She was pleased that her brain didn’t immediately chirp,If there is an “after this.”
As she walked, she practiced stepping softly on the forest floor. The pine needles and the moss didn’t crunch, she noticed. Only the dead leaves, and even they weren’t so bad since the rain. They crumpled beneath her feet.
She noted the poison ivy, steered clear of that, and watched for more blueberry bushes. Pausing at a patch of ferns, she knelt to look for fiddleheads. A few young fronds were growing beneath the full lacy spread of adult ferns.
Gathering them, she thought she heard a voice, specifically Jack’s.
Is he talking to himself?she wondered.
Listening, she tried to make out individual words, but it was too muffled to be intelligible. Oddly, it didn’t sound as if he was talking to himself. There were pauses between words, as if he were waiting for someone else to speak.
Stuffing the fronds into her pockets, she rose and walked as quietly as she could toward his voice. She saw a hint of his orange T-shirt through the trees. His back was to her. She didn’t see anyone with him.
Carefully, she stepped heel-slowly-to-toe between the trees.
“I can fix this,” Jack was saying. “You gotta trust me.” A pause. “Please, it’s not too late. I’m talking to you, right? So that means it can’t be too late. Just... trust me, okay?”
What does that mean? Fix what?
She inched closer, trying to see through the tree trunks, to tell if he was alone—and a twig snapped beneath her foot.
He spun around. “Who’s there?”
Claire popped forward with a wave. “It’s me. Claire.” She winced at herself. Of course he knew her name. Could she sound any more awkward? “Didn’t mean to startle you.” Crossing the remaining distance, she tried to both act casual and scan the area for anyone else. “Were you talking to someone? It sounded like you were.”
He laughed as he picked up his pack, which had been lying on the ground beside him. He slung it over his shoulder. “Justtalking to myself. I talk to myself all the time. Whole conversations. Ha-ha!”
She didn’t see any hint of anyone else. No movement between the trees around them. Just the breeze through the leaves. “I came to tell you. There’s someone else in the woods—a man who looks like he’s been here for decades.” Continuing to scan the trees, she described the wild man.
Jack shook his head. “Sometimes the national forest draws some weirdos. The park rangers try to flush them out, but... Anyway, yeah, definitely will keep an eye out.”
Guess that wasn’t who he was talking to, she thought.
Unless he’s lying.
She glanced at the ground, trying to look casual, as if she were just examining the moss and dried leaves. There weren’t any obvious signs like footprints that didn’t match either hers or Jack’s. Maybe an expert tracker would have been able to tell if there had been anyone else here, but she couldn’t. “Did you find a tree for the net?”
He patted a leafless tree next to him. It was skinny, about three inches in diameter, with only a few twig-like branches, and it had a curve to it that would allow them to angle the net into the water. Surprisingly, it was still standing. She’d thought after this much time, he’d have had it felled. But maybe it had simply taken him a while to find.
“Need help?” she offered.
“Sure.” He kicked at the roots. “It’s rotted. Should fall easily.”
Together, they stood side by side and shoved at the young,dead tree. Its roots shifted in the mossy earth. He kicked again as it tilted, freeing the crumbling roots from the ground. A second later, it crashed down. She checked the woods again, half expecting someone to burst out at the noise.
“You grab one end, and I’ll grab the other,” he said.
She picked up the end with the leafless branches, and he picked up the end with the rotted roots. It wasn’t heavy, but it felt solid enough that it should work. It was thick enough that it wouldn’t snap if a fish pulled against the net, she hoped, and long enough to hold what was left of the tennis net.
“You ever talk to yourself?” Jack asked.
“Trick question,” Claire said. “Everybody does.” She tried to keep her voice normal and casual, so he wouldn’t guess the hundred suspicious thoughts running like rabbits through her mind.
“Yeah, you think so?” He sounded relieved.
She knew that feeling well—you think you’re the only one who’s had a certain thought or has a certain habit, and then you discover you’re not alone. It was such a rush of relief. Was that what was happening here? Was he relieved she understood, or was he relieved that she believed his lie? “Absolutely. Some of my favorite conversations have been with me.”
But I don’t usually sound like I’m waiting for myself to answer, she thought.
