CHAPTER SEVEN

WHEN DAY ARRIVED at Grace’s house for dinner, Zac was at the kitchen table, cuddling the ugliest animal she had ever seen. Grace was sliding a tray of rolls into the oven when her sister came in. “Hi, Day.”

Day’s answering smile was wan, a contrast to Pip’s cheerful “Hello, hello,” as he appeared from the dining room and took her coat.

While Day thanked him, Zac set the animal he’d been holding—some kind of dog—on the floor. Ninochka, who’d been sitting beside him eagerly watching, gazed down at the newcomer and gave a low whine.

“Eat it, Nina,” Grace suggested. “It’ll taste good.”

The Siberian lay down in front of the smaller dog and began to wash it with her tongue.

“See how well they get along!” exclaimed Zac.

Day guessed where the dog had come from. “Stray?”

“Yes,” replied her sister. “Want a dog?”

Day knew Grace wouldn’t really let anyone take the stray dog from Zachary. With a smile that said the same thing, Pip invited, “Come see the new kitchen, Day. Or rather, the gutted walls.”

He led her out of the room, and Grace turned to Zachary, remembering what she’d meant to tell him the minute she came home, before she met the thing. “Guess who my sister loves.”

Zachary repositioned his chair so he could pet his new dog. “She loves Nick Colter. Are they getting married?”

“Ahh!” Grace cried. “No, they’re not getting married. How did you know? How come everyone knows these things but me?”

“Because you’re…pragmatic. For instance, you look at this animal and see an undesirable stray. And I look—”

“Don’t get back on that. Tell me what you know.”

“I don’t know anything, except that they spend a great deal of time gazing into each other’s eyes. That’s a usual symptom of being in love. You and I do it quite a bit.” He got up from the table to hold his wife and look down into her eyes. “Can I really keep him?”

Grace found it very difficult to refuse Zac anything, even a wheezing, one-eared mutt with a pushed-in face. “I said you could. For a coupon.” In fact, it was the first thing she’d said when she saw the animal. If you want to keep it…

She and Zac exchanged coupons for gifts on birthdays and Christmas and other special occasions. Coupons good for housework or back rubs or…strays.

“Done,” said Zac, as Grace had feared. Releasing her, he hurried down the hall toward their bedroom to get a coupon. When he returned and handed her a coupon good for ANYTHING, he said, “That’s what I’m going to call him. Coupon.”

Grace collected the ticket and stuffed it into her pocket. Speaking low, because her sister and Pip were somewhere about, though out of earshot, she said, “Well, Day says he doesn’t love her. She says she’s even thought of trying to take up the things he likes. Rock climbing, mountain biking—”

“That’s not the answer.”

Grace wished she knew the answer. On Nick’s lower back was a long striped scar. Grace had seen it on the river and in the boat yard every summer. Her father had told her and Day that he’d been beaten. But Nick never said what his life had been like before he came to Moab and started living in caves on the river like Huckleberry Finn. Any other woman she would have warned away from Nick. But Day was strong enough.

Or could be strong enough. Grace had seen a long line of women take turns with Nick Colter. Day shouldn’t have put up with that. “I think she’s right, Zac. Nick always picks girlfriends who share his love of the wilderness. It might be the thing standing between them.”

“I very much doubt it. Let them work it out themselves, Grace.”

“But what about Rapid Riggers?”

“Grace,” Zachary suggested, crouching beside the dogs. “Keep out of it.”

“He’s going to Salt Lake and leaving Day alone all winter.”

“Hmm. Imagine deserting the second-most beautiful woman in Moab.” He winked at his wife as he scooped up Coupon and brought the smelly thing over to Grace. “Look at these eyes. How can you not love an animal with eyes like this? Now, this is Grace, Coupon, and she’s in charge of everything here.”

Grace surrendered to his silliness, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Nick and Day. It was much better than contemplating Dirty Bob lying in a coma in Grand Junction.

THE NEXT MORNING Nick reached the river office before Day. When she wheeled her bicycle inside at seven-thirty, he said, “Let’s go to Glenwood Springs and buy rafts.”

