No End in Sight. Dana Mentink
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No End in Sight
Dana Mentink
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Sorrow could not find her in the forest.
In spite of the heavy weight permanently nestled in Valerie’s heart, she fancied the sun-dappled pines that bristled the mountain ridge somehow had the power to protect her, to wick away her grief with their delicate needles as she drove past. Temporarily, at least.
Spotting something at the side of the road, Valerie eased the truck along the dusty road past one more stretch of dense shrubbery and pulled to a stop, shading her eyes against the southern California sun. A red-haired man with pale eyes gave her a rueful smile. The tear in the knee of his khakis indicated he’d taken a fall. He wore an orange shirt, telling her he was part of the crew working on rebuilding park cabins that had been flooded in last winter’s deluge.
“Help you?” she asked. Though she was an arborist, not a park ranger, she’d lent a hand to many stranded hikers and workers during her tenure at Angel’s Loft National Park.
“Thanks,” he said, English accent strong, smile wide. “Went for a walk during our lunch break and took a bit of a tumble.”
He climbed in. No limp from the injury, she noticed. “First time working in the park?”
He nodded as she pulled the truck back onto the road.
She eyed the tear in his khakis, which looked neater than she’d first thought, more of a cut really. A second look convinced her he was in his thirties, older than she’d first imagined. Older than most of the guys on the work crews. “I’m Valerie.”
The pointy-toothed grin that split his face revealed something different than the friendly redheaded hiker she’d seen a moment before. Something malicious.
She swallowed. It was her imagination. Again. “Where can I drop you?”
The grin didn’t waver. “The cabin on Sharp’s Peak. You know it.”
There was only one cabin on Sharp’s Peak—hers. Terror rippled through her. “I won’t.”
“Sure you will,” he said.
The thought echoed crazily in her mind: Sorrow can’t find me in the forest… She kept repeating the mantra, even as he opened the pack on his lap and took out the pruning knife.
Her pruning knife.
The one she’d left on her kitchen table that morning.
Jackson would have enjoyed the ride to Sharp’s Peak a lot more in his 1958 Bel Air than the SUV he was driving, but the Bel Air’s pristine chassis wasn’t cut out for mountain roads. Picturing that car made his heart thump harder. Or was it the memory of Valerie sitting next to him in it, white-blond hair dancing on the breeze, that wondrous smile lighting her freckled face?
Let it go, Jackson. The day you got released from the hospital, she couldn’t run away fast enough.
The small box of her possessions on the seat next to him seemed a ridiculously pitiful representation of the months they had been together, months that apparently counted for nothing with Valerie.
He shifted, recalling how many times he’d cut things off with women in the past. Something about a firefighter’s uniform seemed to encourage female attention, but he’d never met a woman who impacted him like Valerie. She knew him inside and out, the real Jackson, and she’d loved him.
Or so he’d believed.
He pulled up her long drive, surprised to find her sitting in her truck, engine idling. Just get it over with.
Nerves taut as wire, he grabbed the box and marched resolutely to the open driver’s window.
“Can I help you?” Valerie said.
His mouth fell open from the combined shock of Valerie’s indifferent tone and the fact that there was a guy in the passenger seat with his arm around her.
The man waved. “Hello, mate.”
Jackson felt his jaw tighten. This redheaded clown was his replacement?
He tried unsuccessfully to wipe the scowl from his face. In mute surprise, he handed her the box.
She didn’t look at the contents. “Thank you. I’ll tell my father his tools have arrived.”
Jackson took a step back, a cold sensation washing over him.
Valerie’s father was dead.
Long dead.
Jackson