Exposed : My Mountain Man Protector(2)

It had only been a few minutes since I’d last looked back and seen the sunshine-yellow car. I needed to calm down. Soon the landscape became a moving postcard view: beautiful armies of trees, sweeping steeps of rock, tranquil collections of water. It was beautiful, but it was also a purgatory of waiting, an ‘are-we-there-yet’. Whenever I checked, time seemed to drag more. The only thing changing on the projected arrival time was the minutes: 43 more minutes, 40 more minutes, 39 more minutes.



A century or so later, by the time 39 minutes had changed to 9 minutes and 9 to 1, by the time I had started keeping my eyes peeled for the familiar Tudor-style paragon, what I found wasn’t all that surprising.



It was there sure enough, rising high and mighty and out of place among the trees, like it had been plopped there from the sky, unaware it was the only place for miles that was connected to the highway. Yes, with trees for a fence and a cliff for a backyard, the closest next-door-neighbor the Shell station miles back, there it was.



My heartbeat slowed to a soft thump. Finally, I was here. Finally, things could start to be all right.



Angelo hardly knew my aunt and uncle, and he definitely had no idea where they lived. I could be safe here. I could build my life back up.



But, as I stepped out of the car, my last hope fell out too. There was a sign on the door.



I walked toward it slowly on shaking legs, already knowing yet not wanting to know for sure. By the time I made it to the door, the tears had returned.



“SOLD.” That was what the pink-scrawled sign plastered over the glossy wooden door said. It was not even one of those realtor ones, where you could find the real estate agent and call them up, interrogate them for information, for where my aunt and uncle were now, for anything. No, it was a scrawled “screw you” to the last of my hope, a laugh in the face of trying. It was a “nice try, but it’s over now.”



My feet brought me to the backyard, to the cliff my aunt and uncle had always talked about putting a fence in front of for safety but clearly never had. I peered over the edge. The cliff was a sheer face of rock, so high I couldn’t even see the bottom. There was no question about what would happen if I jumped.



I took another step forward, to the very most edge. Pebbles under my feet tumbled down, down into the doomed depths. I could do it. I could step out farther, join the pebbles, be finished with it all. After all, that was what was going to happen to me anyway, right? I mean, that look in Angelo’s eyes, there was no doubt about it. He’d kill me, and I’d rather die now than give him the satisfaction.



I put my foot out and stopped.



There was no choice, and yet there was. There was no chance, and yet maybe, just maybe, there could be. I glared into the depths I couldn’t quite make myself step into. Why not? Why couldn’t I? My life was a failure. My marriage was a failure. Hell, I was a failure. And yet I couldn’t do this.

As pointless as it was, I still had hope.



I gave the cliff one last furious look and then turned on my heel and stormed back to the car. As I slumped into the leather seats, nausea swirled through me. I needed to sleep, rest, lie down—soon. If I kept going for much longer, I was going to pass out at the wheel.



I turned on the car and typed in “hotels.” Five different listings of hope popped up, and I hit the closest, the Inn at Aspen. Twenty minutes for my expected arrival time, the screen said. I stared at it and nodded to myself.



Twenty minutes. I could do that. I could stay awake, stay sane, for 20 more minutes. I backed up, turned around, and drove off the long expanse of driveway and onto the highway. Now Bob Dylan was aptly singing “On the Road Again,” and I forced myself to smile. Here went nothing.



With Bob Dylan playing the background and me speeding, I pulled into the hotel parking lot in 18 minutes instead of 20. Just as I was admiring the inn’s half-window, half-wooden wonder of an exterior, there was a flash of yellow in my rearview mirror. A flash of sunshine yellow.



I turned around to be sure, and there it was, the sunshine-yellow car from before.



It was here. I didn’t know how, I didn’t know why, but it had followed me here. It parked a few spots down. I inhaled, exhaled, and waited.



Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe I was imagining things. Maybe the car had just happened to go to the same hotel as me. Besides, who would follow someone in a yellow car?



But the longer I waited, the longer I strained my neck around to watch the yellow car two spots down, the surer I became: This was no coincidence. As I pulled out of my spot and the yellow car roared to life, there was no doubt anymore.