The Reluctant Bride (6 page)

“It'll bring you up again! Go down!”

Let the water take her down? Karinne kicked even harder, trying to break free.

“Take a breath and just let go!” Max ordered.

“We'll find you, I promise!” Cory yelled.

“Do it, Karinne!” Anita screamed.

Karinne could hear the panic in Anita's voice. She realized she might sink—drown—right now. She was running out of strength in the limb-chilling spray and it was becoming harder and harder to fight for air pockets in the white water.

“Now, Karinne! While you still can! If we get separated, the other boat will pick you up!”

Karinne choked and sputtered. She didn't know the Colorado. She couldn't understand how Max could trust such a rogue river, but she trusted Max—and she wasn't about to lose her future with him now.

She allowed herself another few seconds to suck in air. In between sprays of white water she gulped as deep as she could and, with one final shiver, let herself go down into the sucking maelstrom. The water pulled her under with a strength that threatened to tear the sneakers off her feet. She felt the heaviness of deeper water pressing down on her, the buoyancy of her body and life jacket no match for its weight. Then, with a rib-crushing torrent, the current caught at her one last time to throw her upward into the air, the light, and into view of the glorious yellow raft captained by the man she loved, waiting just as he'd promised.

But even as she swam toward safety, her mind reeled with old images, and new ones.

That woman in the other raft… Could it be…her mother?

Mile 31.9,
Vasey's Paradise

Karinne still felt queasy with fear and adrenaline. She also felt incredibly foolish for falling into the river and not following Max's directions. Eventually, she'd let the current grab her, take her under and bring her back to the surface of the Colorado.

Max and Anita had pulled her inside the raft. Cory soon docked at the closest camping area downriver. Max hadn't left Karinne since they'd arrived on the shore and he'd helped her out. He threw a dry towel around her shoulders, briskly rubbing them, and making her feel like a two-year-old instead of the confident woman she usually was.

“Are you okay?” Anita asked.

Karinne nodded.

“Cory, why don't you start a fire?” Max suggested. “Come on, Karinne, time to get out of those wet clothes.”

A few minutes later, she entered the Porta Potti with dry clothing and a replacement pair of socks. She refused to give in to the urge to be sick to her stomach—an urge not related to the potent odor of chemical treatment—and, once she'd changed clothes, hurried outside again, the door flapping closed behind her.

Karinne took in the Porta Potti door and read the sign posted to prevent campers and wild animals from close contact. It read
For Safety and Hygiene, Please Latch This Door Securely!
With trembling fingers, Karinne tried to fasten the outside catch. She couldn't. The cold, her nerves and aftershock made it impossible. And she'd left her soggy wet mass of clothes inside on the wooden floor. Max got them and closed the door latch for her.

“This place has more rules than a courthouse,” she said, trying to make a joke. Her voice shook.

“Come on, sit down.”

“We can't.” Karinne gestured to another sign in front of bubbling springs and the garden of ferns, mosses and flowers to the far right.

Please Do Not Approach! Protected Area For Endangered Kanab Ambersnails.

“I thought we'd sit over here.” Max guided her to an area where a weatherworn wooden bench allowed visitors to lounge safely behind the edge of the springs' boundaries, the water itself surrounded by saddleback-shaped boulders, rubbed smooth by thousands of years of erosion. Karinne sat while Max dropped her wet clothes onto one of the rocks and joined her on the bench. He put his arm around her and drew her close.

“Warmer?” he asked.

“Drier, anyway.” She couldn't help shivering.

“Cory'll start a fire,” Max assured her. “What happened out there?” he asked.

“I fell,” Karinne replied.

“I checked the hand loop. It's fine. Did you lose your balance?”

“No, I just…didn't hold on.”

“That's not like you, Karinne.”

“I got distracted.”

“Hold tighter next time.” He urged her even closer.

“I will. Promise me you won't think I'm crazy.” At his nod, Karinne gulped in a deep breath.

“I thought I saw my mother.”

“Here?”

“In the silver pontoon. Max, it looked like her. I swear it was Mom again. I twisted to see better. That's when I fell in.”

“You scared the hell out of me,” Max said.

“I scared myself more.” Despite her dry clothes, she shivered again. “You never told me about the whirlpools. I'm starting to hate surprises. How can you live in a place like this, Max?”

