Cancel the Wedding (11 page)

We pulled the boat back into the dock where we had stolen it and Elliott parked it easily. Graham jumped out to tie it to the cleat. Elliott said, “So seven o'clock?”

I smiled and got ready to answer him when Logan cut me off. “What's at seven?”

I pulled my eyes away from Elliott with some effort and spoke to Logan. “Elliott thought of a place we all need to go tomorrow night.”

Logan said, “Cool.” And just like that we had a double date.

Logan and I spent the next morning driving slowly around the parking lot of an abandoned grocery store. She was getting the feel of steering and turning, accelerating and stopping.

Leo called while we were having our illicit driving lesson. I was a little giddy with the freedom of breaking the rules and gushed about how quickly Logan had picked up the basics. Then he heard me tell Logan to stop pushing the gas and break at the same time.

Leo was not pleased. “Don't let her drive your car, Livie. Do you have any idea how much it will cost to replace your transmission?”

I didn't want Logan to have her confidence shot so I ignored that. “Yes, she's doing really great. I'll call you later.”

Once she got comfortable and was consistently using only her right foot, I let her go out on the back roads a bit. She was actually a pretty good driver. She attributed it to being forced to play video games with her brothers. I attributed it to Logan just being naturally accomplished at everything she tried. I reminded her about seven million times that she could not tell her mom and dad that I had let her drive the car.

As we followed the winding roads out of Tillman I took over in the driver's seat. She wasn't ready for the switchback roads that climbed the mountain. We rolled our windows down to let in the cooler air at the higher altitude.

I was aimlessly following the road up to the higher points. I was trying to get close to the top of the ridgeline so we could look out over the valley, the town, and the lake below.

We turned off the main road and began to follow a small gravel street, which continued up the mountain. My hands were gripping the steering wheel as I slowly ascended the road. There was a sheer granite face on my side and a harrowing drop on Logan's. We were both completely silent in the car, putting all of our mental focus on getting safely up the incline.

I stopped the car at the first point where the road widened. I decided to turn the car around so it was facing downhill. I wasn't sure if I would have another chance to do it and I knew there was no way I could reverse all the way back down.

Once we were safely pointed down the mountain, we climbed out to look for a vista. Logan spotted an overlook, which consisted of a large granite rock cantilevered precariously over the edge of a cliff face, and decided it was a perfect spot to take in the view.

I said, “Really? This is where you want to sit?” I inched as close to the edge as I dared and looked down at the treetops below me.

Logan plopped down at the rim of the stone and swung her feet over the edge. “Look at that view, Aunt Liv. Don't be such a chicken.”

“Fine, but you are not allowed to plunge to your death.” I moved back as far away from the edge as I could while still being on the rock. “That's a rule.”

From this vantage point we could see the entire eastern end of the lake below. I located the marina and then the golf course. I followed the fairways around the lake until they ended at the property known as the Ruins. I pointed it out to Logan. A few boats were tying themselves together in the nearest cove to form a party flotilla below.

My phone pinged with a text from Leo:
Sorry about the car lecture. I'm sure it was fine. Have to catch the overnight to SFO. Be out of pocket till Sun AM. Will call you then. xo

If he hadn't signed off with “xo” that text could have gone to anyone. We weren't communicating very well lately.

Logan pointed up to her right at the house clinging to the crest of the hill. It was an impressive spread, definitely the largest house I had seen in the area. From where I sat on the rock I could see that there were actually several buildings making up the estate all surrounding an expansive infinity pool pouring out into nothingness. As day turned to afternoon music began to waft out from the house.

She asked, “Who do you think lives there?”

I shrugged. “Someone with a lot of cash and a four-wheel drive.”

I wanted to get off that deathtrap of a rock, but Logan didn't want to leave the view. I had to lure her away with the promise of adventure at the end of the road.

As we followed the footpath up the hill I was losing pace with Logan. I called out to her, “Slow down!”

She never broke her stride. “Come on, Livie. You're way out of shape.”

