When I was a kid, I was always told to give it to God.Itwas whatever bad thing I’d done or whatever bad way I felt; as if I was supposed to simply handitover and be free. I tried. I always tried, and it never really worked; I could hand things over again and again, but they always seemed to come back and stick like burrs in my conscience. It was because I wasn’t doing it right, wasn’t trusting God enough, didn’t have the right kind of faith.
After Andi left—after her family got chased away and it was my fault—I didn’t try any more. For the first few years I was still too self-righteous to think I’d done anything wrong, and after that I didn’t think I deserved to be rid of it. Even after I grew up, after a stint in the Army and a college degree, after therapy and a steady job and my own house, I never let go. I never told anyone who didn’t know already. I never gave up the guilt, but I did push it down.
But Andi still saysRickthe same way she saysDad, and I’m so grateful for this small mercy that it hurts.
Christ, I’m a mess. I’m tired and haven’t eaten enough or drunk enough water. It’s been a long, stressful day and it’s still not over because the truck is still a mile away and I don’t know when we’re getting out of here. It’s exhaustion and stress and being blindsided by twenty-year-old sins in the middle of it all, and after some sleep and some breakfast I’ll feel normal again.
I reach my hands back into the freezing dishwater and get back to work, only to hear Andi laugh.
“Because I’m tired after my near-death experience and dramatic rescue, and only want to tell you about it—no, I wasn’t really near death. Yes, I promise.”
I wash the dishes as quietly as I can and try not to listen. I even start humming Christmas carols to myself, despite firmly not being a Christmas Carol Person, so I can’t hear her talk to her parents. Every so often, though, she’ll laugh or exclaim something and then I can’t help but start listening again to the bright, happy cadence of her voice in the next room.
Strange, how she sounds exactly the same, like sunny summer days, like goading me into going past the property markers and deeper into the woods, like walking across a fallen tree over the creek, ten feet in the air, and knowing I’d follow her. She was always right. I always did, even if I paid for it later.
“Yes, a cabin,” she’s saying, in the tone of voice that suggests it’s not the first time she’s said it. “A ranger came and got me and drove me back here. The Parkway’s closed, anyway, and it’s too far to drive in the snow.”
She says all this like she’s the authority on the matter, like she knew this all herself and wasn’t stuck in a sleeping bag, cold and freaked out when I found her earlier. Her bravado could be annoying, but instead it’s kind of charming.
“I don’t know, Dad, it’s a cabin,” she says. I need something to do besides eavesdrop, so I start wiping down the counters and then the table again. “It’s kind of cute and old-timey. There’s a wood stove, there’s a kitchen, all the lamps are oil lamps. The fridge is avocado green, you’d hate it.”
I wipe down the ugly fridge, too.
“The ranger?” she asks, and for all that I’m determined not to listen in there’s a note of alarm in her voice. I realize she was pacing back and forth because the soft creaking of the wooden floor stops. Suddenly, it’s very quiet. “Why?”
There’s a long silence. I don’t breathe and don’t make noise, then think that Ishouldbe making noise, so I pace over to the sink and toss the dishcloth in, rearrange some of the dishes in the drying rack.
In the other room, Andi clears her throat and drops her voice, so I have to strain to hear it when she says, “Uh, it’s Steve.”
Pause.
“Wheeler?” Pause. “No, I didn’t get his badge number. Do rangers even have that? He might not be a ranger, he said he was up here to… study something. About birds and global warming?”
I think, inanely, that I never told her why I was here but that it’s a good guess; for a moment, I wonder how on earth she got my name wrong.
It takes me a minute to realize that she doesn’t want them to know who she’s with. Of course. I probably wouldn’t either.
* * *
“This is fine,”Andi’s saying, sitting on the edge of a twin bed and digging through her pack. It seems to have no organizational plan whatsoever. “Why wouldn’t it be fine?”
“I like the couch,” I claim.
“I don’t bite.”
“I know.”
“I’m not—” she starts, waving her hand in the air like I’m supposed to derive meaning from it. “Look, I don’t think you’re gonnadoanything. It’s just beds. It’s just sleeping, whether you’re five feet away on that bed or ten feet away on the couch.”
I shift uncomfortably in the doorway, because, logically, I know. It’s not logic that’s the problem. The problem is the stifling feeling that sleeping in the same room as Andi is one more thing I’m doing to her, and I’ve done enough for a lifetime.
“I think it’s better if I sleep on the couch. That’s all,” I say, but Andi pauses to stare at me.
“What is it you think I’m gonna do?” she asks.
“Nothing,” I say.
“I can keep my cooties to myself.”