“First of all, you said you wanted to see what I did for a living. Second, if you weren't chasing a ghost, you wouldn't have fallen out of the raft. Your obsession with the past could've cost you your life! You didn't follow the rules, you just jumped head over heels—literally—for a stranger in another raft. I thought you had more sense than that.”

Karinne leaped to her feet, away from the rock and out of his arms. “So I'm an idiot?”

“No,
I'm
the idiot. Because from now on, I'm going to do everything I can to help you find this woman.”

“You will? Oh, Max!”

“And then, after that, you're going to choose between having a husband or chasing after your parents the rest of your life. I want to live mine with you. If it isn't going to be that way, I want to know by the end of this trip.”

“You're really giving me an ultimatum?” Karinne gasped.

“No, I'm giving myself one. This is our last chance to see if our relationship can work. I love you, Karinne, but if I can't have you in my life—and so far I haven't—it's time to cut our losses.”

“I've been with you every chance I get!”

“A weekend every few months? That's not enough. You know my father was a cruise-ship captain, and Mom and Cory and I were always without him. I hated it. I swore I'd never do that to my own family. I offered to move to Phoenix once, and you told me not to. The ball's in your court. It's time for you to make up your mind.”

“And what about you?” she accused. “You keep saying you want children. Do you expect me to quit my job? I could, you know. But I just don't see the point. You think we'll see each other more with me and the babies at home and you rafting down the Colorado? I might as well be working.”

Now it was Max's turn to gasp. “You don't want children? But you always said…”

“Yes, I do, but under normal conditions. I'd end up with the same thing your mom had. An absentee husband. There's no day care on the river. Or if you stopped working and I continued, it would be the same thing. I'd be an absentee mother and wife. Why subject the children to what we already suffered through?”

His voice grew grim, cold. “So you're saying marriage wouldn't change anything?”

“I didn't say that.” Karinne rubbed her forehead. “But sometimes I don't know what to think.”

“Make up your mind. I want to know where this relationship stands.”

“It's where it's always been! With me loving you!” she said hoarsely.

“It's not enough, Karinne. It's not.”

 

“Y
OU THINK SHE'S
all right?” Anita asked, glancing over her shoulder at Max and Karinne in the distance as Cory started arranging wood.

“If dry clothes and a fire don't do the trick, Max will.”

Anita sank to her knees to join him, her arms filled with wood. “She could've
drowned
.”

“Not with us on the job,” Cory said. “Sooner or later she'd have tired, and the current would have moved her clear. The smart thing is to do it willingly, without panicking.”

Anita shivered. “It seemed like forever.”

“But everything's fine.” Cory took out his waterproof matches.

“I'm so glad. What would we have told her father?” Anita dropped her wood. She covered her face with both hands.

“Anita?” Instantly Cory was at her side. “Hey, it's okay.” He gently patted her shaking shoulders.

“Sorry.”

“Don't be,” Cory said. “You're Karinne's friend. Nothing wrong with that.” He retrieved his bandanna from her soggy jeans pocket, then pulled her hand down from her cheek to press it into her palm. “I nearly had a heart attack myself.”

“You did?” Anita sniffed.

“For a minute there, I thought Max was going to jump in after her, which would've been no help at all. The look on his face…” Cory shuddered. “Anyway, don't let this scare you out of the raft. Max and I know what we're doing. We don't risk the really nasty rapids.”

“That wasn't the worst?” Anita asked in a shaky voice.

“Not the deluxe thrill package. And you wanted to be a river guide,” Cory teased.

“Maybe I'll find an accountant's job topside,” Anita said.

“Either way, we can relax for the rest of the day,” Cory assured her. “Let everyone catch their breath.”

“Shouldn't we go check on Karinne?”

“Wait for the coffee to heat first.”

Anita watched Cory finish with the wood. “Where are we, anyway?”

“Mile 32—well, 31.9, to be exact. George Vasey's Paradise.”

“Oh.”

“Come on, mop your face, and ask me who he was,” Cory coaxed.

Anita wiped her cheeks with the bandanna. “Who was Vasey?”

“A botanist. He and Powell were together for the 1868 expedition to the Colorado River. Nice place, isn't it? Karinne could've picked a worse spot to fall out,” Cory said.

The maidenhair fern blended with the flowers in a fantastic array no florist could ever duplicate. Moss gently hugged the springs, creating emerald surfaces on rock and below the waterline.

