Chapter Fourteen
Whit caught her sixth fish, killed it and cleaned it, and then slid all the fillets on her spear to carry back to camp.
She hummed as she walked but then stopped dead as she came upon the smoker.
White smoke billowed out the top, seemingly ready for more fish.
She glanced around for Abby, to thank her, but she was nowhere to be found.
“Must’ve gone to pee.” She angled the heavy spear against the log and knelt to open up the smoker by un-piling the rocks.
When she was finished setting the fillets, all but the largest one, on the racks, she closed the smoker back up and stood.
Abby was still gone. And, come to think of it, so was the hare.
Her heart raced. “I bet she went after that rabbit and got herself lost.”
She circled the camp, studying the brush, looking for an entrance point.
The only one she could find that looked recently trodden through was the one Abby frequented to relieve herself.
She took off in that direction, found tracks well beyond the camp, and began calling for her, but there was nothing.
Whit thanked her lucky stars that her father had shown her how to track.
All she had to do was keep to these markings and she should find Abby.
She halted as she came upon a fork in the worn brush.
One went further south, the other northwest. Confusion muddled her mind for a moment until she realized what had happened.
She knelt and examined the prints. The ones she could see going northwest were smaller in both size and stride, as well as fresher.
They were Abby’s. The others must’ve been Boyd’s from when he went off the day before to hunt.
Whit straightened and followed the smaller tracks.
She walked for close to an hour and then the trail began to circle back and then it veered off in yet another direction.
“Abby!” she called, stopping to listen for her.
A small cry came from the distance. Whit began to run, crashing through low hanging branches and thorny bushes.
She called for her again, got a reply, this time closer, and picked up her speed.
She plowed through more heavy brush into a small clearing and saw Abby sitting beneath a pine tree, knees pulled to her chest, crying.
“Abby!” Whit said, hurrying to her. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
She shook her head, wiped her face, and sniffled. “Just my knee. I think I aggravated it.”
Whit knelt next to her and held her leg, trying to examine it. “Can you extend it?”
“Not all the way. Hurts too bad.”
“Can you walk?”
“I think I’ll need some help.”
Whit helped her stand. “Go ahead and lean on me,” she said. “We’ll take it slow.”
They headed back for the trail, pushing branches out of the way as they went.
“What were you doing way out here?” Whit asked. “You had me worried sick.”
“I was looking for berries.” She stuck her hand in her jacket pocket and brought out some blueberries. “See?”
“You shouldn’t have wandered off.”
“I thought I could find my way back. And I wasn’t expecting my knee to act up.”
“What would’ve happened if I couldn’t find you? You would’ve frozen, or worse…”
“Boyd?”
Whit let out a breath. “Yeah.” She didn’t like thinking about that. Who knows what Boyd would’ve done had he come upon her alone.
“I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”
“Please don’t.”
“I just wanted to help out. To show you I’m…”
“What?”
“Not useless.”
Whit stopped their progress and looked at her. “I don’t think you’re useless, Abby.” Maybe she’d been too hard on her earlier. Spoken too harshly.
“Well, I feel useless. And I feel like the whole Boyd thing was my fault.”
Whit tugged her closer, trying to comfort her.
She wasn’t good at this kind of thing. Intimacy.
Vulnerability. Empathy. Words one of her former lovers had used to describe her relationship failures.
She’d been trying to prove her wrong ever since.
But she still felt she wasn’t very adept.
“I don’t think you’re useless,” she said again, struggling for the right words.
“I just—you’re a novice. You don’t know all that you need to know to keep safe.
So I need you to listen to me. That’s all. ”
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I promise I’ll do better.”
“Don’t apologize. Just don’t—wander off.”
“I won’t. I swear.”
“Okay then. We’re good. Right?” She smiled at her and Abby returned it as they moved slowly along, eventually getting back to camp. Two hours had been lost for fishing, but Whit wrote them off, just glad to have Abby back safe and sound. Now she had to worry about her knee.
Whit slid out of her jacket and slipped off her heavy sweater.
Then she tugged off her undershirt and walked to the creek.
She stood at the water’s edge and gathered a bunch of icy-cold wet rocks and secured them in the shirt, tying it off to trap them inside.
Then she returned to Abby, encouraged her to roll up her pant leg, and placed the bundle on her knee.
“Keep this on you for fifteen minutes at a time for the next couple of hours. When I’m done fishing, I’ll get you some more cold rocks. ”
“Okay.”
Whit settled down on the log, slipped back into her sweater and jacket, and placed the fish she’d saved for her and Abby on the hot slab.
The food began to cook and Whit went to refill their water bottle.
She sipped from it as the water began to filter.
It was crisp and cold. A Godsend. She walked back to Abby and handed it to her. “You should hydrate.”
Abby drank and Whit sank back down on the log. “Where’s the hare?”