Standing the mountain bike against the wall, Day hung her helmet on the handlebars. “I don’t want to go.”

“Day, if I leave this place, you’ll need to know your equipment.”

He was offering to teach her. “All right. Shall we stop and see Bob?”

Nick suppressed a wisecrack. Part of him knew that humor was his defense against the pain of what had happened to Bob. But it wasn’t a good reaction. “We can’t. He had some seizures last night, and they sedated him and said no visitors.”

“Seizures? What does that mean?”

Nature—reflex—won. “Picture…Sacco and Vanzetti in the electric chair?”

“God, Nick. Just don’t, all right?”

She saw too much, knew him too well. But the compassion in her eyes, and her insistence that he sober up, helped him do so. When he did, waves of pain came through. Fighting the hurt and fear, he answered her original question more seriously. “I don’t know what it means. But they’re doing all they can for him. You and I can’t do anything.”

He was right. “Okay. Let me change, and we’ll go.”

“You’re dressed better for Colorado now.”

Black wool leggings, blue fisherman-knit sweater and her down coat. She shrugged. What did it matter what she wore?

They gassed up the Red Sled and left immediately, since Glenwood Springs was four hours away.

Nick sang to himself as they drove between burgundy red formations and past the visitor center of Arches National Park. Then the song faded away. “Feel like telling stories?”

Day had been reading some new stories to present at the museum. Practicing their telling would pass the time—and maybe help take Nick’s mind off Bob. “All right. Who goes first?”

“You.”

She began the Hopi legend of Tiyo, who had gone down the Far Far Below River in the hollowed-out trunk of a cottonwood tree. They were almost to the state line by the time she finished. It had started to snow.

Nick said, “Thanks. I liked that. I like his boat.”

Day could believe it. At fourteen, Nick had braved Cataract Canyon in a canoe. Perhaps that was why she always pictured Tiyo like Nick. She said, “Tell me a river story. Tell me about the canoe in Cataract.”

He did. She’d heard it before, but he embellished freely, drawing out the section where he’d swamped the canoe in Mile Long Rapid and it had almost sunk, making up an episode with Little Niagara, the massive hole in Satan’s Seat. As they passed Grand Junction on 1-70, avoiding the business loop but both thinking of Bob in the hospital, Nick told her about reaching the calm of Lake Powell, known to river guides as Lake Foul, the reservoir that had drowned the best rapids of Cataract Canyon and swallowed forever the beauty of Glen Canyon. End of story.

Silence fell on the car for so long he was startled when Day spoke.

“How did you get back to Moab?”

“Hitchhiked.”

“With a canoe?”

Nick didn’t answer at once. “Actually, when I was paddling in Lake Powell, your dad came up behind me in a J-rig.”

Day stared. “That’s when he caught you with the canoe. How come you never told me?”

“It’s embarrassing. Still.” He held the steering wheel lightly, watching the road. “I didn’t know who he was. He had a bunch of passengers, and he asked if I’d like a tow to the marina, a ride back to Moab.”

Nick wanted to abbreviate, to leave things out. Because it was Day, he told it as it had happened. There was safety in the role of storyteller, as though he was talking about some other person, some made-up story boy.

“He put the canoe on the roof of the Suburban he was using to haul the J-rig, and then he said, ‘That’s my canoe, son. Now, you must know where you got it, because it disappeared from my yard Friday night.’“

Hearing her father, Day smiled.

“Then he said, ‘Now, right here on the side of this J-rig, it says‘Rapid Riggers River and Jeep Expeditions,’ and there’s a big sign outside my outfit that says the same thing. And you look like a smart observant boy, so I can only guess you can’t read.’“

Day laughed. “I wonder if he really knew. I mean, he used to say that to everybody.‘Can’t you read?’“

“Yeah, right. I don’t know when he figured it out. I ran away, and he caught me behind the trading post.” Nick had been certain he would be hit. “He said, ‘You want that canoe?’ and I did, but I didn’t trust him. He asked me who I was and where were my parents, and I told him I was eighteen.”

To her giggle, Nick said, “Yeah, he laughed, too. He asked where I’d run away from, and he tried to get me to ride back to Moab with him, but I was afraid, and he didn’t make me. He just let me go.”

