All That We Carried Read online

  Melanie squeezed her lips together and counted to five. She would not cry. “Go on then,” she said, her tone measured. “If you’re having such a bad time, take one of the packs and hitchhike to the car. You can sleep in a motel, and I’ll see you in a couple days if you’re not too high and mighty to come back and pick me up. Or I’ll get an Uber, if they have any up here. Or maybe Josh can drop me at a bus station. Just leave the tent and the dry sleeping bag and some food. I’ll do the rest of the hike myself.”

  Olivia came around the fire to where Melanie stood, resolute. “That’s absurd.”

  “Why? Because it wasn’t your idea? Because it’s not part of your plans?”

  Olivia threw up her hands. “No, because you’re inexperienced, you have a terrible sense of direction, as we have established, and you have no map.”

  “Josh knows where he’s going. I’ll follow him.”

  Olivia stepped closer and lowered her voice. “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve said yet. You don’t even know this guy.”

  Melanie made no effort to talk quietly. “He was pretty helpful yesterday and nobody got raped or murdered. I’m pretty sure it’ll be okay.”

  Olivia punched her in the arm. “You idiot,” she hissed. “It’s a lot harder to overpower two women than it is to overpower one. You have no idea what he’s capable of.”

  Melanie looked to where Josh was standing, eager to draw him into the argument just to make her sister squirm. But he wasn’t there. She gave Olivia her own punch in the arm. “You’re the idiot.” Then she stalked off to find Josh, Olivia hot on her heels.

  They found him back on the rocky shore at the water’s edge, standing just out of reach of the waves.

  “Did you figure it out?” he said without turning around.

  “I’m going on,” Melanie said before Olivia could say anything.

  He looked at Olivia. “What about you?”

  She picked up a rock and flung it into the churning water, where it vanished. “I don’t know what to do here. She won’t listen.”

  Josh looked at each of them in turn. “How about this. Olivia, what if you and I go back to where you left the packs. Melanie, you stay by the fire and keep it going and keep warm. And if, when we get to the packs, you want to keep going to the road, you can go ahead and I’ll bring the other stuff back here to Melanie. Otherwise, we each grab a pack and come back here.”

  Olivia shook her head. “No, Melanie needs to come too, that way we can both leave if we choose to.”

  “I think Melanie’s already made her choice though.”

  Melanie nodded vigorously.

  “You just need to make your choice. Quit or push on.”

  “This is totally none of your business, and you’re not getting it anyway,” Olivia said. “The choice has already been made for us. She can’t sleep in a wet sleeping bag.”

  “Did you ever actually pull that bag out to see if it was wet?” Melanie asked.

  Olivia hesitated. “No, but everything in the pack was wet. All of your clothes were wet. Of course it would be too.”

  “But it’s in a separate stuff sack, which, for all we know, might be waterproof. I mean, I can’t imagine you getting anything less than top-of-the-line equipment.”

  Olivia was silent, and Melanie knew she had her. She had actually out-argued the lawyer for the moment. Olivia was all about evidence-based beliefs, and now she found herself lacking evidence. She’d have to go get the sleeping bag in order to prove her point.

  “Fine,” Olivia finally said. “Josh and I will go back to the packs. If the sleeping bag is dry, I’ll come back and we’ll finish this hike together. If it’s not . . . you’re on your own.”

  nineteen

  STU-PID, STU-PID, STU-PID. With each stride, the word ran through Olivia’s brain. Left, right. Stu-pid. Sometimes it was directed toward Melanie. Sometimes it was directed toward herself. Either way, it was an accurate description of both of them. Melanie was being reckless. She was being belligerent. Both of them were being stupid. And a bit selfish. Now that word took the place of stupid in her interior monologue, one syllable per step. Sel-fish.

  “What do you get out of this?” she asked Josh, her tone almost accusatory.

  “Pardon?” He slowed his pace and moved over as much as he could to allow her to come up almost beside him.

  “Why are you walking nearly three miles you don’t have to, to carry a load for someone you’ve only barely met, after watching her and her sister fight like children about whether or not they should cut a pointless trip short?”

  “The trip doesn’t seem pointless to me. Your sister said it was to reconnect.”

  “That’s her reason, not mine.”

  “Then what’s yours?”

  “Ugh, stop changing the subject. I ask a question and you ask a question. Just answer. Why are you helping her?”

  “I thought I was helping both of you.”

  “You’re not. You’re helping with her plans and hindering mine.”

  “See, but there’s the reason for my question: I thought you shared those plans.”

  Olivia gave him a puzzled look.

  “To reconnect.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh. No. That’s not what this trip is about for me.”

  “Why not?”

  She picked up the pace a bit. “I don’t feel some gaping hole in my life that needs to be filled. She might, but I don’t.”

  This was not entirely true. Olivia felt an enormous hole where her parents had been. But Melanie couldn’t fill that. Nothing could.

  Josh matched his stride to hers. “Why did you agree to the trip?”

  “For two reasons. First, because Melanie is like glitter.” Olivia wiggled her fingers in the air. “You know how you can never really get rid of glitter once it enters your house? That’s what Mel is like. She’s that one annoying Christmas card you pull out of the envelope that’s just covered with glitter, and it gets all over the place and you’re picking it off yourself until Easter. She just keeps calling and texting and emailing. I had to say yes to stop her.”

