This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
YOSEMITE LIES. Copyright © 2023 by Derek Catron. Minorca Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
FIRST EDITION
Kate Johnston didn’t remember her first visit to Yosemite. Her only memories of that trip came from a photograph, its colors faded by time, its midsection creased by the rubber band binding it to a stack of others stashed in an old Nike shoebox. In the picture, a four-year-old Kate perched on her father’s shoulders. He smiled beneath a dark brush mustache straight out of an ’80s movie. Her own expression revealed the gap of a missing tooth, and her spindly legs and knobby knees marked her as tall for her age. The blue skies, green grass, and dark conifers that filled the background might have been captured in any of a million places but for the soaring presence of El Capitan, its fissured granite face establishing the setting more firmly than any caption could.
Her parents must have enjoyed the outing because they returned to Yosemite every four years, as regular as the Olympics or an election, though Kate’s mother dismissed the pattern as a coincidence. As an eight-year-old, Kate slept in her own tent and caught her first fish in water so cold she expected to find ice floating in it. At twelve, her parents let her bring a friend. Jackie Carrico got homesick the first day and cried until Dad distracted her with building and tending the campfire. She and Jackie got bellyaches from eating too many s’mores, but her parents deemed that a fair trade-off to defer the four-hour drive back to the city.
As a sixteen-year-old, Kate invited her best friend, Mary Slater, and they made plans to sneak off to the campground where the rock climbers hung out. Two days before their departure, Mary’s parents grounded her for skipping class. Kate sulked after her parents refused to let her stay home alone. She declined her father’s invitation to fish and her mother’s offers of a hike. Her parents did those things without her, but in sensing how her mood spoiled their weekend, Kate permitted herself a triumphant smile on the ride home. The memory still reddened her face with shame.
At twenty, Kate’s father was gone. He died that spring during her sophomore year at Stanford. A heart attack, as sudden and unexpected as lightning on a clear day, struck him down at barely over fifty. The shock of his death hollowed her. Back home in San Francisco that summer, Dad’s absence permeated the house like a mildew that no amount of scrubbing could wipe clean. Kate stopped eating. She couldn’t read more than a paragraph or two without losing focus. She retreated to her darkened bedroom, where she could ignore the telephone answering machine’s persistent red blinking and her mother’s doleful sighs that invited questions Kate could no more pose than answer.
All of that changed with the arrival of Veronica Hammond, Kate’s freshman year roommate, a force of nature as inexorable as a Diablo wind. She brought Missy and Sherry, their dormitory suitemates, packed and ready for the Yosemite outing Kate had planned to take with her father. Kate’s feeble protests shattered against the igneous shell of Veronica’s personality. Ronnie threw open the bedroom windows, forcing Kate to squint against slanted shears of light, then hustled her off to the bathroom for her first shower in days.
By the time Kate emerged, her father’s oversized backpack had been stuffed with everything she would need. Even her mother had been put to work making care packages of sandwiches and snacks before bidding the girls farewell with hugs and entreaties that they visit again.
After months of wondering how she could ever be happy again, Kate rediscovered old joys that weekend. She fished with Sherry, the other jock in the group. She showed Missy how to build a fire. She taught Veronica the value of patience in roasting a marshmallow to an ideal golden brown, the insides gooey so they flowed like white lava across the chocolate when pressed between crackers.
Rather than spoiling the activities, memories of doing these things with her father flavored them like a sweet spice. That weekend, Kate recovered her appetite, for food and for life. She returned to Stanford in the fall, and though more difficulties lay ahead, she graduated on time and landed a job at the newspaper in Monterey. She often wondered how her life might have played out if Veronica hadn’t come for her that summer and roused her from her grief.
Now, eighteen years later, Kate meant to return the favor with a four-day weekend getaway, including two nights in Yosemite’s vast backcountry. Negotiations over Veronica’s divorce settlement had turned toxic, driving her to confide—in a rare display of weakness—that she feared losing everything she valued most. Even without Veronica saying so, Kate understood she didn’t mean Ryan, the man she’d married after Stanford. She was more concerned about the tech company they’d founded together that had made them Silicon Valley royalty. Kate seized on the idea of organizing another Yosemite escape. She’d even called Missy and Sherry, but between work and kids neither could get away.
