Comfort & Joy

Like the lodge, dressed in its holiday finery, with Bobby and Daniel on the deck, waiting for me.

Are they home? I wonder. Have they noticed that I am gone? Are they worried?

How long has it been since someone waited at home for me, worried about me?

Stacey.

Even with all that has happened; all she has done, the truth is there, buried beneath the resentment: I miss her.

She is the one I want to tell about my time in the rainforest, and the man and boy about whom I’ve come to care.

I guess a plane crash and being lost in a snowstorm will show you things.

I am caught so deeply in my own thoughts that it takes me a moment to hear the noise behind me.

It is an engine. Seconds later, I see the twin beams of headlights come up behind me. In their glow, I see the snow falling all around me.

I stop, turn.

It is Daniel’s red pickup, chugging down the road. They are like something out of a dream, a blur of red in a snowy white world. I’m not entirely sure it’s real. Perhaps I’ve imagined my saviors.

The truck pulls up beside me and stops. The blue passenger door creaks, then bangs open.

Bobby is scooted all the way to the edge of the bench seat. His small face is scrunched with worry and too colorful somehow in this hazy world and half-light. “Joy?”

I try to answer, to smile even, as if this is nothing, but all I hear is the sound of my own teeth chattering. Suddenly I’m crying like a baby. That’s when I realize how scared I was that I would be simply lost out here, all alone again. No wonder I thought of Stacey.

“Help her, Dad!” Bobby cries out. “She’s freezing!”

Daniel whips open his door and jumps out.

“I’m . . . fine,” I say, sounding like a jackhammer on concrete. I grab the top of the truck door—the metal is so cold it burns me—and climb into the seat. I don’t want him to know how cold I am, how foolish I was. I could have died out here. “Th-thanks. ”

Standing by the side of the truck, Daniel looks worriedly through the cab at me. He’s probably never seen a woman with blue cheeks before. There’s a strange look in his eyes, one I can’t read. It’s more than just worry, though. I think he’s angry with me for being so stupid, for scaring his son. He climbs back into the driver’s seat and slams the door shut. “A person could die in this weather,” he says softly.

“I’m fine. Really. I was just . . . trying to find a phone to call my sister. I’m sorry to have worried you. ”

“Daddy has a cell phone,” Bobby says accusingly. I can tell how upset he is. He thought I’d simply left without a word. Disappeared like his mother.

I have no answer to that. My actions were stupid. Plain stupid.

“We’ve been driving around for hours looking for you,” Bobby says. I can hear the panic in his voice. “I told him you were in trouble. ”

“I promised you Christmas morning,” I say quietly. “Remember? I just needed to make a phone call. Honest. ”

“Okay,” he says, still looking unconvinced.

I dare to glance at Daniel. “Bobby invited me to spend Christmas morning with you. ”

“I told Daddy that you were staying for Christmas and then leaving. ”

Daniel still doesn’t look at me. Driving in snow takes all his concentration. Or, perhaps, he wants Christmas morning with only his son.

Before, in my life, I would have been silent now, waited for him to invite me, to want me, but somewhere along the way of this adventure, I’ve grown bold. Life can be short. Planes can simply fall out of the sky; sisters can lose the chance they need. “What do you think of that, Daniel?”

In the silence that follows my question, the windshield wipers seemed almost obscenely loud. He can hurt me now, ruin me with a look or a smile, but I take this risk. It’s what I want: Christmas with Bobby and Daniel. Then I’ll go back to Bakersfield. Every heartbeat that he doesn’t answer wounds me. It’s crazy, I know, and naïve, but I can’t help it.

Bobby must sense the tension and feel for me. “Daddy?” he says when the quiet has gone on for almost a mile. “You want Joy to stay for Christmas, don’t you?”