Category:

"All right, let's move on. We'll have to go single file after this bend," Hal said. When they started moving again, Darby found herself at the head of the pack, just behind Hal. "Doing okay?" he asked her over his shoulder.

"I'm great," she said. Physically, it wasn't a lie, but she didn't think that Hal was asking about her mental state, and he probably didn't want to hear all about her divorce. She had a therapist for that.

"Kinda gives you a new perspective, doesn't it?"

"What does?"

"This." Hal waved his arm to encompass everything that surrounded them: the river, the cliffs, the hawk, and the sky. "It's hard to be stressed about anything when you're out here."

"Except whether you're going to drown in a flash flood."

Hal snorted. "Fair enough."

Darby grinned at him. She actually wasn't too worried about drowning in a flash flood; she'd checked the detailed weather forecast obsessively, and the outfitters had a meteorologist on staff who had the final say in whether a group went out or not. The day was clear and dry, not a threatening cloud in the sky. But flash floods were known for their fickleness; they rose without warning, tearing through a perfect day with absolute savagery.

The group rounded the bend. The river narrowed, growing thinner and thinner until the canyon walls stood barely a breath from each other, their vermillion surface worn smooth by millions of years of water rushing through them. It was eerie how much the color looked like dried blood.

A set of boulders complicated the entrance to the slot, and Hal stopped the group. "I'm going to give everyone a hand up," he said, "so I'll be at the back as we navigate this one. Don't worry, it's a short one, maybe only a quarter mile." He held his hand up to Darby. "You first."

"Me? But—"

"Yep, you." Hal's voice was soft but firm, a current running beneath his words that steeled Darby's spine. She took a deep breath and gripped his rough, calloused hand. He hoisted her onto the boulders, keeping his grasp as she climbed down the other side and entered the slot.

There was no room to turn around and watch her fellow hikers file in behind her—no choice but to keep moving forward, and the metaphor of that wasn't lost on her. The walls undulated around her, so close that her shoulders brushed against them. At one point she had to duck beneath a crag that jutted out at the height of her head, her poles dragging in the ankle-high creek that wound its way through the canyon. It was dead quiet, the sound of the other hikers' voices muffled with the closeness of the walls, and for a moment Darby stopped. If a flash flood came roaring through here, right now, at this very moment, what would she regret the most?

It wouldn't be her marriage. She'd loved him, and she'd tried, so hard. She couldn't regret that effort. It wouldn't be her job, and it wouldn't be that she hadn't had a child. She had plenty of years left to have a baby, even if she had to do it on her own. No, her deepest regret was not loving herself enough. That she'd spent so much time worrying about whether everyone else loved her while ignoring the person who really, truly mattered.

Behind her, a peal of laughter from Jo broke the spell. Darby nearly laughed out loud herself and moved through the slot canyon as though she'd been there a thousand times before and her feet knew the way on their own. The dappled sunlight grew brighter and warmer until she stepped out into its full strength and breathed in anew.

The river widened and deepened here, rushing over rocks with a loud burbling. Darby drank her water and walked a little way out into the river, waiting for the rest of the group. The cliffs rose above her, cragged with tough-looking trees clinging to the rocks. It was so quiet, aside from the river, and for the first time in a long while, Darby listened to her own thoughts without someone else's crowding in. She smiled to herself, walking farther along the river, leaving the group behind as they began to emerge from the slot canyon behind her.

Up the river, something bright blue glided in the water, its manmade color a contradiction to the natural reds and greens and browns of the canyon. Darby squinted. It looked like a parka. That's too bad, she thought. Someone is going to miss that. The parka snagged on a rock, bobbing up and down a little, the motion slower and heavier than she would expect from a simple jacket. She took a few steps closer. Something about the parka looked wrong; its shape was too defined, too full...her feet kept moving toward it, her gaze fixed on the oddity of it, her mind trying to wrap around what she was seeing.