Page 74 of Wanting a Family Man

“Would you justgo?”

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Cloe held offher tears until he was out of sight. Until she couldn’t hear Storm crying anymore.

Then she let her own tears come. She cried and cried in the way she was sotiredof crying. It was draining and wrenching and seemed to scrape her insides of every last piece of her soul.

When the sobs finally dried up, she was numb and empty and bleak. Slowly, her physical aches penetrated her consciousness. Her ankle throbbed and her body was tired from the long walk. The rock was cold and hard under her butt and her clothes were clammy and heavy with mud. Her eyes stung. Her throat was raspy and sore.

She wanted to hate Trystan and had a childish urge to die right here and now, just to spite him, but she kept thinking about Storm. Maybe Storm didn’t need her, not really, but no one else could tell her about Tiff. Not the way Cloe could. No one would love her exactly the same way that Cloe did, either.

She pulled herself together and knelt by the water to splash her face clean before drawing up the neckline of her shirt to dry her face. Then she took Trystan’s advice and soaked her foot.

The water was freezing, but it was bracing enough to snap her out of the last of her self-pity. She took stock of her surroundings, thinking,Be careful what you wish for. How many times had she imagined being tested this way, believing she would be perfectly equipped to deal with a situation like this because she had watched his show so compulsively?

It helped to make a plan, though. What would Trystan do? “Shelter, fire, food,” she said aloud. They were his ABCs of every trek. He was probably right about the wisdom in putting on dry clothes, too.

By the time her foot was numb, she had a list of tasks.

She dried her foot with her sleeve, popped a couple of ibuprofen from the first aid kit, then changed into dry clothes, including putting on Tiff’s shorts. That left her legs bare, but the worst of the rain had let up and Trystan’s sweatshirt hung almost to her knees so it wasn’t that bad.

After twenty minutes of relearning how to wrap an injury with the compression tape, she clumsily hopped her way downstream. Here, the creek flattened out to a patch of round rocks and pebbles where it seemed to flood every spring. The sky was more open, too. The trees weren’t overhanging as much so it would be a good place to build a fire without lighting up the entire forest. Rain was still dripping off the branches, so she doubted a spark would catch if one happened to fall on a leaf or branch anyway. There was even a log that was situated nicely for perching near the fire, where it would be warm.

She found a fallen branch to use as a staff and moved around the area, tossing dried sticks toward her fire pit. When she had what looked like enough for a good start, she made a circle with the biggest rocks within reach, then used the flint in the fire-starting kit on a handful of needles and bits of moss.

The fire caught right away, making her feel like an absoluteboss.

She carefully fed the flames until there was a cheerful little fire. It felt so good! She staked out her soggy pants so they had a chance at drying, then set the metal cup full of water on a well-placed flat rock in the flames and waited for it to boil.

What else did Trystan do? He foraged. Hmm. She didn’t want to stray too far from tending her fire, but she found a huckleberry bush with a handful of late berries still clinging to it. There were probably some grubs or mushrooms around here, but she would wait until she was genuinely starving to death before she would consider those with any degree of seriousness.

Her water was boiling so she made a packet of soup and sat to drink it. That left her warm enough to remove her wet jacket. She set her wet socks to dry alongside the rest.

It was helpful to stay busy, she realized. She didn’t notice the isolation as much or stress about what would happen once she got herself out of this situation. She was trying not to hyperventilate over how much an X-ray was going to cost her. Probably all the wages she’d saved so far and then some. She didn’t have any insurance and now she couldn’t work at all.

Don’t think about it.

This was the beauty of trying to survive in nature, she realized. Survival was all you thought about. All those other cares fell away and forced you to be present to the immediate world around you.

Was that why Trystan liked it?

Did he feel this lonely when he was alone in the wilderness?

Wait. His show was calledNever Alone. Duh.

She began looking for signs of life and suddenly realized she’d been listening to a squirrel chattering this whole time. The distinctiveswoop-swoop-swoopof a bird’s wings sounded overhead, drawing her into looking up.

The fingerlike feathers of a raven’s outstretched wings tilted then contracted as it landed on a branch, high in a tree. Juvenile? It wasn’t very big and let out a harsh caw.

The aroma of her soup had probably drawn it, but it felt like company.

“Hi,” she said. “I’ve been abandoned in the wilderness and I’m thinking about eating worms. Got any recs on where to find the biggest, juiciest ones?”

Nothing.

As the minutes dragged out, a bizarre impulse had her asking, “Tiff?”

The black bird squawked and abruptly dropped to the ground beneath its tree, squawked again, pecked something from the undergrowth and leapt into fight.

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