Day waited a long time for him to continue. “So you hitchhiked to Moab?”

“The next day.”

“How did you hook up with my dad again?”

“I got hungry. You were right, what you said in the hospital. He did everything for me.”

“He loved you.”

“Sure.”

He said it like it didn’t matter. Day knew her father had taken Nick for his own. Her father had had to love someone who would steal a canoe and take it down Cataract and not wreck the boat. He’d kept a careful distant watch on Nick, following him from cave to cave, checking on him. They’d had a deal; Nick had told her about it after her dad died. Nick could keep the canoe—if he went to school.

They’d both honored the bargain.

Day missed her father cruelly. Even that mixture of compassion and disappointed resignation with which he’d viewed her fear of the river. It felt almost as though the only part of him she still had was Nick.

But that wasn’t true. She had Rapid Riggers. She had his outfit.

Refusing to pine for what she could not have, she said, “So tell me about rafts.”

IT TOOK THREE HOURS to choose boats and life vests. The new innovations in equipment surprised Day. The Rapid Riggers boats really were outdated.

They bought two eighteen-foot and two sixteen-foot selfbailing rafts, two dozen new oars and thirty life jackets. All would be delivered to Rapid Riggers in the following weeks.

By then, it was dark, and they were hungry. Lunch had been the salad bar at a City Market. They went out for dinner at an Italian restaurant below street level. Neither of them wanted anything alcoholic with the meal, and Nick seemed indifferent to the idea of an appetizer. Day ordered bruschetta, anyhow, and ate it all herself, while he shifted in his seat and occasionally drank some water.

Even when their food came, he barely touched his.

“Nick, are you all right?”

“Sure.”

“Shall we try to see Bob on the way home? Maybe they’ll let us in now.”

“Maybe.” At the moment Nick wasn’t eager to see more of Bob in a coma. He talked to him whenever he visited, told him jokes and river stories, trying to wake him up. But he never moved, and it made Nick want to hit things.

Day yearned to reach across the table and stroke his hair back from his face. It’s Bob, she realized. That’s why he’s not eating. “Did you go through one of those debriefing sessions after Bob’s accident?”

Critical Incident Stress Debriefing. He’d told her about the sessions for emergency-medical-services personnel. “No. It wasn’t that bad.” If he’d been on the ambulance team, though, they would have made him talk to someone, just because Bob was a close friend.

Restless, he sat back in his chair and glanced toward the stairs that led up to the street.

Day followed his gaze. Oh, God. It hadn’t even occurred to her when she’d suggested the restaurant. They were underground, in a room without windows.

Nick guessed her thoughts. “I’m fine, Day. I’m just not hungry.”

She hurried, anyhow.

While she scraped up the last of her manicotti, Nick brooded. He needed to do something. He diffused stress with activity. There was a full moon tonight, and they were in Colorado, surrounded by mountains. If he had his skis…But Day didn’t ski.

When they emerged on the sidewalk, it was 8:00 p.m. Nick caught Day’s arm before she could start toward the car. “Day, do you want to have an adventure?”

His eyes were hopeful, like those of a child who wants someone to play.

But Nick played hard.

“Like what?”

“Surprise?”

It had to be some outdoor thing. “Is it something I can do?”

“I think so.”

Obviously he didn’t want to go to the hospital. And they were together, anyhow; what further damage could his adventure do? “Okay.”

His smile was boyish, excited. “Let’s go up the street.”

Downtown Glenwood Springs was still decorated for the holidays. As Nick and Day headed up the sidewalk, cars drove by with skis on their roofs, coming down from Aspen.

Nick led her into a mountaineering store and asked the clerk if they rented snowshoes.

“I’ve never been on snowshoes, Nick.”

“Easy as walking.”

There was a rack of those fabric keeper straps for sunglasses on the counter. They caught Day’s eye, triggering memory. While she relived a private drama, Nick requested two snowshoe rentals with ski poles and, after deliberation, chose some climbing equipment and a headlamp. Pointing to three ropes on the wall, all elevenmillimeter UIAA-approved, fifty meters long, he woke Day from her reverie. “Pick a color.”

