Page 4 of Bluebell Tides

Sure enough, the Harpers were an enormous family. Handsome men and beautiful women lined the table, sipping wine and chatting. It was hard to make out any individual conversation, although Ruth’s ears ached to understand. There seemed to be three children—a teenage boy and a teenage girl, plus that baby. The woman beside the baby often looked over at the baby’s carrier with a mix of love and worry in her eyes. Ruth recognized that love and worry. She’d had it before. It was a particular language known only to mothers.

One of the Harpers raised a glass of wine and made a toast. Ruth caught a few of the words, like “time together,” and “grateful,” and “upcoming summer season.” Smiles glinted, and more wine was poured. And soon, it was time for the main course, which looked to be a kind of fish. Ruth’s stomach tugged at her with longing. Why couldn’t she bring herself to eat?

Celia stood abruptly then, letting the chair fall back behind her. The Harpers grew quiet, watchful.

“Celia,” one of the sisters asked, “what’s wrong?”

Celia began shaking her head, gazing down at her phone, which had pulled her from the beauty of the day into a harsh reality. “Oh no. Oh no.” She staggered away from the table and down the veranda steps, where she stood on the grass and dialed a phone number. Ruth made sure to hide herself behind the curtains, giving herself just a sliver of space to see what was happening. Soon, Celia had whoever it was on the line. It was clear that Celia was sobbing.

“Are you really all right?” she asked.

There was silence, as Celia waited for whoever it was to respond. All the Harpers at the table gazed down at her, waiting for answers. Ruth felt as though she were watching something sinister, a horror movie that had sprung to life.

“Oh, Sophie,” Celia breathed, her voice jagged. “Oh, honey. I’m so glad. I’m so sorry and so glad.”

Ruth backed away from the curtain and sat at the edge of the bed. Exhaustion made her eyelids droop. It was as though the adrenaline of Celia’s worry had been drawn into her, only to collapse in on itself.

Through the curtain, she heard Celia explain to her family, “There’s a fire in the mountains. I knew that Sophie was out there camping with her boyfriend. I panicked. But she’s all right.”

“Oh my,” one of the Harper sisters whispered.

“Apparently, she was miles and miles away from the fire,” Celia said, her voice brightening. “She and Ethan are smart kids. They got out of there as quickly as they could. She’s headed back to campus and will call me when she gets there.”

“That’s our Sophie,” another Harper sister said. “She’s got a great head on her shoulders.”

“I think I might like that Ethan,” Celia said contemplatively. “I wasn’t sure at first. But it’s clear they’re a pretty good team.”

3

Far away in Oregon, despite what she’d told her mother on the phone, Sophie was in the hospital. Bandages lined her arms and legs, and she shook with a fever that the nurses said would break soon. She prayed they could be trusted and it would. Beside her on the table sat her phone, which she’d just used to call her mother and tell her an endless array of both truth and lies: that there had been a fire in the mountains (true), that they’d had to end their camping trip (also true), and that she and Ethan were headed back to campus and safe (not true at all).

The full truth was so harrowing that Sophie wasn’t sure she could face it.

When the fire broke out last night, Sophie had been frozen with shock, forgetting all the training she’d had on forest fires. She’d been surrounded, sure that it was the end of her life. When pain scalded her arms and legs, adrenaline shot through her, and she’d begun to run as fast and as hard as she ever had, all the way back to the cars at the campsite. Branches had burst overhead, then crashed down in her path, nearly obliterating her.

She very narrowly made it.

From the looks of things back at the site, Ethan and his friends had been preparing to leave her behind. Tears and soot lined her face, and Sophie screamed for them to stop. They looked at her and screamed back, their faces twisted. She’d probably looked like some forest monster, red and scalding, with steam coming off her clothes. She had no idea what they were saying to her. It was as though she’d lost all concept of language.

Immediately, Ethan had put her in his car and driven down the mountain to the hospital. She’d wept beside him, watching as the orange light from the fire climbed higher and higher into the sky. She wanted to say, "I told you, I told you this would happen," but it felt like a moot point. Ethan couldn’t stop shaking, so much so that he nearly crashed the car three times. He howled and cursed, but not really at her. Sophie knew better than to say anything.

As soon as Sophie had been checked in, Ethan had disappeared. He hadn’t said a single word before he’d gone.

Sophie was beginning to wonder whether Ethan had ever been real or was a figment of her imagination. Had she invented her own boyfriend?

Now, as Sophie lay back in the hospital bed and waited to be cleared to go back home, three cops came into her room and grimaced down at her. There were two men in their thirties and a woman in her late forties, maybe. Sophie already knew why they were there. Although she’d prayed it wouldn’t come to this, she’d been expecting them.

“We need you to tell us what happened up there,” stated the female cop, who introduced herself as Officer Melton. She squeezed the belt around her pants, then hauled it up.

Sophie’s nostrils fluttered. She’d suspected that Ethan and his friends had taken off without speaking to the cops at all, leaving Sophie—the only one injured among them—to take the fall. But Sophie had no interest in doing that.

Sophie introduced herself, then explained that she’d been camping in the woods with her boyfriend and his friends. “I’m an environmental scientist,” she said tentatively. “I’m a grad student at East Oregon.”

“It sounds like you should have known better than to start a fire,” one of the male cops barked. “Do you have any idea what you and your friends have done? Do you have any idea of the damage you’ve already caused?”

Sophie wanted to sob and scream and sob some more. Her entire body itched and burned. “I told them not to build the fire, but they didn’t listen to me,” she said. “I tried to keep it small. I tried to keep it manageable. But they…”

“What did they do? Did they make fun of you? Did they say, ‘Come on, Sophie, let’s have some real fun’?” Officer Melton said, feigning a pout, as though it was the silliest thing in the world, the idea that Sophie had caused a forest fire because she hadn’t been mentally and emotionally strong enough.