Page 29 of Cruel Summer

SEVENTEEN

Oregon Trail route

Now

A two-week break didn’t help. She’d spent the time in a vacation rental on the Olympic Peninsula because it seemed like a fun place to go, and she’d written a piece about the first road trip—focusing on the sights and the car, and not the personal parts.

She ended up selling it to one of sites she worked with often, with the grabby header I Went Cross-Country in a Classic Car—Here’s What I Learned .

She’d said she learned how to pack efficiently and where to get the best coffee.

She was lying a little. She thought again about what Logan had said—about writing a book.

The idea of putting her honest feelings out there made her feel so…

Ugh.

Her feelings were messy, and she did not present as having a messy life.

She didn’t want to…admit that her insides didn’t match the outside, and writing more than just a breezy article would force her to do that.

Logan seemed bound and determined to force her to do that.

It wasn’t just the attraction that she had been forced to acknowledge, but the intensity of the way that he forced her to examine things. The honesty with which he approached it all.

She’d spent the night at Elysia’s the night before she was set to leave with Logan, and she hadn’t even come to terms with the reality of all that time with him. Again.

They were taking the Oregon Trail route, heading all the way from Willamette Valley to Boston.

It was a lot of him. A lot.

When he pulled up with the gleaming red car, she felt determined, and also a little bit apprehensive.

The time that she had spent by herself seemed so much less intense than the time on the road with him.

She’d had a little bit of reprieve. While she had been working on certain things, she hadn’t felt quite so steeped in the most intense of the emotions.

Suddenly all of the emotional intensity seemed to hit her, and the conduit seemed to be Logan’s blue eyes.

What was she doing reacting to a man’s gaze like that? Like a middle school girl.

“You ready?” he asked.

No. Not really.

“Yeah. Ready.”

He gave her first driving shift. The Ferrari was much smaller than the previous car, with tan leather seats, a spindly gear shift and the kind of power that made her heart race.

This experience might turn her into a car person yet.

There was something wildly unsettling and exciting about that thought. Because it was admitting this was going to change her.

That it already had.

He set the map for Multnomah Falls, and they drove up I-5 for five hours, mountains turning into fields of sheep and clover before becoming mountains again, the Columbia River flowing broad and slow beside them.

It was impossible to miss the falls from the road. Even from the parking lot across the street, the sound was thunderously loud, the water spilling down over a sheer rock face into a pool below, which spilled over again, cutting through lush ferns and moss-covered stones.

There was a restaurant and lodge near the falls and the hiking trails. It had the look of a storybook cottage with a steep pitched roof and walls made of gray stone. They went into the dining area, the back wall all windows and sunlight pouring in, counteracting the heaviness of the stone.

They sat and ordered, and when their food arrived, Logan looked at her.

“How’s Ethan doing?” he asked.

“Good.” She nodded. “He’s doing good. Probably doing things I wish he wouldn’t do, but every time I talk to him, he’s happy.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“And Chloe?” she asked.

“I hope not partying too much. But she is my kid. So it’s hard to say, and I can’t be too judgmental.”

“I’ll let you in on a secret,” she said. “You can be as judgmental as you want. You don’t have to be fair. You are allowed to have hideous double standards when it comes to your kids.”

He laughed. “Thanks. It does often feel hypocritical that I don’t want her going out and doing the things that I do.”

“It isn’t hypocritical,” she said. She frowned.

“The thing is, when you’re her age, you don’t have a concept of things.

You don’t know what you’re getting. Take that from somebody who grew up too quickly.

You think you know so much. But you just don’t.

I thought I did. Now…now what the hell do I know?

Logan, honestly, I don’t know anything.”

“That makes it tough. Trying to launch these kids out. We know everything we don’t know. We also know that we know years’ worth more than they do.”

“I wonder if that’s the only way to survive your teen years and your twenties. Thinking you know everything. It’s what makes it fun. Livable. Not terrifying.”

“Agreed. A feature, not a bug.”

“Definitely. Though it’s hard to watch.”

He leaned back in his chair. “We’re going to stay at Skamania Lodge tonight,” he said.

“It’s nice. You’ll like it. Then we’ll get back to your regularly scheduled roadside horrors.

