“She could have gone anywhere,” Mr. Rhodes confirmed.
“They looked,” I told Amos. “For months. Helicopter. Different search and rescue teams. They did a few more searches for her over the years, but nothing ever came of it.” Remains had been found before, but they hadn’t been hers.
The silence was thick, and Amos broke it by muttering, “That sucks.”
“Yeah, it does,” I agreed. “I figure she was doing what she loved to do, but it still sucks.”
There was another rush of silence, and I could feel Mr. Rhodes eyeball me.
I looked over and managed to smile a little. I didn’t want him to think Amos had upset me—not that he probably genuinely cared.
“Which trail did she do?” Amos asked.
Mr. Rhodes gave him the name, shooting me a side look like he remembered bringing it up during our tutoring session.
There was another pause, and I glanced at the rearview mirror once more. The boy looked thoughtful and troubled. Part of me was expecting him to drop it before he spoke up again. “Are you doing the hikes to find her?”
Mr. Rhodes mumbled something under his breath that I was pretty positive had a couple curse words in there. Then the meaty palm of his hand scrubbed up and down the center of his forehead.
“No,” I answered Amos. “I don’t have any interest in going there. She had a journal with her favorites. I’m hiking because she loved to, so I want to do them too. I’m not as athletic or as much of an explorer as she is, but I want to do what I can. That’s all. I know we had a lot of fun, but I just want to… remember her. And those were some of the best memories of my life.”
Neither one of them said anything for so long, I genuinely started to feel a little awkward. Some people were uncomfortable with the idea of grief. Some people didn’t understand love either.
And that was okay.
But I was never going to shy away from how much I’d loved my mom and how much I was willing to do to feel closer to her. I’d been on autopilot for so many years, that it had been easy to… not bury my mourning… but to just keep it on my shoulder and keep going.
For so long, right after her disappearance, it had been hard enough to just force myself out of bed and continue trying to live my new life.
Then after that, there had been school, and Kaden, and just go, go, go.
All this while carrying my mom’s memory and legacy with me, covering it up with distractions and life until now. Until I’d dusted all that other stuff off to focus on what I’d buried for so long.
And I was thinking about all this when Mr. Rhodes said in his rough voice, “What’s on her list?”
Of hikes? “Probably too many. I want to do them all, but it depends how long I stick around.” Which was longer now than I had expected a couple weeks ago since he’d invited me to stay. If I kept being a good guest, then who knew how long he’d rent the garage apartment out to me.
Wishful thinking. Then I’d have to decide whether to rent or buy a place, but all that depended on how things were going here. If I had enough of a reason to stay… or if this would turn out to be another place with no roots to hold me down any longer. “She did all of them when we lived here, but I know for sure she had Crater Lake Trail on there.”
“That one’s difficult. You can do it in a day though if you pace yourself and start early.”
Ooh. He was offering suggestions and information? Maybe he had gotten over the incident with the bat.
I threw out another trail in Mom’s book.
“Difficult too. You have to be in good shape to do that one in a day, but I’d say spend the night or be prepared to be sore.”
I winced.
He must have noticed it because he asked, “You don’t want to camp?”
“Honestly, I’m a little scared to camp by myself, but maybe I’ll just do it.”
He grunted, probably thinking I was an idiot for being scared.
But whatever. I’d watched a movie about an immortal Sasquatch that kidnapped people in the wilderness. And hadn’t he said there were millions of acres of national forest? Nobody could really know what was out there. When I’d go camping with my mom a million years ago, it had just been fun. I’d never worried about some ax murderer possibly coming up to our tent and getting us. I’d never even worried about bears or Sasquatches or skunks or any of that.
Had she?
I named another one.
“Difficult.”
Exactly what I’d read online.
“Devil Mountain?”