Josh lounges in the water, waiting until all eyes are on him. “If you ever come out of the raft during a rapid or otherwise, you’re gonna want to assume the ‘Idaho Easy Chair’ position, okay?” He leans back into the river to demonstrate how his Chaco-clad feet are positioned in front of him, just breaking the surface. “Float on your back, like this, with your legs downriver, toes pointed up,” he says, then swims around to the far side of the raft, where the water is deeper.
Gracie, who is sitting at the back of the raft by the oars, leans over the side and grabs the lapels of his life jacket. “If you fall out, get to the side of the boat as quickly as you can,” she says. “Keep an eye out for ‘holes,’ where there’s aslight drop followed by an area of churning whitewater. That recirculating current will trap you.”
She makes eye contact with each person, then adds, “And whatever you do, never try to stand up in the current. Two years ago, a rafter on the Lower Garnet tried to walk out of a rapid. His foot got wedged between rocks, and the current pushed him face-down. It’s called ‘foot entrapment.’” Her voice hardens. “I know we’re all here to have fun, but this rule is serious and I need you to remember it, okay? He drowned in two feet of water. The river doesn’t care how strong you are,” she adds, and I wonder if she was there—if she saw it happen. But then she’s smiling again, pointing back at Josh. “When you reach the side of the raft, someone will pop you back into the boat like this.” She pushes Josh’s shoulders down into the water, then hefts him into the raft in one swift motion. When he falls on top of her in a sloshing heap, everybody titters.
“Okay now, load up, ya filthy animals!” Macy hoots. “Gracie will take half of you in her raft, and I’ll take the other half. River Jesus and Flip-Flop will guide the gear boats down this first stretch. Because they’re bothbig, strongboys.”
She winks at Josh, who grins, and I get the feeling it’s another jab at the new guy. I wonder if he knows he’s being hazed. This isdefinitelysummer camp.
Finally loaded, we set out into the swift current, plastic paddles held at the T-grips like we’ve been instructed.
“Hey, I don’t think I caught your name,” says the woman next to me—Deborah, if the block-lettering on her orange ball cap means anything.
“Kaia,” I tell her, then flick my eyes to the top of her head. “Deborah, I take it?”
She lets out a barking laugh and nudges the woman to her right, who flaunts a matching gray pixie cut. “My sisterfound it at a thrift store last year. It’s dumb, but everybody remembers my name now.”
“If I ever found a Kaia hat, I’d die of shock,” I tell her. “Somebody once asked me if it was short for ‘cayenne pepper.’”
“Oh, that’s a hoot!” Deborah laughs harder than the joke deserves, but the crinkles in her eyes are genuine, and I decide I like her.
“All right, row together, ladies!” Macy calls from the back of our boat as we approach the first rapid. It’s little more than a frothing dip in the otherwise calm river.
Deborah nudges me again. “So, Miss Kaia, are you here by yourself, or …?”
“Yep, just me,” I confirm with a smile, shrugging.
As I lift my paddle to row again, she says, “Well, I think that’s great. Seeing all these solo-traveling women nowadays makes me happy. Jerry never let me go on adventures by myself, and he wouldn’t go anywhere with me either! All he wanted to do was watch the game and sit on his ass.”
“Divorced?” I guess, eager to keep the focus on her.
“Yep. And no regrets. I’ve been single for twenty-two years now, baby.” She grins, unashamed. “But I got my girls from him.” She beams with pride. “Bothengineers—women in STEM! They gifted meandmy baby sister this ridiculously expensive trip.” She gestures to the woman beside her. “This is Beth. First time either of us has been west of the Mississippi.”
In addition to the matching haircut, Beth has the same Roman nose and natural laugh lines that Deborah does.
Beth waves and says, “She’s been talking about this river for years. Top of the bucket list.”
Deborah’s eyes sweep across the canyon with something like reverence. I follow her gaze. It’s impossible not to be awestruck by the majesty of the towering rockwalls, whittled away over millions of years. “Worth it,” Deborah murmurs, then glances back at me. “You’re lucky, you must have a good one at home.”
It takes a second for me to realize she’s eyeing the wedding band I still wear on my left hand.
My heart sinks even as I grin at Deborah. I force myself to laugh along with everyone else as we hit the tiny rapid head-on, popping the front of the raft upward.
Home.The word pulses at the back of my mind.All I want to do is go home,comes the next thought.
Tears press at the back of my eyes.
I swipe them away and row harder, trying to focus on the glittering veins of quartz in the cliffs, the riffles downstream where tiny fish surface, the smell of warm pine sap. There’s no point thinking about home. I don’t really have a home anymore anyway. Just an empty apartment that hasn’t been vacuumed in months and a dead succulent someone gave me at the funeral. Even my boxer, Bambi, has been staying next door for the past month. My neighbor actually takes her on walks every morning, and has a little girl who reads Bambi books at night.
That apartment isn’t home, though.
Home is Parker.
We’d made plans to raft down the Garnet River when we turned thirty. Since our birthdays were only a month apart, we always planned a big getaway to celebrate. And this was going to be the biggest yet. Because the Garnet River had been a bucket-list dream for us both. An adrenaline junkie’s dream, his. And a nature lover’s dream, mine. The Bureau of Land Management allowed each rafting outfitter just twelve trip permits annually between June and August—all determined years in advance through a lottery system. The waiting list was always about a mile long.
We paid the deposit and booked the trip the year we turned twenty-six. We made payments to secure our spots every year that followed.
And then, at age twenty-eight, Parker had his last adventure.
