Anyone? (26 page)

I had wanted to leave the cabin and get on our way as soon
as possible, but Cole insisted on taking one more day to rest and make sure my
limbs thawed before venturing into the cold again. Actually, he’d wanted to
take a few days, but after one day of restlessness—the longest day of my life—I
said we needed to go.

Cole had put his ingenuity to work during our stay at the
cabin. He managed to make the two of us a set of snowshoes by breaking two
kitchen chairs apart, then pulling the fur off the old bear hide and ripping the
rug into strips. I doubted they would work or stay together for long, but they
held together much better than I had expected, keeping us on top of the surface
instead of sinking into the thick layers of snow: an improvement I greatly
appreciated.

Before leaving, we’d ransacked the place, gathering anything
useful to take with us on the remainder of our journey. I’d found a pair of
decent boots to replace the Doc Martens—I hated parting with those awesome
boots. They had carried me a long way. The new boots were a little big, but
with two pairs of thick socks, they worked out just fine. We took the bulky
winter coats from the bedroom closet and rolled two wool blankets into our
bags.

While we scoured the place, Cole took my hand in his,
stopping our pillaging, and attached a knotted bracelet to my wrist. “I thought
you might like this.”

The bracelet wasn’t much really—a stamped out metal plate
with the words
“Where there is a will there is a way”
and two leather
straps that tied it together—but I loved the gesture. He had told me nothing
was impossible if I wanted it hard enough. All I had to do was look at the
bracelet and remember.

Now, with miles and miles of snow-covered trees, hills, and
ridges breaking through the terrain, making our climb steeper and more
difficult, I found myself removing one glove, and slipping my fingers under the
sleeve of my coat to touch the engraved words, reminding myself I could do
this.

“You’re being a dork, get in here!” I knelt inside the tent,
holding the flap open, and watched Cole struggle to find two conducive trees to
jerry-rig his hammock. The pine branches hung way too low to the ground, and
the other trees in the area were too scattered for the hammock to stretch
between any of them. He kept walking from tree to tree, moving farther away
from our makeshift campsite and small fire in what appeared to be a desperate attempt
to avoid sharing a tiny tent with me.

What an idiot.

The whole thing seemed silly. Hadn’t we spent a night
together with his mostly naked body wrapped around mine? At this point, he’d
already crossed that figurative line in the dirt. If something was going to
happen, it could have happened then, but it didn’t.
Nothing
happened. We
were capable of sleeping in close quarters together without fear of things getting
out of hand. Besides, he’d made it abundantly clear that this particular
relationship was never going to be
that
kind of a relationship.

“I’ll find something to make this work,” he called to me. “Go
to bed, I’ll be fine.”

If he wanted to be stubborn about this, then who was I to
stop him? I zipped the tent closed and sat back on my sleeping bag to remove my
boots, careful not to squish Callie who had curled up inside the bottom.

My feet ached, but climbing a mountain seemed to get easier with
each passing day. Okay, maybe not easier, but my body had become more
accustomed to the strenuous walking. I had fewer blisters and didn’t collapse
into bed each night completely exhausted. My leg muscles didn’t burn and feel
like jelly anymore. I hailed all those things as small victories.

“Watch out, kitty. Here I come.” I slid my feet into the
sleeping bag, and sighed at finding Callie’s body had warmed the bottom for me.
So lovely.
I rolled onto my side and placed my backpack under my head,
trying to find a soft spot to settle into.

Callie shifted and crawled up the inside of the bag to curl against
my stomach—her favorite place to sleep. I scratched between her ears and her
soft purr vibrated against me. Oh, to be a cat! She was carried everywhere we
went, fed when put down, petted and loved, oblivious to the state of the world.
Many times, throughout the course of the day, I envied her.

The tent zipper slid open in one quick swoop and Cole tossed
his backpack to the side of me. He poked his head inside. “Fine, you win.”

I wiggled over, making room for him. “I wasn’t trying to win
anything. We have a tent made for two, and since I’m one and you’re two, it
makes sense for the both of us to use it. Aren’t you tired of waking up with a
frozen beard every morning?”

He stroked his furry face several times. “It is starting to
fill out nicely, isn’t it?”

I smiled. “If you think that’s impressive, you should check
out the hair on my legs.”

“Thanks, Tess.” He spread out his sleeping bag next to mine
and groaned. “Just the image I want to take with me to bed.”

I chuckled. “I thought you’d enjoy it.”

He kicked off his boots, crawled into his bag, and rolled onto
his side to face me. “Tomorrow’s the big day. If everything goes well, we
should reach Rockport Lodge sometime before night fall. You ready for this?”