“The snails must love it here,” Cory said. “They're supposedly descendants from the Late Pleistocene species. Still got your camera?”

Anita pulled out her digital camera, took it out of the zippered plastic bag and snapped a few photos.

After a moment Cory said, “I should finish the fire and get the coffee going. You wanna stay here?”

“No, I'll help.”

Cory extended his hand and pulled her to her feet. “Back to the real world, then.”

The four of them reunited at the campsite.

“Why don't we set up the tents and you ladies start dinner?” Max suggested, his voice cold. Cory gave his brother a questioning look, but Max didn't respond.

“Karinne, you up to it?” Anita asked.

“Of course.” Karinne's voice shook slightly. “I just took a dunking. I didn't get hurt.”

The women unpacked the cooking gear, then set up water to boil for pasta—a light-to-carry food stock.

“Want to hear a ghost story before dinner?” she asked Anita quietly. “I've got one.”

“You don't want to wait for the guys?”

“Trust me—
this
story they've already heard.”

Karinne soon related her tale, as Anita marveled at the turn of events. She didn't mention the part about Max wanting to end their relationship. He couldn't be serious. Perhaps it was just the stress of the moment.

“How can you stand it? Either your mother's alive or some creep is stalking you. No wonder you fell out of the raft. I'd be a wreck.”

“I am,” Karinne admitted. “I don't need to wait for dark to feel nervous.”

“And I thought you had a rough day falling out of the boat,” Anita exclaimed, stirring in uncooked spaghetti.

“Now I'll have to find a new roommate. Once you move out here…life won't be the same,” Karinne said sadly.

“We'll see each other.”

“Not often enough. You'll be with Cory, and I'll be stuck with some new roommate who leaves dishes in the sink and pays her rent late. Are you serious about joining Max and Cory?” Karinne asked.

Anita shrugged. “I don't know enough to be a guide, but I'm tired of not being with my husband. Why are things so complicated?”

 

L
ATER, IN THE TENT
with Max, Anita's words echoed in her head. Instead of the double sleeping bag with Max, they each lay alone in their single bags. Karinne broke the silence first.

“Anita wanted to know why life's so complicated,” she said to Max.

His expression was unreadable in the dark. He ran his hand through his hair. “Are you speaking generally or specifically? Either way, I don't have answers.”

Karinne tried again. “Do you really think Anita could be a guide?”

“It depends. There's a lot she'd have to learn, but if she really wanted to, I don't see why not. Cory's a good teacher.”

“I doubt she could find an accounting job topside in Grand Canyon Village,” Karinne said. “Maybe in Flagstaff, but she still couldn't live in the same place with Cory.”

“Is that what she wants to do?” Max asked.

“She doesn't know. I do know she'd prefer her husband to her roommate. And I'd rather live with you.” She took a deep breath. “Did you really mean what you said back there? That we're through?”

“Yes.”

“But…” She willed her voice to stay calm. “Why?”

“You know why. You want all or nothing, you always have. And between your job and your family,
I'm
left with nothing. The way things are going, I won't have children.” His tone betrayed a deep disappointment she hated to hear. “There's no future in this. The one time I offered to move to Phoenix, you resisted.”

“I didn't want you to resent me.”

“But you don't want to move up here.”

“I don't want to resent you.”

Max propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at her. “No, you don't want to make a commitment to me. To anyone. I used to think you did—that you had—but we keep getting older and nothing changes. You've planned three weddings, only to cancel two of them. I don't think
this one will be any different. You'll use your search for your mother as an excuse to postpone or cancel. How long will that take, Karinne?”

“If this is some prank, it won't take any time at all.”

“And if it isn't? If Margot is alive? How much further away do I get pushed?”

“I…I…”

“You don't know. Of course you don't. I'm not even surprised anymore. Just—resigned.”

Karinne paused, the darkness in the tent suddenly ominous. “What do you mean?”

“Well…” he said slowly. “Even when we're married, it seems the most we'll ever have is the occasional meeting. Like this. We've been together for years, yet this is the first time you've ever showed any real interest in the canyon.”

“I've been working.”

“You've been working, there's your father and now suddenly you've dragged your mother into the picture.”

“I love my father. And my mother. And you.”

“I'm always at the end of your list, Karinne. Always.”

“If that were true, I wouldn't be sharing a tent with you!”

“You came here because you had to use your vacation time. And to make arrangements for yet another pretend wedding.”