With Veronica planted in the passenger seat of Kate’s decade-old Toyota Corolla, they’d left after rush hour to skirt the worst of Bay Area traffic on a Friday morning in late July. They’d whizzed past flat fields filled with evenly spaced crops and through dusty towns that brought to mind Steinbeck novels. When a sign marking the park entrance flashed by, Kate pointed toward it, but Veronica—absorbed on her cellphone for the last half of the drive—took no notice.
“He won’t even talk to me, Mom,” Veronica said. Though Ronnie’s relationship with her parents had been strained for as long as Kate had known her, her mother now provided the sympathetic ear she needed. “It’s probably the guilt. Everything has to be through the lawyers. Which is probably just as well. I’m not sure I’d be comfortable alone with him now.”
Kate squirmed in the driver’s seat, her butt numb from the drive, the rest of her embarrassed at being turned into an eavesdropper by Veronica’s serial conversations. First, she’d been on the phone with her lawyers. Then, with her personal assistant to complain about the lawyers. Finally, with her mother to complain about the lawyers and the assistant. The entire time Veronica had jotted notes in a legal pad that Kate knew she’d throw away without reading; Veronica never forgot anything she read or wrote down.
Swallowing a deep breath, Kate leaned forward to stretch her back. Unable to picture Veronica’s Audi—valued at about twice Kate’s annual salary—abandoned at a trailhead for a couple of nights, Kate had offered to drive. But she’d expected Veronica to help pass the time by talking with her.
“We’re here,” she said, slowing for the line to pay the entry fee.
Veronica missed the hint. “I’ve never seen him like this, Mom.” While listening, she doodled a double helix of a DNA molecule into the margins of the legal pad. “No, nothing like that. But I just don’t know anymore. I thought I knew him, but now …”
Her head bobbed in agreement with her mother’s response, and Kate turned to conceal her reaction at the idea of Ryan raising a hand against a Veronica. He’d been so timid and eager-to-please when Kate first met him, but time, and success, had changed him. She couldn’t pretend to know what Ryan was like when he was alone with Veronica—or how he might react to any threat to his control of the company. Everyone had their limits, and Kate had written too many stories about domestic violence over the years to be shocked if Veronica said Ryan had raised a hand against her in a flash of fury.
Would Veronica even tell her if it happened? In her need to project strength to the world, Veronica kept so much to herself. She made it easy to assume the wound to her pride in being cast aside for a younger woman hurt more than any physical blow could. And she had more reason than most to feel embittered by the betrayal.
Blond, fit, and pert, Veronica managed to look cute even as she complained that forty loomed over her like an avalanche warning. Grown women weren’t supposed to be “cute.” They morphed into beautiful or sexy—or dumpy and frumpy. And while Veronica could look sexy when she wanted, flaunting the boob job that had sculpted the one part of her body that yoga, CrossFit, and triathlons couldn’t, her everyday, walking-around mien reminded Kate of cheerleaders and Barbie dolls, a minx smile captivating every man who entered her orbit.
Kate mostly managed her annoyance at this, for she had never felt cute. She was too tall. Too awkward. Men admired her long legs and trim figure, and she was pretty enough when she took the time. But she’d never been “cute.” She tolerated it in her friend because, like a rich girl with daddy’s credit card, Veronica lavished her appeal as the unearned gift it was. More than once Veronica’s twinkling drew men across a room only to discover, after an hour of conversation, they enjoyed Kate’s company. Kate could live off the memory of those moments for weeks, even if Veronica had to flip down the dimmer switch on her twinkling to make them happen.
Bidding farewell to her mother, Veronica cut off the call. After scrolling through the messages that had accumulated during her conversations, she pulled her attention away from the iPhone with an almost physical effort. “I’m sorry,” she said. “These divorce negotiations are scaring me. Ryan has an army of lawyers, and I feel like they’re all competing to be the one who hands him my severed head.”
