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Gracen’s thighs burned by the time she reached the water tower’s lookout. Five hundred feet above the river, the looming blue tower with THE VALLEY in bold, white letters across the top overlooked the glittering lights of both sides of town, the connecting bridge, and farther to the horizon where the mountainous range decorated the landscape. As far as the eye could see, really.
It was a good hike.
A worthy one if a person enjoyed the outdoors, a constantly inclining trek, and a hell of a pay off at the end with the view. One could see farther from the section of trees that had been cleared for the tower on the very edge of Montgomery Mountain in the daytime, but Gracen preferred the view at night.
The moon and stars were so close it was as if she could pluck them from the dark sky, except the cloud cover that night kept her focus on the river and town down below. She left her pack—a small bookbag with water, her phone, and a small first aid kit against the base of the tower as she headed for the edge of the lookout. After a truck had gone off the side and plunged into the water—with no one inside, thankfully—before Gracen was even born, the town had installed metal garters to keep vehicles from going too far.
It was a heck of a lot faster to reach the tower through the private access road maintained by the town. Connected from the main rural highway that traveled through Montgomery Mountain through the rural counties before the next town, the drive took maybe fifteen minutes to get to the lookout.
The same could not be said for the hike.
As one would expect, the place was popular with teenagers who couldn’t help themselves when it came to doing things they shouldn’t—everything from used condoms to empty alcohol bottles had shown up on the lot. More than a few times. Not even RCMP doing routine checks of the tower at night had stopped the activity.
The local newspaper, named after its respective town, wrote about the antics for weeks with letters to the editor waxing poetic about traditions and privacy on one side of the fence. Mostly anonymous. The other side, well ...
How some of those letters got published was a fucking mystery.
What else did the town have to do with their time, though? It gave people something to talk about over dinner between their regular shifts of work and the nuances of a quiet valley life.
Which was what eventually prompted the town to install security cameras at the tower. Back when Gracen had still been young enough to sneak up to the lookout with a boy who had a license and a backseat, however, the cameras had not yet been on site.
She tried not to care about the wisps of nostalgia—for a time she couldn’t get back, and didn’t necessarily want to when she knew how the path would inevitably end again—while she climbed over the metal railing. Not that she was supposed to. Clear, bright signs, even in the darkness with the help of a few spotlights on the tower and its power supply system, could be seen posted every ten or so feet.
Warnings.
Bylaws, too. For the sake of telling people they would be fined for littering or dumping trash.
More glaring were the pictures of stick people falling over ledges looking back from every direction, each with a clear intention. Gracen never went more than a couple of feet from the railing even though another fifteen or so meters of rocky ledge extended beyond where she stood.
Gracen only wanted the rush of getting that same view she had the first time she stood at that very same spot. It was the ultimate prize for her successful trek up, and a beautiful visual of what she would be hiking back to shortly.
She never stayed long.
The view always looked different each time she made the hike either because of the time of day, the weather, or even the season. Her collection of photographs of the same spot over the years—she tried to make the hike once a month now, if she could—had become impressive enough that Delaney made copies and created a massive collage that now hung over their fireplace mantel.
Gracen didn’t bother with a picture tonight. She’d only brought her phone which couldn’t take a quality shot at night to save its life. Instead, she just took a few seconds to enjoy the view and half completed her accomplishment to spend time doing something she alone loved for the sake of herself.
No doubt, Delaney would be home by the time Gracen returned. A new week was on the horizon. She could finally get her days and life back on track. Managing the chaos wasn’t so hard with a bit of extra time for self-care. It was just making it all happen, of course.
Sometimes, that was the hardest part.
By the time Gracen returned to the tower and her backpack, she had to once again rifle to the bottom of yet another bag to find the usual. Her jogging lanyard holding her keys, amongst other more important things. While the sun hadn’t quite set on her way up the trail, the trek down wouldn’t be the same. The three-inch long flashlight with a keyring attachment she picked up at the gas station worked perfectly to illuminate Gracen’s path when she jogged at night.
The flash of white light from her phone caught Gracen’s attention before she had zipped the backpack closed. She took a second to chug what was left of her water while she unlocked the device, expecting a message about an appointment for the Haus, or even a text from Delaney—had she managed to stick the party out or did she cut it short?
Instead, she found two missed calls.
One right after the other. Malachi wanted something. Clearly.
The phone had been just far enough away that she hadn’t heard the ringing during her moment on the rocky ledge. He picked up on the second ring when she called his number back. Bike Boy still acted as the name for his contact in her phone, too.
She would not be changing that.
Not for anything.
“Shit, I just put my helmet back on, too,” came his gruff greeting.
Which only made Gracen laugh. “Sorry, it was only a couple of minutes since you called. Are you busy?”
It wouldn’t take the man more than ten minutes to drive from one side of town to the other, so she didn’t mind waiting for a phone call while he did it. The trail she’d take back had good cell reception the whole way, so that wasn't a problem, either.