I grabbed a pine cone from the ground and threw it at her. It missed. “I just wanted to walk up to the ridge, not have an Outward Bound experience.” Logan finally stopped and waited for me then made a point to walk at my pace.

After a while of walking in silence she said, “You know what's weird about you and Elliott?”

Me and Elliott? “There is no me and Elliott, Logan.” I kicked a rock and watched it scuttle into the underbrush. I couldn't imagine what she had conjured in her imagination.

Logan continued, as I knew she would. “You're all silly with him. Like playful. You two are always laughing about something.”

I wasn't sure how to respond to that. “He's just a nice guy and we're very busy playing matchmaker for you and Graham.”

She made a sarcastic sort of grunting noise. “Yeah right, this is all about me. You should see the way he watches you. And when—”

“He doesn't watch me. He's just being—”

“Don't say polite, Livie. It's totally different. You guys find ways to touch each other, like constantly.”

“What? We don't touch each—”

“You do. You're always shoving or smacking each other. It's cool. I mean it's kind of sweet.”

“I do not smack people.” To make my point I smacked her on the shoulder, which made her laugh.

“I mean with Uncle Leo . . . you're more like grown-ups, like my parents.”

“Leo and I have been together for a long time. We've already moved past the stage where you're silly or fun or whatever.”

Logan stopped and looked right at me. “Was Uncle Leo ever fun?”

Was I really having to stand here and defend my fiancé to my niece? “You love Leo. He's always been so great with you. What is going on here?”

“You haven't been happy for a long time, Livie. I don't think I noticed it till I saw you laughing the other day with Elliott. That's all I'm saying. I think it'd be great if you could be happy again.”

I was taken aback by her comments, or maybe by her perception. I mumbled, “Out of the mouths of babes.”

We walked easily on the path as crickets sang in a wave of rhythm under the trees, low to the ground. I checked my watch, wanting to make sure we turned back toward the car before too long. Finally I said, “Elliott is just a fun person, who happens to have a girlfriend . . . I think. And I'm just someone in need of research assistance, who has a fiancé. That's it.”

Logan didn't respond.

We came around a bend and spotted an abandoned house set back from the path. The house had weathered to a uniform gray and the front walk was overgrown in gnarled vines. The rusted metal roof had long since caved in and was leaning at a strange angle into the second floor.

“See Lo? An adventure!”

We walked carefully up the broken front steps, across the rotted boards of the porch, and through what was left of the front door. Most of the windows had been broken and the inside of the house had a blanket of leaves and pine straw that had blown in over time. There were still pieces of furniture here and there, most of it knocked over or ransacked. Logan went over to a sideboard that was still standing against the wall and opened a drawer. She held up a stack of papers. They were old letters.

She put them back where she found them and we walked to the next room. Logan was heading for the stairs but I pulled her back and shook my head. I didn't think the floor was safe to stand on up there.

We held hands as we walked to the kitchen. The cupboard doors were missing but the contents of the cabinets were there. Plates and bowls, napkins and tablecloths, all stacked in their proper place and covered in dust.

I realized that neither of us had uttered a word since crossing the threshold, the only sounds coming from the creaking floorboards under our feet. The house had an eerie foreboding to it and I felt like we had seen enough. Logan seemed to agree and we made our way back out to the front porch.

Tchck-tchck
. Even before I knew for certain what direction the sound had come from, or had fully processed what it was that I was hearing, I was in terror. Sheer terror. Logan and I both froze, our feet planted in the last step they had taken before that unmistakable sound.

Tchck-tchck.
I had never heard a shotgun being cocked or loaded or pumped or whatever that was, in real life, but I had seen enough movies to realize it was a bad sound. It was the sound the villain makes to instill fear, to make a point. I turned slowly around toward the direction of the noise with my hands where he could see them. Point taken.

Standing between the path and us was a very old weathered man in greasy blue jeans and a denim work shirt pointing his shotgun in our direction. I felt absurd doing it, but I slowly put my hands up.

