Around the Bend (11 page)

The Rocky Mountains took my breath away. For the first time on our trip, none of us, not even Reginald, made a sound for miles and miles. The mountains rose like stone castles, Nature’s warriors set up to show man there were still things in this world bigger than all of us put together. All three of us bonded in our oohs and aahs, pulling over several times just to gape and wonder over the majestic beauty surrounding us.

For a long while, I could pretend that the conversation with Nick had never happened, but from time to time, I’d catch his eye, and a shade would drop between us. He’d turn away, point out some landmark to my mother, and another brick would go into the wall that hadn’t existed in our relationship. Either my mother didn’t notice or didn’t say anything.

“Stop the car, Hilary,” Ma said. “I want this picture.”

“Ma, we’ve taken a hundred.”

“
This
is the one I want with your father.” She pointed out the window at a stone outcropping that curved like a finger
and a thumb, then dropped into a small lake, framed by lush green pine trees. Before I even had the minivan fully stopped, she was already unbuckled and out of her seat, flinging open the side door, hauling my father down to the guardrail.

“When your mother gets an idea, she gets an idea,” Nick said.

“Stubborn, that’s what she is.” I sighed and grabbed the camera.

“Gee, wonder who inherited that particular trait?” He grinned, but it was a tempered version of his regular smile, then got Reginald’s leash and clicked it onto the pig’s collar. “I’ll do pig duty while you get the picture.”

“Thank you,” I said, laying a hand on his arm. Heat extended between us and his gaze locked with mine, each of us clearly wanting the other, despite everything. “You’re being awfully nice to me, taking over the pig like that.”

After our argument, Nick had gone down to the hotel bar, but later that night, crawled into bed beside me and without a word, curved against my body. Nothing was said about our fight, about the unanswered marriage proposal, but it had hung in the air between us all morning.

Even now, it still lingered in the teasing over Reginald, and in his smile. “Hey, I’m just trying to show you that I have good qualities,” Nick said. “Husband qualities.”

I groaned. “You never give up, do you?”

“I have a couple thousand miles left to show you that being married to me wouldn’t be such a bad idea. After that, yes, Hilary, I will give up.” Then he climbed out of the van, Reginald click-clacking behind him down the pavement. They ducked down the hill and disappeared behind some shrubbery.

Putting physical distance between us, mirroring the emotional space.

I left the subject of Nick and marriage alone. Plenty of time to deal with that after I was done with my mother and this road trip. I had enough on my mind, and enough to deal with, just with her.

“Ma, why this picture?” I asked, already tired of raising and lowering the digital camera. The memory bank was full, so I had to load a new SD card. My mother had even bought three extras of those.

When had she learned to plan ahead for technology? And why had she done all this?

“I like this particular view,” Ma said. “It’s my favorite.”

I put my fist on my hip, the camera banging against the bone, and winced. Something was up, had been up for hundreds of miles, that went beyond what had happened in the hospital. “What is going on with you? We have tons of pictures of pretty mountains and lakes and trees. And I agree, the Rocky Mountains are beautiful. But why this one with Dad? Why all these pictures with Dad in general?”

She clutched the cardboard image of him and bit her lip, the sign that she was reaching into some well deep inside herself to dig up some more “dealing with Hilary” patience. “Just take the picture.”

“No. Not until you tell me why.” She was hiding something and damned if I could figure it out. This whole plan about getting closer to her, bonding—if there was such a thing between myself and my mother—had gone so far off track, I wondered if it was possible to right the train again.

A week ago, I would have given up, retreated into the same familiar frustration I knew with my mother, and allowed to serve as the cement in the wall between us. But ever since the
hospital, since that awful time outside her door, when she’d needed me and I hadn’t been able to get inside, something had changed between us, or maybe only changed on my side, and I refused to let this train wreck get any worse.

Demanding answers only led to derailment. I’d learned that lesson with my father—and so had she, I suspected. Hadn’t we already seen the door shut, a little at a time, until it was closed entirely? Somehow, I needed to keep the door open with her, and find a way to nudge it open more, to get closer to her.

So I framed her image with my father’s in the camera, and a wobbly smile came to her lips. “Tell me what you like about this picture,” I asked again, softer.

