“Weird. Beautiful. Breathtaking. Awful. Incredible.” I stared at my own hands. “It’s hard sometimes, being alone, traveling alone. I’ve had more than my fair share of breakdowns. But…” A smile found me then. “When I’d go on a hike and reach a stunning vantage point, or talk to someone from a different culture — even through a language barrier, or taste a food I’ve never tasted before, or hear a new type of music I’d never heard before…” I shook my head. “It’s like I can’t even remember the hard times it took to get there.”
My eyes found River’s, and he wore a subdued smile. “What’s been your favorite place so far?”
“Italy,” I answered quickly. “Hands down, Italy. The food, the wine, the people, the landscape… they have it all. There’s country, and beautiful coastal towns, and bustling cities.” I paused, rolling my lips together before I looked at him again. “Would you maybe want to see some pictures?”
River frowned, looking down at his coffee mug even though it was empty now.
I didn’t wait for an answer before I grabbed my phone off the bedside table where I’d plugged it in, pulling up my photos from Italy. I pulled my chair over next to River’s, showing him the first one.
“This was in Tuscany. I stayed on this gorgeous farm with a lovely family. They let me stay for free as long as I worked.”
“It’s beautiful,” he said as I swiped through the pictures, showing the Tuscan hills and cypress trees. “What did you do for them?”
“A little of everything, kind of like you,” I said, nudging him. “I’d cook, clean, pick grapes, shake olives off the trees when the season came. I’d do the shopping in town. Sometimes, I’d babysit.” I shrugged. “Whatever they asked of me.”
“I can see why it’s your favorite,” River said, swiping through. I noticed that he paused longer on the photos I was in rather than the ones I wasn’t. “You look happy.”
“I am,” I whispered.
River swallowed, handing the phone back to me.
“Want to see more?”
His frown was so severe, you would have thought I’d just asked him to make the choice between sticking a fork through his arm or his leg. But his eyes found mine, and he nodded — just once.
What was left of my coffee grew cold as I showed him album after album, picture after picture on my phone. I told him stories of the families I’d stayed with, the crews I’d worked with, the houses I’d watched over in exchange for a place to stay, the hostels that had creeped me out more than once, and even the time I slept in an open field in the south of France because of a transportation mishap.
I showed him pictures of castles and reefs, of skyscrapers and beaches, of hidden hiking trails and bustling bars.
And with each new story I told, I asked him for one of his own.
I wanted to know how he spent his free time, to which he answered with a multitude of things that surprised me. He’d fallen in love with reading, and fishing, and he’d even picked up skiing, though he said he was still figuring it out. He was trying to teach himself another language and had decided on Mandarin, mostly because everyone said it was one of the most difficult to learn.
And I wanted to know about our friends, the ones who weren’t on social media. He filled me in on how everyone around town was doing, the drama and the gossip — well, as much gossip as River would partake in, anyway.
It wasn’t a lot of talking, and sometimes we’d have long stretches of silence between us. But it felt good to talk at all, to ask questions and actually get responses.
To be asked questions in return.
At one point, I even called him on it. See? Isn’t this nice? To which I received nothing more than a wry smile before he turned the attention back to one of my stories.
“And how are your mom and dad?” I asked after maybe an hour had passed.
The second the question left my lips, River went stiff.
I frowned. “I… I haven’t heard from them in a while. We kept in touch for about a year after I left. You know, talking on the phone here and there. But then they stopped calling, and stopped answering my calls…”
There was a coldness in his eyes, and they seemed to lose focus where they were trained on my phone screen.
“I just figured they were trying to put some space between us… with you and me being divorced and all…”
River hastily handed my phone back to me then, abandoning his place where he’d been looking through my pictures at an old fishing port in Israel. He stood just as quickly, the legs of his chair scraping against the wood.
“River?” I asked, but he ignored me, picking up his plate and then mine. He took them to the sink and flipped the faucet on to wash, and I stood to join him. “Did I say something wrong?”
“They’re dead, Eliza!” River screamed suddenly, his chest heaving when he turned his manic gaze on me. Then, he winced, pinching the bridge of his nose with his wet, soapy fingers. He blew out a breath, shaking his head before he looked at me again. “That’s it,” he said, quiet again. “That’s how they’re doing. Alright?”
If my mouth had hung open wide when he’d told me about his job with Skidder, it might as well have been a train tunnel now.
“I…” I swallowed. “I had no idea.” I shook my head, eyes glossing over. “What happened?”
River sniffed, turning back to the dishes in the sink. “Dad got sick. And after he died, Mom just couldn’t live without him. She was gone seven months later.”
My eyes stung more, the tears welling up and falling over before I could stop them. I covered my mouth with my hands, shaking my head over and over. How? How could this have happened? When did it happen?
Why didn’t my parents tell me?
Why didn’t River tell me?
I opened my mouth to ask him just that when he held up a hand, silencing me. “Please, Eliza. Can we just…” He swallowed, hands bracing on the edge of the sink, eyes averted.
And I knew what he was asking without him having to say it.
I nodded, even though he wasn’t looking at me, and then grabbed our coffee mugs off the table. I walked over to him slowly, like he was a bear caught in a trap, one that I might provoke into murdering me if I moved too quickly. I dropped the mugs in the soapy water, and then I grabbed the towel hanging on the stove.
“I’ll dry,” I whispered.
The rest of the morning and afternoon, we were quiet.
I did my best to stay out of River’s way. He turned on his small radio long enough to tune into the weather report — which essentially said conditions were still terrible and to stay inside. They did predict that the wind would die down overnight, and that the snow would stop falling — both of which meant I might still be able to be home on Christmas.
But only time would tell.
Once he shut the radio off, River busied himself around the house. He worked on the boot barn, read a little, played with Moose — all while not saying anything to me. And for once, I didn’t push him. I suffered my boredom in silence, even picking up a book off his shelf just to keep myself busy, and even playing a few games of solitaire.