  Josh was smiling. Olivia wanted to be irritated by this, but he had a pleasant smile.

  “And what’s the second reason?” he said.

  “Because I knew I’d have to plan it. I mean, I could have been nicer about it, but everything I said back there was true. She’d fall off a cliff if I wasn’t watching her. She’s too distracted for hiking in the wilderness. She doesn’t pay attention to details. She thinks everything will just work itself out.” She shook her head. “Probably just the natural result of her being the baby in the family.”

  “And you being the oldest.”

  Olivia shrugged. “I guess. She’s always had someone watching out for her, and a lot of the time when we were young, that was me. If something happened to her, I was the one in trouble.”

  Josh grinned again. “Gee, I wonder how she has survived without you for nigh on a decade.”

  He was right. Melanie had survived. She’d made a lot of big decisions on her own: distributed an estate, sold a house, moved to a different city, created a career out of nothing but a lot of mumbo jumbo. Maybe Olivia wasn’t giving her enough credit.

  “What are your religious beliefs?” Josh asked.

  “That’s a super-weird-bordering-on-rude question to ask someone you just met.”

  “I only ask because of what you’ve been through with your parents. And it’s pretty clear your sister believes in something.”

  “She believes in everything. Questions nothing. Just sucks it all in like a cosmic vacuum cleaner picking up all the junk out there.”

  “And you? What’s your motto? Question everything, believe in nothing?”

  “I definitely don’t believe in God.”

  Josh glanced over. “Sure you do.”

  Olivia stopped walking. “Excuse me, but I think I know my own mind. I haven’t believed for a long time.”

  He stopped and looked at her, a
thoughtful turn to his mouth. “Let me ask you this: to what in your life do you devote the most time, effort, and passion?”

  She didn’t even have to think about the answer. “My job.”

  “And in what do you find your sense of self-worth? Where’s that rooted?”

  Olivia shrugged. “In my job, I guess.”

  “So if you do your job well and guilty people are convicted and serve their time, you’ve done a good job and you feel good about yourself.”

  “Right.”

  “What if they aren’t convicted? What if you know without a doubt in your mind that someone is guilty, and they get off on some technicality, some procedural thing that went wrong? Then what?”

  “I feel angry,” she said.

  “At what? The system? The jury?”

  “Well, partly, I guess. But I’m upset with myself too because I always feel like there could have been something I missed or something I could have hit harder during questioning or cross-examination.”

  “So, your job is where you spend your time, energy, and passion, and when something goes wrong you feel like you’re at fault and your sense of self-worth suffers?”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s accurate.”

  “Easy. Your job is your god. Or one of them. Let’s try another.”

  Olivia started walking again. “I don’t like this game.”

  Josh followed. “Who is the final arbiter of truth in your life?”

  “What?” she threw over her shoulder.

  “How do you decide if something is true?”

  “I look at the evidence and use reason to deduce the truth.”

  “There’s another one then. Reason. The human mind. Your own human mind. So, you. You are your god.”

  “I see what you’re trying to do. Let’s just say I don’t believe in a higher power, some divine being out there puppet-mastering all of this. I believe in science. Observable fact. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

  “And yet you didn’t trust me when you first met me. You hadn’t observed anything about me, yet you made a judgment.”

  “That’s not true. I observed that you were a man, and I deduced from what I know of men as a sex that you might be dangerous. That’s completely reasonable. And, I’ll add, I trust you more now than I did at first because I gathered more firsthand information about you as an individual—namely that you didn’t steal anything from us or attack us when we were sleeping, and also you shared food with us. And gave us a compass—thanks for that, by the way.”

  Despite herself, Olivia was enjoying this conversation. She loved to argue. But arguing with Melanie was like trying to play tennis with a golden retriever. She could never get a good volley going. Josh, on the other hand, was a skilled partner. He had a lot to say and wasn’t afraid to hit hard. It wasn’t mansplaining—she’d had plenty of experience with that in both law school and the courtroom. It was more like talking to an expert witness who was confident that what he was saying was true and accurate to the best of his knowledge, that it was true whether or not anyone else believed it.

  This was also what was beginning to bother her about the whole thing. He was just as confident as she was. And they couldn’t both be right.

  “However, despite beginning to trust you, I don’t entirely like you.”

  Josh laughed. “And why is that?”

  “You have the irritating habit of not answering my questions even though I’ve answered a ton of yours.”

  He tipped his head to the side. “Or is it just that you don’t like my answers?”

  Olivia laughed then. “Nice try. You still have not answered my only real question, which is, what are you getting out of helping us? Besides, perhaps, not having our deaths on your conscience when you get back to civilization and read about two inept lady hikers gone missing in the wilds of the Porcupine Mountains.”

  He smiled. “I think maybe you’ve answered your own question.” He pulled a hand out of his pocket and pointed at the two packs still leaning against the birch tree. “And don’t be so conceited as to think you two are the first people I’ve put on the right path. I’m always looking for opportunities to do what my father would have me do.”

