Page 113 of Boston
Fallen logs and rocks and stumps lingered back near the tree line, and Cora perched on one covered in shade. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d willingly gone into nature like this, with the silence and the wind in the trees and the soothing rushing of water.
She’d loved Miami, but as she sat next to the Little Brown Bear Stream, she realized that she had forgotten part of herself.Miami had beaten it out of her and made her believe that the country girl she was wasn’t good enough.
She’d had no time to attend church, but as she closed her eyes and centered her thoughts, Cora realized that sometimes those outward actions were only that—actions. Sometimes they reflected an inner belief, and sometimes it just meant people were going through the motions.
She wanted to attend church and hadn’t been able to find time yet. She would go when she could, and when she couldn’t, Cora had found herself turning to journaling, prayer, and the scripture cards that she’d once used as a teenager.
Each one contained a single verse and was supposed to help her center her focus around a principle for that day. Sometimes Cora had used them for a whole week or longer as she tried to ponder what the scripture was trying to teach her.
She hadn’t read one since the babies had been born, and she realized that she had a lot of voids in her life. Boston, yes. A lack of support at work, absolutely.
But she could also pull a card out of that file and read it every day. It would only take ten seconds, and perhaps her mind would revolve around it in the moment she needed it.
Sitting by the stream, Cora made a renewed commitment to read at least one scripture from one card each day. Even if it was the same one every day for consecutive days, until she felt like she understood what was being taught, that was fine. But she couldn’t continue to ignore the spiritual side of herself. It needed to be fed too.
She stayed sitting next to the river and watching the fish swim upstream, smiling as they tried to jump up the small, four-foot-high falls closer to where the cameraman had set up. She’d given Boston clues for this place, and she smiled at how happy he’d been when he’d been able to guess it.
Eventually her stomach growled, and Cora didn’t want to be walking through the woods, even on a populated trail, too close to dusk, so she got up. Once again, she nodded to the cameraman, who had not seen any bears, and headed back to her car.
The late July evening heat had seeped right back into her car, and she turned on the AC to try to ward it off. She’d left her phone behind too, and she almost didn’t want to pick it up. The screen sat dark in the console, but the moment she touched it, a vibration rumbled against her hand, and that meant she had at least one message.
When she swiped on her device, she found she had a lot more than one.
She read quickly through the things her mother had said about the babies and the request for Cora to stop at the market in Rusk and get a few things for Kat and Jeremy. She said she would, and she ignored all texts about work, noting that none of them needed to be answered right that moment.
What she really wanted to see was a message from Boston, but one had not come in. Sighing, she tapped over to her social media, where she often got tagged when someone said something about Silver Sage, as she ran their company account.
She realized with a pang of regret that she should have taken her phone with her to Little Brown Bear Stream and taken a short video clip of the salmon spawning and swimming in the wrong direction. Then she could have put it on the Silver Sage Mountain Lodge and Resort page and told people it was only a short thirty-minute drive from the lodge to see such an amazing wonder.
At the same time, Cora didn’t want to share this place with anyone. Not everything had to be used for a promotional opportunity.
She pulled up a professional photo of the resort’s pools and posted that, saying that they would be having pool parties on Tuesdays that would be family-friendly and Fridays for date night.
“And the best part is,” she said slowly as she typed. “You don’t even have to have a reservation at Silver Sage Mountain Lodge and Resort to come. If you’re local, you can attend the pool party for just ten dollars per person, and twenty-five dollars for families with up to six kids.”
She made that post, glad to see one of her ideas finally making it to the public. The pool parties would run from seven to nine, and two hours didn’t seem like a long time. She’d committed to having handheld tacos on Tuesdays for the family events, and sliders on Fridays. People could purchase more food and drinks if they wanted to.
Her post chimed as it went through, and then her feed refreshed. Cora almost looked away from the group photo that had just appeared, and then she realized that it was the Young cousin night and had just been posted by Cash Young.
His handle wascashforrodeos, with a money sign in his bio. Cora started to smile, especially when her eyes landed on Boston, who stood next to Cash, the two of them with their arms around each other, and grinning at the camera like they’d won free vacations to their favorite destination.
His sister Beth stood there too, and she recognized Harry and Belle, Bryce and Codi, Adam and Joey, Rosie, Liesl, Corinne, and a younger boy that she hadn’t seen at the first cousin night, but had met at the Fourth of July.
“Eric,” she whispered. He looked a little bit out of place, but Cole had his right arm around Eric’s shoulders and his left hand secured in that of his girlfriend’s, Rachel Walker.
An angry sound exploded out of Cora’s mouth. Why did Cole have his girlfriend there, and she couldn’t attend with Boston?
They’d started datingafterher and Boston, too.
She tapped to call him, though cousin night was probably still raging at Cash’s vacation rental.
“Hello?” Boston asked as if her name didn’t sit on his screen. She definitely heard laughter in the background, but it quieted as he added, “Cora?”
“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “I’m here.”
“Hey, what’s going on?”
She wasn’t sure what to say. Her nerves buzzed with her hurt feelings, and her stomach pinched. “I just saw that Cole has Rachel at cousin night.”
