She just wasn’t sure she wanted to be in his.
Izzy waved at the ranger on the way in and steered the car into the small lot by the campsite supply store. “There’s another trailhead that can get us where we’re going—via the old stagecoach trail—but I like starting over here instead.”
“What’s the difference?”
“That one is wide and flat to start, more of a walk than a hike. This entrance through the campground is more like a deer trail.” She could tell from the look on his face that he’d have preferred the former, but she pretended she didn’t notice. She liked the ritual of embarking with blind trust in the barely visible path, the satisfaction of pushing to the point where you could see out ahead of you.
They shut their doors as quietly as they could in the crisp morning. Dome tents of all colors and sizes dotted the drive-in campsites. Some sites were still quiet with sleep, while others had fires going, where campers huddled sipping instant coffee. Izzy inhaled the scent of woodsmoke and felt her blood pressure lower—but only for the fleeting minute it took to remember that the last time she’d sat around a fire had been with Kristin. As she led the way to the hidden trailhead, she hoped Paul wouldn’t be reminded of it too. The last thing she wanted was to spend the morning fielding more questions she didn’t have answers to.
Izzy plunged into the woods, eager to leave as much as she could behind, but Paul was stepping over branches and through weeds as if one of them might jump up and bite him. She slowed her pace so he could keep up.
“We’re just going to make our way down this hill to the creek, and then the path is more defined.”
He nodded, uneasy, and she pressed on with him trailing behind her, hoping he wasn’t hating this, hating her, wishing he hadn’t come. She just had to lead him to the right spot in time. None of this awkwardness would be worth it unless they made it.
The narrow dirt trail declined steeply, cutting and winding this way, then the other, and she ignored his grunts from behind her until at last the path opened up to the rocks alongside the creek.
Here in the ravine, the otherwise subtle shortening of the daylight hours had had an amplified effect on the slow trek toward autumn. While their neighborhood was still a lush green—it had been a wet summer, with none of the lawn burnouts that Ohio Augusts sometimes bring—these trees were dotted in low-hanging patches of gold, orange, and red. Clusters of soggy brown foliage meandered along the water’s surface. A light breeze rustled through the forest, and loose leaves floated down around them like snowflakes.
“Pretty,” he said, visibly relaxing.
She smiled. “Just wait.”
A short distance upstream, they came to the first footbridge. From here, the trail climbed to a safe height above the riverbank and then wound its way along the bottom of the towering limestone ridge. There wasn’t as much undergrowth encroaching, and they had room to walk side by side. When Paul didn’t drop back on the other side of the bridge, she didn’t step ahead, either.
And now that their paces were matched, now that it was almost odd not to make conversation, Izzy’s curiosity—percolating like a slow-brewing distraction for the past week—came to a pressure point. If he was here, that might mean he wanted to talk. But even if he didn’t, would he blame her for asking? She kept her voice low. “I don’t want to intrude, but do you have any family to come be with you? While all this is going on?”
He sighed. “My parents are in Connecticut. They’ve met Kristin and the kids only twice—once right after we got married, since we didn’t really have a ceremony, and once at a funeral. It’s not that they’re not concerned, but…” She stole a look over at him but couldn’t read his expression. He seemed to be struggling to keep it neutral. “I guess it’s not that personal to them,” he finished.
“Not personal? You’re their son.”
“Well, my dad is—” He stopped himself. “You know, I don’t really talk about my childhood. It wasn’t happy, but it pales in comparison to the stuff I see in my line of work. I could tell you plenty of stories that no one should ever have to hear, much less live through.”
Izzy thought of the hopeless feeling that sometimes overwhelmed her at the news desk, and of how much worse it could be for someone like Paul, who was no stranger to life-or-death scenarios. She pictured him alone in a modest doctor’s office, head in his hands from feeling his patients’ pain too keenly, and a sense of solidarity filled her.
“I think what you’re going through now might qualify,” she said gently, and he was quiet for a moment.
“My dad is … not a good guy,” he said finally. “And my mom goes along with whatever he says.” The statement ended flatly, as if he was debating leaving it at that. “When I was in med school at Ohio State, we’d have these weekly calls, Sunday nights, with both of them on the line—ostensibly to save the minutes on the phone bill. Everything is money with them. Every call, my mom would hardly say a word while my dad gave me the third degree about my professors and if I was getting my money’s worth and whether I was being distracted by any actual fun. But she’d always call back later, practically whispering so he couldn’t hear, to ask if I needed any money. That was always the only question. Like if I didn’t need money, there was nothing else to know. As if I would have taken her money anyway.”
“Maybe they can’t afford the airfare, then. Maybe they’re embarrassed by it.”
But Izzy wasn’t really thinking of his parents. She was thinking of the money Paul had allegedly threatened to fight Kristin for. Maybe with a childhood like that, he couldn’t help himself.
“They should be,” he said, his tone blunt. “My dad has horrible gambling debts. He fell into it when I was little, and for a while it didn’t seem bad. We’d go on long weekends to Atlantic City, stay for free in a suite since he was such a loyal customer. My mom would play on the beach with me while he sat at the tables. But soon after, we’d be dodging debt collectors. Changing houses, changing schools. It pinged back and forth for years, between the high life and the low life, and then it kind of just stayed low.”
He stumbled over a tree root, and Izzy automatically shot out an arm to steady him. He held it for an instant before letting go. “I don’t want you to think I’ve written them off or anything. I love my parents. I paid their way here after the wedding. We would have visited them for holidays, but Kristin wanted the kids to have their own traditions in our house, which I understood. I always offered to fly them down for Christmas or Thanksgiving, but they always declined. I do think you’re right that they were embarrassed. And I’d buy them tickets in a second if I thought they’d be a comfort to me now. But I don’t. They never showed an interest in my wife or the kids while they were here, and they didn’t seem to much care when I told them we were getting divorced.”
They made their way in silence under a rocky overhang.
“I get the feeling my dad thinks I should have kept a better handle on my wife, and if I don’t know where she is now, that’s my problem.”
Izzy didn’t know what to say. “Your kids are adorable, and so sweet,” she ventured. “I’ve always thought boy-girl twins are something special. How rare it is to have someone who is so much the same as you, but also so different, I mean.”
“Thanks, but they’re not my—”
“Yes they are,” she cut him off. Her voice sounded pointed, harsher than she’d intended. “Yes they are,” she repeated more softly. They walked in silence for another moment.
“Thank you for that,” he said, and when she looked over, his eyes were wet.
“They’ll be back,” she said. “Or the police will find them and bring them back. Don’t lose hope.”
“I think I lost that even before this happened,” he said.