Backcountry Page 2

  He drew a deep breath. “When I opened the laptop this morning . . .” He paused, letting the silence draw out.

  Jenn’s eyes flicked away from his guiltily. “I was just researching.”

  “You’re scaring yourself for no reason. In all the times I’ve been hiking in this place, I have seen a total of two black bears. One was at a distance, and the other one took one look at us and hightailed it out there as fast as its legs could carry it,” he said. “Parks Ontario keeps a close watch on the population. Any bears that get too territorial or wander too close are tracked, tagged, and taken out further into the deep backcountry.”

  “The deep backcountry?” she asked.

  “Yeah, the real wilderness. As much as I love the park, it’s pretty civilized. There’s a ranger cabin, and observation towers, and people on picnics or school day trips,” he explained. “It’s like a gateway. The real backcountry is different from where we are going. Much more isolated. We’re never going to be far enough away from other people for my liking at this park.”

  She was silent for a moment. “There are only black bears in this park, right?”

  “Yeah, just think of them as big raccoons.”

  Jenn was unconvinced. Her doubt must have shown on her face.

  “Hey, look, I promise to protect you,” Alex said, trying to lighten the mood. “But if it’s a female bear, she might try to have sex with me. Then I need to be protected. You think you can do that?” He grinned at her disbelieving look. “I mean, can you imagine the claw marks on my back?”

  Despite herself, Jenn laughed at the image, and Alex seemed to relax a little.

  “Hey, before we get to the park I want to stop at this place—”

  He was interrupted by the beep of Jenn’s phone. She grabbed it and started tapping at the keys. Caught up in dealing with another work mini-crisis, she was only half listening to what he was saying.

  “—haven’t been since I was a kid. My dad used to take me every time we went camping.”

  Jenn was so intent on her phone it took a moment for her to notice Alex’s frown. She could see that he was getting irritated, but she had to deal with this and he’d just have to wait.

  “They’ve got the best ice cream,” he said. “Plus I get to bang the girl who works there.”

  She could tell he was waiting for an outraged reaction, but she didn’t take the bait. She was almost done, and once she got this message sent she could focus on him. There was no point getting distracted. If she let herself get dragged into an argument, the message would never get sent. It was better to deal with it now and get it out of the way.

  “That’s great, babe,” she said, reading through her reply and double-checking it.

  “Can you change my diaper?” he asked. “It’s getting full.”

  “It’s going to be fun,” she said, still pretending she wasn’t listening.

  He leaned over, turning up the radio. As the driving beat of Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused” washed through the car, she continued to check her message. Alex just drove, thumping out the driving beat on his steering wheel.

  Jenn was drifting in and out of a light doze, her head against the cold glass of the window, when the car started to shake violently. The unsettling vibration stopped after a few seconds, but it was enough to jerk her fully awake. She looked around groggily, trying to work out where they were and what had just happened.

  “Sorry about that, babe,” Alex said. “I ran over the rumble strip.”

  “How long was I out for?” she asked, blinking away sleep from her eyes.

  “Not long,” he replied. “About half an hour.”

  “I’m sorry, honey, I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” she said. “Do you need a break? It doesn’t feel right sleeping while you’re doing all the driving.”

  “No different than when you had your head buried in your phone,” he said. She chose to ignore the comment, and he grinned. “At least you weren’t snoring then. Unlike just now . . .”

  “I was not!” Jenn exclaimed. “Was I? I never know whether to believe you when you say that. I’ve never heard myself, anyway.”

  “Like I keep saying, I’m going to record you so you can hear it. It’s like a chainsaw,” he said. “Seriously, it’s fine. We both know you’re not a morning person. Don’t want you getting grumpy this early in the trip. I’d rather you get some rest now, before we get there.”

  She could tell he was teasing her, and she grinned back at him.

  “Wait! Speaking of grumpy­, did you set Game of Thrones to record?” she asked in mock panic. “I know you set the security alarm when I asked, but please tell me we didn’t forget to set up the PVR.”

  “Oh, we’d be turning back right now if I hadn’t,” he laughed. “That would be a real crisis. I’d rather leave the alarm off.”

  “I am glad you’ve got your priorities right!” she said, keeping her tone deliberately light. “But we did check everything else, right?”

  “Yeah, I double-checked all the locks, made sure the oven was off, unplugged all the appliances. I’m not blasé about those things,” he said. “Seriously, Jenn, just relax. The condo will be there when we get back, just how we left it.”

  Jenn sighed. If she was completely honest with herself, she wasn’t really worried about the apartment but about how she was going to get through the next few days.

  “You’re right,” she said. “Sorry, just a bit tense after the week we’ve had at work. Things have been crazy, and it’s not the greatest time to be going somewhere where I’ll be so out of the loop.”

  “I think getting away for a few days is going to do you a lot of good,” Alex said. “You need some time to unwind and relax a bit. God knows you deserve it, what with all those extra hours you put in.”

