They walked back into the light and poked around. Bob set off, climbing beyond it onto a hillside of loose shale. Nina, who had been sitting cheerfully on a rock overlooking the lake getting her picture snapped by Paul, got up grudgingly to continue on with him.
“I’ll wait here,” Paul said, checking out the steep rock walls, noting the places where climbers had attached fixed holds. After they left, he walked around until one particular line on an outside wall of the cave attracted him. Cave Rock might be a sacred place to the Washoe, but to the profane rock-climbing community it was a vertical park.
Pulling his climbing shoes and some chalk for his hands out of his pack, he quickly readied himself for some free climbing, scoped the line out some more, eyeballed some handholds, and pulled himself into the ascent.
How he loved to climb. He loved the stretch of muscle under his skin, the adrenaline rush, the cold edges of rock that nicked him as he felt for handholds. He ignored the pitons left by more cautious roped-up types. After a while, he settled into a slow rhythm, taking no chances on the holds, which were, true, not too reliable, just enjoying himself in the moment, doing what his body was meant to do, his eyes six inches from Mother Earth, his hands holding her tight.
He reached the top fairly fast and sat down to enjoy another fantastic view of the lake and surrounding peaks, clouds massing in the east, a sliver of moon ghostly in the thin morning air. His reverie was interrupted by a shout, followed by a second shout, followed by his name.
He scuffled down the gentle backside of the rock face, toward the voices. There he found Nina kneeling over Bob, who was sitting at the bottom of a long rockfall, blood gushing from his knee. A bruise was beginning on one cheek, and scrapes on his arms told Paul he had taken quite a tumble.
“You all right, Bob?”
“It’s not broken. I can walk.” Nina started to help him up, but he shook her off. “Leave me alone, Mom.”
They walked, or in Bob’s case, hobbled, down the hill to the car, where Nina found her first-aid kit. By the time she bandaged the wound, Bob had established a policy of silence, which he somehow maintained through the stinging, painful cleansing regimen.
They rode back without even the soothing effects of music. Nina turned on NPR, and they listened to Bob Edwards telling, in his earnest round voice, the latest disheartening world news. By the time they reached Caesars, Paul was happy to say good-bye, although sorry for Nina. They got out while Bob stayed in the car, and walked a short distance away.
“What happened up there?”
“He was fine until I told him he couldn’t go to ‘band practice’ this afternoon at Nikki’s. I made up an excuse but he saw through me, which upset him. He suddenly decided to leave the trail and climb a steeper part of the hill. I told him to stop, it was too steep. Then he fell, which humiliated him.”
“Humiliated?”
“You can’t imagine how much he looks up to you, Paul. He didn’t want you to see him.”
Touched, Paul said, “I’ll take him out sometime and teach him a few things.”
“I don’t want him rock climbing.”
“He’s getting older, Nina. It’s a safe sport if he learns right. I started at about his age.”
“Sure. He can spend the nights with Nikki and the days risking his neck. Why not? He’s a big thirteen years old!”
Paul said gently, “He’s going to grow up with or without you, honey.”
“You don’t understand,” Nina said with that fierce note in her voice, and Paul did understand that he’d better back off or she might kick him out of the stepfather competition. He was feeling a certain solidarity with the kid, and she didn’t like that. Did “stepfather” mean being a yes-man for the mother? He experienced a moment of doubt about Nina. She was too driven and too protective of the kid.
She made a good boss, though, and unfortunately he was in love with her. He had wanted to do some serious talking about their future the night before, and it didn’t look like the opportunity would come again soon. “I’ll call you after I speak with Ali,” he said.
He set out up the road toward Meyers, the next town over on the California side of the lake.
The Peck family owned some acreage on a side street off South Upper Truckee Road. Consulting his map and watching for a crooked wooden sign Ali had described, he arrived at the house at a few minutes after noon. U-shaped, with an open grassy courtyard in front, the house stepped down a hill on the backside and must have had some expansive glass in back for admiring the craggy landscape beyond. He looked forward to a peek inside, but as it turned out, he had no opportunity.
Ali Peck waved him over to the side of the house. She had a split stack of wood beside her on the left, a few short logs to the right, and a two-foot log set up lengthwise on a low stump. As he walked over, she gave it a smack with a long-handled ax. The log fell open like the O.E.D. She threw the two pieces toward the split pile, then started in on another one. “Hang on,” she said, “I’m almost done.”
She wore jeans and a V-necked T-shirt that read One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila, Floor. He watched her shoulders work. He could see her appeal. Youth, pep, spirit-she had it all, and if he could see that in a few strokes of the ax, imagine what riding with her day after day must have shown Kevin.
She stopped, set the ax against the stump, removed gloves, and wiped her hands on her jeans. “I won’t shake,” she said. “Blisters.”
“You know who I am.”
“Yeah. You can call me Ali if I can call you Paul.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t know what you expect to get out of me. This mess with Kevin has been such a pisser.” She pushed hair away from her face, and Paul noticed she had not broken a single nicely manicured fingernail.
“Your parents around, Ali?”
