“Where’s Pia and Rory?” I asked.
“Not really sure,” Rachel said impatiently. “Rory was going on and on about showing us some sacred Native American place. A little bit upriver. Something about some dog star aligning with Orion’s belt or some crap like that. Pia was all over it.” Rachel hugged herself, the two sharp worry lines between her eyebrows in evidence even in the shadowy dark. “We said whatever, go for it. We’re staying here. I just don’t want to get lost.”
I squinted through the trees. Smoke from our campfire marked the sky, coiling up toward diamond-hard stars. Sandra faced away from us, drying herself with care before stepping into her clothes.
The river glistened black and oily under the moon, frisking over the pebbly bottom with its endless hush. Our way across was lit perfectly by the night sky, less so in the woods where we kept our eyes on the flickering campfire.
We stumbled into the small circle of light. Sparks exploded from the fire’s orange heart and swirled up into blackness. I remembered the box of wine I’d left behind at the oasis, missed it.
Beams from our three flashlights crisscrossed the campsite. Rachel’s lingered on one tent, then the other, before she stepped over and peered inside both of them, lifting the triangular flaps, then dropping them in disgust.
“Pia!” Rachel called into the night forest. “Rory!” The names echoed from the mountains.
Nothing. Just a momentary hush before the chirring of insects surrounded us again.
“Okay, so where are they?” Rachel ran her flashlight across the sky, as if she might find them there.
“Maybe still at the magic place, or could be they went back for another swim,” I said, kneeling by the fire.
“That is not funny, Win.”
I looked up at her. “I wasn’t trying to be.”
Sandra picked up a few sticks of kindling from the meager stash we’d gathered earlier and tossed them on the fire. A whoosh of flame as the dry sticks caught and burned; soft white ashes floated up. “We should get more wood if we want to keep this going all night.”
“Wait,” Rachel said, her face lit red by the new flames. “We’re not going to look for them?”
“He’s a guide,” Sandra said. “He knows the woods.”
Rachel stomped on a glowing piece of bark that had leapt from the circle of stones around the fire. “This is so not cool.”
“They’ll be back any minute, Rache,” I said as if I had any idea.
She jammed her fists through the sleeves of her fleece jacket and zipped it up all the way. “Look, Win, it’s this guy’s job to keep us safe. All of us. All the time.”
I thought about Rory, his ear-to-ear smile in the pool as he looked up at Pia, her arms opening to embrace the night sky before she jumped in to join him.
“We’re safe,” I said. “Let’s get some wood.”
Sandra had already ventured out into the darkness. I pulled on a sweatshirt, shivered, and stepped out of the circle of light. Cool night air lifted up from the earth and mingled with the vapors of water and river stone. Rachel joined me, and we thrashed about in the underbrush, cursing as we gathered what we could.
Which wasn’t much. No one could root out decent wood in the dark, even using our headlamps, so we gathered by our dying fire and huddled in our sleeping bags.
“I need a drink so bad right now.” Rachel quickly raised her hand. “But don’t worry. I’ve been good. Just got my three-year medallion.”
“Congratulations,” Sandra said, meaning it.
“Good for you,” I said through my pleasant haze of grape. Each of us at one point or another had picked Rachel up from the depths of her addiction, from tearful interventions to bringing her to rehab to just buddying up with her at a meeting, but it had been nearly ten years since any of us had lived close enough to her to be meaningful in those ways once she’d moved to Philly from Boston. That said, I confess that hearing about the last day, hour, or minute she’d had a drink was one up close part of our friendship I didn’t miss. Addictions to me felt adolescent at our stage in life, as harsh and unfeeling as that sounds; it was profound loneliness that haunted me; obsolescence in my profession; midlife existential dread. Now that the dying parents had arrived, the divorces, the snotty teenagers, who had time for addiction?
Rachel combed her still-wet hair with her fingers, sighed a big but somehow fragile sigh. I thought of her growing up as the youngest of nine in rural poverty, all the stories of hardship she’d shared over the years, and felt a surge of tenderness for her that washed away my petty lack of understanding. Perhaps her attraction to nursing was a way of healing her traumatic past. Naturally she overcompensated in the control department. Who wouldn’t?
Sandra shivered.
“You warm enough, Loo?” I asked.
“Never,” she said with a little smile, edging closer to the fire and rubbing her hands together.