Seven
We headed upstream, Hunter in the stern for muscle power and steering, me up front in the bow, paddling and scouting for rocks and shallow spots. Once we left Moraine behind us, hardwoods flanked ridges following the banks of the river. Then the trees on the east side opened up and the slope tapered off into cattail marshes. Red-winged blackbirds perched on top of cattails and wetland grasses, calling to each other. When they flew off almost simultaneously, it should have been an indication of things to come. But we missed the warning.
Hunter and I hadn’t said much until now, although I was bursting with curiosity. “What’s new with Carrie Ann?” I finally asked. I couldn’t help myself. Call me nosy, but I really wanted to know what they were doing together. Back when Carrie Ann and I hung out in high school, Hunter hadn’t cared for her personality. Of course, times and people change. I still couldn’t see the two of them being close, though.
Hunter laughed easy behind me. “Jealous?”
“That’s the arrogant man I know so well,” I teased. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I was just wondering.” Which wasn’t exactly true. Hunter and I had spent some time together recently and I liked what I saw.
He chuckled again, but didn’t answer my question.
I pressed on. “I have to tell Carrie Ann she won’t be working for me anymore.” I kept a keen eye out for any sign of my kayak, first scanning the sides of the river in case the pint-sized troublemakers had pulled it ashore, then peering mid-stream in case they’d sunk it like last time. Those kids could have left it anywhere.
“I wouldn’t fire her if I were you,” Hunter said.
“I can’t handle any more of her erratic behavior. She’s an alcoholic.”
“She needs a job, and she needs the stability you can provide her.”
“Listen to you defending her.” I switched my paddle to the other side, dipped the blade while I watched ripples of wind glide across the water. All bird life had vanished from sight because of the incoming storm.
“Would you reconsider your decision if I told you she’s going to AA meetings?” Hunter said.
“Since when? She was drunk at the store yesterday.”
“She just had her first one.”
That surprised me. Carrie Ann had come a long way if she was ready to finally admit she had a drinking problem.
Now that Hunter mentioned her newfound sobriety, I couldn’t remember seeing any beer bottles on their lunch table.
“She didn’t say anything to me about AA,” I said. “Carrie Ann didn’t mention one word to me, and I’m family.”
“Maybe she didn’t tell you because you’re family.”
“I wouldn’t have told anybody else. She could have trusted me.”
“Give her another chance?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.” I stopped paddling and twisted around to look at Hunter. “Should we head back?” He looked up. So did I. The sky had darkened significantly since we’d set out.
“I don’t hear thunder in the distance,” he said. “I’m not afraid of a little water. Unless you want to turn around?”
I listened for rumbling. “I don’t hear anything, either.”
“Then onward, Pocahontas.”
It figured that soon after, the sky let loose. I could hear rain slapping at the treetops, driving through to the next layer of canopy before pounding into the water around the canoe like buckshot. We guided the canoe under as much cover as we could find along the wooded side of the shoreline, then met in the middle of the canoe to huddle under the windbreaker Hunter had had the foresight to bring along.
In better weather, this was my favorite part of the Oconomowoc River, where it continued all the way to Loew Lake, which nestled in a valley within one of our state forests. I’d completed that scenic journey many times. From where we sat I could see the Ice Age Trail following the west side of the river.
Before long, rain was falling in sheets and the windbreaker broke down as a working tarp. Hunter held the canoe in place with a firm grip on a thick maple branch, otherwise we would be spinning out of control in what I feared might develop into funnel weather.
If the firehouse tornado siren went off, it meant we were in big trouble.
I remembered fantasizing about an adventure similar to this when I watched Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner fight their way through a Colombian rain forest in Romancing the Stone. And again when I saw Six Days, Seven Nights, where Harrison Ford and Anne Heche crash-land on a deserted island. How she couldn’t adore him from the very beginning was beyond my comprehension.
Recklessness and romance. That’s what I craved.
Hunter had that same starlike male sexiness that Ford and Douglas had. But I didn’t look half as good as Kathleen or Anne did with mud all over and their hair plastered to their faces. Not to mention the cold. Suddenly, I was freezing to death in wet clothes that clamped onto my body like cling wrap. It didn’t feel good at all, and totally not sexy.
“How are you doing?” Hunter asked, with water streaming down his face.
“I need a hot shower.” I tried to keep the whimper out of my voice. My kayak could go fly a kite for all I cared.
“You’ll have to settle for hot conversation instead,” Hunter said, still holding us in place with one hand clutching the branch. The other arm squeezed me closer to his body, where I got a really good view of his feet.
They were tanned and toned and shiny wet from the rain, with wisps of man hair on each toe.
I needed to redirect my thoughts before he tuned into them, an ability I’ve discovered that most men possess as long as it involved sexual context. “I wanted to thank you for trying to get Grace to agree to an autopsy,” I said, wiping mascara from my face. Movie stars never lost their makeup, even after a night between the sheets. So much for this particular fantasy.
“Grace is a stubborn woman when she makes up her mind,” Hunter said.
“Her sister-in-law said someone from the beekeepers association was picking up the honeybees tonight.”
“Don’t you want them?”
“Of course I do, but apparently Grace didn’t think I was the best choice. And the bees aren’t really mine, at least not legally. Manny owned them. Grace can do what she wants.”
“Maybe she felt that if you had them, the bees would be too close to home for her. They’d be a constant reminder of the day she lost her husband.”
I shivered as the wind gusted again, driving rain into my skin like pinpricks. “Let’s get out of here.”
“We’ll have the wind at our back. We can give it a try.” He pulled me closer, if that was even possible. “First, promise to give Carrie Ann another chance.”
“What’s it to you?” I blurted out, pulling away enough to meet his eyes. “Why all the sudden concern?”
“Because she came to me for help.”
“Why would she do that?”
He shrugged. “What do you say?” he pressed. “Give her another chance?”
I couldn’t refuse those deep blue eyes. I sighed. “As long as she stays sober, comes in on time, and does her job. Yes, I’ll give her another chance. But you owe me.”
“Thanks. Come on. Let’s go. The storm is passing.”
Which was true. As quickly as the rain had started, it was ending. The clouds didn’t exactly part and the sun didn’t shine, but the end was in sight. If only the wind would die down. When Hunter pulled away from me, I tried to wring some of the water out of my halter top.
The adventurous romantic fantasy I had envisioned was completely ruined.
“Is that your kayak?” Hunter called out. I followed his gaze.
“That’s it!”
My kayak must have been lodged between clumps of cattails in the marsh, and the wind and torrential downpour had set it free. Designed for speed, it came at us fast with the wind gusting at its stern and vegetation streaming behind it like it had risen from a watery grave. We paddled like mad to intercept it before it crashed into the rocky bank on our side of the river or had a chance to change course and take off downstream ahead of us.
We came within reaching distance. I dropped the paddle into the bow of the canoe and stretched out both hands to get a firm grip on the kayak.
What I saw made me sit back down hard. I couldn’t form words. My mind couldn’t get past the image of the body sprawled faceup inside the kayak, hair knotted and plastered to her face, her red top drenched and splattered to her body like thick paint.
“Dammit!” I heard behind me.