Falling for Hope Read online

  “What happened then?” asked Aspen quietly. Amy stared up seriously at the gathered women, folding her hands in her lap.

  “Well, that’s just it,” she murmured. “We don’t know. The woman disappeared. Vanished. Was it a panther that got her, or the mountain itself? Did she get lost, or did she get mauled? All we know is that on stormy nights like this, you can still hear a woman screaming if you listen very, very closely…”

  Silence fell over the group as they stilled and listened.

  Outside, another crack of lightning lit up the sky, and thunder made the cabin shake.

  Every single woman—including Amy—jumped.

  Laughter cut the tension, Hope leaning back in her chair and chuckling as the rest of the women continued to roast their dinners, Cole trotting to the kitchen for the hot dog buns.

  Throughout all of the ghost stories told that night, and despite the alluring scent of delicious fire-cooked food, Chris failed to make an appearance.

  ---

  “Oh, my cheeks hurt from smiling, and my stomach hurts from laughing,” said Amy, grinning at Hope as they shut the door to the bedroom behind them. Rain pattered the roof overhead, though the thunder and lightning seemed to have moved off for the night.

  “I look forward to this week every year so much, I can’t stand it,” Hope confessed, pulling off her socks and tossing them into the small dirty clothes pile. Her pants followed suit, and Amy felt a small blush begin to creep across her face. “I mean, we all hang out all year, you know? But up here, it’s different. It’s better. We’re freer. We’re who we were meant to be, you know?” Hope peeled the shirt over her head and turned around.

  “Yeah,” said Amy quietly, swallowing.

  In the dull light of the one small lamp, Hope’s body was outlined, illuminated. And as the taller woman stepped forward, wrapping long fingers around the curve at Amy’s waist, Amy felt her heart beating so hard that it was all she could feel, all she could hear, drowning out the sound of the deluge outside. Here, in the warmth of the cabin, Hope’s mouth pressed down upon hers, and Amy wrapped her arms around Hope’s neck.

  “You know,” Hope whispered, “I’ve been giving it some thought. I think it’d be best if I talked to Chris when I was calm and clear-headed, and I know how to get that way… I’m going to go for a hike tomorrow,” said Hope quietly, letting her mouth slide down to Amy’s neck, as Amy shivered against her.

  “A hike?” asked Amy, voice weak. Hope began to tug at her shirt.

  “I just need to sort my thoughts, after everything with…” Hope paused for a moment, and the word stood clearly between them: Chris. “I’ll be gone really early. I’ll be gone when you wake,” said Hope, tugging at Amy’s shirt again, dislodging it from the waistband of her jeans. “But I’ll return around noon. If the storm’s over, we can have a picnic. It’ll be romantic,” Hope whispered, as Amy shivered again beneath her kisses.

  “You’d hike in the storm?” asked Amy, gasping as cool air washed over her skin when Hope at last pulled her shirt over her head.

  “I hike in the rain. I hike in the sunshine… Hiking’s good for my soul,” said Hope, grinning, pausing and gazing into Amy’s eyes. “I’ll be back at noon. I promise.”

  “Okay,” Amy whispered, almost forgetting what they were talking about as Hope’s mouth closed over her own again.

  There was no more need for words that night.

  ---

  When Amy woke, Hope wasn’t beside her in the bed. For a long moment, she struggled to remember the conversation of the previous night and sat up, holding the sheet against her chest as she stared at the space Hope had kept warm. Amy placed her palm against the sheet now; it was cold.

  Maybe it was the grayness of the morning—at least it was no longer raining, Amy reflected dimly—coupled with the fact that Hope wasn’t there, but Amy’s mood was somber as she rose and dressed before standing in front of the tall windows in Hope’s bedroom and gazing out at the mountains that loomed around the cabin.

  “Hey, Hope?” came a voice from the other side of the door, followed by a short knock. Lindsey. Amy crossed the room and opened the door, trying to summon a smile.

