Chapter 1

Monday, October 29, 2001

There were a few brief notes of harp strings, and then Myleigh's voice came over the receiver: "This is Dr. Harris. I'm sorry I'm..."

Crystal hung up the phone. Where could that woman be? She'd tried calling both her home and her office many times over the weekend, and this was getting on toward the last chance. She glanced out over the parking lot at Lee's Ferry and watched the handful of tamarisk trees wave in the stiff wind blowing upriver under the leaden gray skies. The rafts sat nosed up to the shore, loaded and ready to go for the last trip of the season through the Grand Canyon. It was going to be a long, tough pull to even get down to Badger in this wind. This could still be a good trip, but it had been a long season, and she was actually looking forward to having it over with for once.

There was no putting it off any longer. She'd been dreading this phone call ever since she realized it would have to be made, but she'd rationalized and temporized as long as she could. With a sigh, she picked the handset up again and started punching numbers.

The phone rang on a desk located in an office near the Michigan-Wisconsin border about fifteen hundred miles to the northeast of Lee's Ferry. The sky was even more leaden and gray there, and Crystal knew from having been there that there were more trees visible from the office window than existed within miles of where she was calling from. In a moment, she could hear the phone being picked up with the words, "Clark Construction, Randy."

"Hi, Randy," Crystal said shyly. "What's happening in Spearfish Lake?"

"It's the ass end of October, the leaves are down, and it's raining, so everything is about as attractive as hell with the fires out," he replied. "Shouldn't you be on the river by now?"

"The customer bus is going to be here any minute," Crystal said. "Look, Randy, I'm sorry you're not going with us."

"I told you it was likely to happen," he sighed. "You know I don't plan to do stuff very often since it usually works out I don't get to go."

At one time, even as recently as a month and a half ago, Randy had been scheduled to be on this trip, working on his insurance qualifications to be a part-time Canyon Tours boatman. Crystal's old boyfriend, who had been sort of a fiance for a while, really was pretty good at the oars of a raft, and had been looking forward to the trip – but his family-owned construction business had to come first. On her break before this, Crystal had come into the office to find a message that there was too much hanging for him in wrapping up the construction season to be able to get free.

"Just as well," Crystal said. "The weather forecast for the next few days here really sucks."

"Got to be better than here," he sighed. "You know the old rafters' saying: 'The worst day at the oars is better than the best day at work.'"

"Well, maybe next spring," Crystal said sadly, still not wanting to come to grips with what she had to say.

"Not much chance," he sighed. "They opened bids on a new gym down in Blair this morning, and we're low. We'll have to be ready to fly when the weather breaks, so that shoots April in the ass."

Oh, damn, Crystal thought. That's just lovely. He'll be happy to get the work, but the last time she ran with Randy, he'd spent hours bitching about all the extra inspections and paperwork involved in school projects, so it's a mixed blessing at best. Still, having me call from Lee's on a trip he'd wanted to be on can't make him feel any better, and the news she had wouldn't help, either. Well, there was no putting it off any longer. "Randy, is there any chance you and Nicole could fly down here for a couple days over Thanksgiving weekend?"

"Not impossible," he replied. "Something cooking?"

"Well, sort of," Crystal told him. "We have a Canyon Tours season wrap party the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I ... uh..."

"That's really just for you Canyon Tours people," Randy commented.

"Randy, I've told you before, we consider you one of us," Crystal protested, and figured she'd better get on with dropping the bomb. "Besides, since we're having the party, Preach and I decided it would be a good time to get married."

"No kidding?" he laughed. "Nicole said the two of you were getting close when she ran with you back in August, but I have to say, I never dreamed you'd wind up marrying a minister."

"Me either," Crystal giggled. "Well, former minister, anyway. Can you come?"

"If it's on Saturday, and if we can get tickets to fly out Friday and back on Sunday, we ought to be able to," he said.

"Good," she said. "Sorry to drop this on you at the last minute, but it's been a madhouse on this break, and I really wanted to tell Myleigh before I told you. But I can't get hold of her, either at her office or at home. Or Trey, for that matter."

"Not a chance of that," he said. "They were up here over the weekend. I'd guess they're out on the road somewhere by now, heading back to Kansas City."

"Damn, I should have called yesterday," Crystal sighed. "I really don't want to have to use the satphone to call her. Could you get in touch with her for me, and see if you can get her out here for the wedding?"

