Page 59 of The Harvey Girls

Forty-Five

Charlotte smiled as she headed out the service entrance toward the dorm, thinking of her self-imposed love exam. She stopped short, however, when her happy gaze took in something so contradictory as to seem almost impossible.

Him .

He was standing in front of the dorm, his head swiveling to scan the area so he could see her approach from any direction.

He did not look spruced up as he had back in Topeka.

His hair had grown down over his ears, and his beard was patchy and unkempt.

His clothing was deeply wrinkled as if by multiple nights of sleeping in them.

No! she thought. Not now! Now that she’d finally found true friends and real love.

She froze in her steps for only the briefest moment, but it was long enough for him to catch sight of her across the road. “Charlotte!” he barked.

It was not the pretense of remorse that he’d constructed so carefully back in Topeka. Now his face showed only fury.

She turned and ran.

Back through the service entrance into the dining room. Where to hide?

But then she heard the commotion behind her (“Sir, you can’t—”) and she dashed past the hotel reception desk.

“Miss Turner!” It was Mr. Patrillo’s voice, but she couldn’t stop for him. She would stop for no one until she was safe.

She ran through the Rendezvous Room with its ghastly severed animal heads mounted around the upper walls, leaving a wake of grumbled comments from hotel guests—“My word!” and “Goodness me!” and “… Harvey Girl!”

From the porch she scanned the Harvey Cars lined up in front, searching for Will, but he wasn’t there. He’s sitting on his own porch waiting for me , she thought. And all she wanted was to get to him. But first she had to lose the predator who now stalked her.

She headed left toward the canyon, thinking she might slip into the constant stream of tourists strolling along the edge of the abyss.

But her damned white dress stood out against the tide of colorful garments and the rusty reds of the canyon.

She didn’t know if he was behind her, but she had to keep running.

Up ahead was the Lookout Studio, and she considered slipping in there, but if he saw her go in, she’d be trapped.

“Charlotte!” His voice came from her left. He must have turned right out of El Tovar and come around the south side of the building, but he had located her now, even if he was still some distance away.

She ran harder down the path, and then she saw her chance.

As sure as she had once been that the infernal hole in the ground would be the death of her, now it would be her refuge.

The canyon would save her.

Down the Bright Angel Trail she went, spinning so fast around the first hairpin turn that she almost ran right into a hiker.

“Hey, watch it!” he yelled, but she had no time to apologize.

Her heart pounded so hard from fear and exertion that she thought it might leap right out of her chest and drop off the side of the precipitous cliff to her right.

She knew she had to stop and catch her breath, but he could be right behind her.

When she felt she might collapse, she saw the tunnel ahead.

It wasn’t deep, only ten or so feet through an enormous rock outcropping that jutted out over the canyon.

Before a hole had been bored through, the old trail had required a death-defying climb around it on a narrow ledge.

On the other side of the tunnel, Charlotte scrabbled out onto the ledge on the back side of the rock.

If he came through looking in front of him, he would miss her altogether and keep running downhill.

Then she could climb back onto the trail, reverse direction up through the tunnel, and head straight to Will.

All she had to do was wait.

As she stood there, muscles quivering, back pressed painfully against the jagged stone, she saw two women in the distance coming up the trail from below, one redheaded and one blond.

They were chatting amiably, smiling at one another, and then the blond said something that made the redhead roar with laughter.

Henny and Nora.

They hadn’t spied her yet, too engrossed in their conversation and each other. Charlotte could only hope either that Simeon would pass by them before they saw her, or that he hadn’t come down the trail at all.

“Charlotte!” Henny called out, just as Simeon dashed through the tunnel. He stopped short, his shoes skidding in the dusty gravel, his head craning around to track her.

And there she was like a bird in a cage. Like a fish in a barrel.

“Charlotte,” he growled and moved toward her. “Your hiding days are over.”

“How… how did you know…”

“One of the Harvey Girls in Topeka. You remember Tildie.” He smiled, proud of having charmed yet another source into revealing things they knew they shouldn’t.

“I secretly visited stupid little Tildie every month until I’d gained her trust. Then I got her to find out from that oaf of a manager where you’d gone. ” He took a step closer. “It was easy.”

Throat clenched in a knot of fear, Charlotte couldn’t breathe, much less call for help. She could only stare at the man who would end her right now on this godforsaken cliff.

The graveyard of the world , George Wharton James had called it.

Her graveyard.

Simeon’s left foot was so close to the edge that several rocks gave way and tumbled over the side.

She never heard them land, just as the author had promised.

Simeon paused a moment to adjust his footing.

His hair was plastered with sweat, and she could tell that he, too, was terrified.

But his terror would not keep him from accomplishing the task at hand, and that was to punish her for leaving him, humiliating him, disobeying him, not once, but twice now.

Well, if she was to die, she had something to say—had always had something to say but had lived in soul-crushing fear of saying it. Now there was no reason not to.

“You are a fool.”

His face contorted in confusion, and it occurred to her that it was possibly the most surprising thing he’d ever heard in his life, this man who thought he was smarter than everyone else on the planet.

“You had a wife who adored you, who supported your dreams and left her entire world behind to be with you, something most men would dream of—and you squandered it. Squandered all that love and happiness. And for what? To feel large and powerful when the world showed you that you were small, to beat and bloody your true source of pride. You should have been proud to have me by your side, but you were too stupid—so unbelievably stupid—to see it. And now you have nothing when you could have had everything .”

Billie sped down the trail, hoping desperately that Leif had found Will and they were close behind her. But whether they were or not, she had to get there. She had to help her friend.

She ran through the short tunnel and heard Charlotte’s voice. She turned quickly, searching for its location, and saw her friend cornered on the ledge, a man standing motionless with his back to Billie as Charlotte drilled him with the ferocity of her words.

“Charlotte!” Billie called out, uncertain what to do, how to keep the terrifying scene from getting immeasurably worse.

The man startled and spun toward her, kicking up dust and sending small rocks flying out into the canyon. Billie locked eyes on Charlotte, whose face had gone from fury to sorrow and almost… was that an apology of sorts?

Suddenly Charlotte scrambled forward between the rock and Simeon.

He grabbed her arm as she tried to pass.

No , thought Billie. Please, God, no!

She lunged forward to stop him, but Charlotte wrenched free. The motion destabilized him, and suddenly his arms were windmilling in the air, his face a rictus of terror as he teetered and fell away from them, back, back, back…

And down.