Kate cringed at the image.
“Metaphorically speaking,” Veronica added.
“Let’s hope so.”
They both laughed, but the exchange smothered any new conversation Kate could offer. A sign for a fuel station emerged from a hedge of pines. Kate’s eyes flicked to the gauge. She had plenty of gas for the weekend but not enough for the return trip. Grateful for the chance to break the silence, she said, “I’m going to gas up here so we don’t have to worry about it when we leave.” She flicked on the Toyota’s turn signal and eased into the turn-lane shoulder.
She was already into the parking lot before realizing everyone else heading to the park must have had the same idea. A line of vehicles extended from the fuel pumps. More cars filled the parking spaces before the adjacent convenience store. Kate sighed. Though they’d made good time, they still had to drive into Yosemite Valley to pick up their camping permit from the ranger station, then retrace their path to the campground where they’d be staying tonight before heading into the backcountry tomorrow—all of it at a pace dictated by the oversized RVs that hugged the roads’ narrow curves.
“Okey-donkey,” Veronica chirped, a reference to an inside joke that never grew old to her. “I’ll go in and get some snacks. I have to pee anyway.”
Without another word, she bounded out of the car and over to the wood-framed store. She didn’t even ask if I had to go, Kate thought. She pushed aside any resentment while the Toyota idled in line. Veronica was going through a lot, and Kate wanted to be sympathetic, even if it was hard to empathize with someone whose biggest problem appeared to be whether her divorce settlement would be counted out in eight or nine figures.
Living on a reporter’s salary, Kate tried not to dwell on matters of Veronica’s net worth. Yet it was impossible to ignore stories about Conquistador, the company Veronica and Ryan had founded. As tech companies go, Conquistador was no Apple, Microsoft, or Google. Ask people strolling the Embarcadero and most would have never heard of it. But those same people—if they weren’t lost—probably owed that good fortune to software developed by Ryan. He had come along just as GPS became common in higher-end cars. He copyrighted some coding that integrated the GPS with real-time traffic updates, but his genius came in anticipating the shift to GPS on smartphones. Anyone using a phone to find Ghirardelli Square or the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market owed that convenience to Conquistador.
Veronica had been at his side through it all. She’d marketed the company to investors who’d been slow to recognize its value. She’d also burnished Ryan’s rougher edges to make him more presentable. In college, Ryan had been the sort of geek whose idea of small talk was to debate the merits of Captain Kirk versus Jean Luc Picard. Veronica replaced his white tennis shoes and tube socks with loafers. Got him a hairstyle that looked like he hadn’t cut it himself. Dressed him in Brooks Brothers shirts and Italian suits so that the men writing the checks would feel comfortable sliding the decimal point over another digit. Bottom line: Veronica was no mere trophy wife, even if she looked like one. If divorce meant she and Ryan could no longer work together, she had just as much claim to control of Conquistador as he did.
They’d been haggling that point for months. Too late, Veronica discovered that honing Ryan’s manner cut both ways; the boyish nerd who for so long she’d led by the nose—or other parts, to hear her tell it—now proved as stubborn and proud as she. The judge in the case, impatient at repeated delays, had given the sides until Friday to arrive at a final settlement to avoid a public trial neither side wanted. Kate’s suggestion that they find a way to continue working together had been met with icy disdain. Veronica blamed Amy, the new woman in Ryan’s life, saying she wouldn’t stand for it, but Kate suspected Veronica’s ego stood as another impediment to an amicable arrangement.
Lifting her sunglasses, Kate checked herself in the rearview mirror, her brown eyes rimmed red by the long drive and thoughts of her father, dark hair mussed from pushing her sunglasses onto her head every time the road fell into shadow.
