Leaving Blythe River: A Novel Read online

  “As soon as I can. She’s in the hospital but your grandpa’s alone.”

  “So . . . do I go with you? Or do I stay here and keep going to school?”

  “I’m thinking neither,” she said. She lifted her head away from her hands. Looked Ethan in the eye for the first time that morning. He winced inwardly at what he saw there. Something was coming. And he wasn’t going to like it. “I really can’t have you there, kiddo. I’m sorry. This is going to be so hard for me. I’ll be sleeping on the couch, and there’s no room for you, and I won’t have an ounce of energy left over to take care of anybody else. You know how I am when I’m under stress like this.”

  He did.

  “Fine. I’ll stay here.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I’m seventeen. I can stay alone.”

  “I would have said so. Before what happened. But think about it, Ethan. On your own in Manhattan. Every time you have to go to school or go out for food . . . The way you’ve been since the mugging, it just doesn’t seem right.”

  In the pause that followed, Ethan mulled the flavor of her words. “The way you’ve been . . .” She probably hadn’t meant to let on that it was a problem for her, the way he’d been. That she thought it was time he pulled himself together. But those sentiments had a way of bleeding through.

  “So where do I go?”

  “I think you should go stay with your dad until . . . you know. Until things are resolved with my parents. I’ll probably have to find some kind of home for Grandpa. I’ll stay with Grandma for as long as she’s got.”

  Ethan opened his mouth to speak, but she stopped him with a raised hand. Like a stern crossing guard. Someone whose authority you don’t question.

  “Please don’t, Ethan. I’m begging you. I know you don’t like the idea. I know this is hard for you. But it’s hard for me, too. So please, please . . . just do this. Just accept it. I’ll make it up to you ten times over when all this is past. You don’t have to forgive him. You don’t even have to speak to him. Please just go, so I can know you’re okay. And then I can give my energy to Mom and Dad.”

  Ethan closed his mouth again.

  He got up from the table. Found the cereal he liked best. Took it down from the counter. Pulled out a bowl and a spoon.

  It didn’t seem right, not even letting him argue his side of the thing. Then again, she was right that he hadn’t been about to tell her anything that could be considered breaking news.

  He sat down at the table again. Realized he hadn’t gotten milk out of the fridge. But it was too much trouble and he didn’t care. He wasn’t hungry anyway. Just going through a bunch of empty, shocked motions.

  “Can I at least go see Grandma one more time before I go to Dad’s?”

  Her eyes came up, and softened. “Of course. Of course you can.”

  “I don’t even know where Dad’s living now,” he said. “He hasn’t even tried to call. Does he know I’m coming?”

  “I called him.”

  “And he doesn’t mind?”

  “Mind? Are you kidding? He’d give his right arm for the chance to redeem himself with you.”

  Ethan only shook his head. And kept shaking it for a long time. Too long. But he still never managed to process what she’d just said.

  “So where is he living? Is he in a hotel in Midtown or something?”

  “No. He needed to get farther away than that. He’s on a sort of . . . sabbatical.”

  “Please don’t tell me he’s living way the hell far out of the city, like Yonkers or Flushing or upstate or something.”

  He watched his mom’s face, but couldn’t quite interpret her expression. Something like a cross between dread and some dark amusement.

  “It’s way outside the city all right,” she said. “But Yonkers or Flushing it’s not.”

  Chapter Five: Blythe River

  Six weeks before his father disappeared

  “None of this makes a damn bit of sense,” Ethan said.

  “Oh, Ethan,” his mom said with a sigh. “We talked this to death on the plane.”

  They were in a rental car, traveling along a narrow two-lane highway through what Ethan would have described as exactly nothing. They hadn’t seen a man-made structure in more miles than he could remember. If you didn’t count split-rail fences.

  “Look,” she said. “Those are the mountains up ahead. The Blythe River Range. Aren’t they beautiful?”

