Page 1 of Distant Shores (Stapled Magnolias #2)

ADAIR

B y the third hour of searching, I hadn’t yet lost hope, but apparently the old four-wheeler had.

With a sputter and a crack, the machine died as I crested a hill, and all I could do was hold on as I coasted down the other side, cutting tracks through the sludgy snow until it eventually lumbered to a stop.

I knew these woods well, but the three-day-old snow made them treacherous. Now that the engine had died, I could hear the incessant dripping of water from the trees. It was so thick and consistent, it could almost be mistaken for rain.

Pushing my hair off my forehead, I stood up on the ATV’s foot pegs, then cupped my hands around my mouth, and yelled hoarsely, “Wilbur Smith!”

My calls died in the woods with eerie quickness, just like the hundreds I sent out before it.

And just like those times, no response came. Not even birdsong.

Terror truly seized me then, ripping through my fatigue .

Pops was a force of nature. He knew this land and was a far more capable human than anyone I’d ever known, no matter the memory slips he’d been having lately.

Or the faint tremor in his hands he’d been trying to hide from us since Christmas.

When he grabbed his jacket and said he’d be back in a while, waving off my offer to come with him, I thought nothing of it despite those things.

But that was almost six hours ago.

I grabbed my medical bag from the back of the four-wheeler and prayed that I didn’t need it as I entered the woods on foot.

Pops had taken to going on long walks by himself ever since Grandma Nell passed away, which was around….

Lordy.

The thought of just how long it’d been stopped me in my tracks. I lifted my gaze to the sky and was pelted by droplets of melting snow, but I didn’t have it in me to care. Even so, I took my glasses off and found a dry piece of shirt under my coat to clean them off.

Seven years.

It was hard to believe she’d been gone so long.

It’d been several years since I’d lived in North Georgia.

Not since my sister Delly graduated high school.

But no matter how long the hours got working as a paramedic for two different counties near Atlanta, I made sure to check in with Pops twice per week.

During those calls, he always described his walks in painstaking detail, down to the exact trails he used and the species of birds he saw on the way there and on the way back.

The sun was getting lower in the sky, and I cursed the lack of signal here more than ever before, which was saying something considering how much time I’d spent here in the mountains as a surly teenager .

I worked my way through the woods with redoubled speed, thankful for the cardio my best friend Cole’d had me doing as part of my fitness routine for years. Most of the trees were bare, and I wasn’t as careful in the sludge as I should have been, slipping and sliding as I went.

Memories of the first time I’d walked through snow in these woods threatened me with each stumble, and it was hard not to merge flashes of that remembered panic with this fresh one.

My baby sister, Delly, desperately hot and crying.

Our parents too drunk to drive us to the hospital and my legs too short to reach the pedals of our beat-up old Saturn.

The landline dead because they hadn’t paid the phone bill since Christmas.

A long, scary walk through the woods all the way to the cabin.

Pops and Grams rushing to the door when I finally made it to their cabin with my two-year-old sister, both of us delirious.

I also remembered the love and care Pops had always freely given me and Delly. Love that we’d desperately needed.

We couldn’t lose him.

I upped my pace, thinking hard about what to do next. I’d already checked all of his normal walking and riding trails, and I’d even tried to find some of those game trails I only vaguely remembered, but maybe it was time to approach this differently.

The unmistakable call of a red-shouldered hawk pierced my thoughts, and I automatically searched the winter sky for it. “ Kee-ah” came the call again, the sound guiding my thoughts.

Summers with Pops and Grams, cooking and singing together—his gruff baritone to my developing teenaged one. Grams teaching me hymns on their old upright piano while he carved walking sticks for long walks to …

“The creek,” I whispered before breaking out into a full-on sprint.

As the tall pine trees swallowed me, I tried my best not to berate myself for not thinking of it. I slipped more than once but managed to stay upright as I slowed just enough to pick my way more efficiently through the woods the way Pops taught me.

By the time I’d worked up a sweat and burned two weeks’ worth of calories, the pine trees spit me out into a ravine, and the sight before me nearly had me falling to my knees in relief.

Pops was there. Right there, standing above the ravine that sheltered a partially frozen creek, his back turned to me.

Exhaustion and elation were the all-consuming distractions I would later blame for what went down next.

The “what” in that equation being me .

“Pops?” I rasped more quietly than intended as I approached him. “What are yo?—?”

Lost eyes of a color I knew but didn’t know met mine over his shoulder just before his entire body sagged in relief, mirroring my own. My heart, already bruised from hours of panic, squeezed in pained thankfulness to see that he seemed to be physically unharmed.

But still, my training kicked in, and I started my visual assessment.

His white hair was hidden beneath his old beanie, his prominent mustache was flaked with snow, and his rigid stance didn’t signal an obvious injury.

But his eyes….

There was something about his eyes that had sympathetic panic and grief welling inside me before I could even name the feelings. It was the same look he had when he confessed to me all those years ago that Grams was sick .

His hands shook as he pointed an arthritic finger down toward the water.

“I…,” Pops started, but his voice cracked, and he faltered.

Cold and a disused voice had him coughing for several moments before he tried again.

“I wanted to see if I remembered how to get to her place. Nell’s spot by the creek.

It’s been years since I’d visited it, and I…

.” He laughed, but it was a sad sound. “I hated that.”

I took several careful steps toward him, only then realizing how close to the edge he was standing, and forced a smile onto my face.

“You found it,” I said hoarsely, hours of yelling and exposure catching up to me.

He was still for a long moment before he dipped his chin in acknowledgement.

“Yeah. I did.” Then, with a gesture that was very much unlike him, he tugged angrily at his orange beanie, faded from years of wear.

He lowered his gaze to the ground, his hand noticeably shaking by his side as he bit out, “I couldn’t remember if I needed to cross the damn—” He kicked at the ground, emphasizing the uncharacteristic curse, sending snow and loose rocks down into the creek bed.

“—the damn creek to get home.” He stared off beyond the creek as if still trying to remember and then whispered, “I couldn’t remember. ”

“Pops,” I said quietly as I reached toward him, intending to squeeze his shoulder in comfort. But then, in a surge of strength that was unexpected though not exactly surprising—he was still a strong man even in his seventies—he startled. Violently.

It took only seconds but somehow also a century.

A misplaced step, loose rocks beneath my feet shifting to reveal a layer of ice beneath them, then a sharp turn of my ankle.

All I registered besides the blinding pain was Pops’s wide, panicked eyes, flashes of snow and sky reversed… and then there was nothing.

Nothing at all.