She was not one to pollute waterways, but she didn’t see it like that. It was a water burial. The closure of her family. Of her past. Of the future she used to see. Everything she’d ever lost was forever merged in this one piece of earth she’d loved. Even that piece of earth, and her love for it, was now buried there.
She climbed up the riverbank. She was acutely aware of the absence of who she’d been, and the sickening, visceral emptiness expanded with every step away from the river. She was like a cavernous tree, dying from the inside out.
A fortyish woman in a blue beret walked briskly toward her with a dog on a leash. “I saw you come up from the river,” she said breathlessly.
“Yes, I was walking,” Ellis said.
“Have you heard their plans? They’re going to put a fence between us and the river.”
Ellis supposed us referred to the people who lived in the apartment buildings.
“Some stupid woman from Building Two let her kid fall in the water. Then she complained that the river is a hazard. I hear the boy was in, like, two feet of water. No danger at all.”
Ellis had no words.
“Did you know about the fence?” the woman asked.
“No.”
“Well, some of us are fighting it. You should come to the meetings. There’s a flyer in the lobby of every building.” When Ellis didn’t respond, the woman said, “They have no right to ruin the river for us. Nature is important for good health. You probably know that if you were walking down there.”
“Yes,” Ellis said.
“The river and trees are important for those of us who have dogs.” The woman patted the dog’s head. “Mimi can’t go out in the open. She needs privacy to do her business. She heads straight for the trees as soon as we get out. That’s one of the reasons I rented here. To walk her by the river.”
Ellis vaguely worried she would cry in front of the woman, but she was too hollow to produce tears.
“Speaking of which,” the woman said, smiling, “she’s gotta go.” She let Mimi pull her toward the river.
Ellis quickly turned around. She didn’t want her last look at the river and trees to be connected to this woman and her dog’s bowel habits. But she supposed that had already happened.
She went back to the car and opened a bottle of pills.
9
The pill took effect as Ellis drove through her former hometown. She’d had to take something to function well enough to operate the car, just enough to deaden her awareness of the abyss she felt within herself. She believed she was safer driving with the drug than without.
She saw almost nothing around her, because she didn’t care to see it. She aimed toward a phone store she’d seen on her way in. She would keep a charged phone in the car in case she needed a tow truck or had some other kind of emergency.
And maybe . . .
Maybe the ranger. She’d gotten the idea when she was leaving River Oaks Apartments. The hollowness had mostly erased her by then. She could hardly feel enough body parts to operate the car. And for some reason, she’d thought of the ranger and imagined him touching her. Not sexually. He hadn’t looked at her that way. He’d looked at her . . . gently. That was how Ellis would describe the warmth she saw in his gaze. And if he could touch her that way—a soft hand on her hand, even an accidental brush against her body—she hoped she would feel her body again.
She knew all these feelings might be one sided. She didn’t trust her ability to read a man these days. Maybe she’d seen only an absence of disapproval in the ranger’s gaze. Since the abduction, she’d grown used to people looking at her critically.
She bought a phone and got out of town as fast as she could. The idea of calling Keith Gephardt stayed with her. She was surprised she wanted to ask a stranger to have a drink with her, but she couldn’t think of a reason why she shouldn’t. Her marriage had been over for much longer than two weeks. Even before she knew it. Calling a man for a drink wouldn’t be that weird. It would hardly be a rebound when she hadn’t been intimate with a man for more than a year. Just a drink. She sure needed one.
She waited until after sunset, but that happened early up north in the winter. She fueled the car and sat in the station lot drinking water, looking down at the ranger’s card.
She took her new phone out of the box. Ellis Rosa Abbey had a new number. A new billing address. She’d even abandoned the Bauhammer name. It had never fit anyway.
She turned on the phone. It had no contacts. No call history. No photographs. Her past was buried far away in a river.
She could do whatever she wanted. She could call the ranger with the gentle look in his eyes, and she would not feel guilty about it.
She pressed his number into the phone. Just when she thought Keith wouldn’t answer, he said, “Hello?”
She should have planned what to say.
“Hello?” he said again.
“So where can you get a decent drink around here?” she asked.
After a few seconds, he said, “Do I know you?”
“The odd camper.”
Another pause. “I never said you were odd.”
“But you were probably thinking it.”
“Does the odd camper have a name?”
“Ellis.”
“Is that a last name?”
“First.”
“No last name?”
“Not until I know how you feel about having a drink with an odd camper.”
“I’ve never done it, in all honesty. But I’m open to new experiences.”
“My last name is Abbey.”
“I think the nurse got