She paused, thought for a second. “It reminds me of him.”

Click. I took the picture, and when the pixels filled the screen, I saw the love she still had for my dad, spread across the plasma. Hope rose in my chest. Could Nick and I have that someday? Make our feelings last over years, over the divide of death? Despite everything, she still loved him, and I wondered why. I raised the camera again. “Why?”

“Because it’s hard and soft at the same time.”

Click again, but I didn’t glance down at the result this time, because I heard in her voice what the picture would become. Tender, vulnerable. An inside peek into her heart. Curiosity bloomed in me, to know the woman who had been such an enigma, this half of my biology I barely knew. Finding the keys to her, I realized, would unlock the parts of me that I needed, too. And maybe, I thought, glancing toward where Nick had gone with Reginald, provide the answers I needed in that relationship, too. “Tell me more.”

She turned, peering over her shoulder at the view for a long time, just staring at the splendid, larger-than-life, impossible-to-capture magnificence. “Your dad, he was strong, you know. He held us together, held everything together, but underneath—”

I lowered the camera, no longer able to see what she saw. “Underneath he wasn’t what we saw or what he thought.”

She pivoted back, a tear running down her face. “He was like that lake, wasn’t he? Deep, and dark, and full of secrets. And maybe if we had seen past the stones, we might have—”

“Oh, my God, Louie, would you lookee here at that great big picture of that man! Ain’t that ’bout the cutest thing you ever did see?” The high-pitched, grating Southern voice caused my finger to falter on the shutter release, adding one memorable photo of my mother’s shoes to the collection.

I turned around to see Daisy Duke—or what Daisy Duke would look like, if she had five kids, let her body go, and stopped coloring her roots. “Uh, hi.”

“Hi! Whatcha doing?”

I cursed the interruption. Every time my mother and I took two steps forward, something caused us to slide back three steps.

“Taking a picture, that’s all.” I held up the digital camera for proof. Where was my bodyguard boyfriend and Reginald? Granted, he wasn’t exactly a feral pig, nor did Nick make for a menacing presence, but these people were WEIRD, in capital letters, and I wanted some backup.

“I meant, with the cardboard man,” Daisy Duke said. “If I had me one of those, why, I’d just love it. I could set him up in the living room, make him a real conversation piece, if
you know what I mean.” She gave me a wink and a side-mouth “chuk-chuk,” like she was calling a horse.

“I’m sure you would.” I turned back to Ma, reframed the picture, and clicked, this time getting it right. “All set, Ma.”

“Is that your man?” Daisy Duke asked Ma. “Did he not want to come along on your trip to the Rockies? Or are you just framing him for blackmail purposes? I only ask because my neighbor Jolene did that and Lordy, she got a whole bunch of money from the divorce settlement for setting her man up in a compromisin’ position with a compromisin’ woman.” Daisy sighed. “’Course, she did have to pay it all back, once Jeremiah proved, with videotape, that
she’d
been compromisin’ with a little filly of her own, if you know what I mean. Seems videotape trumps photographs every time.”

I didn’t know what Daisy Duke meant in that long-winded paragraph of a sentence and I wasn’t going to ask for an explanation. Some things, I figured, were better left unknown.

“Louie! Come here! You gotta see this! It’s just amazing. My Lord, the things you can do at Kinko’s these days.”

A man rounded an RV that had seen better days and better paint jobs. It was long and bright green, with “See the Country or Bust Tryin’” painted in swirling neon-yellow letters down the side. Louie hitched up his jeans as he walked, one finger in the belt loop, apparently serving as suspenders.

But his ample gut hung over the front, undoing all the hard work of that one digit. He had day-old stubble coating his neck and chin, a grease-stained John Deere cap shading his face, and a Budweiser frogs T-shirt straining over his chest, the frogs looking ready to either belch or make a run for it.

Nick came out of the woods then, Reginald trotting beside
him on his leash, looking lighter and happier than five minutes earlier. Nick gave me a grin and an arched brow that asked, “Who are these people?” I just shrugged in answer.

“Howdy,” Louie said, extending a hand toward me, then Ma. “Nice to meet some fellow travelers. You folks broke down?”

“No, just taking pictures.” The digital camera, clearly, wasn’t a hint.