I had been trying not to think about it: strange, but true.
Tomorrow would mean the end of my journey, and it excited and terrified me all
at once. Either I’d see my Dad and Toby again. Or I wouldn’t. Those were the
only two options.

“Tess? You okay?”

I’d never answered him. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound fine to me.” He tucked a bent arm under his
head. “What’s going on? I thought you’d be overjoyed to have come this far.”

I petted Callie, taking comfort from her before giving voice
to my biggest fear. “What if all of this has been nothing but a waste of time?
What if no one’s there?”

He shrugged. “Then no one’s there. At least you’ll know.
That doesn’t make it a waste of time. It only means we keep going until we
figure out where your dad and everyone else went. It will be a setback, that’s
all.”

Maybe he was right. I had to know—good or bad. “You’ll help
me keep looking?”

He nodded. “I told you we’d find your dad, and I have every
intention of sticking this out to the bitter end.”

“Cole?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you still planning to go back after you hand me off to
my dad?”

He was quiet for a moment, but kept his eyes on mine. He
took a deep breath and released it. “I know you want me to say no, I’ll stay,
but Tess, I can’t do that. You need people. Me, well, I do a lot better without
them.”

He’d told me from the very beginning he planned to go back,
but I’d hoped after all this time he would’ve changed his mind. Knowing he hadn’t,
that he still wanted to leave once this was over, almost brought me to tears. I
blinked several times to keep from crying. I didn’t like him at first, but now,
I couldn’t imagine life without him. “What if I begged you to stay, would you?”

He reached across the small space separating us and cupped
my face.

I turned into it.

“Tess, if I stayed, you’d never be truly happy. Maybe at
first you’d feel like you were, but after a while, you’d come to realize how
wrong I am for you. We’re from two different worlds—you’re a kid with your
whole life ahead of you. Me? Not so much.” He brushed his thumb over my cheek. “We’re
only together now because circumstances forced us to be. Had none of this happened,
you would have walked right past me on the street without looking my way. I’d
just be some old dude you’d never glance twice at.”

Blinking no longer helped. The tears fell, and I couldn’t
stop them. He was right. Had none of this happened, I would be hanging out with
my friends, doing stupid teenage things: things seeming so important at the
time—planning for prom, posting selfies to my social networks, and trying to
figure out how to stay out past curfew without getting caught. Homework,
dating, makeup, boys—that was my life.

I would have never thought to say hi to someone like Cole. It
embarrassed me to think how shallow my life before all of this had been—how
shallow
I
had been. I prayed I was a better person now. I really wanted
to believe I had changed.

“Worse yet,” he continued. “You’d always wonder if I was
happy being with you and living like everyone else lives. I’d say yes, I was
very happy, but that nagging voice in the back of your head would never let you
fully believe I told the truth.”

“So you really think you’d be better off without me and
without other people?”

He shook his head. “Other people? Yes. I’ll be fine. Without
you? No, I won’t, but I know
you
would be better off without me, and
that’s why I can’t stay.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“I know.” He went to remove his hand from my face, but I
covered his hand with my own, keeping it in place.

“I don’t think I’ll be better off without you,” I said.

He smiled, his eyes watering. “You will be.”

“Cole?”

“Yeah?”

“Promise me before you go, you’ll say goodbye first. Don’t
just disappear like some douchebag vampires in teenage books tend to do,
thinking it’s best for everybody. I’d hate it if you did.”

He leaned toward me and kissed my forehead. ““I promise. I’ll
make sure you receive a proper goodbye before I go.”

Cole stood at my side, our shoulders touching, our chests
heaving from the climb, and neither of us moving. “What are you waiting for?”

A very good question. What
was
I waiting for?

The lodge’s peaked roof rose above the flock of pine trees
and aspens surrounding the log structure. Glimpses of the wrap-around deck danced
between branches that the wind tossed from side to side. Beautiful, just like I
remembered it.

The distance between us and the lodge was less than the size
of a football field, but I couldn’t take another step. Not yet.

“It’s going to be okay.” He took my hand in his and gave it a
gentle squeeze.
“You’re
going to be okay.”

I wasn’t so sure.

I reached up with my free hand and adjusted the knitted cap covering
my head, pulling it lower. A few loose strands of hair threatened to fall away,
and I tucked them back inside my hat, trying to ignore what was happening to me—a
hard thing to do—since every day it seemed to get worse. “I don’t think anyone’s
there,” I said.

“How can you tell?” He glanced from me to the lodge. “We’re
too far away to see much of anything.”

I pointed to the rock chimney. “There’s no smoke. Don’t you
think there would be smoke?”