They were beautiful. Turquoise, shocking pink, neon yellow—all interwoven with threads of contrasting colors. “Blue.”

It was what he would have chosen. He asked the clerk to get it down, then talked him into lending them a second rope and a climbing pack.

“What are we going to do?” asked Day, half laughing. He was crazy. “It’s nighttime.”

“You’re going to have the best night of your life.”

Their eyes met and held for too long, trapped in memory. His eyelids dropped, shielding his thoughts, and Day turned away and pretended interest in skis and snowboards. All the best nights of her life had been with Nick. But this couldn’t be one of them.

THEY STOPPED at the grocery store for fruit and trail mix and Power Bars, plus hot water and herbal teabags to fill the two thermoses. Although Nick wasn’t hungry, he knew Day would be before they were done. Out in the Red Sled, he removed one pair of rental snowshoes from the storage pack they’d come with. “Put the food in here.”

He started the engine while Day dealt with the groceries.

As he drove south, the moon lit up the silvery snow and the Victorian buildings. He headed west at Carbondale onto another highway, and they passed a motel and a school and some small ranches with corrals. The road narrowed to two lanes and wound into the mountains.

“I take it we’re not going back to the desert.”

“Not right now. Relax. We’ve got a little drive.” He adjusted the heat in the car. “You can go to sleep if you want.”

“No. That’s all right.” She was wide awake, watching the curves, the shadows of the trees.

They had left ski country, moved into closed-up snow country. More twists. Past the town of Redstone, with its row of historic coke ovens for processing coal, they entered evergreen forest. There were no other cars. As Nick turned onto a new road, Day read the highway sign. “Marble. Is that where we’re going?”

“Yes.” Feeling the intimacy of what they were doing, Nick reminded himself why he’d ended their relationship. All the whys. When he’d awoken in the office the day before with the effigy in his lap and the sleeping bag covering him, he’d been worried. But if Day had seen the object, she apparently hadn’t thought anything of it.

It was a big lie between them. His life was one big lie.

“It’s really dead up here,” she said. The cabins they passed were all dark.

“Especially this time of year. It’s inaccessible. One of the least-discovered places in Colorado.” He’d asked about avalanche conditions. They were good, the snow as stable as it got. He was more concerned about Day. She’ll be okay. She’d quit smoking. She’d been riding her bike.

Eventually they reached the town of Marble, shut tight for the winter. Outside a restaurant that wouldn’t open again till spring, Nick parked the Suburban. The road leading off to the right, to the quarry, was not plowed. “We’re here.”

The valley was dark, the mountains surrounding it so high and steep that the moon had not risen above them. Instead, it cast a glowing white outline around the ridges.. As soon as she got out of the car, the cold sank into Day’s bones, but she ignored it. At least she was dressed right. She pulled on her hat with the long tail.

Coming around the side of the car, Nick said, “Give me that thing.” He took it from her and tied the tail in a knot.

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t want it to get caught on the rope.”

Rope. Because she was with Nick, the prospect didn’t make her nervous. She trusted him and put on the silly hat.

Nick loaded the climbing gear into the borrowed pack and gave Day the smaller snowshoe pack, which held the food. “Okay, these snowshoes are easy.” They were aluminum, and he showed her how the bindings worked, with three nylon straps and buckles to fit around her boots. He stabbed the ski poles into the snow beside her. “These help you walk in deep snow.”

Enduring the cold on her bare hands, Day snugged the snowshoes over her boots while he put on the other, larger pair. As she pulled on her gloves, he checked that they had everything they needed from the Suburban and locked it.

Day grasped the ski poles and experimentally raised one foot, then moved it forward. The snowshoe sank a few inches into the snow. She picked up the other foot. “I can do this.”

“Of course.” Nick felt no urge to tease her now. He just wanted her to make it to the top. “Let’s go. You set the pace.”

They started along the road, heading toward the nearest ridge, past a sign that said Marble Quarry.

“Is that where we’re going? To the quarry?”

“Right.”

It sounded interesting, and the snowshoes weren’t bad at all. The cold left her body. Even her fingers and toes grew warm from the exertion of poling and of lifting the shoes in the powder. “I like this. I’m warm.”