  Ethan had been looking at them already, before she pointed them out. He supposed they were beautiful. If you liked mountains. They were unusually shaped. Pointy, like photos he had seen of the Tetons, but with more high peaks, narrower, and more closely wedged together. Their tops were packed with heavy snow, the sky a deep navy behind them.

  “I guess,” he said.

  He reached into the backseat and stroked his dog’s ears. Rufus was still whacked out on tranquilizers from the plane trip in the baggage hold, and barely noticed. An awkward mix of pit bull and bloodhound, Rufus had loose brown skin that flapped whenever he ran, and massive ears currently trailing onto the seat.

  Then, after hoping she’d say something for another mile or so, he added, “Please let me go to Grandma and Grandpa’s with you.”

  She sighed again.

  She had always been a beautiful woman, Ethan’s mother, but it had been an inside-out beauty. It shone out through her eyes, and in her smile. But that was missing now. Had been for weeks. Now she just looked older. And all too tired.

  “I feel for your situation,” she said. “But it’s getting tedious, having the same conversation over and over. Besides, this place might be just the thing for you. It’ll be good for you to get out of the city. The air is clear out here. It’s safer. Might be great for your confidence.”

  Which was yet another way of saying that Ethan’s constant fear since the incident was a problem for her. Another disappointment. She hadn’t said so out loud. She hadn’t needed to. Ethan knew her well enough to know.

  A long silence. Ethan thought maybe the conversation had ended.

  Then, finally, he said, “Do we ever get to go to Peru now? Or is that whole thing just over?”

  “We’ll go. Sure we’ll go. I just need to tend to my mom. And everybody just needs time to settle.”

  “See, this is where you’ll be going to school.”

  They’d pulled into the tiny town of Avery. Not much more than a cluster of homes and businesses, turning the slightly wide spot on the highway into a Main Street of sorts. High-clearance pickups sat parked at an angle, something like perpendicular to the sidewalks. There were two churches. A school. A grocery. A tavern. A tack and feed store.

  Ethan thought it looked like the set of a Western movie, except with trucks instead of horses.

  “So we’re pretty much there, then,” he said.

  “No.” A hint of apology in her voice. “It’s another twenty-seven miles.”

  He felt his jaw drop.

  “How the hell do I get to school? I don’t want to sit that long in a car with Dad every day.”

  “You won’t have to. There’s a bus. A school bus comes around and gets all the kids from the outlying areas.”

  Just that fast they were back on an empty highway again, the town in their rearview mirror. Welcome to Avery. Don’t blink.

  They drove toward the snowy mountains in silence for a time.

  “I swear, Ethan,” she said. “I really did arrange this because I thought it would be the best thing for you.”

  “Look,” she said. “There it is.”

  Ethan looked out the window to see his dad walk out of a house a few hundred feet down the plowed road, swinging on a heavy winter parka. It was tiny, that house. An A-frame, its roof weighted with snow, framed by the snowy mountains behind it. It made Ethan feel as though he were in a commercial for hot cocoa mix. The house couldn’t have been much more than five hundred square feet.

  “It’s so tiny,” he said as she swung the rental car int
o the freshly shoveled driveway.

  “Why do you care about the size of the place, Ethan? You have the great outdoors for a backyard. Besides, it’s only for a while.”

  “Yeah, but a while with Dad. Would you want to be pushed into a place that small with Dad?”

  He thought he saw her jaw tighten.

  “The answer to your question,” she said, “is no. I wouldn’t. But then again, it was me he betrayed. Not you.”

  Ethan knew that wasn’t true. In fact, he was surprised by how thoughtless it was of her to think so. And he wanted to point that out. But he never got the chance. His father walked right up to the driver’s side window, and his mother powered it down, letting a blast of biting cold air into the car.

  “Noah,” she said flatly.

  Ethan couldn’t hear what his father said in return. It might have been her name, which was Emma. It might only have been a grunt. In any case, it ended Ethan’s chance to protest the statement that he had not been betrayed.

