I was lucky because I remembered a lot about her. I’d been thirteen when she’d gone missing, but there were a few things I could recall a lot more clearly than others. Time had softened so many details and watered other memories down, but one of the brightest memories of her had been her absolute love of the outdoors. She would’ve killed it working at The Outdoor Experience, and now that I thought about it… well, I guess it was the most perfect job I could have gotten. I was already planning on doing her hikes.
Maybe I didn’t know anything about fishing, camping, or archery, but I’d used to do some of that stuff with her, and I was pretty sure if I’d hated it, I wouldn’t have forgotten. That was something to consider.
Another thing I remembered as well was how much she had loved to catalog things she did. That included keeping track of what had been her favorite hobby in the world: hiking. She used to say it was the best therapy she’d ever found—not that I’d understood what that meant until I’d gotten a lot older.
The problem was, she hadn’t written things down in order of easiest to hardest. She’d done random ones, and over the last two weeks, I had already done the grunt work of finding the ratings for their difficulties and figuring out how long each trail was.
Because I wasn’t used to the altitude, and I didn’t know yet how long I was going to actually be here, I had to start with the easiest and shortest and work my way up from there. I knew exactly what hike I would do first. Clara and I hadn’t talked about long-term scheduling, but I’d eyed the shop’s hours on the way out and saw it was closed on Mondays. I figured that for sure would be my day off, obviously. Now I’d just have to see what other day I could get too. If she wanted me to only work part-time, that was good. We’d… see. And that was perfect.
My plan was to start jumping rope tomorrow to give my lungs some exercise in preparation. I’d been walking and jogging almost every day lately, when I wasn’t driving somewhere new, but I didn’t want to give myself altitude sickness my first week here—at least that’s what all the travel forums I’d read had warned against. There really wasn’t anywhere to walk around here though, other than driving into town to a trail or settling for the side of the road, which didn’t exactly sound safe.
Either way, I set the two notebooks in front of me and reread my mom’s entry. The one I was looking for was toward the middle. Mom only did entries for new hikes, but continued doing her favorites over and over again. She had started this particular journal after I’d been born. There were older journals she’d done before me, but all those had been extreme hikes and ones in other places she’d lived before having me.
August 19
Piedra Falls
Pagosa Springs, CO
Easy, 15 minutes one way, clear trail
Come back in the fall to get in the river!
Would do it again
There was a heart drawn next to it.
Then I read it once more even though I’d already read the entry at least fifty times and had it memorized.
There was a photograph of Mom and me doing this hike when I’d been around six years old in one of the photo albums I’d been able to keep. It was an easy, short hike, only about a quarter of a mile in, so I figured it would be a good starting point. Tomorrow I’d talk to Clara about days off to be on the safe side and plan to work around them… if she didn’t fire me an hour in because I had no clue what the hell I was doing.
I dragged my finger along the outside of the journal; I didn’t do it over the words anymore because I was worried about smudging them or ruining them, and I wanted her notebook around as long as possible. Her handwriting was small and not all that neat, but it felt a lot like her. The book was precious and had been one of the few things that had never left my side.
After a little while, I closed it then got up to shower. Tomorrow I should take my tablet into town and go somewhere with Wi-Fi to download some movies or shows onto it. Maybe Clara had Wi-Fi at the shop. Stopping at the only other window in the house that I hadn’t opened as soon as I got into the almost too-warm apartment—I’d forgotten most places around here didn’t have air conditioning—I paused and glanced at the main house again.
It was even more illuminated than it’d been when I’d arrived. Light pierced through every huge window along the front and side. This time though, the Parks and Wildlife truck was gone.
For the second time, I wondered what my landlord’s significant other looked like.
Hmm.