Behind her, she saw a guy in an oversized pickup truck pull into a too-narrow space, his engine pulsating like a marching band’s drum corps. He opened his door and stepped out, a tall, thick-shouldered man in his late forties wearing a trucker’s hat, jeans, and a flannel shirt he left untucked to hide a nascent paunch. He tossed a cigarette onto the asphalt. Kate watched the wisp of smoke from the butt, recalling the wildfires that raged in Monterey County earlier that summer. She willed the man to at least stub it out before walking away, but he moved past it, oblivious, a cellphone to his ear as he strode into the store.
In front of Kate, every car must have been on empty, with huge, oversized tanks that seemed standard in the gas-guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks, half of them probably from the city where such large vehicles made about as much sense as a yacht in Nebraska.
A massive Cadillac Escalade pulled out, and Kate inched forward. She was third in line. By the time she moved up another spot, the guy from the pickup had returned, carrying a couple of six-packs, a bag of ice, and a new pack of cigarettes. Even with his hands full, he managed to peel off the cellophane, which he let fall to the ground. The ice and beer disappeared into the back of the truck, and he lit up a new smoke before opening the driver’s side door. He seemed to sense her attention, and for a moment their eyes locked in Kate’s mirror before she looked away. The truck rumbled to life, the sound rattling her little Toyota, and she smiled at the thought of what the man was compensating for by driving such a large truck.
In front of her, a man with a classic dad bod was filling a red Ford Explorer decked out with enough gear to open an REI store. A rack on the back held four bikes. A turtle-like storage case clung to the roof. A woman trailed by two kids returned from the store ladened with soft drinks and candy and clambered into the car. Kate looked about for Veronica. How long does it take to use the bathroom? She hoped there wasn’t a line like the one at the fuel pump because she would be in it next.
The SUV started. Kate slipped the Toyota into gear and waited for the other vehicle to pull clear. Parked at an angle, she needed to ease around the concrete curb that shielded the pumps. She inched forward, braking to a stop when she felt, as much as heard, the powerful rumble of the oversized pickup truck. Her head whipped around in time to see how the driver had taken advantage of her hesitation to nose the front of his truck before her Toyota, trusting in her unwillingness to damage her car. She glared in his direction. He lowered the passenger window and leaned over to catch her eye.
“Do you mind? I’ve got to get to a campground before all the spots are taken and I’m running late.”
Kate bit back the first response that came to mind. What choice did she have? She swallowed her anger and waved him on, as if the act of generosity had been her idea. Maybe good karma would come back to her, though it seemed she’d spent her adult life waiting for karma’s payback.
The guy nodded with the kind of appraising smile that made her feel she was being judged and found, maybe, acceptable. Like he asked himself with every woman he saw: Would I? Or wouldn’t I? Having decided that he’d probably grant her the pleasure if given the chance, he saluted her with a wag of the index finger protruding from his steering wheel grip. Kate figured she was supposed to feel honored, but the gesture turned her stomach.
She lost sight of him as his truck thundered forward—then braked to a sudden stop.
“Back it up, asshole.”
The tiny hairs on the back of Kate’s neck sprang erect on recognizing a woman’s voice.
Slipping the Toyota’s transmission into park, Kate opened her door and stood to get a look. Veronica had positioned herself in front of the pump, arms filled with drinks and bags of food, her blue eyes burning a hole through the truck’s engine casing. The driver couldn’t advance without rolling over her. Kate shuddered at the blare of the oversized truck’s horn, a lighthouse fog warning.
“Get out of the way, you dumb bitch!”
Veronica squinted as if to take the driver’s measure through the glare off the windshield. Once she had it, she turned her attention to one of the drinks balanced in her arms. A long red straw protruded from the plastic lid. Veronica clasped it between lips made shiny by a new coating of Chapstick. She slurped. Finished, she said: “I can stand here all day. I’ve got snacks.” She shifted her weight to one hip and looked to him, awaiting his efforts at a clever rejoinder.