Malachi’s silence stretched on.
Gracen didn’t miss it. “No worries, you can call me—”
“I’m at the Irving Big Stop before the Renous highway,” Malachi said. “I won’t have any service until I’m closer to the Miramichi, so I was trying to catch you before I started out.”
Gracen blinked up at the huge tower overhead, absorbing what Malachi was trying to tell her. She just wanted to be clear. “You’re heading back?”
Was that home for him?
She didn’t really know, so she chose not to say.
“Yeah,” Malachi said, the word sure and confident but his tone still came off stressed. “Before I make myself a problem here, it’s better to just head on out.”
“Did you go to the engagement dinner?”
“Yes and no.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Gracen pointed out.
Malachi sighed on the other end of the phone. “I went, but I doubt anybody saw or knew I was there. I don’t want to give people a reason to start a problem. It could make things worse for other people as a consequence, and I can’t justify that. As it stands, I shouldn’t have come back here in the first place. I wasn’t actually ready to.”
No wonder he was itching to get away, then. She would try not to fault him, even if she wished he could have given her a face-to-face goodbye instead of a phone call. Maybe this was easier. She’d try not to fault him for that, either.
“Did you see your sister?” she asked.
“I think I will at some point,” he returned.
Gracen wondered how fragile and sticky the situation with his family truly was, but she couldn’t find the words to express that she could be a safe place for him to dump those secrets keeping him hostage. She wasn’t sure he even wanted to.
“Anyway,” Malachi said, his voice lulling Gracen back into the conversation easily despite the clear road she saw it taking. “I was wondering ...”
“Yeah?”
“Could I call you? I can’t say when or if I’m even coming back to town in the near future, if I’m being honest,” he added quickly.
“Were you ever not?”
He chuckled, then. “No, I guess not.”
One of the things she liked best about Malachi was that he’d been upfront with her from the start. At least, when it came to things between the two of them. There were no fronts. The guy didn’t play with her feelings. They had easy conversation and a couple of good nights together because they both knew exactly that they were getting from this.
“And yes, okay? Call me just to talk. Anytime, Malachi.”
So it was clear.
Couldn’t they be friends?
Benefits would have to wait.
“Drive safe,” Gracen said. “I hear the Renous is bad for moose.”
“I’ll let you know when I’ve made it safely across. How’s that?”
Good enough for her, she told him.
“Have a beautiful night, blue eyes,” he said before they ended the call, “and for what it’s worth?”
“Yeah?”
“You were the best part of me being back here.”
*
Gracen replayed Malachi’s parting words on repeat for her entire jog home. After that, even. Delaney was home when she arrived, and while Gracen engaged her friend in conversation through their nightly routine, her mind stayed with the man on his way to Miramichi.
There was no way to deny it. She missed him—for absolutely no reason at all—already, and he was barely even gone.
As expected, Delaney’s night was less than stellar. So the girls enjoyed wine and binged a season of their latest favorite television series, closed out the world and the noise, and made the best of the rest of the evening.
While she might regret the late time in the morning, it was well after twelve-thirty before Gracen slid under her duvet’s cover. She’d been almost asleep, lounging in that blissful barely aware state before slumber, when the beep of her phone had her wide awake.
Just long enough to see the message from Malachi.
Just got into service. Talk soon.
Gracen had no trouble falling into a quick, deep sleep after that. The person she missed was hours and hours away, but her heart still felt like it was in a good place. Shouldn’t that count for something?
Barely a couple of hours after Gracen closed her eyes, the wail of a siren pulled her back into consciousness. Lights flashed behind their window shades as Delaney and Gracen stumbled out of their rooms with oversized housecoats hiding their nightclothes.
It didn’t take them long to find the reason for the sirens.
The noise.
The fire.
By the time the girls stumbled out of their house and into the front street where cops and firefighters were already waiting to usher them across to the river boardwalk, a crowd had also started to gather. Checkered & Cheese lit up the night sky—engulfed from the blown out front windows to the high apartment overhead.
“What happened?” Delaney asked the closest familiar face in the crowd.
It just so happened to be Malachi’s friend.
Nader.
The guy worked a lot, as far as Gracen knew. He spent more time away at work-provided lodging during the week, and on occasional weekends. The old muscle car that still had a long way to go to reach its former glory was his money pit, according to Malachi. She was reminded of that while staring at Nader’s horrified expression reflecting the destructive blaze.
“Are you okay?” Gracen asked him.
Nader shook his head, but she could see his unsteadiness clearly. “I don’t know.”
He could have been answering Gracen’s question. Or Delaney’s. Chances were, she thought, while watching the two fire trucks push back against the flames, it might have been his way of answering both.
Delaney grabbed Gracen and pulled her close when the windows of the top apartment above the pizza joint blew out.
“Did everybody get out?” Gracen dared to ask.
Nader couldn’t tear his gaze away from the fire. “I really don’t know.”
