I sigh and look down. I’ve got it wrapped, and I need to be careful, but it’s no excuse.
“It’s all right,” I tell. “You’re sure you’re up for this? Ten miles, cross-country, and it’s still pretty cold.”
It’s the closest I can bring myself to sayingwe could stay here longer. Life in the cabin isn’t necessarily easier, but it’s simple and I’m suited to it. Here, at least, I know what I’m doing nearly all the time.
“Yeah,” she says, and gives me a jaunty little half-smile that’s brighter than the sunrise. “C’mon. Don’t you want to shower?”
“Good point,” I say, and she’s still smiling when she turns to go down the steps.
On impulse, I catch her wrist, and she stops. She’s got on the same hat and coat and braid that she did when I first found her, and I almost tell hernever mind, it’s nothing.
“Wait,” I say, instead, and my voice is slow and scratchy with the early hour and with a sudden desperation I can’t explain. “Just—”
I kiss her there, on the cabin threshold, soft and chaste and lingering, and hope it says enough.
Then we follow the road out of the clearing where the cabin is, and at the last bend before it disappears, I look back. It’s already so small, a deep brown dot on a white and gray landscape, closed up and cold, and I almost can’t believe it felt like the whole world.
* * *
The pathto the Hogswallow trailhead is easy, then hard, then easy, then not too bad. The first part is the road to the cabin, which is rutted and worn and badly in need of repair for a road, but wide and flat and pleasant for a trail. It’s early and we don’t talk much, or we talk about nothing, and I pretend that I don’t want to turn back with every step.
About a mile and a half before the road comes to the spot where the avalanche closed it, we get to the tricky part: a long, fairly steep, off-trail hike to the trail itself. It’s hard and made harder by everything we’re carrying: Andi’s got her frame pack on, and I’ve got a slightly smaller backpack that I insisted on filling with half her stuff. The footing is tricky for a lot of it, the forest filled with stumps and rocks under snow, not to mention plenty of impossible spots we can’t get around easily. I have to check the GPS every few minutes to be sure we’re still going the right way.
By the time we get to the trail it’s midday, and we’re both hungry and exhausted. Andi banged her knee pretty good on a rock when she fell, and I wrenched my bad ankle a little harder than I admit to her. I’m fine, especially because the hardest part is finished, but there’s still six and a half miles to go and daylight is limited.
We argue about lunch—Andi wants to walk while we eat the sandwiches we packed, I want to sit for fifteen minutes because that’ll do us more good in the long run. I win and we sit on a boulder next to a near-overflowing creek that makes me more nervous than I tell her, because what if there’s a flood we can’t cross? How do we get back? We’re got her tent and sleeping bag, so I guess we share that, but it’s not a good prospect and worry gnaws at me.
“You’re quiet,” Andi says after we’ve eaten and gotten back on the trail. It’s wide and flat through here, next to the creek, though the water’s closer than I’d like.
“Usually, I’m so talkative,” I say, and she snorts.
“Point taken.”
I take a deep breath, adjust the pack on my back, and discard the first three things that I’m actually thinking about: the creek, how late it is in the day, and what I’m going to do about Beth and Sadie’s fight tomorrow, when I’ll have to deal with it.
“I’m wondering whether Reid rendered the wild animals in my care unfit for release back into the wild,” I say. It is, technically, a thought I’ve had.
“Vicky and Fluffy?” she asks. I only sigh in response, and Andi grins over at me. “You’re releasing a three-legged fox into the wild?”
One of my boots sinks into mud further than I’d like, so I nudge Andi to step away from the creek.
“Probably not,” I admit.
“Then why not let him name it?”
“It’s awild animal,” I say, because that’s the best and only explanation I’ve got, but it ought to be explanation enough.
“You don’t want Vicky to get jealous. I understand.”
I glance over at her, lips pursed like she’s trying not to laugh, and it makes something small and secret behind my ribcage twist.
“Birds don’t get jealous, Andi,” I point out.
“One of my friends’ moms growing up—in Jersey—had a very emotional parakeet,” she says thoughtfully. I slide her a look, and whatever my face is doing, it makes her almost-laugh again. “Mostly it was angry,” she admits. “Which I would probably also be if I had to live in a cage and poop on newspapers.”
“Depends on the newspaper.”
“You’re not about to besmirch the Sentinel-Star, are you?”