“They do a big grocery shop on Saturday afternoon. I don’t want them involved.”
A careful and mature young lady, Paul thought. And it made things easier for him. “Looks like you do a lot of that.”
“Two cords a season. My father chops the other two cords. He’s a karate instructor. Do you want to sit down? How long is this going to take? I’m willing to do this one last thing for Kevin, whatever loose ends you’re here to take care of, but tell Kevin I won’t be taken by surprise again. I’ll be out of state when the permanent-custody hearing comes around. I’m not going to go through another court scene. So embarrassing. I don’t specially like hurting my first lover, you know.”
“Where are you going?”
“To spend the spring at my aunt’s ranch in Arizona. It’s too hot for me here in the mountains at the moment. I’m a scandal.” She laughed. “I just hope all this doesn’t ruin my career in law enforcement.” She sat down on a smooth rock in the yard and Paul sat on a log beside her. The yard, Tahoe style, had been left natural. The well-spaced pines and the soft lawn of needles made it look like a nature preserve.
“You may still get subpoenaed,” Paul said. “Even in another state. There are ways.”
“I’ll get a better lawyer if I have to. Can we get this over with? I heard that Kevin lost the hearing. He really loves his kids. It’s too bad.”
“How did it happen? You and him, I mean?”
Her eyebrows went up and she smiled. For once she looked her age. “It just happened. We were alone a lot. I was helping him right down to assisting in the apprehension of suspects. I know cadets aren’t supposed to be put in harm’s way but things happen fast. We became like real partners who trust each other totally. Sometimes we went on stakeouts and we’d tell each other all about our lives. Kevin was miserable with his wife. He finally broke down and told me.” She glanced at Paul.
“I’m sorry, I forgot how old you are. I need to make a note,” Paul said.
“Yes, legally I was underage. Kevin worried about that all the time. We had to be incredibly careful. He might be fired. Has he been disciplined?”
“There’s an investigation.”
“He has to be in trouble. Everybody knows about us now. At least I fended off that statutory-rape garbage. My father wanted to go to the police but I wouldn’t let him. After it came out, they decided not to prosecute, because I wouldn’t cooperate. The fact is, we were in love. We were two adults and what we did was our own business.” She had a clear, intelligent way of talking. Maybe someday she would become a police officer, but she had some work to do on her judgment first.
“I’m confused,” Paul said. “Did Kevin and his wife split up because of the affair?”
“No! Absolutely no way could she know about it. They were living together the whole time. This custody issue hadn’t come up. But we were in love. Kevin was everything to me. I planned to marry him.”
“So the two of you talked about marriage?”
“Sure. He wanted to marry me, too, but he wanted to be sure he’d get the kids. I wasn’t sure what I wanted except that I wanted him.”
“So did Kevin tell his wife he wanted to separate while you two were still, ah, in the relationship?”
“No. We almost got to that point. We had plans. Go to Alaska, if you want to know. I was there two years ago on an Outward Bound kayaking trip. It was an excellent place. My parents wouldn’t like me going, but they would respect my rights. But it never got to that point.”
“Why not?”
“Well, we had been together about three months. We were patrolling the condo area up at Ski Run around eleven at night in a snowfall. We had a big talk. Kevin told me, okay, Ali, this is it, I’m going to tell her tomorrow. And we’re going to go to Alaska and start over, and I’ll bring my kids and we’ll get jobs and live in a cabin and do some hunting and trapping. He had finally come around to what I wanted. We had sex in the patrol car. I fibbed in court when I said we never did it there, incidentally. Then I went home and went to bed.”
“I see,” Paul said. He checked her face again. Was she truly eighteen, or some hard-nosed mama of forty?
Ali did that smile again, the smile with the eyebrows up that made a sort of facial shrug. “Yeah,” she said, “that’s how close I came. But then when I went to bed I couldn’t sleep. I thought stuff like, we don’t have any money, how do we get to Alaska? And I don’t like doing dishes or anything, so do I want to take care of kids? All of a sudden, you know, this lightning bolt hit me and I fell out of love. Like this.” She snapped her fingers. “All of a sudden I couldn’t understand what I ever liked about Kevin.
“He has no ambition. He’s actually kind of passive except when it comes to his kids. The truth is that I initiated everything. He liked being dragged along. And the sex was good but he was only my second boyfriend and there was this cute exchange student from Sofia-that’s in Bulgaria, in case you were wondering-at school who I was starting to think about, like, you know, what a shame. He’s soulful. He wants to be a writer. You know?”
“I know.” He thought back to a beautiful artist he knew once.
She shook her head wonderingly. “I felt like I had been sick with flu and just suddenly got over it. I searched my soul that night and I realized I didn’t want to go to Alaska. I knew it was over. Has that ever happened to you?”
“Not since I was seventeen,” Paul said.
“Are you saying I’m immature? Because-”
“No, no. I have no problem with that.”
This magic sentence always worked. Ali’s defensiveness dissolved and she said with a trace of boastfulness, “So that was my love affair. Is that all you wanted to ask me about?”
“Not exactly. Although you have been very frank and helpful.”
