Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever by Phoenix Sullivan (easy readers txt) 📕

back to the therapist? She did you a lot of good. You can tell her how you feel, get it all out so you can cope better.” He patted me on the knee.

I dug my nails into my palms. My voice still calm, still reasonable, I said, “The two aren’t mutually exclusive, you know.”

He patted me on the knee again, more a rewarding gesture than a reassuring one. “You’re right. You go to church if that helps you.”

“But I want you to go with me.” I need you to go with me.

“Honey,” he said, always patient, explaining it again. “I’m not the one who needs help getting over this.” He turned back to the TV, thumbing the sound back on in time for Iron Chef.

~~~

I slipped out of the house at dawn, my hands full of camping gear. Before the clouds had lifted off the peaks, I was on the trails, tramping across deer paths, descending into canyons, looking for signs. By dusk I was weak-kneed and shaking. I trudged back toward my campsite, one foot in front of the other, too tired to stop.

Until I reached the helipad. A man in a Forest Service uniform waited for me there, feet dangling as he sat on the concrete circle. I gave him a nervous smile and stayed on the far side of the camp space.

“This your tent?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You can’t camp up here, ma’am.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not just illegal. It’s not safe, especially alone. You want to camp, you should go to one of the designated campgrounds.” His voice was more conversational than lecturing.

“I’m sorry. I’ll pack up right now.” He still perched on the helipad, a foot from my tent. I dug my fingers under the straps of my pack and didn’t move toward him.

He shrugged. “I’m supposed to fine you, but you didn’t light a fire, so I’ll let it go. Have a nice hike?”

I gave him a non-committal nod. “Saw some cougar tracks earlier.”

“You sure they were cougar?” he said.

Something in his tone made me look more closely at his face, the eager forward hunch of his shoulders. “Yeah,” I said. “They were only about this big.” I traced my palm and he nodded, the excitement going out of his eyes and shoulders. I took a step closer to him. “Have you seen bigger?”

Now he studied me, his eyes wary under the brim of his Forest Service cap. We watched each other a minute, our eyes locked, each gauging the danger from the other.

Finally, “There are a lot strange things in these hills,” he said. “You never quite know what you’ll find.”

I gave him a slow nod. Let my heart beat twice before saying, “Like a saber-tooth cat.”

Now his grin spread out from his eyes to light his whole face. He patted the helipad beside him. “When did you see it?”

“‘Bout a month ago.” I let my pack slide to the ground and took a seat next to him. The concrete ground into my cold muscles and I braced myself with my hands, sitting half turned so I could see him.

“I saw mine six years ago,” he said. “I’ve been looking for it on and off ever since. I told a few of the guys in the service, once. Won’t do that again.”

I pointed at his gun. “Are you going to shoot it?”

“Not sure I could, even if I had to. It never did me any harm.” He ducked his head, eyes hidden again under the cap brim. “You could say it did me a lot of good. All the time I’ve spent up here, trying to find it again. I could have spent it in bars.”

I drew my knees up and rested my chin on them. The breath of the hills blew over us. “What did you lose?” I asked.

The question sent a jolt through him, brought his face back up into the light to meet mine. His eyes were pale hazel, the color of young sage leaves. Boyish freckles dusted his cheekbones despite the crow’s feet around his eyes.

“My wife. She left me for a buddy of mine.”

“I’m sorry.” This time I meant it.

“What about you?”

The scar across my belly tightened, the muscles shrinking back, flinching from the touch of memory. Tears pricked my eyes in the breeze and I blinked hard. I couldn’t inflict my tears on this guy. I cried too much as it was.

But he’d asked, so I told him. “A baby.And my uterus. It was ectopic and they didn’t catch it in time.”

“I’m sorry.” He reached into his breast pocket and offered me a handkerchief.

“It wasn’t a real baby yet. That’s what the doctor said. It couldn’t have lived, so it didn’t count, I guess.”

“Funny how other people get to decide what’s real and what’s not. Bonny, my wife, she said I wasn’t really in love with her.” He picked a piece of loose quartz off the concrete, sending it across the campsite as I blew into the handkerchief. “Did you have a name picked out?”

“Michael Brandon. I was going to call him Mikey until he got old enough to be embarrassed by it.” I dabbed at my face, smiling at the image. “Did you have kids?”

“Nah, it was just the two of us.” He pursed his lips, thinking, or looking backwards, maybe. “For a long time I used to come up here, just for the silence. Like it could hold me in, keep me from having to feel anything anymore.”

“Yeah,” I said. Dusk had fallen as we talked. The sharp black shadows were gone, swallowed in the creeping darkness that grew up the hillsides. Soon I would have to get in my car and drive back down to the city, to my job, to Michael.

I shivered in the evening wind and curled my arms into my chest for warmth.

“Do you think we’re both crazy?” I said.

“Sure.” He laughed. “If we were sane we’d get the hell out of LA and come live up here in the hills where we can breathe.”

~~~

I still