them with the paddle. “Do you hear that?”
When the sound got louder a moment later, everyone could hear it.
Tanner’s muttered curse was cut off when the raft jerked suddenly, the front end collapsing, throwing them all forward.
Both kids screamed as they were thrown forcefully into the water. Bree grabbed for Eva, but the rapids pulled her away, then pulled Bree under.