Before heading back down the valley to the now-open bridge, Kevin asked if they could stop by work for a minute, meaning the Sun Valley Lodge. Walt knew damn well he had no intention of talking to the boss, who wouldn’t be there at eight o’clock on a Sunday night anyway. But Walt dropped Kevin off while he and Myra waited silently in the Cherokee, Myra not knowing what to say and for once not trying to.
Then her shoulders began shaking again, and she reached into her purse and fished out a tissue, cleaning herself up.
“Thank you,” she whispered hoarsely.
“No problem,” Walt said, looking out the windshield at the hotel’s reddish façade, thinking briefly of Hemingway as he always did no matter how many times he visited the lodge. He pushed his anger over Teddy Sumner back, having no idea how or even if the law would ever catch up to him. Cantell was dead, and quite possibly so was the connection between the two. Walt had a couple of interview tapes he needed to decide what to do with.
Kevin came out of the lodge a few minutes later. Despite having his arm in a sling, he seemed to be walking taller. He had a confident, almost smug expression on his face as he climbed into the back.
“Everything okay?” Walt said.
“We’re good,” Kevin said.
“We’re good,” said Myra, unable to control her tears.
“Mom, get over it,” said Kevin. “She’s just a friend.”
Myra’s shoulders continued to shake but now with laughter. She was laughing into her tissue and looking over at Walt, her teary eyes filled with utter amazement.
90
– hwz it ging?
sme. u? WYCM?
Kevin responded to the “Will you call me?” by immediately dialing her number.
“Hey,” she said. She sounded so close all of a sudden.
“Hey,” he said. “How’s the tennis?”
“Haven’t played.”
“You should.”
“You sound like my father.”
“How is he?”
“The same. In big trouble. I may have to live with my aunt, or something. It sucks.” A silence crossed the line. She filled it. “No big deal.”
“I… I think about you all the time.”
“Yeah. Me too,” she said. “My shrink says that’s part of it.”
“Mine says I’m supposed to move on. Right… Not going to happen.”
“We’re coming up there.”
“Here?”
“Yeah. Some kind of hearing or something.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever fly again,” he said. “That’s what I dream about: those flames.”
“My dad, he cried like a baby,” she said. “Apologizing. As if that’s going to change it. Said how he screwed it all up. I said: Duh!”
“My uncle says people do weird stuff when they’re cornered.”
“Don’t go defending him,” she said.
“You’ve got to forgive him,” Kevin said.
“No way.”
“Way,” he said. “So he goes to jail, so what? Maybe you could live up here or something. Maybe it all works out.”
“Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”
“It might,” Kevin said.
Silence.
“So, will I see you when you’re up here?” he asked.
“If you’re looking for me,” she said.
He tried to follow the shrink’s advice and just say what came to his mind, but it wasn’t as easy as she made out, and he heard himself whisper, “The thing is… I think about you all the time. I feel like-”
“Shut up,” she said. “I love you too. BFF.”
Best friends forever.
Kevin swallowed, trying to regain his voice. “No… not for me. It’s more than that, more than BFF.”
“Yeah, I know,” she confessed.
He felt good all of a sudden. Incredibly good. “I’m going to see you when you’re up here.”
“Duh!”
He thought he heard her crying. Only a few seconds later, mumbling some excuse about needing to be somewhere, she hung up.
Kevin held the phone in his hand, staring at it. He remembered calling his uncle from the back of the jet as it took off. He remembered leaving the phone by the chimney of the lodge and his uncle telling him how it had helped track him to the ranch. He considered calling the cowboy and thanking him for everything he’d done. He’d been invited to spend time at the lodge and to fish or white-water raft, and he thought maybe that would be a fun thing to do with his uncle. But he wasn’t going to fly in. If they ever went back there, they would have to hike it.
91
What’s to become of her?” Fiona asked. The view from Walt’s back porch included a dozen hummingbirds battling for control of the feeder. Shadows from the aspen trees slanted across grass that needed mowing. It was almost nine P.M. He’d made them a dinner of microwave lasagna, peas, and coleslaw from the deli. He was sipping Mexican beer. She preferred red wine.
“A white-collar guy like Sumner, he’ll win multiple extensions. He’ll push the trial back at least a year, maybe two. Days before the court date, he’ll cop a plea and get eighteen months in minimum, where he can get home visitations and play volleyball. She’ll be in college by then, immune from a lot of it.”
“I feel bad for her.”
“Yeah.” He worked on the beer and watched the hummingbirds duel with their long bills, their wings going a million miles an hour. He felt like that more often than not: insanely busy but just hovering in the same place. “We caught the woman. Reno, at the tables. We have the phone records connecting her to Cantell, and our visual of her here. She’ll do time along with the others.”
“But months, not years. That’s what you said, right?”
“Way of the world. She’ll do less time than either of the other two. They’re in for kidnapping. Big difference.”
“Kevin?”
“Doing better. I owe him a night of fishing. Maybe you could guide us on Silver Creek.”
“Love to do it. Just name a date.”
They took Bea for a walk around the block, the smell of barbecue lingering, windows lit blue with the glow of televisions. Crickets buzzed loudly, mixing with the sound of lawn sprinklers. A jet flew overhead, its wheels down for landing. Walt thought back to all the walks around the block he’d taken with Gail, surprised and comforted that those memories didn’t land in the center of his chest. He looked over at Fiona a couple of times and knew she was aware of him doing so, but neither said anything for a long time.
“You don’t talk much about your life before coming here,” he said.
“This was-is-a place for me to start over,” she said. “The past is better left where it is. You know?”
“I’m not sure I know, but I’m learning. Yes.”
Kids, playing in a tree fort, cried out. The tree fort had a stained-glass window and an asphalt roof. Walt wondered if this was the right place to bring up kids. The private jets. The tree houses.
“It’s not the same place it was ten years ago,” he said. “This place.”
“You’re tired. You need a break.”
“The girls will be back from camp tomorrow.”
“You must be looking forward to that.”
“Big-time,” he said.
Bea raced out ahead of them, then circled back and came to heel on her own. Fiona reached down and rubbed her head, and Bea jerked up to lick her hand; Fiona laughed.
Walt nearly said, “I could get used to this,” but held his tongue for fear how she might take it. Baby steps, he thought.
“We could go over to Henry’s Fork,” she said. “It’s fishing really well. With Kevin, I mean.”
It would mean motel rooms. Three or four days at least. Meals together. A five-hour drive each way. That was the subtext, and it wasn’t lost on him.
“I don’t think I’m good enough to fish Henry’s Fork,” he said,
“but Kevin would love it.”
“I can teach you,” she said. “It’s what I do, remember?”