“She was an ass,” Sully said. “Not like her, neither. You want a little pop, son?”
“You’re on,” he said, sitting on one of the stools. “How about a Chivas, neat, water back.”
While Sully pulled the cork out of the wine, he talked. “So, Maggie here is very tough but tenderhearted and usually very good with her manners. Much better than I am. But I think putting up with me for three weeks since this operation just plain ruined her.” He pushed a glass of wine toward Maggie. “She isn’t going to do that again. Unless you give her trouble. Don’t give her trouble, son. She’s very strong.”
Maggie the bold and strong, she thought.
“I don’t have any trouble in me, Sully,” Cal said with a chuckle. “I’m just checking out Colorado.”
“And what are you doing here?” she asked. When both men looked at her, she held up a hand. “Hey, no offense, but people usually have a reason for finding themselves at Sullivan’s Crossing.”
“No offense taken,” he said. “I’ve been doing some hiking here and there. Hiking and camping. There’s a lot of stuff online about hiking the Divide, but you don’t want to hit the Rockies before May, and that might even be too soon…”
“Not this year,” Sully said. “It’s an early thaw. We damn near washed into the lake one year with an early thaw. The snowpack flows to the west, but we’re not without our wash. I gotta figure out how to get that garden in without lifting a finger.”
Maggie laughed. “Once again, he talks about me like I’m not even here. Of course I’ll help with the garden. So, you think you might hike the whole CDT?”
Cal shook his head. “I don’t think so, just a little piece of it, but I’d like to get up there and see what I see. I’ll hike and camp for a few weeks, then I’ll decide what’s next. Montana, maybe. Or Idaho. Canada. But not in winter.”
Over the years, Maggie had learned that you don’t ask a hiker why they take on something like the Appalachian Trail or the CDT. They’re driven. They want to be stronger than the trail, to break it or maybe just survive it. “The CDT is the longest one,” Maggie pointed out. “It can get lonely out there.”
“I know. I like the solitude. I also like the people I run into. People who want to do that are… I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like they have things to understand about themselves and every single one of them has different things to figure out.”
“And what do you have to figure out, Mr. Jones?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Nothing too deep. How about what to do next? Where to settle?”
That sounded like true freedom to Maggie—choosing something new. She’d eventually have to go back to work in Denver. Right now she was using Sully’s rehabilitation as an excuse. She was needed here.
“If you like solitude, then that must be why you chose this campground in March,” Sully said, sipping from his glass and letting go a giant ahhhh as he appreciated it. Maggie and Cal laughed. “Doc says this is all right but you can bet your sweet ass that bitch of a nurse didn’t bring me no nightcap!”
“Dad!”
“You expect me to apologize for saying that? That was a simple, true statement!” He shook his head. “That one nurse, the one at night with the black, black hair and silver roots, she was mean as a snake. If I die and go to hell, I’ll meet her there.”
Cal looked at Maggie and with a wry smile said, “Long convalescence?”
“Three weeks of my life I’ll never get back,” Maggie said.
No man can, for any considerable time, wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which is the true one.
—NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
3
Once Sully had gone to bed, Maggie got on her computer. She might not be a trained investigator, but she was damn sure an experienced researcher. She started by collecting the possible variants on the name Cal. Calvin, Calhoun, Caleb, Callahan, Calloway, even Pascal. Then she tried just plain Cal Jones. She found several obituaries but not a single reference that could be their camper, so if he was a serial killer he was still an unknown one. She wasted two hours on that.
She heard her phone chime with a text. She was surprised to see it was from Andrew.
I heard about Sully. Is he doing well? Are you?
We’re fine, she texted back.
There was no response and she went back to tinkering on her laptop. About ten minutes later her phone rang and she saw the call was from Andrew. She sent it to voice mail. There was a ping—message received.