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Palm Springs

January 3, 2023

5:00 P.M.

Never in my life had I been so attuned to the sun as it arcs across the sky. By late afternoon, it slips behind the rough outcroppings and blankets the valley in a growing shadow, setting beyond view. The closer you are to the mountains, the sooner the day ends. And when the day ends, so, too, does the search.

Grant had already spent two nights alone on the mountain; I didn’t want there to be a third. Brady said the third day was the tipping point; you could only go three days without water.

Cassie had brought me to this dramatic spot at the Trading Post shortly before Christmas. She wanted me to photograph her for a “collab” she was doing with a company that made antibacterial lotion. She needed a dramatic setting; if she could get enough engagement, the company would offer her a thousand-dollar bonus.

She wasn’t the only Instagrammer who’d recognized the photographic possibilities of this location. Next to us were some girls in heels and skimpy dresses taking selfies. This was a scene we saw all over town. Young people were always snapping photos of themselves in front of cheesy glowing signs intended not for the moment, but for the virtual online confetti. They say CHILLAX, POOL TIME, and PALM SPRINGS. “Look, an entire generation suffering nostalgia for the present,” Grant would say.

Cassie stretched out her arm to take a photo of herself with her phone, testing out the background. “Selfies always make me feel funny,” I told her. “My mother was not one for vanity.”

“Well, I hope I look like you when I’m your age. Here, hold this.” She handed me the bottle of lotion. “Squirt it into your hand.” She fiddled with some settings, held her phone out, and leaned against me. We smiled. “That’s good!” She pressed the button on the side of her camera and expertly snapped a few photos.

“This makes me so uncomfortable,” I said through my grin. “Why doesn’t anyone use the word conceited anymore? When I was young, it was a great insult to be seen as full of yourself.”

Cassie put the phone down and looked at me. With great sincerity, she said, “But don’t you see, Kim? If you aren’t full of yourself, who are you full of?”

To my horror, that was the photo she ended up posting to @spiritguidecassie. The company loved that we gave off “mother-daughter vibes” and that the product implied you could be close to the people you loved if you had the right kind of protection. It didn’t look staged, but natural. She did get the bonus—and with it, she took me to Sephora downtown, where she bought me a ridiculously expensive tube of sparkly blush, and then she made me get a makeover so I would know how to use it.

That same day at the Trading Post with Cassie, I’d snapped some photos of the posers, and also the hikers covered in dust emerging from their adventures. I tried to capture the look of gratitude that washed over their faces when they saw that they were back at the gift shop, which sold water and souvenir trinkets. Even portable toilets, under the right conditions, can appear to be blessings.

Now, not even two weeks later, here I was again, allowing myself to fantasize that Grant, too, was making his way back just before dark. He’d smile and wave when he saw me as though he’d expected me to be there all along. Or he’d emerge from the other entrance and sur prise me with a kiss—that was our running joke ever since we’d met, the surprise kiss.

We’d get in the car and return to Basil’s place and soak in the hot tub. He’d regale me with stories of coyotes and canyons and explain how he’d miscalculated his route. Or I’d return to Basil’s and he’d be there, waiting for me, and we’d both apologize the way we always did, and everything would be fine.

Our relationship had worked up to that point because it was fueled by our cycles of absence and reunion—from the planned to the unpredictable. The longer he was gone, the more powerful the emotions when we saw each other again, the more emphatic the apologies, and honestly, sometimes, the better the sex—we were so much more acutely aware of each other’s bodily presence.

I kept trying to tell myself that just because the Jeep had been parked near the Jo Pond Trail, it didn’t necessarily mean Grant was lost in the mountains. But I didn’t really believe that.

I felt a tap on my back that scared me to death. I screamed, turned, and saw Hobie.

His face was lit up with excitement. “There’s been a development.”

Hobie pulled the backpack off his shoulders and held it up; it was Grant’s, and in that moment, it was as precious and meaningful as the girls’ baby bootees I kept in a box in the basement. Grant’s spirit and energy seemed to radiate from it with such force that I felt it could knock me down. I could see something poking out of the front pocket: his Moleskine journal. For all his concerns about the weight of his pack, he would never have hiked without it; he said he did his best thinking on the trail. Since Cassie’s “assignment,” he wrote more than ever. He found it freeing to burn his pages in the gas grill next to our unit when he was done, while I wondered what thoughts and fears he was so eager to torch.

Seeing his backpack, one of my questions—perhaps the biggest—was finally answered, and I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Grant actually had gone hiking, which meant that he was really and truly lost. At least, before, I could comfort myself with the thought that even if he had left me, he was at least physically okay. Now, I understood on a visceral level that he might not be.

He was in danger.

“But how would he have lost his pack? He needs it.” I stuffed my nose in the fabric, my eyes welling with tears. I tore it open. “He still has a protein bar in here. What’s he going to eat?” My hands were shaking.

“It was just sitting there next to a boulder,” Hobie said. “Who knows what happened. But at least we have an idea of where he’s been, and we can send some trackers to follow him.”

“You should have left it,” I said, my voice sounding hysterical even to my ears. “You should have stayed. He’s trying to find it, I’ll bet. He’s hungry. He’s hungry, Hobie!”

“We search in a given radius. He wasn’t anywhere near it. He was long gone.”

I reached for the journal. “Maybe he wrote something that will tell us—”

Brady appeared from out of nowhere and snatched the backpack out of Hobie’s hands. I grabbed for it, and Brady pulled it away. “That’s mine,” I said, sounding like a petulant child. “What’s Grant’s is mine.”

“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Duffy, but I need to keep this for a few hours. He might have written something that will help us find his coordinates.” Brady’s voice was soothing but firm. “I know it’s important for you to see it, and you will, but I’m going to look it over. I promise I’ll get it back to you. For the moment, we have to treat this as evidence.”

That word evidence made me feel exposed. What would they find in that journal? Now everyone would know about our whole relationship, our complicated history.

To me, it was evidence of us, and who we were.