  “Unwinding would be nice,” she replied. “The problem is that the work will still be there when I get back; it’s not going to go away. In fact, there will probably be even more waiting for me. Sometimes I swear all those bits of paper breed when no one’s around. That makes it a bit hard to just kick back and relax.”

  “I have an idea!” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “How about we don’t come back at all? We can become hermits, live in the forest. We can dress up in animal skins and I can let my beard grow out.”

  “We’d have to be there for a while for that to happen,” she teased. Alex had tried to grow a proper beard a few times since she had known him, but he was just one of those guys who wasn’t meant to look like a lumberjack. Designer stubble was about as good as he could manage.

  “Ouch! Just because I’m not as hairy as your Dad.”

  “It’s a tempting idea,” Jenn said. “But I’m afraid that I’m more of a run-away-to-Paris kind of girl. If we are going to leave everything behind, we may as well make it worthwhile.”

  “Just wait until you see the park for yourself. You might decide that it isn’t a bad place to run away to,” he said. “In fact, I might not come back, whether you decide to stay or not.”

  She poked out her tongue at him and went back to her phone.

  “Okay, that was the grossest thing I have ever done,” Jenn said as she slid back into the passenger’s seat.

  “Come on, it’s not that bad. There’s no one around, and anyway, those bushes hid you from the road.”

  “You know I’m an indoor plumbing sort of girl,” she said. “I like flush toilets and running water.”

  “You should be thankful. That was pretty luxurious in the scheme of things—and it could have been much more awkward.”

  She shot him a disbelieving look. “Worse? How?”

 
; He laughed. “I remembered to bring a few rolls of toilet paper. You try using leaves and then you’ll be complaining.” He poked her in the ribs. “And if you happen to grab some poison ivy by mistake . . .”

  “That’s terrible!” she said, punching him in the arm.

  “That’s terrible? Wait until you have to dig your own hole and then—”

  “Alex, that’s disgusting.” she felt a little sick at the thought. “I can’t believe you’d even put a thought like that in my mind.”

  “I’m sorry. I promise it won’t come to that. There are long drops scattered around the park, so you’ll have walls around you and rainwater to wash up.” Alex sounded a bit guilty, as if realizing he shouldn’t have given her more to worry about. “Don’t worry, babe, I have something to take your mind right off it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ll find out in about an hour or so,” he said. “Now, why don’t you just relax, enjoy the scenery, and recover from your ordeal.”

  The scenery was worth enjoying. The trees on either side of the road grew thickly and pushed right up to the road. She could only see about thirty yards in before the shadows were too deep for her eyes to penetrate. It was like something from one of the fantasy novels she occasionally read, and her imagination populated the woods with elves and other creatures before she remembered some of the less-welcoming forest dwellers she had read about.

  An unpleasant thought popped into her mind: there could be anything in there, just out of sight, and she would never know. She shivered. She was a city girl, by birth and by inclination, and she had never been deep enough in nature to be out of sight of a road, power lines, or some other mark of civilization. She enjoyed walking or running in the city parks a great deal, but there was something tame about them, as if they were completely under control, no more than a giant garden. This forest, even this close to the road, had a completely different look about it. It looked . . . untamed? No, more like wild. Yes, that was the word that she was thinking of: wild. No city planner had arranged the layout of that forest or decided where those trees would grow. It wasn’t just a case of walking a few minutes until you emerged on a city street with asphalt underfoot. Those trees had been there before she was born, before her parents were born, and they would probably still be there when she was just a fading memory. Some of those trees might even be older than the laws she and her colleagues worked under. She wondered what secrets they might have seen, and she shuddered. Just then, Alex’s stomach grumbled loudly enough to startle her, and she realized just how long they had been driving.

  “Oh,” she exclaimed. “I’ve got something for you.”

  He looked over at her, puzzled. “What’s that?”

  She reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a bundle wrapped in aluminum foil, balanced it on the palm of her hand, and smiled at him.

  “Is that what I think it is?” he asked.

  “Sure is.” She unwrapped the parcel, revealing three sandwiches. Two of them were thick-cut roast beef and cheese, and the sharp smell of mustard spilled out into the car. The third was chicken and lettuce with a little bit of mayo dribbling out the side.

  “You, madam, are a treasure,” he said reverently. “The only issue is how I’m going to be able to drive and eat. I am only a mere male after all. I can’t multitask.”

  She laughed. “Oh, we can work it out.”

  For the next quarter of an hour they ate in companionable silence. Whenever they came to a stretch of road that required a change in speed and gears, Alex would say a number, and Jenn would shift the gears for him from the passenger’s seat.

  “I’m impressed,” he said.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Not many people still know how to use a stick shift. They’re a dying breed.”