“Hi . . . um, my name's Olivia and my niece and I were just out hiking.” I slowly stepped in front of Logan and pushed her behind me with my foot. I kept smiling at the man but he didn't make a move to lower the gun.

I kept talking. “I'm sorry is this your house? We uh, we didn't mean to intrude.” He was still standing there staring at us with a look of complete incomprehension. I was wondering if perhaps he was profoundly deaf. I was wondering how I would explain Logan's untimely demise to my sister. I was wondering if I was actually going to wet my pants.

Logan peeked out from behind me and in a tiny voice said, “Sir, could you please lower the gun? You're scaring us.”

He looked at Logan and then propped the gun over his shoulder. He didn't look menacing anymore, just sort of tired and irritated. I realized I had been holding my breath and blew out the air. The man spit on the ground, a long brown sticky spit, which I assumed was from chewing tobacco.

He motioned to the house with his head. “You're trespassing.”

I put my arms down, took Logan's hand, and began to back slowly away from the house. My eyes never left the shotgun. “I'm really sorry. And we didn't realize we had gotten so far from the road. It seemed completely abandoned.”

Before I could reach the tree line he asked, “You one of Bryant's people?”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I was glad at that moment that I was not, in fact, one of Bryant's people. “No sir, we were just out walking. We didn't mean to intrude.” I took a step backward, pulling Logan with me.

The old man walked a few feet closer to us and squinted at me. “Goddamn, you look like a Rutledge.” He spit again, this time narrowly missing my shoe.

Logan was gripping my hand so tightly that my knuckles were aching, but this man seemed to recognize me. He must have known my mother, and if so he was the first person from this town I had run into who had known her. “Did you know Jane Rutledge, or her father Winchester Rutledge?”

The gun moved back into firing position. “Get off my property.”

He didn't have to ask us twice. Logan and I began to back slowly out of sight from the gun-wielding mountain man. As soon as we reached the path we ran as fast as our legs could manage down the rocky, uneven terrain. I fell twice and Logan ran head-on into a wasp's nest, getting stung several times on her shoulder. None of this made us stop. We ran until we got back to the car.

Gasping for breath I looked us over as I locked the doors then started the engine. We were both filthy and sweaty with scrapes and scratches from running through the stiff, sharp brambles. My left knee was already bruised and bleeding badly from where I had fallen. Logan's shoulder was red with welts from the wasp stings.

I asked, “Does it hurt?”

She wiped the dirt from her hands before pulling out one of the stingers. “Yeah, but getting shot probably hurts more. Let's go.”

After a recklessly high-speed getaway back to the town of Tillman, and a very long, hot shower, Logan and I went down to the lobby to meet Elliott and Graham for dinner.

Elliott looked us up and down, noticing the scratches on our arms, the bleeding gash on my swollen knee, and the angry red welts on Logan's shoulder from the stings.

As Graham opened the door leading us to the waiting car, Elliott asked, “What happened to you two?” I went to get in the backseat, with Logan, but Graham beat me to it. I climbed in the front with Elliott.

On the way to dinner Logan gave a hilarious recount of our narrow escape from the mountain. She made that poor man defending his property from two nosy girls sound like the security guard of the
Deliverance
clan. Elliott was laughing so hard his eyes were watering.

It all seemed very exaggerated now that we were safe and sound and back in civilization. But when I remembered the sound of the shotgun behind me I still shivered.

I said, “I think he recognized me, or I mean I think he recognized my mom in me. I look a lot like her. He must have known her.”

Logan piped up from the backseat. “Yeah, and he clearly didn't like her.”

We pulled up to something called the Circle J, parked in the crowded parking lot, and Graham and Logan jumped out. Calling this place a roadside shack would be a generous description.

Elliott said, “Hang on.” before I could climb out of the car. He leaned over me, leaving a trail of the scent of soap from his skin, and opened his glove compartment retrieving a first aid kit. He took out a piece of gauze and taped it to my bleeding knee.