  “What does that mean?” Olivia knelt down by Melanie’s pack and started pulling at the straps that held the sleeping bag in the stuff sack to the frame.

  “My dad was a ranger in this park. His job was to prepare people for what they’d face, to give them the rules and enforce them. But he was also called upon to rescue them. To track down those who had strayed from the trail. Sometimes he had to physically carry people out to safety.”

  Olivia unsnapped the compression straps on the sack and pushed the tightly packed mummy bag out. “I guess that’s why you’re so comfortable out in the woods.”

  “And it’s why I’m helping you. I do what he would want me to do.”

  Olivia unfurled the mummy bag and ran her hands over every inch of it, front and back. Then she shoved her arms inside and searched for wet spots. After a minute she groaned out loud. “Dang it.”

  Josh smiled down at her like he knew what she was going to say next.

  “It’s dry.”

  “I called the top bunk before we even got in the car this morning.”

  Olivia stood in the doorway, hands on hips, frowning up at Melanie, who was sitting cross-legged on the top bunk and hugging her once-white stuffed bear, Bruno.

  “You had it last year,” Melanie said, squeezing Bruno tighter.

  “But I called it. You have to call it.”

  “Nuh-uh. It’s my turn.”

  Olivia expelled a lungful of air and spun around. “Mom!”

  Melanie lay down on her side and buried her nose in Bruno’s matted fur. He smelled kind of bad, but in a good way. A way that reminded her of all their picnics outside, when she’d take him and a snack in the wagon up the sidewalk until she reached Mr. Barkley’s house and lay a blanket out right by the chain-link fence that kept his rottweilers in. Mr. Barkley wasn’t his real name—at least she didn’t think so—but it was what she called him because of the dogs. She would sit there most summer afternoons with Bruno, passing bits of cheese and crackers through the fence and wiping the dog slobber off her fingers with the blanket.

  Right now she had to pee. Bad. But she couldn’t leave the top bunk if she hoped to keep it. They didn’t have bunk beds at home, so their week renting the cabin on Lake Michigan each year was her only chance to sleep in one.

  Olivia stomped back into the room. “Come on, Melanie.”

  Melanie smiled. Olivia hadn’t quoted Mom saying anything. Which meant Mom either didn’t care and wanted them to work it out themselves or that she was on Melanie’s side.

  “No, it’s my turn,” she said sweetly.

  Olivia reached up and grabbed Bruno by a leg.

  “Hey!” Melanie pulled him back.

  Olivia yanked again and Bruno almost slipped out of Melanie’s hands. She wrapped her arms around his squishy middle.

  “I called it!” Olivia said, pulling harder.

  Melanie felt herself being pulled to the edge of the bed. But she would not let go, she would not give in. She locked her teeth onto Bruno’s ear like one of Mr. Barkley’s rottweilers with a bone.

  “Melanie!”

  Olivia yanked once more, and Melanie felt herself going over the side. She was falling face-first to the cabin floor below. Then the room spun and she was looking at the ceiling. Her tailbone connected with the hardwood, then her back, but not her head. Olivia was standing next to her, one arm extended, rigid, eyes as wide as Melanie had ever seen them.

  Bruno’s ear still clenched between her teeth, Melanie took big breaths of air through her nose. Olivia pulled her arm back and knelt at Melanie’s side.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she kept saying.

  Melanie sat up, dazed. She opened her mouth and scraped a few strands of Bruno’s fur off her dry tongue.

  “Are you okay?�
� Olivia said.

  Her mother appeared in the door. “What happened?” Then she saw Melanie on the floor. “What happened?” she said again.

  Olivia opened her mouth, but Melanie spoke up first. “I fell off the top bunk. Olivia was just helping me up.” She stood and rubbed her backside.

  “Oh my goodness, are you okay?” her mother asked, turning her around to inspect the damage.

  “I’m fine,” Melanie said.

  “I think maybe you’re not ready for the top bunk, sweetie,” Mom said.

  Melanie nodded. After a little more fussing, their mother left to finish unpacking. Melanie went to use the bathroom. When she came back in, Olivia was sitting on the bottom bunk with Bruno in her lap.

  “Thanks,” she said, holding the bear out to her sister.

  Melanie nodded and took Bruno by the paw.

  A few minutes later they were in their swimsuits. The afternoon flew by in a flurry of sandcastles and rock collecting and diving into the waves on the big lake. Then dinner and showers and a game of Sorry! Then it was bedtime. Melanie slipped under the covers of the bottom bunk and listened to Olivia trying to get comfortable on the top. Their parents came in for kisses and good nights. When they left, all was quiet except the sound of crickets through the open window.

  Melanie tried to fall asleep, but Olivia kept moving around, making the bed shake and creak. Finally, Melanie saw her sister’s legs silhouetted by the night-light, and Olivia dropped to the floor.

  “Want to switch?” Olivia said.

  “No, it’s fine.”

  Olivia stood there for a moment. Melanie scooched back toward the wall and pulled back the covers. Olivia slipped in beside her and pulled the covers up over her shoulders. Their faces were inches apart, Bruno shoved into the space between them.