“Of what?” Louie looked around, holding tight to that belt loop as he did. He spat a wad of tobacco behind him, then swiveled his gaze forward again. “I see nothing but trees and rocks. You can get them ’bout anywhere, ’specially in these parts. Don’t they have rocks where you live?”

“Not so much,” Ma said, moving forward, Dad under her arm. He wobbled a bit with the movement, and she nearly lost her footing as she navigated over the rough, rocky gravel at the edge of the road. I rushed forward, taking Dad from her. “My husband here—” she gestured toward my father “—didn’t get to see the country before he died, so we’re taking pictures with him.”

Daisy Duke pressed a hand to her chest. “Oh, Lordy, that is just the sweetest thing I ever heard. About makes me want to cry. It’s like a Nicholas Sparks book.” She sniffled and I worried I’d have to go get Ma’s Kleenexes again. I was half tempted to ask if they were related to a Sally from Sandusky.

“Where you folks from?” Louie asked.

“Boston,” Nick put in, coming up beside me. My hero, albeit too late to rescue me.

“Lot of rude yokels, that’s what you got there. No offense to you folks, of course.” Louie tipped his hat with his free hand. “I used to be a truck driver and I tell you, them Boston people, they scare me.”

Daisy Duke slipped in beside her husband and nodded. “Louie here is out on disability because of it. Post-drama stress.”

“You mean post-traumatic stress syndrome, don’t you, from driving in Boston?” Nick asked.

“No, post-
drama.”
Daisy Duke leaned in close. “He had an altercation with a high maintenance actress over a parking space outside the Macy’s. It got ugly pretty quick. Delivery driver versus diva, and the diva, she wouldn’t back down, not her or her little dog.”

“Those Chihuahuas, they can get pretty mean,” Louie said, his eyes wide. He shuddered.

“I guess there was a big sale at the Macy’s and she wasn’t going to let my Louie keep her from her Ralph Lauren. Let’s just say the cat came out and she had some pretty sharp claws. My poor Louie hasn’t been the same since.”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. Nick had to look away, and I could see him doing the same thing as me. “Oh. I see.”

“Well, that’s neither here nor there, not anymore. Though, we’re still fighting the restraining order by Macy’s. Totally unjustified. I mean, Louie has rights and he may someday really want some designer duds.”

I glanced at the faded, redolent frogs on his T-shirt. “Yeah, he…might.”

She thrust out her hand. “By the way, I totally forgot to introduce myself. My name’s Carla, Carla Weggins, wife to my sweet Louie here. And you are?”

My mother, who I had fully expected to run these people off or better yet, run
from
them, was the first to put her hand into Carla’s. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Rosemary Delaney.
This is my daughter, Hilary, and her…‘significant other’—” Ma air-quoted the words “—Nicholas Warner.”

“Nick,” he corrected, when it came time to shake his hand. “And I’d be Hilary’s fiancé if she let me.”

I groaned. “Do we need to make my love life public knowledge?”

“Yes,” Ma and Nick said at the same time.

I threw up my hands, grabbed Reginald’s leash, and walked away from all of them. I had enough people standing over there to open my own looney bin. “Come on, Reginald, in the car. Westward, ho, and then maybe we can get home again. Back to normal life.”

But Reginald was having no part of getting back in the minivan. He dug in his little hooves and refused to climb inside. When I tried to lift him through the open side door, he went limp, dead pig weight in my arms. “Stop it, or I’ll turn you into bacon.”

He oinked.

“Come on, let’s go.”

He wouldn’t. I hefted and shoved, but he squealed and flung out his hooves, squirming wildly in my arms, twisting until he fell to the ground and scampered away—or at least as far away as his leash would take him.

And barely leaving my arm in the socket in the process.

“You are
so
becoming breakfast tomorrow,” I said to the pig. He plopped his bottom on the road and ignored my threat.

Behind me, Carla and Louie were laughing at something my mother had said. I could hear the murmur of conversation, four voices exchanging bonding over God only knew what. Nick, I could see. He had the ability to converse with
everyone from the governor to the homeless guy who spent his summers living in the alley behind Nick’s building, refusing help, but accepting the occasional bottle of wine.