Kate’s stomach clenched. The air around the fuel pumps felt charged. Veronica enjoyed a verbal joust—especially with men puffed up on undeserved vanity—but it usually took more than a couple martinis for her to get this mouthy. Her ability to get away with saying almost anything to a man struck Kate like a superpower. Veronica dismissed it as no more than confidence, as if any woman could do it. Yet Veronica’s power emanated from unique qualities: a lightning-quick wit that sheathed her insults within a veneer of flirty comic relief; looks that left men wanting her even after they swallowed her putdowns; and the wealth and power to buy herself out of any situation that spun out of control.
More than once Kate had warned Veronica it was only a matter of time before she ran up against a man with a grudge against the world and all the women he felt had slighted him along the way. Kate alternated between praying she wasn’t around the day that happened and wanting to be there to do what she could to stop Veronica from taking things too far. That time was now, yet Kate stood transfixed, her knuckles white from her grip on the open door panel.
“Bitch, if you don’t move, I’ll run your ass over.”
The corner of Veronica’s mouth dropped into the hint of a frown, a look of disappointment more than sadness in recognizing the unworthiness of her foil. She remained unwilling to give up the game.
“I have lawyers on payroll. They get paid whether I sue anyone this month or not. Give me a reason to put them to work.” She nodded toward the store’s front entrance. “They’ll start by securing copies of the surveillance video from that camera.”
The man turned his head to follow her gaze. His shoulders slumped behind the wheel of the truck. His bluff having been called, he looked left and right, as if seeking an escape with dignity.
Veronica still stood before him. She slurped again from the straw, waiting for his next play.
Kate couldn’t see a camera and wondered if Veronica was bluffing too. She was too good an actor to tell. The man must have reached the same conclusion. He mouthed something Kate couldn’t hear and threw a dark look in her direction. Apparently, he’d recalculated his would-I, wouldn’t-I equation and now found Kate didn’t measure up. “You’re in the way,” he said.
“Happy to fix that.” Kate dropped behind the wheel and eased back enough for him to retreat. The truck lurched back within inches of the Toyota’s front end, then roared off in an ear-shattering cloud of exhaust.
Kate pulled next to the pump and got out of the car. Veronica handed over the food bags and drinks and pulled out a credit card. “I got this,” she said, having already dismissed the confrontation from her mind.
Kate’s eyes followed the truck where it disappeared onto the forested highway while Veronica pumped gas. She wanted to be angry at Veronica for heedlessly putting them at risk over such a trivial matter, but alarm had given way to a wash of adrenaline, like the moment a roller coaster eases to a stop. “That was amazing.”
“That,” Veronica replied, waving a manicured hand in the direction of the truck, “was cathartic.”
Back in the car, Kate approached Yosemite Valley on Big Oak Flat Road. Trees blurred as they swept past, creating a sea of green on the undulating hills that reminded her of waves on an endless ocean. Losing herself in such vastness always proved a balm for nerves frayed by texts and emails and deadlines that, like these hills, never fell away but just rolled one into another. Still anxious after the stop at the gas station, Kate eased her Toyota behind a line of cars at a lookout and got out to stretch her legs.
Peering down from the stone wall at the edge of the asphalt, Kate took in a view like something out of mythology or a Tolkien novel. A carpet of pines reached toward the mammoth granite peaks that rimmed the valley. The sheer face of El Capitan stood sentry on the north side. Opposite, Bridalveil Fall poured forth from boulders that extended like conical spires. The clear waters of the Merced River wove between them, the stitching that bound the rest together.
“Jesus.” Veronica stared open-mouthed. “I’m sure I’ve seen this before, but the memory doesn’t do it justice.”
Kate used her phone to snap a photo of Veronica. The park’s serenity had relaxed Veronica’s features, so that Kate glimpsed again the girl she’d met twenty years ago who’d been so eager to see what the world could offer her—and just as determined to seize it. They had grown apart as upperclassmen, reuniting a few years after graduation at a baby shower for Missy and then, a few months after that, at one for Sherry. Veronica, strident in her defense of childlessness, identified a compatriot in Kate, even if her childless status was less a lifestyle statement than a byproduct of impotent relationship choices.