  “Hope’s not here. She went for a hike, said she’d be back around noon,” said Amy, crossing her arms against the chill of the rest of the cabin. It was a cool day, odd for the summertime.

  Lindsey nodded, hitching her purse up higher on her shoulder as she grinned at Amy. “She does love her hikes. Listen, I was heading into town to get some more marshmallows. We finished them off last night. Want to tag along?”

  Amy nodded, grabbing her jacket from the peg behind the door. “I’d love that.”

  The little gravel lot that the women parked in was flooded. Amy and Lindsey sloshed through the puddles toward Irene’s truck. Lindsey unlocked the cab, and both women climbed up and in, the early morning mist making the woods surrounding them seem, to Amy, strange and ominous. Perhaps, if Amy had been in a better mood, she might have described the effect as magical, instead. But now she stared out at the trees, worrying at the hem of her jacket.

  “Did Chris come out of the bedroom yet?” asked Amy.

  Lindsey shook her head as she started the truck. “But it’s nothing to fret over,” she said quickly, backing the truck up. “You know how she likes to sleep in…”

  “Yeah.” Amy’s stomach turned as they began to make a very slow descent over the gravel road circling down the mountain. “But… You know, this is ridiculous,” Amy spluttered, running her hands through her hair. She’d swept her hair into a messy bun, but it had fallen loose. She smoothed a stray lock behind her ear. “Hope and I haven’t done anything wrong!”

  “You haven’t,” agreed Lindsey, pressing down on the brakes as a deer bounded in front of the truck. They’d been coasting at twenty miles an hour or so, but Lindsey slowed down even more to watch as the doe paused on the other side of the road, glancing over her shoulder and staring at the invasive vehicle, nose twitching. Then, in the next instant, she leapt to the side, white tail flashing as she dove into the underbrush. “Chris has a lot of feelings about all of this, and they’re just not resolved yet,” said Lindsey with a shrug, easing the truck around a bend. “Everyone grieves in their own time, in their own way. And love can be funny.”

  Amy folded her arms and leaned back in her seat, gazing out the window at the rocky terrain.

  The nearest “town” was comprised of a gas station/convenience store, a post office, and a very rundown mobile home park. Few people lived on the mountain, since most of it was a national forest park with campgrounds and campsites sprinkled over the acreage. Lindsey parked under a sprawling oak tree that stretched out behind the convenience store and turned the truck off. As Amy got out, she held onto the truck door and glanced back up at the mountain. The summit was shrouded mostly in clouds, and—from here—it looked menacing. Amy exhaled a long sigh. She was just upset about Chris. There was nothing ominous about the mountain.

  But her stomach was still unsettled as she shut the truck door, dug her hands into her jean pockets, and followed Lindsey into the convenience store.

  The fluorescent lights overhead made the cans, bottles and boxes on the beat-up metal shelves look like they were from the seventies—which, depending upon how many customers this little hole-in-the-wall store got, might actually be true. The older woman behind the counter (who’d owned the place as long as they’d been coming there), Doris, had drawn her graying hair back with a bandana, and her face—the sort of face that looked as if it never stopped smiling—brightened even more at the sight of Amy and Lindsey. Doris placed her plaid-covered elbows on the counter and grinned at her customers.

  “Hey, ladies! We’re having a special on pop today—buy one, get one fifty percent off!” she regaled them cheerfully.

  “Thanks, Doris,” said Lindsey with a smile, heading down the aisle toward the back coolers. But Amy stopped in the middle of the aisle, surprised, and cocked her head to the si
de.

  There, poised on one of the shelves at about nose height, was a bedraggled kitten.

  The kitten sat still as a statue, blinking large, wet eyes slowly at Amy. It was a calico, which meant it was a female, Amy knew. And though the kitten was tiny, she had an air of dignified importance about her.

  Again, she blinked at Amy, and then she let out the smallest, most adorable mew. As a veterinarian, Amy had heard a few trillion adorable mews throughout her career. But this mew in particular touched her heart.

