When Joey woke early the next morning, it was to a room as significantly empty as her bed.
She sat up in alarm, aware immediately that Luke was gone, along with half the equipment. Her heart began to pound with the certainty that he had left her once again, changed his mind and abandoned her without explanations as he had twice before.
By the time she came fully awake and could think more clearly, she realized how ridiculous that assumption was. He wouldn’t have taken the canvas sack of her gear if he’d intended to leave her. A moment later her hand, fumbling for the small alarm clock on the bedtable, brushed against a loose sheet of paper.
Meet me at the edge of the forest with your gear. Those were the only words in the note he had left, scribbled impatiently in bold lines. Her hands almost shook as she crumpled the paper into a tight wad and tossed it into the wastepaper basket against the wall.
It was time Joey tossed back the sheets and set her feet on the floor, mentally cataloging her final preparations. She pulled on underwear, a light shirt and a warmer wool one over it, sturdy wool pants, two pairs of socks, and boots. Two light wool sweaters, a medium-weight parka, hat, and windbreaker lay draped over her backpack, rain gear was already stowed away where it could be easily reached. A quick glance out the window revealed the biting blue sky of a cold autumn day.
She took her compact toilet kit to the washroom. The features reflected in the mirror seemed almost a stranger’s. Dark hollows shadowed her eyes, and it took a conscious effort to smooth away the almost permanent frown that had settled between her arched brows. She schooled her face until it looked back at her with complete and remote indifference, and then she returned to the room for the last time to stow the remaining gear.
The edge of the forest loomed before her, a wall of trees that marked the final barrier between the world she knew and the one she had yet to discover.
Luke was waiting for her there as he’d promised, blending so completely with the wilderness that only Joey’s ever-present sense of him kept her from walking past. He nodded to her once and turned for the woods in silence.
They followed the same route Joey had used to track Luke to his cabin; it was familiar to Joey, yet utterly different because this time she was not alone. Even as they walked in tandem, Luke slowing his long stride to accommodate hers, Joey could not for a single moment lose her awareness of him at her side. The lean grace of the simplest of his movements impressed itself on her, and she felt remarkably clumsy next to him; it did not add to her peace of mind.
But there was another, unexpected side effect to his presence. Before, when she’d hiked to the lake, she had felt almost at one with the wilderness that surrounded her, grasping in some tenuous way the fragile bonds that connected all life. With Luke that awareness was magnified beyond anything she had ever experienced. It was as if he possessed some mysterious power to make her see things she never would have seen otherwise, without any effort on his part, or on hers. The very forest around them seemed like a living entity, and Joey felt less like an intruder than a welcome guest in Luke’s domain.
Even so, the time came when the silence, broken only by the cries of birds and the distant grunts of moose in rut, began to seem oppressive.
Slanting a glance at Luke as they walked, Joey broke the peaceful accord. “I’ve been wondering for some time, Luke—why don’t the townsfolk like you?” She hesitated a moment, hearing the ill-mannered bluntness in the question. It was not something they’d ever discussed. “I mean—it seems to me that something strange goes on whenever you come to town. The reactions…” She trailed off into awkward silence.
Joey knew she’d struck a nerve by the tightening of Luke’s jaw, the hardening of his profile as his strides lengthened. Joey skipped a few steps to keep up until he’d slowed again, he did not turn his head as he answered.