  Though, truthfully, it was possible that he wouldn’t have said it out loud anyway.

  Ethan held his phone in his lap, and, as inconspicuously as possible, texted to Glen: This sucks. But he couldn’t send it, because he had no reception.

  Ethan walked his mom out to her rented car, Rufus wagging at their heels.

  “I wish you’d stay,” he said.

  “Stay?” she asked. As if Ethan had suggested she throw herself off a bridge. “Ethan. You know I’m not comfortable with him.”

  “Oh, and I am?”

  “Look. Honey.” She moved closer to him. Brushed his shaggy hair back behind his ear on one side. She was only five feet tall. And she didn’t have to reach up very far. Not for Ethan. “I could’ve just put you on a plane. You know that. You’re not a child. You’re seventeen. I could have driven you to JFK and said good-bye to you at security. Made your dad haul into Casper to meet your plane. I came this far with you for moral support. But now I have to go back. I know the thing with your dad is hard. I know this is hard for you in lots of ways. And I know this is not exactly your kind of place. But I only have one mother, and I’m about to not have her anymore. So please . . . this is not going to be a happy time for me, either. Please just get through this for me.”

  “But I don’t know what to do out in the middle of the freaking wilderness.”

  She kissed him on the forehead, her lips pressed against him for an extra beat or two. They felt warm. They were the only thing that had, for as long as he could remember. He didn’t want them to go away.

  They went away.

  “This is your chance to find out,” she said.

  She gave the same forehead kiss to Rufus, except more briefly. Then she climbed into the rental car and drove away.

  Ethan stood and watched until her car disappeared down the snowy road. Then he stood a bit longer. Only when he got too cold to stay outside did he go back inside with his father.

  “Hey,” his father said, without even looking up from the kitchen counter. There was something too airy in the word, as though he thought he could make everything lighter with just the tone of his voice. “You hungry?”

  Ethan stared at his three duffel bags. They sat in a triangle on the floor, right where he and his mother had dumped them.

  “No.”

  “Long plane ride.”

  “I ate on the plane.”

  “Since when is there food on planes these days?”

  “We got something to go at the airport. We brought our own food onto the flight.”

  “Oh,” his father said. There was a definite disappointment now to his tone. As if the offering of food was the only card he had to play.

  Ethan still did not walk closer to him. Or sit. Or move.

  Ethan looked around, hoping to see something that reminded him of home, but the furniture was all unfamiliar. The house must have been a furnished rental. The only thing Ethan recognized was the gun rack near his father’s bedroom door, a vestige of bragging rights that seemed to carry no purpose.

  “Why do you even keep those?” he asked, indicating the rifle and shotgun with his chin. “Why did you even bring them up here? You planning to go out in the wilderness and kill a moose and drag it home?”

  “They don’t have moose around here,” his father said. “So, look . . . we haven’t had much of a chance to talk.”

  That was true enough. His father had gone to a hotel the day after the great disaster. Stayed respectfully away after that.

  “Good,” Ethan said.

  “Don’t be like that.”

  “You could have called. If you’d wanted to talk.”

  “I want to talk now.”

  “Well, I don’t,” Ethan said.

  “Sooner or later we’re going to have to. Ethan, listen. I know how you felt about her. Everybody did.”

  Ethan’s eyes snapped shut. If only he could have done the same with his ears. He said nothing in reply.

  “But it’s not like anything was going to happen with that. I mean, you didn’t think it would, did you?”

  “No,” Ethan said, but it wasn’t an answer to the question. “No, no, no, I won’t listen to this.”

  He turned abruptly back to the door. Reached it in two long strides. Threw the door open and stepped out into the cold afternoon, holding it open briefly for Rufus.

  “Wait!” his father called. “Before you start walking around out here you need to—”

  Ethan slammed the door.

  He and his dog set off up the road together in the direction of the mountains.

  The road turned to dirt in no time. Not graded dirt, either. Four-wheel-drive territory. Apparently they now lived as close to this national wilderness as it was possible to get without a 4x4 vehicle or a good pair of hiking boots.