"Yeah, sure," Randy said, sounding a bit smug about it.

"What was she doing in Spearfish Lake, anyway?"

"Oh, boy," Randy laughed again. "She really ought to be the one to tell you, but since you're heading out on the river, I guess I should let the cat out of the bag. She was down at Weatherford for a concert Saturday night. They had this reception just before the concert, and right in the middle of the thing she got up and made the announcement that Trey had asked her to marry him, and she'd accepted."

"My God!" Crystal gasped. "I knew they were closer than they let on, but, well, I wasn't expecting that! At least not this soon! What brought this on?"

"Not sure, but it was a surprise to me, too. But that's not all the news. She's leaving Marienthal, and she's got a spiffy new job in the lit department at Weatherford. Trey is going to be working for Jennifer and Blake, doing some business management and running their new studio. It looks like they're going to be buying a house right up the street. Long story about that; I don't want to get into it now."

"You're kidding!" Crystal laughed. "And to think that neither of us was willing to marry you because we'd have to live in Spearfish Lake!"

"Yeah, you want irony, there it is," Randy shook his head. "I mean, I'm just as happy the way things worked out, but, let's face it, if I'd known things were going to work out that way, I might have done something different. But, that's all water down the river now. Over the years, I've come to understand that the things I like best about Myleigh are the things that would drive me up the wall in the long run."

"I suppose," Crystal agreed. "When are they getting married?"

"December 29, the Saturday before New Year's," Randy said. "They wanted to get the wedding in this year for tax purposes. It's going to be up here, at Jennifer and Blake's. I'm sure she'll want you here."

"Are they still going down to Florida for our surf week?"

"Don't know," Randy said. "Probably not, although we didn't have any real discussion of it over the weekend. Knowing Myleigh, I doubt she'll want to spend her honeymoon in a tent."

"That's probably a good guess," Crystal laughed. "Well, the rest of us can have a good time."

"I hope so," Randy replied a little listlessly. "I may even get in a day or two."

"What do you mean?" Crystal said, an awful feeling coming over her. "I thought you had the week cleared away."

"I did," Randy said. "But then, we had to have this construction conference the week you and Scooter and Jim and Preach and I were going sailing, and I pissed and moaned and got it moved up so it wouldn't get screwed up. The wedding pretty well took care of that."

"It turns out that Scooter and Jim aren't going," Crystal told him, a really sinking feeling coming over her. Why did this have to work out this way? "Look, is there any way you could break Nicole free to come sailing?" she asked desperately.

"No, she'll have to be back in school," Randy told her. "She took enough absences in the last year that it'd be hard for her to break free again."

"Well, come on along anyway," she sighed. "We'll still have a good time. I've really been looking forward to it, especially the way the first part of December got loused up this weekend."

"Loused up?" Randy said. "What do you mean?"

"Long story, I don't want to get into it now, but we sort of got strong-armed into making a trip around a bunch of churches in the southeast, talking about the Canyon, and how you can do cool stuff and still be a Christian. That goes up almost until Christmas, but we ought to have time to do Christmas here and still make Spearfish Lake for Myleigh's wedding. The surfing and the sailing will be Preach's and my first real break."

"I understand," Randy said glumly. "You two have fun. I guess that's why I shouldn't plan stuff, since I never get to do any of it anyway."

"But Randy," Crystal said. "After the way Nicole and I strong-armed you to go sailing with us, well, we still want you to go."

"No," he sighed. "That was supposed to be with you and Scooter. Crystal, I know what you said, but I'm not going to horn in on your honeymoon, and that's that."

"But we were only talking a week," Crystal protested. "Randy, you got the short end of the stick so many times over the years, I feel like I need to make it up to you somehow."

"No, Crystal," he said glumly. "I'm used to it by now, I guess. You and Preach have a good time. You deserve it. But fuck, that even screws up the chance to go surfing. I just can't ask those people to reschedule things again."

"I'm sorry, Randy," she said. "I'm really sorry. I wish you didn't feel that way."

"Don't you think I'd feel just as crappy if I came along?" he said. "That would really be pretty damn shitty of me, now wouldn't it?"

"Yeah, Randy, I know," Crystal sighed. "But, damn!"

"I'll talk to Nicole, and see if we can make it out for your wedding," he said. "Especially since it looks like it's all the vacation I'm going to get for the next year or so."