It was after one o’clock by the time they reached Yosemite Valley, and the weekend crowds were turning out. Seizing the first parking spot she could find, Kate left Veronica to buy sandwiches at the Yosemite Village store while she hustled to the ranger station to get the permit she’d reserved online. By the time she reached the front of the line, she could recite every word of the lecture on “leave no trace” camping methods. The ranger, an older man with a salt-and-pepper beard and crinkly eyes, spoke with the rhythmic cadence of a tour bus driver.
“Camp on durable surfaces, including established campsites, rock, gravel, and dry grasses. … Pack out all trash, leftover food, and litter, including toilet paper and hygiene products. … Deposit solid human waste in catholes dug six inches deep at least one hundred feet from water sources, your campsite, and the trail.” Kate hadn’t told Veronica of the lightweight metal trowel she’d packed for digging poop holes, and she smiled to anticipate Ronnie’s reaction. Signing the paperwork for the permit and asking to rent a bear canister triggered another speech about food storage. As he spoke, the ranger pulled out a clear plastic jug that reminded Kate of a small office water cooler.
“Communal food lockers can be found at the campsites and trailheads. Don’t leave food in your car. Bears have a sense of smell a hundred times stronger than a dog’s. They’ve been known to break windows and cause other damage to get at food inside.”
Kate nodded and smiled, recalling the same lessons from her father. He’d been ahead of his time in understanding that when people were careless or, worse, fed bears, they taught the animals to associate humans with food, making them bolder in their efforts to forage for more. The inconvenience of a canister or food locker seemed a small sacrifice when the alternative could mean forcing rangers to kill a bear that became aggressive in interacting with humans.
The press of people outside the ranger station left Kate feeling like she’d stumbled out onto Disneyland’s Main Street, U.S.A. She found Veronica waiting for her.
“Some quiet getaway,” she said, an eyebrow cocked to signal she was baiting Kate.
“The village is always like this on a summer weekend,” Kate said. “Four million people visit Yosemite each year. The park has twelve hundred square miles, but the vast majority never venture beyond the valley’s seven square miles.”
“Thank you, Wikipedia,” Veronica said, flashing a wry smile.
They ate lunch on a log bench set before a yellowed field of dry grass where Half Dome hovered like a gray-faced photo bomber. Tourists took turns standing on an adjacent bench, arms spread wide to create an impression of themselves isolated in nature.
“Do you want me to take your picture?” Veronica asked.
Kate shook her head. “Tomorrow we’ll be some place that none of those people will ever see. Take my picture then.”
“It won’t be Half Dome.”
“I’ll buy a postcard of Half Dome if I want one.”
Kate ate quickly, eager to be rid of the crowds and congestion. Here, people could sleep in RV parks where generators hummed at assigned hours of the day to assure their comfort. They bought Ansel Adams picture books, Yosemite Falls refrigerator magnets, and stuffed bears for the kids. Those who could afford the rustic luxury of the Ahwahnee Hotel gorged on prime rib and burrata salad in a cathedral-like grand dining room of rock columns and wood-beam ceilings—all without so much as risking mud on their shoes.
Modulating her voice to mimic the foreboding tone of a movie trailer voice-over, Kate said, “We’re here to get so far away from the crowds we could get lost and no one would ever find us.”
She chuckled at her own joke, but Veronica didn’t react. She’d turned from the postcard view to take in the wooded mountains behind them that stretched farther than anyone could see. “If only that were true,” she said, so softly Kate wasn’t sure she’d been meant to hear.
They returned to the car and retraced their route out of the valley along Big Oak Flat Road. They passed through a tunnel blasted out of the mountains. They followed the switchbacks that ascended from a five-thousand-foot elevation in the valley to around eight thousand feet at Tioga Road, which looped through the mountains to the north of Yosemite Valley.
