She looked down at her left hand, at the engagement ring she wore. It was a strip of silver foil, carefully folded and twisted around her finger.
She refused to think of what her sister would say about it, and remembered instead how she’d felt when Bobby put it there.
Marry me, he’d said, on bended knee. She’d known she should smile gently, say, Oh, Bobby, of course not. We barely know each other.
But she couldn’t say those words. His dark eyes had been filled with the kind of love she’d only dreamed of, and she’d been lost. Her rational self—the part that had been alone for almost three dozen years and become a single parent—had warned her not to be a fool.
Ah, but her heart. That tender organ would not be ignored. She was in love. So much so that it felt like drowning.
Gina was right. This love was a gift she’d been given, one she’d stopped looking for and almost stopped believing in. She wouldn’t turn away from it because she was afraid. One thing motherhood had taught her—love required boldness. And fear simply came with the package.
She grabbed her sweater off the back of the sofa and slipped it over her shoulders, then she went outside.
Night had almost completely fallen now; darkness enveloped the salmon-hued granite peaks. To the tourists who sat around their campfires making s’mores and roasting hot dogs, it seemed like a quiet time in this patch of green tucked up against the mountains’ vertical walls. The locals knew better. Within walking distance, there was a whole world unseen by the casual observer, unheard by those who spent their lives listening on telephones and watching computer screens.
On peaks nearby, ones with names like Formidable, Terror, and Despair, the glaciers were never still, never silent. They slid forward, groaning, creaking, crunching every rock in their path. Even the heat of an August sun couldn’t melt them away, and along the banks of the mighty Skykomish, just beyond where the humans walked, a thousand species of wildlife preyed on one another.
Yet the night felt still and calm; the air smelled of pine needles and drying grass. It was that time of year when, for a few weeks, the lawns in town would turn brittle and brown. That rarest of times in the Northwest—a patch of dry.
She heard the quiet buzz of the campers’ dinner conversations, punctuated every now and then by a barking dog or a child’s high-pitched giggle. Underneath it all, as steady and familiar as the beating of her heart, was the chattering of the river. These sounds had become the music of her youth, long ago replacing the jumbled cacophony of raucous music that had been Mama’s soundtrack.
She didn’t bother with shoes. Barefoot, her soles toughened by summers spent along this river’s banks, she strolled past the empty pool. In the small, shingled pool house, the filter’s motor thumped on, buzzing. A pair of inner tubes—one shocking pink and one lime green—floated on the darkening water.
She made her nightly rounds slowly, stopping to talk to several of their guests, even sharing a glass of wine with Wendy and Jeff Goldstein at campsite thirteen.
It was completely dark by the time she reached the small row of cabins on the property’s eastern edge. All of the windows glowed with fuzzy golden light.
At first, she thought the sound she heard was crickets, gearing up for a nightly concert. Then she heard the sweet sound of strings being strummed.
Cabin four had a pretty little porch that faced the river. They had taken the cabin off the market this summer because of rain damage to the roof; the vacancy had given Bobby a place to stay until the wedding. Destiny, Dad had said when he gave Claire the key.
Now, destiny sat on the edge of the porch, cross-legged, his body veiled in shadows, a guitar across his lap. He stared out at the river, plucking a slow and uncertain tune.
Claire eased into the darkness beneath a giant Douglas fir. Hidden, she watched him. The music sent shivers skimming along her flesh.
Almost too quietly to hear, he started to sing. “I’ve been walkin’ all my life … on a road goin’ nowhere. Then I turned a corner, darlin’ … and there you were.”
Claire’s throat tightened with an emotion so sweet and powerful she felt the start of tears. She stepped out of the shadows.
Bobby looked up and saw her. A smile crinkled the suntanned planes of his face.
She stepped toward him, her bare feet making a soft, thumping beat on the hard, dried grass.
He began to sing again, his gaze on her face. “For the first time in my life … I believe in God almighty … in the Lord my grandpa promised me … ’cause, honey, I see Heaven in your eyes.” He strummed a few more chords, then thumped his hand on the guitar and grinned. “That’s all I’ve written so far. I know it needs work.” He put down the guitar and moved toward her.