2018
“Are you ready?” Matt asked. They’d been waiting out the rain under the long arms of an evergreen, snacking on beef jerky and peanut butter crackers, passing a bottle of water back and forth between them. It had stormed hard for less than three minutes and then quickly petered out, and the clouds had rolled away, peeling back to reveal a soft blue sky that seemed to have been scrubbed clean by the moisture.
“Yes,” she said, holding open her pack so Matt could drop in his trash. It was an old habit from when the girls were little and she was constantly picking up after them, but old habits die hard. Matt had been ready to stuff the empty wrappers in his own pocket, but shrugged when he saw her offer the pack and tossed in the bits of plastic and paper.
“Take a picture first?” Matt asked, fishing his phone out of his pocket and holding it up.
“Sure.” Marie stood up and brushed her hands against her thighs. “Where do you want me to stand?”
Matt blinked, considered.
“Why not out there?” he asked. “With your back to the view?”
“Out by the edge?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “It’ll make a good picture.”
“Okay.”
She came from under the trees, stopping near the edge and peering out over the cliff. Plenty of open air and trees and rock down there. And the river, of course—Three Forks, that’s what it was called—splashing and hissing as it churned its way under the cliff, moving faster and rougher than she’d ever seen before. But it was difficult to see just below where she was standing, because the cliff was formed like a tabletop—it stuck way out and then sloped back in, so it was impossible to see straight down. If you got on your hands and knees and stuck your head way over the side, you could see—but why would you want to do that?
“You okay?” Matt asked, and she turned slowly and looked at him. The ground was uneven under her shoes.
“It’s a long way to the top,” she said.
Matt smiled again.
“You mean to the bottom?” he asked, missing her reference to the AC/DC lyrics. And if that didn’t sum up their marriage, she guessed that nothing else would—the two of them had never spent much time on the same page. If any time at all.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s a long way down.”
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”