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She shakes her head. “Wasn’t working here back then. Sorry, honey? You looking for something out there?”
“I’m not sure yet. How far is it to Chippewa Falls?”
“Couple of miles. Are you hiking up there in this heat? you’re going to want more than a soda to keep you going.”
“I’ve got water in my pack. I should be all right.”
“Ain’t no cellphone signal up there. If you get in trouble, three miles can feel like a very long way back down. If you want some advice, you keep to the shade where you can. Temperature’s not dropping for another couple of hours.”
“I’ll be careful, thanks.”
“And watch out for bears,” she calls after me as I head out the door. “Been a few sightings lately.”
“Will do,” I call back before setting out onto the trail. I press the soda can to my neck, letting the cold get into my bloodstream, taking the edge off the heat for a while.
The trail is dusty and pitted with stones but it looks like vehicles still use it from time to time. I can see fresh tire marks on the ground, heading the same way I’m going. It must be a through road else there’d be two sets. One there and one back. Funny, the map suggested it’s a dead end.
Still, there are lots of routes like that, the type only locals know about.
I look around me and reason there are worse places I could be on a day like this. The higher I get, the more the view improves. The pine trees thin out enough for me to see along the mountainside, all the way back to Shallow Falls on my left. It looks so small from up here but it’s my entire world.
The only problem is the heat. I’ve drunk the soda and half the water in my pack and I haven’t even started digging yet, not to mention the return journey I’ll have to do. Maybe this was a stupid idea.
I wonder if this was where I came from when I was found. Did I wander from all the way up here? I get a vague sense of familiarity when I look around me but I know it’s probably just my mind playing tricks on me. Would it be fitting if I died of thirst back at the place I was abandoned? Some kind of universal poetic justice?
I try to ignore those thoughts, looking around me for signs I’m in the right place. I spot the sign for the campsite. Rotted and broken into pieces on the ground but it’s easy enough to read the words carved into the wood. Moss has grown into the indented lettering. Chippewa Falls.
Beyond the sign is a flattened stretch of land, scrub for the most part like the lady in the gas station said it would be. Beyond is more of a pond than a lake. The surface is covered in algae with a few floating logs here and there looking a lot like alligators in the shade of the few trees growing on the shore.
I pull out the photo and take another look at it, trying to position where it was taken from.
It doesn’t take me long to find the spot. Not because I’m an expert at working out the geography but because I can hear the unmistakable sound of someone digging.
I walk toward the noise, not sure what I’m heading toward. I stop dead when I see Enzo’s car parked at the edge of the scrub. Next to it, the man himself is standing next to a hole. He’s shoveling dirt back in, oblivious to me watching him.
I could turn and walk away. A part of me thinks that would be the best thing to do. Not let him know I saw him, nor let him know I have the photo from my file.
He’s come up here to dig up whatever it was my parents hid. That much is clear. But what is it? And why does Enzo want it so badly?
I watch as he finishes filling in the hole, tamping it down with his boot. He sets the shovel down and without looking my way, calls out, “Come over here, Chloe. You look thirsty.”
“How did you know I was here?” I ask as I walk toward him.
He pulls out a cigar, putting it into his mouth and setting it alight with a match which he tosses to the ground a moment later. “I heard you coming,” he replies. “Saw you watching me.”
“You weren’t even looking my way.”
He turns and faces me at last. “Saw you reflected in the car windshield,” he says like a magician revealing one of his tricks. “What are you doing here?” He passes me a bottle of water out of his car.
“I fancied a hike. What about you?” I unscrew the bottle and take a sip. Before I know it, I’ve emptied the whole thing.
“Shouldn’t come hiking in this heat.”
“You always take shovels with you on your hikes?”
“You always bring yours to abandoned campsites?”
There’s a moment of silence between us. It’s like we both know we’re lying but neither of us wants to call the other’s bluff, not just yet.
