I nodded and stuck to the truth. “For ten years, and then I spent the next ten in Nashville, and I was back in Cape Coral—that’s in Florida—for the last year before coming here.”
“Why’d you leave there to come here?” the teenager scoffed like that was mind-blowing to him.
“Have you been to Florida? It’s hot and humid.” I knew Mr. Rhodes had lived there, but I wasn’t about to drop that knowledge bomb on their asses. They didn’t need to know I’d been creeping and stalking.
“Dad used to live in Florida.”
I had to pretend like I didn’t already know this. But then his word choice sank in. He’d said his dad not him. Where had he lived then? “You did, Mr. Rhodes?” I asked slowly, trying to figure it out. “Where?”
“Jacksonville.” It was Amos who answered instead. “It sucked.”
In the seat next to me, the man scoffed.
“It did,” the teenager insisted.
“Did you… live there too, Amos?”
“No. I just visited.”
“Oh,” I said like it made sense when it didn’t.
“We visited every other summer,” he went on to say. “We went to Disney. Universal. We were supposed to go to Destin once, but Dad had to cancel the trip.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mr. Rhodes turn in his seat. “I didn’t have a choice, Am. It wasn’t like I canceled the trip because I wanted to.”
“Were you in the military or something?” I asked.
“Yeah” was all he gave me.
But Amos didn’t leave me hanging. “In the Navy.”
“The Navy,” I confirmed but didn’t ask more about it because I figured if Mr. Rhodes hadn’t even been willing to tell me what branch, he wouldn’t want to tell me more. “Well, it’s not too far of a drive. Maybe one day you can go.”
In the seat behind me, the kid made a noise that sounded an awful lot like a grunt, and I regretted opening the subject again. What if he didn’t take him? I needed to shut the hell up.
“Is it true your mom got lost somewhere around here in the mountains?”
I didn’t wince, but Mr. Rhodes turned around again. “Am!”
“What?”
“You can’t ask stuff like that, man. Come on,” Mr. Rhodes snapped, shaking his head incredulously.
“I’m sorry, Aurora,” he mumbled.
“I don’t mind talking about her. It was a long time ago. I miss her every day, but I don’t cry all the time anymore.”
Too much information?
“I’m sorry,” Amos repeated after a second of silence.
“It’s okay. No one ever wants to talk about it,” I told him. “But to answer your question, she did. We used to go hiking all the time. I was supposed to go with her, but I didn’t.” That same pang of guilt that I had never gotten over, that slept in my gut, safe and warm and tremendous, opened an eye. As much as I didn’t mind talking about my mom, there were some specific things that were difficult to bring out into the world for everyone to know. “Anyway, she went for her hike and never came back. They found her car, but that was it.”
“They found her car, but how could they not find her?”
“Your dad might know more details than I do. But they didn’t find her car for a few days. She had told me she was going to do one hike, but Mom would always change her mind last minute and decide to do something that wasn’t on a trail if she wasn’t in the mood or if there were too many people on the trailheads. That’s what they thought happened. Her car wasn’t where she had said she would be. Unfortunately, it rained a lot in those days, and it washed out her footprints.”
“But I don’t get how they didn’t find her. Dad, don’t you have to do search and rescue a few times a year? You always find people.”
Beside me, the big man shifted a bit in his seat, but I kept my gaze forward. “It’s harder than it sounds, Am. There are almost two million acres of the San Juan National forest alone.” Mr. Rhodes stopped talking for a second like he was watching his words. “If she was a strong hiker, in shape, she could have gone just about anywhere, especially if she wasn’t known for staying on trails.” He paused again. “I remember the case file said she was a good climber too.”
“Mom was a great climber,” I confirmed. She had been a fucking daredevil. There was nothing she had been scared of.
We used to go to Utah every chance possible. I could remember sitting off to the side when she did some kind of climb with her friends and being amazed by how strong and agile she was. I used to call her Spiderwoman she was so good.