  “Oh, drat. The kittens got back in,” Doris muttered, moving away from the counter and down the aisle. The kitten rose quickly, back arched. “Hey, do you want a kitten? I’m giving away the whole litter,” Doris told Amy, then, scooping up the kitten in her big hand and holding her before Amy’s eyes.

  Amy stared at the tiny ball of fur, and the tiny ball of fur stared at Amy solemnly.

  Amy had never been a cat person. She’d grown up with dogs, and it was her love for them that had inspired her to get into veterinary medicine in the first place. Obviously, she loved all animals, but cats were on about the same level as horses for her. Nice, lovely creatures, but not main characters in her personal life.

  The last dog she’d had, Beau, had passed away about two years ago. The golden retriever had died of extreme old age, and she still missed him on a daily basis. And Amy had been waiting ever since he died for that perfect moment when the pet she was meant to have next showed up.

  And now, here was this kitten.

  There were a million reasons not to adopt her. Amy was not a cat person. She was going to be spending a few more days at the cabin, and imagining this kitten in that large, rambling place, most definitely getting herself lost, made Amy frown and shake her head. What would she feed her? How would she take care of her until she got back to her apartment?

  The tiny kitten continued to stare, serious and still, blinking slowly at Amy.

  “Sure,” said Amy then, and she scooped the kitten out of the woman’s hands and held her close against her chest.

  The small ball of fur began to purr as noisily as a diesel engine in dire need of repair.

  “I got the marshmallows and some pop,” began Lindsey from another aisle, coming toward Amy. Amy turned as Doris beamed, and Lindsey stopped dead in her tracks. “I left you for, like, a minute…” muttered Lindsey, hefting the six-pack of pop onto her hip as she reached out with her free hand to stroke the top of the tiny kitten’s head. The purring intensified.

  “Do you sell kitty litter or kitten food?” Amy asked Doris, without much hope. But the woman nodded and wandered away down another aisle.

  “I thought you didn’t like cats,” said Lindsey, one brow raised as Amy shrugged, continuing to pet the kitten, nuzzling the small animal with her chin.

  “We find the ones we need, and who need us,” she said cryptically. Lindsey raised a brow and grinned.

  Doris did, indeed, have one bag of kitty litter in stock, and it had probably been manufactured in the eighties, at the latest. The bag of kitten food was less ancient, not even dusty, as were—hopefully—the bag of marshmallows and the pop. Lindsey paid for everything, despite Amy’s protests, and carried it all out to the truck as Amy held tightly onto the kitten and followed her.

  If the mountain had looked ominous before, it was looking downright deadly now as both women stared up at it. The gathering thunderclouds rumbled.

  “Best get back as soon as you can!” called Doris from the porch, holding onto her bandana as the wind began to pick up. “They’re predicting some of the strongest storms we’ve seen in years, heading on through the week!”

  Amy, holding the kitten with one hand, glanced at her watch. It was 10:30. They’d been away from the cabin for longer than she’d thought.

  “Do you know when the storms are supposed to hit again?” she called to Doris, who nodded her head, pointing up toward the mountain.

  “By noon!” she called out.

  “Hope will come back sooner, I’m sure. She’ll have seen those storms. She’s not stupid, you know,” said Lindsey, as they began to drive back up the road toward the cabin. Amy stroked the tiny kitten, who sat calm and alert upon Amy’s lap, watching the tree branches that whipped past the window.

  “I just have a bad feeling,” Amy explained, staring down at her hands on the kitten’s back.

  “Don’t worry.” Lindsey reached out and patted Amy’s leg with a grin. “So, what’ll you name her?” she asked, nodding toward the kitten. It was an abrupt and obvious attempt to change the subject, but Amy sighed, grateful for the distraction.

  “Goodness, I don’t know. I’m terrible at naming things. My last dog came with his name from the shelter, and the one before that, my parents named. I had a stuffed animal when I was a kid, a stuffed dog. I named him Stuffie.” She chuckled and shook her head. “So I’ll probably just name her Kitty.”

