the city limits.
I love the fall colors in the woods here! Natalie had said to me on the phone, after she had moved to Shadow Cove to work as a hospital nutritionist. I’d still been living in Seattle, had snagged my first book contract, and I’d longed to escape the city, to return to the forest, where my mind could find room to create stories. You would love it here, Natalie had said. So many flowers and trees, right on the ocean. And so I had moved to Shadow Cove, where my career had blossomed, where I had met Dr. Johnny McDonald. I’d been barely twenty-five; he’d been thirty-four, establishing a private dermatology clinic with two male colleagues. Dr. Johnny McDonald, a dashing bachelor, friend of Natalie’s husband, Daniel Kemp, family physician. They had all gone to the annual polar bear plunge, where my offer of a towel to Johnny had set our love in motion. We got married nearly two years later.
Now I could hear the river in motion below. I’d taken an unfamiliar, narrow trail that descended over rocky ground toward the shore. I was going the wrong way, but if I could reach the riverbank, I could turn left and follow the waterline back to the main trail.
The rain had let up by the time I reached the bottom of the trail. I’d wandered off course, downstream from the dangerous waterfall. Here, the river widened into a deceptively serene, glassy pool, although I could sense the current underneath, discernible in faint ripples reaching the surface. The waterfall crashed and roared a distance to my left on the route back to the cottage.
Johnny would surely be ready for work by the time I returned. He would be the one with questions. I imagined him bouncing his car keys in his hand, the way he did when he was impatient, ready to go. Where have you been? Were you following me?
At the riverbank, the path flattened, scuffed by many footprints. A thick rope hung from a tree leaning over the water. The embankment descended gently to a narrow, sandy beach. On the opposite bank, an abandoned wooden canoe lay upside down in the grass, its blue paint peeling. And several yards to the right of the boat was a makeshift dock with a broken-down building perched on top. There was something familiar about the layout of the scene—the dock, the building, the cedar and fir trees in the background. The shed was made of weathered, grayed wood, the roof buckling in places, the small, square windows like hollowed-out eyes. An old fisherman’s hut, I thought. Chum salmon had once numbered in the thousands, returning from the sea to spawn along the river each winter, drawn by some unknown force of nature, driven to mate, lay their eggs, and die. The salmon would return again in a month or two, but their numbers had diminished.
My sense of reality had diminished, too, wavering on the edge of a dream. I realized, now, why the vista looked familiar. If I were to replace the mist with a brilliant blue summer sky, I could see Johnny sitting on that dock, dangling his feet in the water, the stunning woman in the black bikini sitting beside him, her arm touching his. I could see the fisherman’s shed in the background. But no, this could not be the place where the photograph had been taken. There were many rivers in the state, hundreds of lakes, many broken-down shacks. Johnny would have remembered if the photograph had been taken here, so close to the cottage, on the Shadow River.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I had expected to find Johnny ready for work, but when I arrived at the cottage, shivering in my thin outerwear, he was whistling in the shower. How could he act so casual? Maybe he had nothing to hide, and I was the one seeing the world through a tinted lens, my distrustful mind damaged by tragedy and head trauma.
The clock on the kitchen wall indicated that only forty-five minutes had passed since I’d left. Somehow, I thought I’d been gone much longer. Time had slowed in the forest. But inside the cottage, the day sped up. The air
I love the fall colors in the woods here! Natalie had said to me on the phone, after she had moved to Shadow Cove to work as a hospital nutritionist. I’d still been living in Seattle, had snagged my first book contract, and I’d longed to escape the city, to return to the forest, where my mind could find room to create stories. You would love it here, Natalie had said. So many flowers and trees, right on the ocean. And so I had moved to Shadow Cove, where my career had blossomed, where I had met Dr. Johnny McDonald. I’d been barely twenty-five; he’d been thirty-four, establishing a private dermatology clinic with two male colleagues. Dr. Johnny McDonald, a dashing bachelor, friend of Natalie’s husband, Daniel Kemp, family physician. They had all gone to the annual polar bear plunge, where my offer of a towel to Johnny had set our love in motion. We got married nearly two years later.
Now I could hear the river in motion below. I’d taken an unfamiliar, narrow trail that descended over rocky ground toward the shore. I was going the wrong way, but if I could reach the riverbank, I could turn left and follow the waterline back to the main trail.
The rain had let up by the time I reached the bottom of the trail. I’d wandered off course, downstream from the dangerous waterfall. Here, the river widened into a deceptively serene, glassy pool, although I could sense the current underneath, discernible in faint ripples reaching the surface. The waterfall crashed and roared a distance to my left on the route back to the cottage.
Johnny would surely be ready for work by the time I returned. He would be the one with questions. I imagined him bouncing his car keys in his hand, the way he did when he was impatient, ready to go. Where have you been? Were you following me?
At the riverbank, the path flattened, scuffed by many footprints. A thick rope hung from a tree leaning over the water. The embankment descended gently to a narrow, sandy beach. On the opposite bank, an abandoned wooden canoe lay upside down in the grass, its blue paint peeling. And several yards to the right of the boat was a makeshift dock with a broken-down building perched on top. There was something familiar about the layout of the scene—the dock, the building, the cedar and fir trees in the background. The shed was made of weathered, grayed wood, the roof buckling in places, the small, square windows like hollowed-out eyes. An old fisherman’s hut, I thought. Chum salmon had once numbered in the thousands, returning from the sea to spawn along the river each winter, drawn by some unknown force of nature, driven to mate, lay their eggs, and die. The salmon would return again in a month or two, but their numbers had diminished.
My sense of reality had diminished, too, wavering on the edge of a dream. I realized, now, why the vista looked familiar. If I were to replace the mist with a brilliant blue summer sky, I could see Johnny sitting on that dock, dangling his feet in the water, the stunning woman in the black bikini sitting beside him, her arm touching his. I could see the fisherman’s shed in the background. But no, this could not be the place where the photograph had been taken. There were many rivers in the state, hundreds of lakes, many broken-down shacks. Johnny would have remembered if the photograph had been taken here, so close to the cottage, on the Shadow River.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I had expected to find Johnny ready for work, but when I arrived at the cottage, shivering in my thin outerwear, he was whistling in the shower. How could he act so casual? Maybe he had nothing to hide, and I was the one seeing the world through a tinted lens, my distrustful mind damaged by tragedy and head trauma.
The clock on the kitchen wall indicated that only forty-five minutes had passed since I’d left. Somehow, I thought I’d been gone much longer. Time had slowed in the forest. But inside the cottage, the day sped up. The air
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