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I drop my hand. “Tell me about this plan.”
We’re at the truck, which beeps as we approach. We set the bags in the back seat and get in. He leans on the door. “There’s something I want to show you, if you’re up to it?” His eyes search my face. “But maybe you should rest.”
Normally, I’m a goer and a doer, and I resent that my ability to do so, tobeso, is in question. “I’m good.”
His eyes are roaming my face again, settling on my eyes.
Dang it. I want that concealernow.
CHAPTER 26
Annalise
He takes me at my word, and we leave town from the opposite direction we came.
Not ten minutes from town, I spy something grayish on the horizon and squint through the windshield. “Is it supposed to rain?” Seems a silly question here in the blazing sun.
“Not that I know of.”
I lean in. “Those aren’t clouds?”
“Nope.”
I look again, harder. Whip around. “Mountains?”
“Yep.”
“But…” I scan the pancake-flat emptiness, stretching around and ahead of us for untold miles.“Here?”
“I’d have thought you got out more, Annalise.”
“I know New Mexico has mountains, but I didn’t think in this part of the state.”
“Well you thought wrong. They may not be the Colorado mountains you’re used to, but I think they’re great.”
My excitement builds as I watch the gray mass on the horizon slowly come into focus. I feel small compared to these feats of nature, and it’s weird, but I find comfort in the immensity of it all, though I’d not considered this before my present troubles.
Finally, the mountains are upon us, and I can’t wait to begin the climb. The scenery has gradually been changing, scrubby vegetation replaced by smatterings of actual trees. Scattered pine and cedar, possibly? I’m not much on botany or forestry or whatever this qualifies as.
Now, the shoulders begin to fall away. We begin our ascent, and the trees thicken into real forest, but where there are gaps, they frame gorgeous vistas. I inhale, and calm creeps over me. This trip I need.
I tear my eyes from the splendor around me. It was a funny little breathing noise that made me look.Hmm. Yep, Marco’s knuckles are a few shades paler than the rest of him. “Are you afraid of heights?”
“Nope.”
“You look like you are.”
“I’m watching the road,” he responds, in the most unconvincing, off-pitch denial I have ever heard. His knuckles are white, too.
Okay, I’ll play along. I’m not going to let his fear stop me from taking it all in. Life suddenly has meaning, and I feel…alive. Small and insignificant, but alive. Could be that I see myself as more important than I am, my problems as mountains when this…these…are mountains. My issues are just little pebbles on the shoulder of a greater journey, one of a billion journeys since the world began.
Sighing, I relax into the seat. Wow, I’m waxing philosophical all of a sudden. Very unlike me—and probably cheesy philosophy at that. But I feel peace in this moment, and I’ll take it.
We begin a series of tight switchbacks, my view now blocked by towering trees. Near the top, a brown park sign announces a lookout and camping area, and Marco takes that turn. The road surface becomes gravel and dirt, dust spraying around us as we travel through wooded but level terrain until the trees part and a sprawling parklike area unfolds. He drives to one of the campsites, which is nothing more than a dirt parking spot with a built-in grill and a picnic table with attached benches.
“Here we are.”
His announcement sounds more likewe’re alive, and sweat has crept across his brow. But he smiles over. “Want to get out?”