Once we get a little further along. But I thought there’s nothing wrong with enjoying some of the natural beauty in style. ”

She was happy enough with the subject change from heavy things, and liked the idea of nice accommodations.

“I figured it’d be good,” he continued. “Since a little birdie told me that you like fancy.”

“Why are you suddenly concerned with my enjoyment of things that are fancy?”

“Your first-class booking.”

“Honestly, I thought you would be flying first-class too.”

“And yet you weren’t concerned about it enough to make sure that you were sitting next to me.”

“No. I wasn’t. But I’d rather sit fancy than sit with you.”

He raised his eyebrows, then shook his head, letting out a slow breath as he ate the last of his french fries. “Well. Yeah, apparently.”

She had been teasing. She hadn’t meant it to have any kind of seriousness. But he had clearly taken it a little bit deeper than she meant.

“Well, then, since you’re such a fancy lady,” he said, making a clear effort to lighten his tone, “you probably aren’t going to go on the zip line.”

This irritated her. Sure, she’d never considered zip-lining in her life, but that didn’t mean she was opposed, or never would. He didn’t know her. “A zip line?”

“There’s a big zip line course at the lodge.”

“That sounds terrifying. Tell me more.”

“Well. Considering you are after adventure, I thought you might appreciate the opportunity to try something new.”

“But a zip line involves heights.” That scared her.

“And speed. You do seem like kind of woman who likes speed. We are in a Ferrari. After all.”

“All right. Well. Maybe. Maybe I’ll try it.”

“We can ease you into it. We can start with the bridge up there.”

She wrinkled her nose. “The bridge gives me anxiety.”

“It’s got a beautiful view.” She felt like this was some weird turning point. A gauntlet. “Come on.”

So she did.

They finished their lunch and paid, then went back outside to the main part of the park, the trail that led up to the bridge. Two tiny children, probably four and six, scampered toward them, heading to their parents.

Emotion knocked her right in the chest, stealing her air. Her breath. She turned and watched as the mother and father each lifted one child up off the ground, the mom stroking her little boy’s hair.

“Aw…that’s… It’s sweet,” she whispered. They continued walking up the trail, and she pressed her hand to her chest, a spot right at the center suddenly sore.

She looked down at her feet. At the trail.

She was looking now. At where the eroded parts were, the rocks buried halfway in the mud. She was paying attention to why she lost her footing sometimes.

They both knew why now. So why not be honest. Why not tell him exactly what she was thinking about.

It was what had drawn her to him. Before.

Before she’d gotten scared of that connection.

She could say things to him and he didn’t really try to solve the problem. He didn’t seem desperate to make it go away.

“Do you know…” she said. “Sometimes I see something like that. Families. Small children. I can’t tell if I ache for when my kids were little…

or when I was little. It’s all the same thing.

It’s time I can’t get back. It’s… I miss mothering in that way.

Some days I really miss being mothered. Everything changes, always. ”

“Yeah. It does.”

“It just feels sad sometimes. To know so profoundly that that part of my life is over. At forty. My kids are grown. My mother is gone. I just…”

They stopped walking, and he turned to face her, grabbing hold of her wrist. His grip was firm, not painful. Steadying. “You have life left. To be who you want. Whatever you want.”

He released his hold and walked ahead.

She felt…destabilized.

Whatever you want…

She felt like she was holding on so tightly to her idea of what her life should be. It was all tangled up in those sharp moments that made her chest hurt. The things that she wished she could go back to.

She was accepting that her marriage wasn’t what she’d believed it to be. What she’d wanted it to be, so desperately.

They traversed the switchbacks of the trail until they came to the bridge. They stood there, the pounding falls so close that the mist brushed her face.

The mist felt like a metaphor in a way she couldn’t quite work out. All this water. Pouring down the rocks. There was always more water, but it wasn’t the same water. It couldn’t flow backward.

She was trying. Trying to meet Will back around again at the beginning. But the problem with a circle was that you ended up back where you started.

You might as well be going backward.

She took a breath. “We can go.”

“Let’s go up the trail. Come on. You came all this way. Let’s see the view.”

She was kind of over how deep every comment was making her think, but there was something to that too.

They hiked up a trail that went straight up the side of a hill, overlooking the valley below.