At the turnoff, Kate entertained a stop at the Tuolumne Grove trailhead for a quick hike to see some of Yosemite’s giant sequoias. But she wanted to get a good spot at the campground where they would stay the night before heading out the next morning into the dense wilderness. After the long drive, Kate could feel the pull of weariness. She was counting on getting to bed early. She lowered her window and inhaled the scent of pine, more invigorating than any car air freshener.
Veronica’s focus returned to her cellphone while she could still hope for a signal. She balanced the device on her lap with her sandaled feet propped against the dashboard. Kate’s legs were too long to do that, and she admired her friend’s matching French pedicure, her toes dainty like the iridescent seashells you find in souvenir shops but never on a beach. Veronica’s thumbs set a staccato rhythm on the screen’s tiny keyboard. Kate worried she might be regretting the getaway now that the reality of the weekend’s timing with the final negotiations in her divorce settlement had set in. Kate’s enthusiasm for planning the trip and repaying the favor Veronica had done for her might have precluded any expression of second thoughts. She’d wanted to offer a distraction from all Veronica’s troubles, but that couldn’t happen so long as she kept her nose in emails about the office and the legal maneuverings she could no longer control.
Kate couldn’t begin to fathom the emotions of severing a life that had been defined by its union with another person, even for a couple who were as different as Veronica and Ryan. His manner reminded Kate of teenage boys who had to be reminded to clean their rooms, while Veronica hardly ever let up. Opposites attract. That’s what people said, and Kate hadn’t spent enough time with the two of them together to properly judge the truth of it. Veronica called on Kate when she wanted to get away from the house or needed a stand-in for Ryan at a charity event.
Kate wasn’t privy to the private intimacies that fused the couple. She’d been angry with Ryan when she first heard he’d taken up with another woman. Only after she’d had time to absorb the news did Kate wonder if Ryan’s move wasn’t so much a yearning for a younger woman as a reprieve from Veronica’s ambition. Life with her had to be exhausting. Veronica often bragged about how she had shaped Ryan into the man he was. If Ryan had grown tired of being molded, Kate didn’t know how Veronica could mend that.
A sudden bend in the road left the Toyota’s tires scrabbling on the loose stones of the shoulder. Kate looked ahead just in time to punch the brake and avoid a hiker wearing a tall frame backpack stuffed almost to bursting. The man kept walking, barely sparing a look back, though he shifted his path to hug the road’s uneven shoulder more closely.
Kate’s heart hammered against her chest as she upbraided herself for allowing her weary mind to wander while negotiating such twisty roads. “God, I could have killed that guy.”
“You weren’t that close or going nearly so fast. At worst he might have broken a leg,” Veronica said, smiling and leaning forward to make eye contact. The gesture had its intended effect, as Kate’s breathing evened out. “He shouldn’t have been on the road.”
“There’s nowhere else for him to go.” Kate spoke as if the man might hear her. Letting off the brake, the Toyota crawled forward. She stole a glance through the open window as they drew even with the man. A floppy, wide-brimmed hat shielded half of a lean face. He looked about forty and acknowledged her with a salute-like wave without looking in her direction.
“Sorry,” Kate mouthed under her breath.
“He’s cute,” Veronica said after they’d passed him. “Maybe you should offer him a ride.”
“From where you’re sitting, all you could see was his ass,” Kate said, though she didn’t dispute the assessment. “Besides, we don’t even know him.” Her eyes flicked to the rearview mirror for another look, and before his image receded something clicked in her brain, not so much a memory as a sense, elusive and impossible to categorize.
“What?” Veronica, who’d been watching Kate, craned her neck for a look back.
“He seemed familiar.”
“You know him?”
Kate shook her head. “I’d remember if I’d met him. It’s more like a familiar face.”
Veronica waggled her fingers as if peering through a crystal ball. “Ooh. Maybe you’re destined to meet.”
Kate frowned. Her mind whirled through a mental Contacts list, but without the context of where she might have seen the man, she had no hope of identifying him. All she knew was that the association wasn’t good. Dangerous even. She said none of this to Veronica, seeking only to drop the subject with a dismissal intended as much for herself as her friend.
“Don’t be silly.”
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