All That We Carried Read online

  She relocated to the computer to start working through what she had missed during her time off the grid, starting with the comments on the video from the scene of the motorcycle accident. They were largely what she’d expected—notes of support and declarations that thoughts and vibes were going out and prayers were going up. But there were also a few along the lines of what Olivia had said—that she was using someone else’s tragedy to get clicks. Her fingers itched to respond to those comments as she had responded to Olivia’s criticism, but she refrained.

  Instead, she deleted them. She couldn’t do anything about the thumbs-downs—there were always a few of them—but she didn’t have to let false accusations go unchecked. After she finished with that video’s comments, she clicked to the previous video she had posted and did the same. It felt good. It felt like scraping the sad remains of a failed recipe from her plate and shoving it down the garbage disposal.

  Once she got started, it was hard to stop. Comment by comment, video by video, she rejected every criticism of her or her motives until everyone who disagreed with her was silenced. Then she sat back and looked at the clock. If Justin’s flight was on time, she was going to be late. Again.

  The drive down to Traverse City was always lovely, but today especially. The rolling green hills had burst into fall color while she was gone. Every tree had become an individual rather than just an anonymous part of the collective. The blue sky was studded with fluffy white clouds playing peekaboo with the sun. Lake Michigan and Grand Traverse Bay sparkled to her right. Lake Charlevoix, Torch Lake, and Elk Lake glittered to her left. Every charming tourist town along US-31 was now empty of its summer traffic snarls. It was for moments like these that she lived Up North.

  Plus she was on her way to see Justin. To take him home and tell him she would marry him.

  She’d meant to text him the night before to see how everything went, but then she’d fallen asleep so quickly and completely. She’d been a little annoyed when there wasn’t a text from him this morning to update her on the situation with Olivia. No text letting her know he was boarding his plane. No text letting her know it had landed.

  Now she stood up to check the status of the flight, but as she did people started filtering into the lobby. She spotted Justin immediately. He was talking on his phone, a wide smile on his normally stoic face. Melanie’s gut twisted at the sudden thought that perhaps Justin had not stayed at a hotel that night. That maybe he’d stayed with Olivia. But the thought fled when Justin saw her, said “I gotta go” into the phone, dropped his backpack, and pulled her into his arms.

  “Oh, I missed you,” he said into her neck.

  “I missed you too.”

  He kissed her long and slow, the kind of kiss she’d wanted back in Indian River but hesitated to give him in front of Olivia. He shouldered his backpack and steered her toward the door.

  “So how did it go?” Melanie asked.

  “Rocky start. But ultimately better than I expected.”

  “That’s good,” she said. “What did you talk about?”

  “Oh, lots of stuff. We talked about old times. I got her set up at her place. Got us some Chinese food while she took a shower. We watched a movie. Then I took an Uber to the hotel. Took another to the airport, and here I am.”

  A movie? They’d watched a movie?

  Melanie unlocked the car, and Justin tossed his bag in the back seat. “Did you talk about the accident?”

  “A bit.” He got into the car.

  Melanie got in and fastened her seat belt but did not start the car. “What did she say? Did she forgive you?”

  Justin scrunched up his brow. “She’s not quite there yet.”

  “But she watched a movie with you?”

  “She’s on the right path, I think. Give her time.”

  Melanie frowned and started the car. “She’s had ten years.”

  Justin put his hand on hers where it rested on the shifter. “Don’t be like that. This is progress.” He sat back. “She seemed like a different person in a lot of ways. And I guess in others she seemed exactly the same.”

  Melanie put the car in reverse and then studied his face, which seemed lost in a memory that did not include her. Just as all those photos had not included her. Was there a piece of him that would never quite be hers? A piece that would forever belong to her sister?

  “What’s up?” Justin said.

  “What?”

  He looked around. “We’re not moving.”

  “I just thought . . .” She put the car in drive. “I don’t know what I thought.”

  She could feel him watching her, but she pasted a smile on her face and headed for the highway.

  “So who were you talking to back there?” Melanie said after they’d been on the road for a few minutes.

  “Back where?”

  “The airport. Before you saw me. Who were you talking to?”

  “Oh, that. That was Dale. The guy with the ’55 T-Bird I was telling you about a couple weeks ago. Said he might have a couple more cars coming my way this winter. Wants them ready for the summer car shows.”

  “That’s great!” she said, masking her relief that it was not Olivia with extra enthusiasm.

  “It’ll be good money. Which is great if we’re going to be paying for a wedding.” He let the word hang there in the air a moment. “So what do you think? Are we going to be paying for a wedding? I kind of got the idea from Olivia that maybe we’d be paying for a wedding.”

  “Olivia said that?” Melanie snapped. What gave Olivia the right to tell Justin yes or no?

  “Not exactly. She said she knew I’d asked you.”

  “And?”

  “And she said she knew what your answer was, but she wouldn’t tell me. She didn’t seem like she was upset about it or anything, so I kind of thought—I mean, that was your reservation, right? That she’d be angry and you’d have to choose, her or me. But now it doesn’t seem like that’s the case.” He fell silent.