“Good.”

The squeaking crunch, the gentle clinking of the levered bindings, made a reassuring rhythm in the still night. As the path began to rise, winding up onto the mountain, Day’s breath came hard. She coughed some, then pulled up her turtleneck around her face.

Nick paid careful attention to her. She’s going to be tired. But he would turn around if she seemed in danger of exhaustion.

When they had climbed for some time, she stopped. “I just want to catch my breath.”

“Sure.” While she rested, he opened her pack to get the trail mix. Removing one of his gloves, he untied the twist and offered her the food.

Day peeled off her gloves to eat and to drink hot tea from the thermos. Moonlight shone on Nick’s hand holding the bag, and she looked up and saw the bright disk rising over the far ridge. It illuminated the valley, the trees and a frozen creek below. Till then, she hadn’t even noticed that they’d crossed a bridge. “It’s beautiful.”

Seeing the keenness with which she was studying the view, thinking how beautiful she was, Nick felt free. This is the best thing I’ve ever done.

It was because she was there.

He put the food and the thermos away. “It’ll probably take us an hour and a half to get up to the quarry. It’s faster in summer. I’m going to walk in front of you and break trail, but I won’t go too far ahead.”

“Okay.”

Nick was the perfect companion. Without looking back, he seemed to know her speed, slowing his steps so that he was never more than about ten feet in front of her. Day alternated between walking in the prints he made in the deep powder and cutting through it on her own. But even though she was sweating in her clothes, she felt her muscles and her body growing stronger, her lungs cleaner as she coughed the phlegm out of them.

Whenever she stopped to rest, Nick offered her the thermos and something to eat. She grew used to the sight of his face and his dark eyes in the moonlight, to seeing his hair against his ski headband. His eyes tilted at the corners when he smiled at her, and in his expression she saw a part of him she hadn’t known before. He was at peace.

Now I understand why you do these things.

It was especially good to see him like this—calm—after his edginess since Bob’s accident. She’d longed to help him relax and hadn’t known how. In the past, after he’d been through a crisis like retrieving the mountain biker’s body, even making love to him hadn’t really worked.

She realized she’d never known him before tonight. Shep had never met the lover that Day had. But undoubtedly Shep and many other women had seen this side of Nick.

No point in trying to guard her heart from emotion; she could not. On this mountain every wave of love seemed safe and right, like in the hospital, when they’d held hands after he’d told her he was going back to school to become a paramedic.

“This is fun, Nick.”

“I’m glad you think so.” I’m glad you’re with me. He paused, waiting for her, but she kept going, each rise and fall of her breath audible. He sensed the deep flush on her cheeks.

He felt himself falling more deeply in love with her.

It’s okay. Just enjoy this night. Enjoy her friendship.

Eventually he spotted the first of the pieces of quarry equipment, draped in snow. “See the waterfall?”

It was up ahead, iced over, glittering under the moon. The wall beside them was steep, straight up and down, the mountain cut away to make the quarry road. But they were at the end of the road, and it changed to a narrower path up through the trees, alongside the frozen creek falls.

“This trail is going to be tricky, so we’ll stay close together. Just take it slow and use your poles.” He broke the trail for her, taking care that his steps weren’t too long for her legs. He picked out the stairs, avoided boulders.

Day struggled, deliberately putting her feet exactly where his had been.

“We’re almost there.”

“Almost there” turned out to be a long quarter of a mile, but when the trail ended, they were on level snow.

“This way.”

Nick led her alongside another sheered-off wall of rock to a giant overhanging mouth in the mountainside, the gaping manmade entrance to the quarry. The snow beneath it tapered off to ice and then to nothing.

“Stay here, Day.”

He ventured across the snow and ice toward the edge of the quarry. Eventually the ice stopped, leaving cold concrete. Nick took off his snowshoes. A four-inch diameter pipe protruded from the ground, a sling and a carabiner already around it. He crouched and examined them, then removed his pack to get the headlamp.

When he returned to Day, she was gazing up at the roof of the entrance, thirty feet overhead. “This place is incredible.” She met his eyes. “I take it we’re going in.”

