Vella Munn - The Return of Cord Navarro

Still, he didn’t turn. Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe… Knowing she might be risking a return to what bad been so hard to break free from earlier, she touched his back. He didn’t move and yet she sensed something change deep within him. “My mother said something that’s bothering you, didn’t she? I wish you’d talk to me about it,” she whispered. There was just the two of them in this world of night and wilderness sounds. Just this man who had embraced and been embraced by that wilderness.

He remained still, not speaking for so long that she began to break inside. Then, “She said that having Matt back is the only thing she wants in life. You, too.”

Her mother’s words hit her with the force of a blow. They must have done the same to Cord, and that’s why he’d let darkness absorb him. “It’s the truth.”

“I know.”

“But… didn’t you expect that from her?”

Through her fingers, she felt him draw in a deep breath. “I didn’t expect her to be that honest with me.”

Why? Oh, Cord, what does it feel like to be set apart from others this way? “My mother believes in keeping her opinions to herself, not that I have to tell you that. It took this for her to break through all those polite layers.”

She thought that might turn him around, but he continued to stare off at nothing. Only the night wasn’t nothing for him. He knew which creatures embraced it, who hunted and who was hunted. Lost in thoughts of his place in a mountain night, she ran his shirt fabric between her fingers. He shifted his weight so that he now angled himself toward her slightly. “Why did you come back here?” he asked.

“To Summit County?” Is this what we’re going to talk about? Decisions from the past?

“You were so eager to leave it. When we got married, you told me you needed to move away so you could get an education and make use of it.”

“I did say that, didn’t I?” Almost before the words were out of her mouth, she winced. After everything they’d shared in the past few days, she didn’t want to skirt around his question. “I don’t know why I returned. At least, I didn’t know what I was going to do when I packed my bags and… and-”

“When you walked out of the apartment we were living in.”

We? He’d hardly ever been there. Although she now felt petty saying it, she reminded him that she’d paid the utilities and rent before leaving, even stocked the refrigerator for him.

“I never spent another night in it.”

She hadn’t known that. “Why not?”

“The memories.”

Memories . “I should have-I didn’t know how to handle any of that.”

He nodded. “Neither did I.”

“Oh. Oh.”

He turned fully around, presenting himself to her, taking over everything. “Did your parents want you to live near them?”

“They…had nothing to do with my decision.” She didn’t dare acknowledge his gaze; she might forget what she wanted him to understand. “I got in the car and started driving. This is where I wound up. Of course, my folks were happy and for a while I let them spoil me. But-”

“But you don’t like it when someone tries to take care of you.”

He knew that about her. What else hadn’t the years erased? “No. I don’t.” She thought about rubbing warmth into her arms, but he might guess she felt uncomfortable in her body. She finally gripped her right elbow with her left hand. “I think, when I realized I couldn’t spend another night waiting for you to be there for me-to look at you and think of you as a stranger-nothing but home called to me.”

“Your childhood home, not the one we’d made.”

“We didn’t have a home. Not what I needed, thought I needed. Oh, Cord, I was so confused. Hurting. All I knew was, I would lose my mind if I didn’t do something. I knew I needed space around me. That apartment you felt penned up in, it got that way for me, too. I needed to smell pines and look at mountains and…and support Matt and myself doing something I loved. I needed to go on with life.” Put you behind me.

“You’ve done well,” he said softly. “You’ve made a success of your business.”

She’d been concentrating on where his voice came from for so long that her mind filled in what her eyes couldn’t see in the dark. She knew he’d removed his boots and was walking around barefoot just like her. It wouldn’t take much for the wilderness to absorb him; if it did, would she ever find him again? “It’s been a lot of work, but then, I don’t have to tell you what it’s like to be self-employed. You know about the sacrifices, the uncertainty.”

“Yes.” His voice threatened to encircle her. She started to fight it, but that single word was so quickly followed by others that she remained off balance. “Only, when it’s something you truly want to do, or feel compelled to do, it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice, does it?”

“No. It doesn’t.”

“Matt’s proud of you.”

Warmth at Matt’s endorsement spread through her, followed by even more realization of how much communication took place between father and son. Maybe Matt even sensed his father’s presence tonight. She could at least hope. “He can see what I’m doing on a daily basis. A lot of kids can’t say that.”

“I know.”

She thought she understood what was behind Cord’s pensive tone, that he envied what she had. She nearly told him so, but everything they said to each other seemed so complex and she was worn out from trying to deal with her reaction to being here, alone, with him. She shifted her weight onto her right leg and began absently rubbing her hand up and down her arm. “I thought Matt might balk at having to help with the horses. A lot of his friends don’t have any real responsibilities and have a lot more free time. But I don’t think he minds. At least, he’s never said.”

“He doesn’t mind.”

“He told you that?”

“Yes,” Cord said softly. She thought he’d said something else but just then an owl let out with an indignant call that momentarily stopped all conversation.

“Maybe we’re disturbing him,” she ventured a few seconds later. “After all, he was here first.”

“He’s passing along information to other owls.”

“What kind of information? That there are intruders around?”

“Yes.”

“Then-Cord, if the owls are talking about Matt as well as us, would you know?”

“No. Not unless he was close.”

She knew she’d been grasping at straws when she asked her question. Still, his denial depressed her more than it should.

Unsure what to do with herself now, she made a move as if to turn back to her bed roll.

“Shannon?”

“Yes?”

“There’s something…”

“Something? What?” she prompted.

“We aren’t… there are-does… does it bother you that it’s just us looking for him? You haven’t said.”

That’s not what he’d started out to say. She knew that instinctively. But because she understood all too well the folly of pressing Cord to reveal something he didn’t want to, she told him she trusted his judgment in this. He was following Matt’s tracks. There wasn’t anything a hundred searchers could do that wasn’t being done by them.

But what she felt went deeper than practical considerations. It was somehow fitting that they were the ones intent on bringing their son back where he belonged. In this world of complex organizations, rules and regulations, sometimes parents simply needed to be the ones doing the job that instinct and love and commitment had prepared them for. “I want us to find him, for us to be the first people he sees when he realizes he’s no longer lost. A kind of bonding.”