“Come on, Tess. That doesn’t mean anything, and you know it,
so stop making excuses.” He released my hand and started walking. “You can
stand there if you want,” he called over his shoulder, “but I’ve hiked an
entire mountain to get here, and I’m not stopping now. I would’ve thought you’d
be sprinting the last few yards to get to your family.”

I thought I would have too. “It’s not that easy.”

He quit walking and turned to face me. “No, what we’ve done
to get here wasn’t easy. It was damn hard, but this”—he swung his arm between
us and the lodge—
”this
is the easy part.

“You’re wrong. This part is really hard.”

Cole retraced his steps to come stand in front of me. “What’s
going on, Tess?”

“What if...” I shook my head. I couldn’t finish.

“What if
what?
We’ve already been over this. If they’re
there, we’ll celebrate. If they’re not, we’ll figure out where they went.
Standing here isn’t going to change anything.”

“Maybe not, but for right now, standing here keeps them
alive, inside, waiting for me.” I bit my lip to stop it from quivering. Living
in the unknown was painful, but facing certainty head-on might kill me. They
could be dead in there.

He came closer and placed his hand on my forearm. “You and I
both know whatever happened to your friend—what’s his name, Dylan, was
it?—doesn’t mean anything. His sickness was a fluke. I’m fine. You’re fine. You’re
dad and brother are probably fine, too. Shouldn’t we go find out?”

I could’ve pulled off my hat and shown him what was going on.
I could’ve told him no, Dylan wasn’t a fluke, but I didn’t. That would mean
admitting something was wrong with me, and I wasn’t ready.

What could he do about it anyway?

A sunburned arm and frozen limbs were one thing; Dylan’s
type of illness couldn’t be mended—not by mortal, angel, or alien, whatever he
happened to be. This was beyond fixable.

“Tess.” He reached out and took my hand, shaking me from my
thoughts. “You can’t avoid this. Whatever we find in there is going to be the
same today, tomorrow, and the day after that.”

I weaved my fingers between his and held on tight. “That’s
what I’m afraid of.”

It seemed surreal to stand in the middle of the floor,
looking up at the massive chandelier created from dozens of elk antlers. The
first time I saw it, I cried. I had to have been six or seven at the time, and
thought someone had hurt a lot of poor animals simply to make a complicated
light fixture.

Dad had knelt next to me, wiped my tears, and explained how
each antler had been collected through elk shedding. He promised no animals
were hurt; he pinky-swore. From that point on, every time we visited the lodge,
I’d stand below it and stare. It fascinated me, because I couldn’t understand
how an animal could grow something so magnificent only to have it fall off
later. It didn’t seem right.

When lit, the chandelier bounced light across the walls in
scattered patterns, but now, in the darkened dirty foyer, the hanging relic only
gathered dust. There was nothing special about it anymore.

The river-rock fireplace had the same feel. With a fire
roaring in its monstrous cavern, the entire hall glowed in oranges and yellows,
its warmth like a comforter. Without the dancing flames, it became hollow and
depressing. An inch of undisturbed dirt lay across the cushions of the leather
couches, with their gold decorative studs along the edges. The smell of mildew
and faded smoke rimmed my nostrils.

Outside the A-framed windows, the ski-lift remained still.
Only a few chairs, clinging to the cables above, rocked when the wind moved
them—eerie and ghostlike. Leaves and pine needles gathered in the corners and along
edges of the once majestic room.

For the most part, I kept my eyes on the dead chandelier. I
couldn’t look anywhere else.

Cole’s footsteps resounded along the second-story balcony as
he ran from one room to another, flinging open the guest bedroom doors. I’d flinch
when each door smacked the wall—the boom painful to my ears—and Callie meowed
in response from her tethered place at the bar.

He searched the lodge because I couldn’t.

Knowing we were all alone grounded me to that one spot in
the middle of the foyer, numbing me to everything else. I had expected to find
the lodge empty, but I wasn’t prepared for it.

“They’re not here.” Cole, panting, stood at the top of the winding
stairs and looked down at me. “There’re no bodies.”

I didn’t answer. Of course, I was grateful to hear their
bodies weren’t lying on beds upstairs, but they may as well have been.

Alone was still alone.

Dad had left; he’d never come back, and worse than either of
those things: he hadn’t waited for me either. He’d written me off, cut his
ties, and left me behind.

“I know what you’re thinking.” He leaned against the railing.
“And you need to stop it.”

He couldn’t possibly imagine what I was thinking. I turned
in a slow circle, still staring at the chandelier that used to bring me so much
joy.

“Your dad loves you, Tess. Don’t doubt it. Whatever reason
he has for not being here must have been a good one.”

I’m sure it was.

“We’ll find him and we’ll find your brother.”

No, we wouldn’t. I continued to turn around and around.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way, remember?”

