He held her out and looked into her eyes. “What happened to make you do this?”
“Do what?”
“Go off alone into forests in the middle of winter.”
“Why do you think something had to have happened?”
“I saw it first thing this morning. You’re sad. Deep down.”
“Isn’t everyone?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
The snow fell between them.
She kissed his cheek, cold, wet skin prickled with new beard. “I loved being with you tonight. It was more for me than you understand.”
“I’m glad you called me.”
She kissed him again, briefly, on the lips. “I’m going in the tent. I’m getting cold.”
She walked away from him.
“Goodbye, Ellis.”
When she unzipped the tent and slipped off her boots, she saw him vanishing into the snowy darkness. She sealed the door before he’d fully disappeared. She took off her clothes and put on thermal underwear, sweatpants, a fleece pullover, and wool socks. She would let her hair dry a little before she put on a hat. She slid into her insulated sleeping bag and turned off the lamp.
She wanted to sleep. Immediately. She didn’t want to lie there wanting Keith, or thinking about the River Oaks Apartments, or seeing her phone with pictures of the kids in the river.
But that wasn’t how it went for her anymore. Usually she had to take something to get to sleep. She felt around in the darkness for the pill bottle and water.
“Ellis?”
He was standing near the tent. Same as when he’d first called to her that morning.
“I don’t care if I’ll never see you again,” he said. “I want to be with you. If that’s what you want, too.”
She unzipped the tent. “It’s what I want,” she said. “I’ll even let you bring the pony.”
10
Ellis pulled the pony out of her pocket. She set it on a boulder, framed by the snowcapped mountains. Ellis called it Gep. The day after she’d spent a snowy night with Keith Gephardt in her tent, she’d found it zipped into the pocket of her down coat. Keith had hidden it there before he left.
At first, the pony’s name had been Gephardt, but that had become abridged, as had everything in her life as weeks and months went by. “What do you think, Gep?” she asked the pony. “We’re at the top. Great view, isn’t it?”
The pony gazed silently at the mountains. Ellis took out her water bottle and held it up in a toast. “To ten days of being sober,” she said before she drank. “What do you think? Can I do it this time?”
The pony’s smile looked more sardonic than supportive.
She hadn’t succeeded the first time she tried to get sober, back when she was camping in the mountains of New Mexico. She’d nearly made it to two weeks of sobriety that time. She’d discovered ascents didn’t work so well when she was drunk or zoned out on pills. That meant she had two choices: keep to her tent and look longingly at the mountains while she got stoned, or stay sober and climb. But even if she climbed, she’d return exhausted and usually drink a lot in her camp at night.
But this time she was determined. If she could get through this day without pills or alcohol, maybe she was finally strong enough to stay sober.
She said to the pony, “Guess what today is?”
Gep smiled.
“Today is the one-year anniversary of the day I left my baby in the forest.”
His blue smile remained.
“Seriously. I put her down in a parking lot and drove away. I left her for some lunatic to find.”
Two men and two women came up the trail. They looked at her oddly; maybe they’d heard her talking out loud. Ellis remembered the pony too late.
“I used to have one of those,” said a woman with a bear-ear hat.
“That picture will be awesome,” the other woman said. “Are you sending it to a little girl?”
“Yes,” Ellis said. She took Gep off the rock and stuffed him in her pocket.
Now that the pony was out of the picture, the two couples started taking photos against the boulder. Ellis packed up her stuff and headed back down the mountain.
About a quarter of the way down the switchbacks, Ellis patted her pocket, and when she discovered the zipper open, she panicked for a few seconds. Gep was the one thing she owned that was irreplaceable. She reached in and felt the smooth mane. She zipped the pocket.
Ellis had slept with two men since Keith, and neither had been half as good as the ranger. She found that ironic. The partners she’d met on a trail and in a campground had been much more compatible with her. They wanted sex with minimal emotional connection. Keith was the reverse. He’d mainly wanted connection. He hadn’t expected sex when they met in the tavern. He’d even walked away from it initially.
A raven was calling from the forest when she arrived at the campground. She still hated that sound. But another commotion distracted her. A group of six had put up three tents in the two sites next to hers. They were young and loud. Constant laughter and the smell of weed wafted into her camp.
She’d tented near much worse in campgrounds. Ellis might have even been with them, young and spirited, if her life had gone a different way. She mostly resented the noise because she wanted a quiet night on the anniversary of Viola’s abduction.
She made a fire and heated a small dinner. A young guy from the adjacent camp walked past and waved at her. She raised her hand in greeting but made as little eye contact as possible.
Ellis sat on a log to eat. She stared into the fire, letting the shape of the flames steer her thoughts. Normally she’d sit by the fire and drink whiskey, but she tried not to think about that. And she tried not to think about where Viola was and what River and Jasper were doing on the other side of the
