“What are you smiling about, Jane?” he asks.
“The snow-it’s beautiful.”
He looks outside and then says: “What snow? There’s no snow, Jane. You know that, right?”
“You’re a liar,” I say.
He just smiles, and suddenly my mother is sitting next to him, and my dead father and grandmother are off in the distance, making snow angels.
“Can I play?” I ask.
“No,” Old Doctor says, shaking his head, still smiling. My mother cries. And Old Doctor puts his arm around her. He whispers something in her ear and she nods. He kisses her on the cheek, and I want to kill him for my father. She digs in her purse and pulls out my father’s watch, hands it to me, and tells me not to lose it again. I get up and walk toward Dad and Grandma, and by the time I reach them, they are gone. The snow angels are there, and their eyes come alive and then they fly away. I look up to watch them, and then my father is standing next to me and I’m opening and closing his watch over and over again. Then Paul walks toward us. But he is dead. I try to reach out and touch him, but there is glass between us. I smash my hands against the glass over and over and scream his name.
His eyes open and he says, “Tell me the truth?”
“About what?”
But his eyes close before I can speak and I know he is dead again.
• • •
“Hey, sleepy,” Paul says, shaking my shoulder.
“Yeah.”
“Are you okay?”
“Why?”
“You’re hitting me.”
“You’re here,” I say, half stunned, half asleep.
“Well, yeah.” He leans over and kisses me. I remember last night again and then I kiss him back, putting both hands to his face. He breaks it off.
“Stay here,” he says, “I’m gonna go scout our next move.”
I nod, and almost in an instant, he slips from the bag into the woods. It happens so fast that for a minute I wonder if I’m dreaming, and I scramble out of the bag to go after him.
“Wait,” I shout. “Paul! Paul!” But no answer comes. I shout again. Silence. Trust, Jane. Trust. He would never leave you. But what if it’s not up to him? I shove my feet into my boots and get my gloves and shell and the little second-guesser in my head rises, fresh and alert, like she’s just risen from her own nap. He could just keep walking or fall in a lake; what if his foot is stuck in a bear trap or he tumbles off a cliff? Stop! Quiet the voice, Jane. Focus on what is real. Focus on what you can control.
I roll up the extra sleeping bag, my hand caressing the warmth that remains where our bodies were. I play back every detail from the night before. The kisses and touches tumble together in my mind and I smile. My dream, my dream, for the life of me it has disappeared in a matter of seconds. I try to catch it, but all I remember is his face in the window, waving goodbye.
My hand finds his little book at the bottom of his sleeping bag, the one his brother gave him. I pick it up and feel the cover. I slide back in the sleeping bag and then open the book and pull out the letter I read once before and snuggle into the bag where I’m hidden in case Paul reappears.
I read it again, with what I now know about Paul and his life after his mother died. What was Will trying to tell him?
I fold the letter up and place it carefully back inside and close the book.
Then guilt grows inside me; perhaps I shouldn’t have read his brother’s letter. Hold it! I definitely shouldn’t have read his letter! It is so wrong to be reading Paul’s private things. If he found out, would he ever forgive me?
I crawl back out of the bag and switch out what I can for drier things. I pack up. I grab the water bottles and pour the last drop or two onto my tongue. Then I pack them with snow and place one down my jacket and slide it over to the small of my back. Damn, that’s cold. I roll our bag up and crawl out into the forest.
He is standing a few feet from the cave, looking at the mountains.
“Do you know where we are?”
“I’m not sure I do. But I think if we can climb up that peak, there’s none higher. We’ll be able to see the world below, and, hopefully, they will be able to see us.”
“Is it possible?”
He shrugs as if to say he doesn’t know for sure.
“Anything is possible,” he finally says. “You just have to get yourself to believe it first.”
Chapter 26
I look out over the range above and before us. I see where we need to go, but I don’t see how to get there.
“Look over there.” Paul points.
I look. I see a sea of trees and some hills and then a deep gully separating our peak from the higher peaks.
“I don’t see what you are looking at,” I say.
He comes and holds my arm, pointing it toward a speck on the horizon. “There,” he says, guiding my hand with his.
I realize that he is pointing down. Down into the next valley, then up.
“All the way down?” I say.
“No, see there,” he says. “There’s a natural bridge connecting the two peaks. It could be dangerous, but I feel like it’s our best shot.”
“How far is that?”
“I don’t know. Should take us a day or so to get there.”
I have no idea if he’s kidding. I’m trying to imagine how we’ll ever be found. Maybe twenty years from now, the wreckage will be located and our bodies found frozen under ten feet of snow. Actually, that’s unlikely, because the bears will never let us sit that long once they wake up in the spring. We’ll be tasty morsels once the snow melts.
“Down and up again,” I say.
“Yes,” he says. “On the upside, no cliffs to climb.”
“And the weather, let’s be thankful for that.”
“That’s the spirit, Solis. Yes, the weather is almost a balmy zero degrees today.”
You couldn’t really see it from where we stood, but somewhere off in the distance, the sun must be shining brightly behind the mountains. We are still under a canopy of tall trees, but the air is warmer. I do feel hopeful.
“I’m guessing it’ll take us the day to get down and another day to get back up. Once there, if the weather holds, we’ll try to start a fire.”
“What will we eat?” I ask.
He looks at me strangely, and then he says, “I’m more worried about what we’ll talk about. We can go without food for days; plus we’ve still got some candy. We’ve got water, too. But after our conversation last night, I fear there’s nothing left to confess.”
“Really, that’s your fear? Running out of confessions?”
“I’m afraid so.”
He looks around at our stuff and he starts feeling his jacket and checking his pockets.
“What are you looking for?”
He looks at his bag and my things.