  Melanie pulled off to the side of the road. “I can’t have this conversation while driving.” She parked by a stretch of sandy beach that separated US-31 from the waves on Grand Traverse Bay and swiveled in her seat to face Justin. She reached for his hand. “I’ve given this a lot of thought since you asked me, but also a lot just this week. And I do want to say yes.”

  He frowned. “But?”

  “I just have to ask—when you were with Olivia yesterday, did any of your old feelings for her pop up?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think you know what I mean. I just have to be sure that when you saw her yesterday, you weren’t thinking about what might have been if things had gone differently.”

  Justin relaxed his face and put a hand on top of hers. “That was a really long time ago, Mel. God led me away from Olivia. And he led me to you. You were there for me. You cared. You showed me love and mercy and friendship. And you’re the one I want to marry. Not Olivia. Okay?”

  Melanie sniffed and felt a tear escape her eye. “Okay.”

  “You believe me?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

  He dipped his head and caught her eye. “So will you marry me?”

  Melanie straightened in her seat and smiled through her tears. “Yes.”

  Later that night when Melanie returned home, she sat back down with her new journal. She had lost the record of Justin asking. She would not miss recording her answer. She scribbled away for ten or fifteen minutes, reliving the emotions from the car. But she only chronicled the joy. None of the suspicion or second-guessing would make it into the official record of her life.

  Afterward she scanned her emails and social media notifications. So many people looking to her for encouragement and guidance. So many people taking without offering anything in return beyond an ego boost. She scrolled through months of posts and comments, and rather than feeling accomplished as she usually did, she felt mildly irritated. Nothing she said actually meant anything. She had just bee
n saying things that people wanted to hear, feeding their ideas back to them, a slightly shined-up version of what they already believed.

  What was the point of it all? Was she even helping anyone? Or had it all been about her all along?

  Suddenly she wished she had not deleted all those negative comments. She wanted to think about what they said. Wanted to look herself in the face with a more critical eye, to see if maybe there were some things she was just plain wrong about. But she couldn’t undo it.

  She got up and searched the fridge for something edible, but she’d emptied it of all but condiments before leaving for the hiking trip. Anyway, it wasn’t food she was craving. Not physically, at least. She needed something to nourish her soul. And before that, she needed to detox it.

  She turned on every light in the kitchen and dining room, settled into a chair, and picked up her phone. She fixed her hair in the screen, centered herself, then hit record.

  “Hello, my Mellies! I’m back from my hiking trip in Michigan’s glorious Upper Peninsula, and I have to tell you that I am just filled to overflowing with stories I’d love to share with you. Getting lost and encountering bears and escaping a forest fire—no, really, all of that happened and more!”

  She paused, knowing that even now she was putting on a front. She relaxed the practiced smile on her face and took a breath.

  “The thing is, I’m not really ready to talk about it. I need some time to process. Some time to think through what this trip really meant to me. For that reason, among others, I’m going to be signing off for a while. It’s time to clean my mental house, to reevaluate. Over the next few weeks, you may see content disappearing from my channels as I sort through the kind of person I want to be and the kind of messages I want to send. It may be that I close up shop online altogether and start something completely new. I don’t know yet. But there’s one thing I do know: life is about more than just being happy or being liked or being self-actualized. It’s about more than just me. It’s about more than just you.

  “Now, I’m not saying I know what it’s about. But I know it’s about something. Something bigger. Something real. Something mysterious, yes, but also something that wants to be known. So that’s what I’m going to be looking for. You know me: I’m all about the journey. But what’s a journey without a destination?

  “So goodbye for now, my Mellies. Peace, love, and life to you. And may we all find what we’re really looking for.”

  Melanie blew a kiss at the camera and stopped the recording. A few minutes later, it had been uploaded to all of her platforms. Before she could see any comments, she shut down her computer and uninstalled the apps from her phone. Then she texted her sister.

  How are you holding up?

  Epilogue

  THREE YEARS LATER

  OLIVIA PUT THE CAR in park in a handicapped spot in the lot at Tahquamenon Falls State Park and pulled a red knit cap over her short brown hair. She opened the door, slowly turning her entire body to the left before she stepped out of the car. Deliberate movements like this had become second nature to her. She had to be careful not to wrench her new titanium hip, still had to concentrate to stand on her prosthetic without her cane. It had been a long, agonizing road to get to this point, but she was determined to reassert her independence.

  This was why she was here. Or at least, that’s what she told herself.

  The amputation of her right leg from just above the knee had been difficult to come to terms with, though she felt that the recovery from the hip replacement on the other leg was more tedious. The chemo was no picnic either. But she had come through. Next week she’d be back to work full-time. For now, she had just one goal: walk unassisted from her car to the falls.

  She drew in a deep draught of the crisp autumnal air. It smelled of pine needles and decay and cedar trees, a welcome relief after so much time breathing the sterile air in hospitals and rehab centers and her apartment. It crossed her mind that her sister got to smell air like this all the time. Perhaps she ought to reconsider Melanie’s invitation to come live with her and Justin. But no, she’d only be in the way. Especially since Melanie was pregnant with number two.

