The Mountains Between Us

Nature hailed to her from a forest mountain stream. The smooth grey rocks took no vengeance upon her bare feet as she traipsed blissfully into the water. Wind whipping across her thighs delivered no bite nor bitter cold, rather the familiarity of an old friend. She plopped down the messenger bag and plunged her hands inside, freeing the currency previously concealed by these natural powers around her. The stream took no notice as she splashed and tossed money wildly. Wind entangled the bills, and for a moment they all danced and laughed together, free! A rasping cough rode rudely in with the rustling of leaves, and she blinked awake.

Naomi rolled from the dingy mattress, feeling around beneath for the crumbly messenger bag that guarded her treasure. She found nothing but a small, beaten notebook, affirming yesterday's nightmare was real. Naomi was the most honest person no one ever dared believe. She had no predilection for deceit but lacked such conviction while speaking that people naturally sought second opinion. And certainly no one would believe her now, that is, until they read the most recent headline in Clark County News.

She pulled a sweatshirt over her head and tried in vain to tame wispy fly-aways into in her tangled, mousy mane. A second cough cut through the air, and she bounded across the hall.

“Grampa? You awake? You okay?”

“I’d rather be fishing,” came the hoarse reply.

Typical. She rolled her eyes but counted it a good omen. “I’ll start breakfast then. Let me know if you need help getting dressed.”

Life was fishing in the mountains with Grampa. Sure, she went to school, grew up, and became a teacher; but up until last year, real life happened every weekend in the wild with him. While her father sporadically popped back into her life—each time reminding her she did nothing right, Grampa and the mountains filled her days with excitement—teaching ingenuity and every fishing knot imaginable. Naomi was raised with the mountains as her legacy.

And then came cancer. For all Grampa's ingenuity—creating fish traps from two-liters, stoves from soda cans, even opening her first-job-celebratory champagne with only his boot and a tree stump—cancer cruelly leveled him. None of his survival skills could help him now... could lessen the cost of his treatment or soften his pain.

With its ear-throttling trill, the phone startled her attention from the pan of sizzling bacon. Pulling the archaic kitchen ornament from the wall, she recited mechanically, “We aren’t interested in buying or subscribing to anything. Please stop--”

“Naomi Bryght,” a clipped tone interrupted.

“Yeah, this is she. Look, this landline will be disconnected soon, and you won't be able to bombard us with--”

“I’m no solicitor. I’m Henry Broyles, calling on behalf of Helena Caldwell.”

Naomi’s heart stopped mid-beat. Caldwell. She stumbled upon that name all too recently, though she dare not admit where. The phone nearly slipped from her hands, now cold and clammy.

“Uh, what can I do for you,” she asked, choking her heart back down to her chest.

“Ms. Caldwell saw the paper today and thought you must be quite the adventurer, wandering out around Zion’s Pass. She’s followed that case for years and was wondering if you’d come for coffee this afternoon—perhaps talk in person?”

“Well, I, I teach, ‘til about um... two,” she stumbled. “Over, over at Clark High.”

“Three o’clock, then?”

Naomi agreed uneasily, jotted down the address, and hung up the phone. Could Helena know what she had done? Surely not.

Tens of thousands of dollars in that messenger bag evaporated within hours of Naomi's discovery. Entirely confiscated as evidence, it soured her greatest stroke of luck--hurling her back into this cancer nightmare. She would get a portion back at some point, she was told. But this was not assured, and she needed the money now. As the town reveled with excitement about a nationally unsolved case and its newest clue, Naomi gave to despair. All the answers in the world could not help Grampa.

She still could not quite understand her actions amidst the confiscation. It was almost involuntary. Invisible within the excited chaos of the precinct, Naomi slipped the beaten notebook subtly into her sweatshirt pocket. She had no care for it, really. But watching the officers disappear with her money somehow changed everything. With her treacherous withholding came some modicum of justice and control.

Whilst fear struck at the name Caldwell, incredible opportunity simultaneously appeared. Her body railed against this plan—teeth chattering, stomach back-flipping. Her mind answered with logic and necessity. She worked it over again and again in her head.

It’s our chance. She’d be paying for answers. Do it for Grampa. Don’t let this slip away like you just did the ten grand.

Distracted the entire day, she struggled free from her trance as the winding rural road escorted her toward Helena. The clouds furled ominously around the mountain as she climbed higher and higher, enveloping her in a grey convicting gloom.

The house of Helena Caldwell happened to be, in fact, the most renowned winery of Clark County. A sign from fate, Naomi thought, that her plan would succeed. Her insides crumbled when the woman she met was as rigid and intimidating as the stone wall surrounding her estate.

The intricately carved doors opened to reveal a neat grey suit. Her mature attire mitigated the youth betrayed in Helena’s cool, piercing eyes. She could be no older than thirty, making her perhaps the same age as Naomi. This thought surprised Naomi, who expected Helena to be rich, but older.

“Helena was my grandmother’s name,” she drawled confidently, seeming to read Naomi’s mind. They sat together in a garden behind the great house, heater alight between them as they sipped coffee and watched fog invade the evergreens below. “Zion’s Pass is no place to go alone, especially for a woman,” Helena reprimanded. “What ever were you doing up there in the first place?”

“Well, I’d lost my wallet,” Naomi prayed her sad attempt at humor would rescue her nerves and goad courage. “A cheap price to pay for finding an entire bag of money, I guess.”

Helena narrowed her eyes, unamused. “You know they matched the serial numbers from your bills to the plane heist with the sky-diver in ‘71?”

Naomi’s familiar unease around people was compounded by queasiness and hot flashes as she thought desperately how to frame her demand.

How does one even begin to blackmail? Especially this cold stranger? And if she refuses, or worse, reports withholding evidence to the police?

“Naomi?”

“Sorry. Yes, that’s... that’s what they said at the precinct. But... if I could be frank, what does this matter to someone like you? I mean, crazy story, right? But calling a stranger to your house to hear it firsthand? I don’t know, it’s weird.”

Helena abruptly dropped her gaze, shoulders slumping along with it. Her demeanor shifted so drastically she seemed ten years younger.

“It’s stupid,” she whispered. “My mom married my step-dad when I was fifteen. He owned this winery... He gave us so much. But Dad was her true love. I’ve never seen her so happy as when they were together, poor as we were.” She stopped to take a shaky breath. “And I really thought he loved us, too... And then he was gone. I heard about the heist as a kid, and... I guess I just imagined it was him. Stupid, yeah... insane. But he had been a paratrooper in the military. It was just always easier to believe it was him—trying to get money and make a better life for his family. Easier than believing he would leave.”

A mountain of guilt and sympathy forced Naomi to action. She prayed Grampa could forgive her as she pulled the little black notebook from her sweatshirt and slid it, shaking, toward Helena. “I don’t think you’re so crazy,” she heard herself say in a small voice. “Charles, right? Charles Caldwell?”

Helena gasped as tears of grief and relief streamed down her face. “This can’t be real.” Her trembling hands embraced the weathered yellow pages. “I can’t believe I was right. He didn’t abandon us!”

The two girls sat together examining the notebook and chatting quietly in the evening air—friendship forged instantaneously through this surreal circumstance.

As Naomi gazed dreamily toward the sun disappearing behind the trees, responsibility stung, and she rose with a start. “I have to get home. My grandpa is all alone, and he’s pretty sick.”

As they walked to her car, Helena pulled a checkbook from her suit pocket and scribbled something out on the hood of Naomi’s car. “I know they didn’t let you keep the money. Here—for your sick grandfather.”

Naomi stared incredulously at the check for twenty thousand dollars.