  He knew why his father would want to live in a place like this. Noah used to be a backpacker. He used to be a through-hiker. He had done the entire Appalachian Trail by the time he was twenty-one, and all at one time. The entire Pacific Crest Trail by twenty-three. At twenty-four he’d climbed Mount Everest, one of the typical moneyed Westerners who paid guides and Sherpas tens of thousands of dollars to get them to the top, sucking bottled oxygen all the way. Sure, this place was a magnet for Noah. But it meant nothing to Ethan.

  The sun felt strong and warm, but the wind carried an icy chill. Ethan had a heavy winter coat on, but no gloves. And nothing like the good boots he would need to go much farther. The road had begun a steady uphill grade, making him puff as he walked. He knew he couldn’t keep going for long. It was a strangely desperate feeling. He needed to be anywhere in the world except the inside of that house, yet he could feel himself forced back toward the safety of shelter.

  He stopped and looked down at Rufus, who looked back at him. Then he sat. Right in the middle of the road. It’s not like any cars were about to come by. Rufus sat beside him. Ethan scratched behind the dog’s impossibly huge, floppy ears, and they stared down at the house in silence, breathing clouds of steam.

  In time, a car actually did come up the road. Well, not a car exactly. A big white SUV. It turned into the driveway of his father’s new house. Ethan couldn’t see much from the distance, but he was ninety percent sure it had a light bar on the top, like some kind of rugged police vehicle.

  He watched somebody get out. Maybe a man, or maybe just dressed enough like one that Ethan couldn’t tell the difference from so far away. He knocked on the door of the A-frame, whoever he was. Talked to Ethan’s father for a minute or two.

  Then he started up the SUV again, turned it around in the driveway, turned up the road in Ethan’s direction, and began to drive toward him.

  Ethan felt his heart hammer. He tried to swallow but seemed to have forgotten how.

  His father had called the cops on him? That seemed to be what was going on. It was the only thing Ethan could figure. And for what? Running away? Is it really running away if you’re sitting in the middle of the road close enough to see your o
wn house?

  Still the vehicle kept coming, bouncing and rocking over the rutted, frozen dirt road.

  Just for a moment, Ethan almost ran. But to where? He stood his ground—actually, sat his ground—and tried to calm his own shaking.

  When the SUV got closer, Ethan was able to read the words on the side of it, painted within a green strip that ran the length of the vehicle. “Park Ranger.” With that National Park Service insignia that looked like an arrowhead.

  The SUV pulled up right beside him in the road. The man driving wore one of those classic wide-brimmed ranger’s hats Ethan remembered from the bear cartoons he’d watched as a child.

  The ranger powered down his window.

  Ethan figured him to be maybe thirty, if that.

  “Ethan Underwood?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, trying and failing to keep the words from trembling.

  “You weren’t exactly what I was expecting. Your father said you were seventeen.”

  “I am seventeen.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. Your father asked me to come talk to you.”

  “Because I ran out of the house? That’s a little . . .”

  “Oh. Is that what you thought? No. Nothing like that. I didn’t drive out here to punish you for anything. He told me you were coming three days ago. He said you’ve lived in the city all your life. We thought it would be good if I showed you some basic moves to stay safe out here.”

  He stepped out of the car and stood. And did not tower over Ethan the way most adults did. It was hard to tell from his sitting position, but Ethan guessed the man was only two or three inches taller than Ethan’s five-foot-two. Rufus stood and wagged enthusiastically at the ranger, who didn’t seem to notice.

  The man reached a hand down for Ethan to shake.

  Ethan took it. And shook it. He was embarrassed that his hand was still shaking, but it always took hours to calm the trembling once it had started.

  Besides. You can get accustomed to embarrassment. You can get to the point where you don’t expect better.

  Ethan pulled to his feet. Dusted off the seat of his jeans. He’d been right—he was nearly as tall as the ranger.