“Hm?” She seemed to be lost in thought. “Oh. Right. She wandered off. Guess she wanted to go back home.”
Whit searched her face for sadness or heartache, but saw only solace.
“That’s probably a good thing,” Whit said.
Abby shrugged. “I suppose.”
“You could always get yourself a pet rabbit. When you get home.”
Abby looked at her quizzically and then laughed.
“What?” Whit said.
“Is that your idea of comforting me?”
Whit felt her skin flush. “I don’t know. I just thought—”
“Oh, my, God, it is.” She laughed some more. “Thank you, Whit. That was sweet.”
“Well, it obviously wasn’t the right thing to say. You’re laughing.”
“It was sweet that you tried. I get the sense you aren’t good at these sorts of things.”
“I can be.” She thought of the woman waiting for her at home and how she cared for her and comforted her. She hadn’t had any complaints, so why couldn’t she do it with other women? “At least I think.”
Abby laughed again. “You’re too cute, Whit.”
Whit continued to blush, and she stabbed at the fish. “Let’s eat.” She came around the fire and served Abby hers in the pot and then speared a bite for herself. “It’s good, yes?”
“Mm-hm.”
“You getting used to eating the fish?”
“Seems so.”
“And you’re liking it?”
“For now.”
“But you’re going to go back to veganism?”
She nodded.
“Why? I mean, why are you vegan?”
Abby took a sip of water. “Well, you know how I feel about animals. I think that’s obvious.”
“Yes.”
“But I also do it for health reasons.” She raised an eyebrow. “Want to hear more?”
“Not really.”
Abby chuckled. “Didn’t think so. Most people don’t.”
“I had a girlfriend who was vegan and I heard it all from her. So I know all about animal products being bad for you, etc.”
“Ah, so you’re already educated.”
“And then some.”
Abby looked contemplative. “What happened there? With the girl? If you don’t mind my asking.”
Whit was a little surprised that she didn’t ask further about her sexuality, whereas a lot of people did when she told them.
But Abby didn’t seem struck at her confession to having a girlfriend at all.
She’d just seemed to readily accept it and move on.
Almost as if she’d known or even suspected.
Did that mean…could that mean…Abby was gay?
Butterflies took flight in her chest, fluttering her heart.
“Whit?”
“Hm?”
“Your girlfriend?”
“She moved back to the Lower Forty-eight.”
Abby took a bite of fish. “Was it a mutual breakup?”
Whit poked some more at her fillet. “More or less.” What should she say?
That Myra told her she was cold and indifferent and in no way passionate?
Or that she lacked the skills for any real intimacy?
She went with the safer route, the one that didn’t make her sound like a total failure as a girlfriend.
“She had health issues. Which really was why she chose to become a vegan. Because of her kidney failure.”
Abby straightened her spine. “Oh? And the vegan diet helped her kidneys, didn’t it?”
“It took a little time, but yes. Her kidney function went up from eleven to twenty-four in less than a year.”
“That’s astounding! So then, why did she move away? If she was improving?”
Because she said I wasn’t around enough to be a supportive partner and when I was, I was too distant.
“She wanted to be close to a certain clinic and participate in a vegan study on repairing kidney function.” It was true, she wasn’t lying. She was just leaving out the other stuff. That wasn’t lying, was it?
She flushed again at the possibility. She didn’t usually lie, and thinking that she might be doing so left her feeling awful.
She needed to escape, to get away and leave this conversation altogether.
Damn it, why did every conversation with Abby leave her feeling like she had to hide something because she just couldn’t talk about it?
Whit shoved a last piece of fish in her mouth and grabbed her spear. “I’ll fish closer to camp this time, staying on this end of the creek. So just yell if you need me.”
Abby blinked up at her. “You’re taking off? Already? You didn’t even finish your meal.”
“Gotta get back to the creek. We’re losing daylight. Stay in camp, okay? No running off.”
“I won’t, I swear.”
“And keep that bundle on that knee. Fifteen minutes at a time.” She noticed that Abby didn’t have a watch, so she stopped and unfastened hers.
She hesitated a moment, thinking about how much the piece meant to her, but then decided that Abby wasn’t likely to lose it or damage it by just sitting there.
She gave her the watch and then realized that she probably needed to pack the fire in the smoker, so it would keep going while she was gone.
She didn’t want Abby doing it with her bad knee.
She set her spear aside and tended to the smoker, then emerged and took up her spear once again.
“Smoker’s all set. You shouldn’t need to mess with it. I’ll be back at sunset.”
“I’ll be here waiting.” She smiled, pressing the backs of her hands to the bottom of her chin while batting her eyelashes. Whit couldn’t help but laugh. She waved and headed for the creek, thinking all the while that it wouldn’t be so bad to have a woman like Abby to come home to.