  “That’s a good name,” said Lindsey in a tone that clearly indicated that Kitty was, in fact, one of the worst names she had ever heard. “Well… Why don’t you ask Hope for some ideas?”

  Amy bit her lip, considering the implications. “Um. Are you saying she would be…our cat?”

  “Not exactly,” said Lindsey, though she was grinning as she stared out of the windshield. “I’ve just seen how Hope looks at you, and this thing’s heading toward Seriousville pretty darn fast.”

  Amy rubbed her knuckles gently over the kitten’s head and felt the butterflies in her stomach flutter. She hadn’t lived with anyone since… Well, she didn’t want to think about her ex. Amy was set in her routines now, after living alone for so long, and normally the thought of sharing her space with anyone (or moving into anyone else’s space) made her feel anxious. She liked things the way they were. But when she considered Hope, considered sharing her life with Hope… Then her feelings changed. It was strange, really. Amy considered this realization as the kitten curled up in her lap, made a tiny sigh, and fell fast asleep.

  The sky darkened further, and it began to rain.

  The rainfall was slow, at first; the big, fat drops splatting against the windshield were almost rhythmic. But as they hit the gravel road and crunched beneath the trees, the rain began to come down harder, falling through the leaves and obscuring the view out of the windshield.

  “Shit,” muttered Lindsey, slamming on the breaks as the windshield wipers worried at the rain. Amy peered through the mist and downpour and saw what had made Lindsey stop: there was a fallen tree blocking the road that led back up to the cabin.

  “What do we do?” Amy asked, swallowing. They had driven this way on the trip down the mountain, and the tree had been standing then. The wind buffeted against the side of the truck with a whomp, making the hairs on Amy’s arms stand to attention. The storm was descending, and it was much, much more powerful, more angry than yesterday’s storm. Amy could feel it in her bones.

  “Well,” said Lindsey, letting the truck idle for a moment, her hands stretched out on the steering wheel as she thought. “We could try to off-road it.”

  “You’re not serious,” said Amy, mouth open as she looked at the dense underbrush that the truck would have to cut through on either side of the downed tree.

  “I mean, it’s either that or walk,” said Lindsey apologetically. She thrust the truck down into a lower gear and pressed on the gas.

  Amy didn’t even have time to grab onto anything, the seatbelt tightening painfully against her chest as the truck launched off the road, careened down into the ditch and began to mow the small trees and bushes.

  “It’s a tank,” said Lindsey with a grin, patting the dashboard affectionately as the truck continued to barrel through the mud and bracken, wheels turning and pulling around the downed tree. The rain came down in buckets, and Amy wasn’t quite certain how Lindsey was able to see to steer, but as the truck climbed through the ditch and back up onto the gravel road, both women sighed with relief.

  “Thanks for driving,” said Amy weakly
, and Lindsey smiled, pressing down on the gas.

  “I’m just glad we took the truck,” Lindsey laughed. She continued to smile, even when there was a blinding flash of lightning, instantly followed by a crash of thunder. The afterimage of the lightning streak burned behind Amy’s eyes, even after she blinked, and she realized that the lightning had struck one of the trees right by the road. She watched in horrified fascination as the tree began to fall—thankfully in the opposite direction of the road and truck.

  “Let’s get back to that cabin,” growled Lindsey, slamming the gas pedal to the floor.

  Amy tried, very, very hard, not to think of Hope out in this terrible weather. Surely she’d noticed the threatening clouds—even if they had appeared suddenly—and surely she would have begun to make her way back down the mountain, back toward safety. But all Amy could think about was the steep, treacherous trails that were dangerous even on a good, dry day and could turn fatal after a rainstorm, making everything underfoot too slippery to navigate. Even though they were small-ish, there were still cliffs and gullies and a million and one ways for someone to break their leg. As Amy continued to fret, the kitten woke up, yawned hugely, and stared up at her, pushing her little whiskers out.