“Game?”

Day regarded the monstrous hole with only blackness beyond. “Okay.” She shivered. Now that she’d stopped moving, she was cold.

In the pack, Nick found a length of one-inch tubular webbing he’d bought at the climbing store. “I’m going to tie a harness for you. It was cheaper than buying one, and it works just as well as long as you do it right.” Directing the headlamp where he needed it, he wrapped the webbing briefly around her thigh, checking her size. “Go ahead and take off your snowshoes, but stay over here, off the ice.” His eyes teased. “Since you’re so graceful.”

Day listened attentively as he explained knots and watched his hands as he expertly tied them. When she stepped into the harness he’d made, he adjusted it, then secured it with two other knots. The knots all looked perfect. “Comfortable?”

She picked up her legs, felt the webbing around them. “It’s snug.”

He slipped his fingers inside the webbing, against her wool leggings.

Oh, God. Just a little higher, Nick.

“It fits.” Satisfied, he withdrew his hand and used another length of webbing to make himself a harness, taking the same care he had with Day’s. He noticed her shivering and took the thermos out of her pack. “Drink some tea.”

He went to set up the anchor. The pipe was solid, embedded deeply in concrete, but he added a new sling to the one already in place. After anchoring the rope he’d bought, he went back to Day. He loaded their extra gear, including the snowshoes, into the two packs. “I’m going to lower these after you go down. You’ll have to take them off the rope.”

“Okay.”

“Hang on to me. It’s icy.” Giving her one arm, he used the other to carry the gear over to the anchor. While she waited, he set up a belay with the second rope and tied in. “Here. This is a locking carabiner.” He fastened it through all the layers of webbing on the front of her harness, both waist and leg loops, so that her weight would be evenly distributed. “It’s important to lock the gate. You screw it like this. It’s supposed to be as fool-safe as two regular carabiners with the gates opposed. But because you’re you,” he said, knowing he was on the verge of saying what he wanted, saying more than was wise, saying because I love you so much, “we’re going to use an extra one, anyhow, and oppose the gates. Now, this is a belay plate.” He fed a loop of rope through the plate, then through the gate of each biner and closed and locked each gate.

Day listened carefully to everything he said. Brake hand. Friction, which he said would keep her descent as slow as she wanted.

“When you start, you say, ‘On rappel,’ and I know you’re going down. When you get to the bottom and you’re off the rope, you’re going to yell, ‘Rappel off.’ On rappel. Rappel off. You use the words in different order to avoid miscommunication. What do you say when you start?”

“On rappel.”

“When you’re off the rope.”

“Off rappel.”

“Rappel off.”

“Rappel off.”

He gave her the headlamp and adjusted the band tightly over her hat. “At the bottom, there’s plenty of room to walk around. But don’t go anywhere. There’s a lot of ice and a lot of water.”

Regarding the impenetrable darkness of the quarry entrance, Day choked back a laugh. “You think I’m going to wander around in there?”

He wanted badly to kiss some part of her face before she went down. Any part. He couldn’t, so he just grinned at her. “Okay, balance.” He demonstrated how she should hold her legs. “The hardest part is right at the top, going backward over the edge. Keep your feet high and your legs at a ninety-degree angle to the wall, parallel to the ground. Like walking down it. Backward. If you let your feet get too low, you’ll fall against the wall.”

A swarm of butterflies launched in her stomach.

Nick checked her harness and his, the anchor, all the knots, the ropes. He fastened her gloved brake hand around the turquoise rope and threw the coiled end over the ledge and down into the quarry.

Cautiously Day crept toward the edge, bent her head so that the light from the lamp shone down. She saw streaked walls of marble, white and yellow and gray. The rock had been cut away in slabs, and the remaining wall showed the cuts. An ancient ladder stretched hundreds of feet up the nearest face. Ledges running the length of each wall cut into the marble approximately every eight feet, creating a reverse shingle effect and disappearing below the light shed by her lamp. She couldn’t see the bottom. “Is the rope long enough?”

“Yes.”

Nervously she turned her back on the chasm and faced Nick, clutching the rope tightly in her brake hand. “On rappel.”