I stopped moving, undid the leather strap from my wrist, and
flung it above me. The bracelet snagged on the sharp point of an antler and
dangled from the tip, too high to reach.

Stupid bracelet. Stupid memories. Stupid expectations.

My will was broken.
I
was broken.

Cole crossed the room and came to my side, staring up at the
discarded bracelet. “Remind me never to give you a gift again.”

The moment it had left my fingers, I regretted it. He didn’t
deserve that, especially since he wasn’t the target of my anger, but I couldn’t
do anything about it now. “We should go.” I didn’t know where to exactly, back
to the hanger maybe, but I knew we needed to leave. I couldn’t stay any longer.
No point.

I started toward Callie, but Cole grabbed my hand and drew
me back. “What’s that?” He pointed above us. “Right there. Do you see it?”

He wasn’t pointing at the bracelet hanging from the outside
edge, but to the middle of the tangled antlers. He grabbed my shoulders and twisted
me so I could see what he was seeing.

A dingy white sock.

It blended in with the whiteness and drooped over several
sharp points. Unless we stood directly below it, like we were now, we would never
have seen it.

“Just a second.” He left me standing there and took off
across the room then threw open the glass doors to the pool hall and
disappeared from view. A few seconds later he returned carrying three pool
cues. “There’s a roll of duct tape in the front pocket of my bag. Go grab it
for me, will you?”

I did as he asked, bringing the silver roll of tape back to
him where he’d stretched out the pool sticks on the floor in a long line. “It’s
a sock, Cole.”

“Yeah, it is, but
why?”
His eyes widened and he
bobbed his head. “Ask yourself that.” If he expected a response, he didn’t get
one. He knelt next to the poles, tore off long pieces of tape, and began
fastening them together. “Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

Maybe a little. “Please don’t do this to me.”

He wound more tape around the sticks without looking at me. “Do
what?”

“I don’t want to be disappointed again.”

“I hate to break it you, but life is brimming with
disappointments. There’s no getting around it.” This time he looked at me and
cocked a brow. “Would you rather I leave that sock where it is? I can, you
know.”

I glanced up at the hidden thing, curious. Someone had a
reason to throw it up there. But a sock? Really?

“Fine.”

It took several tries to manipulate the extra long stick
into place. Cole got close, but the upper pole slipped and didn’t want to stay together.
He lowered the whole thing back to the floor and started redoing the tape
again.

I folded my arms across my chest. “Why don’t you use your
magical abilities and fly up there and get it?”

“Ha, ha, you’re funny.” He glared at me. “Stop being a pain
in the ass and give me a hand with this.”

I knelt beside him and tore off the long pieces of tape he
needed, though I couldn’t imagine the wobbly contraption actually working. The
whole thing looked awkward, and he looked awkward trying to work it.

“This should do it.” He positioned himself below the antlers
again, balancing on his toes to get enough height and leverage, and poked the
sock, trying to dislodge it from its hammock-style position. After a few more
jabs, and with a bit of nudging and probing, the sock fluttered to the ground.

Cole dropped the poles and they clattered on the tiled floor.
He nodded to me. “Go ahead.”

If it was just a sock, and nothing else, I didn’t know what
I’d do. Yes, disappointment was part of life, but hadn’t I already suffered
more than my fair share of it?

“Do it already. If nothing else, we now have a new sock for
your cat to play with.” His attempt at a positive spin didn’t help me any.

“It is what it is, right?” I looked at him for
encouragement.

He gave an impatient nod. “I’m going to grab it if you don’t.”

I bent over and snatched the sock into my hand, trying my
best to keep my expectations low. It crinkled like paper.

What?
I squeezed it again, unsure I had actually felt
something inside the old sock.

It crinkled like before.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly as I slipped my
hand inside the dingy thing. My fingers wrapped around a tiny piece of paper,
folded into fourths. I removed the worn and wrinkly paper and allowed the sock
to fall to the ground.

“Tess, you’re killing me here!” Cole motioned to the paper.

I carefully unfolded it, read it, and then read it again. I
looked up at him with tears glistening in my eyes. “It’s from my dad.” I
recognized the handwriting, even if he hadn’t used my name to address it to me
or signed his own.
He left me a note.

“Sweet! What did he say?”

I shook my head. “I’m not sure.”

Cole took the paper from me and angled it so the natural
light fell on it. He read it, flipped it over, saw nothing on the backside, and
then flipped it over and read once more. “He’s a man of few words isn’t he?”

“Why this?” I tapped the paper he still held. “Why not leave
a complete note on the door or place it on the bar so I could see it? A cryptic
note shoved into a sock way up high in an antler chandelier? What was he
thinking?”