  She stepped up onto the sidewalk gingerly, giving the task her full attention. When that feat was accomplished, she began to make her way up the paved walk toward the trees. With each step, she felt more confident, more at ease. There were few people there this late in the season, and those who passed by gave her little notice. In long pants it was hard to tell she had a prosthesis. In summer she’d had to contend with staring children and people thanking her for her service. At first she tried to explain that she was not a veteran, merely a cancer survivor. But it got complicated and took forever, especially if the hiking trip somehow slipped in there, so she stopped correcting people and merely made a point to always thank actual veterans and soldiers anywhere she encountered them.

  She could hear the crash of the forty-eight-foot falls getting stronger, sneaking past the trees on her left, drawing her down the walkway. At one point the railing by which she’d been hovering—just in case—made a sharp left turn toward an opening in the trees, where she’d be able to see the falls in the gorge far below. Did she follow the rail? Or meet back up with it when it returned to the straighter path in fifteen feet? Perhaps she should have brought the cane after all.

  She opted to follow the rail. Safe was better. At the opening in the trees she paused to watch the foam drift away from the basin of churning water. White foam tinged with brown from the tannins that leeched from the cedar trees, like a river of root beer. A little farther and she could see the falls in the middle distance.

  She lingered at the rail, trying not to think of anything in particular, trying to experience something without making any plans or doing any mental calculations about time or distance or efficiency. It was a skill that was hard to master, one that had been suggested to her by the therapist she saw during her recovery. When she found herself wondering exactly how much water went over the falls each day, she moved on.

  A few minutes later, she stood at the precipice of a very long flight of stairs—the sign said ninety-four—twisting down toward the brink of the falls and broken every ten or twelve steps by landings with benches. She was sure she could get down them if she took it slow. Coming up, though, could be another matter. Yes, she was cleared for normal activity, but this wasn’t exactly normal. Given the choice, even an able-bodied person might opt for an elevator rather than climb that many steps. And she was less able-bodied than most.

  Disappointed, she slowly retraced her steps toward the car. She’d have to settle for the lower falls today. She drove four miles down a winding road hedged in by forest to another parking lot, repeated the slow ritual of exiting the car, and headed down another long, paved path.

  After several minutes of careful walking, she stepped off the paved path and onto a boardwalk leading to a deck she was sure had not been there when her family had visited Tahquamenon when she and Melanie were small. On the other side of the wooden rail, the lower falls tumbled and crashed over rocks and downed trees, eventually ending up at a wide basin downstream. For just a moment, she thought of nothing at all, allowing her basic senses—sight, smell, hearing, touch—to simply receive data without using that data to come to any conclusions.

  She felt the reassuring shape of Josh’s compass in her pocket and thought of the last time she’d seen a waterfall before today, of that cursed hiking trip in the Porkies that had turned out to be the most bizarre of blessings. She’d tried to dismiss it for a while, but when the diagnosis came in she couldn’t deny it any longer. There were too many coincidences, too many times she’d been ready to quit but had been thwarted. The man in the river right where he needed to be, the borrowed campsite, the dry sleeping bag, the fire driving them on, the stumble that cracked her kneecap, the fall off the escarpment. Even that overly warm day in March that started it all. Every little thing pushing her a little further along to where she needed to be
in order to save her life.

  She took out her phone, snapped a picture of the falls, and examined it to see if the phone’s mediocre camera had managed to capture the dynamic movement of the water. It hadn’t, but something in the top left corner of the shot caught her eye. A small blotch of blue and olive green standing out against the autumn trees.

  Olivia looked at the actual river above the falls where the blotch had been but saw nothing. She moved to the left and stepped up onto the wood slat at the bottom of the rail to gain a better angle. At first there were only trees and water. But then . . . yes, that was a person up there. A man in a blue shirt and olive waders with a canvas bag slung across his body, waving his fly rod back and forth, back and forth, in what seemed like a familiar rhythm. For the barest moment, he turned her way, and Olivia could swear he looked right at her. Then he went back to his fishing.

  With a strange sense of urgency, she made her way to the edge of the viewing platform. There was a narrow path that ran along the river, strewn with rocks and roots. A harder path to take than the wide, paved one that would take her back to her car. But it was, she suddenly knew, the right path.

  With nothing in her hands, Olivia set her jaw, stepped off the smooth, man-made platform, and took the hard way. The way that would lead her home.

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

  I HAD BEEN SITTING on my butt for more than a decade when I decided I wanted to do some backcountry hiking with my sister, Alison. With equipment mostly borrowed from my father-in-law, we spent several days and nights in June of 2012 hiking Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. In the years that followed, we hiked the Grand Sable Dunes, Tahquamenon Falls, the Manistee River Valley, the Jordan River Pathway, and Sleeping Bear Dunes. We did start a hike in the Porcupine Mountains that we did not finish due to the miserably high level of mosquito activity (I’m talking, like, eleventh plague on Egypt here). But we’ve never gotten lost, fallen off any cliffs, or run from a wildfire. We’ve never even had an argument while out on the trail. We did sleep next to a bear one cold October night. Our hiking trips are chronicled at www.erinbartels.com. Just look for the blog posts in the Travel category tagged “hiking” or click through the Photos page.