  “I’m not completely a spoiled brat, you know,” Jenn said, pretending to be offended. “My first car was a beat-up old Volkswagen Rabbit convertible. All I could afford was a standard, but luckily Dad had taught me how to drive stick shift in the parking lot of our church. I remember the first lesson was in his car, and it was a lot more expensive than the Rabbit was. The first time I tried shifting gears, it made the most horrendous grinding noise, and this vein in Dad’s forehead started pulsing. I thought he was going to blow his top, but to his credit he didn’t say a word. But the next day he started taking me around second-hand dealerships—that’s where I got the Rabbit. I think he paid for half just so he had an excuse not to let me back in his car!”

  She laughed, remembering all the other lessons. They’d been fun times.

  “Man, the number of hills I stalled on driving around the city! And I used to hate traffic lights so much because I knew it was even money I would bunny hop my way through. But it was a good little car—made it all the way through law school with me despite all the abuse I heaped on it.”

  She broke off, unsettled by the intense way Alex was starting at her.

  “What?” she asked defensively.

  “It’s nothing. I guess I just can’t imagine you driving a crappy old car.” He hesitated for a moment. “You’ve certainly moved up in the world.”

  “Thanks, I guess,” she said with a touch of asperity. “So you thought I was spoiled or something, that I’ve always had nice things? I mean, you know my parents, you’ve seen the house where I grew up. I’ve worked hard for everything I’ve gotten.”

  “No, it’s not that, babe,” he said soothingly. “It’s just that when we met, you were the best-dressed person in the bar. You looked like someone from a movie, really different from the girls I knew back home. I was almost too scared to go up to you.”

  She smiled. “Well, I’m glad you mustered the courage to talk to me that night,” she said.

  “So am I,” he said. “Especially since you make such good sandwiches.” He fell silent for a moment before he went on. His voice had thickened as if he were struggling to hold back his emotions. “It means a lot to me, this trip. You have no idea,” he said. “You’re going to have a great time, I promise.”

  He reached out and squeezed her hand and she smiled back at him.

  “Well, just don’t forget that I’m doing this for you,” she joked. “So I get to pick our next holiday, right?

  “Of course!” he said. “Well, it does depend on where you want to go. I’m not sure we can afford Paris just yet.”

  “No, I’ll be a bit more realistic than that,” she laughed. “I was thinking we could spend some time on the beach—maybe California.”

  Alex started to reply but Jenn’s phone beeped again. He clamped his mouth shut, biting off whatever he was going to say. Jenn sighed, feeling the cheerful atmosphere dissipating as quickly as it had gathered. She checked the message: another question from one of the partners about where a certain file was located. She quickly tapped out a reply, trying to ignore the almost-palpable waves of impatience radiating off Alex. Just as she hit send, he spoke.

  “Was it really that urgent?”

  “When one of the partners asks a question, you answer it, and right away,” she replied.

  “Even when you’re on holiday?” he asked.

  “Especially when you’re on holiday. As far as they are concerned, anyone below them on the corporate ladder is on call twenty-four-seven.”

  “I still think it isn’t fair,” he said.

  “Everyone goes through it. I mean, it’s only my second year at the firm. I’ve got to take the hits,” she said.

  “Does everyone do as much extra work as you do?” he asked.

  “Anyone who wants to get ahead in the firm,” she said. “You can get away just doing your
job, but if you want the partners to notice you, you have to work twice as hard.”

  “And it’s that important that they notice you?”

  “Of course it is. You know that,” she said impatiently. This was an old discussion. “I’m not interested in staying in the same level forever. I plan on being a partner by the time I’m thirty-five, and that means doing the hard work now. I need to be better at my job than anyone else—and I definitely have to make sure that when one of the partners messages me with a question, I get back to them. I am not going to give them any choice but to promote me.”

  “I really don’t know how you put up with it, though,” he said.

  “Despite all the hassle, I love my job. I’m good at it. Really good at it, if I put aside false modesty.”

  Jenn was so caught up in what she was saying that it took a moment for her become aware of the change in road sounds as the car slowed down.

  “Is something wrong, honey?”

  The grin on his face was all the answer he gave. He pointed out the window.

  “Wow!” she exclaimed. “What is that doing in the middle of nowhere?”

  “If you hadn’t been on your phone earlier and had listened to my story instead, you’d know all about it.” Alex said, but there was no real heat in his voice this time. Jenn hoped what she had said had gotten through to him for a change—or maybe he was way too excited to want to start another argument. “This is, like, the best ice cream in Canada. Seriously. Do you want one?”

  “Does a bear—” she stopped, not wanting to think about bears. Instead, she looked out at the strange sight coming up. A battered trailer sat on the shoulder of the road. Taking up most of its side was a sliding glass window, and in front of the window was a weathered wooden sign with yet another reminder, Jenn noted ruefully, of her fear: a cute cartoon bear happily licking an ice cream cone.