Total pages in book: 198
Estimated words: 186242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 931(@200wpm)___ 745(@250wpm)___ 621(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 931(@200wpm)___ 745(@250wpm)___ 621(@300wpm)
Either way, I set the two notebooks in front of me and reread my mom’s entry. The one I was looking for was toward the middle. Mom only did entries for new hikes, but continued doing her favorites over and over again. She had started this particular journal after I’d been born. There were older journals she’d done before me, but all those had been extreme hikes and ones in other places she’d lived before having me.
August 19
Piedra Falls
Pagosa Springs, CO
Easy, 15 minutes one way, clear trail
Come back in the fall to get in the river!
Would do it again
There was a heart drawn next to it.
Then I read it once more even though I’d already read the entry at least fifty times and had it memorized.
There was a photograph of Mom and me doing this hike when I’d been around six years old in one of the photo albums I’d been able to keep. It was an easy, short hike, only about a quarter of a mile in, so I figured it would be a good starting point. Tomorrow I’d talk to Clara about days off to be on the safe side and plan to work around them . . . if she didn’t fire me an hour in because I had no clue what the hell I was doing.
I dragged my finger along the outside of the journal; I didn’t do it over the words anymore because I was worried about smudging them or ruining them, and I wanted her notebook around as long as possible. Her handwriting was small and not all that neat, but it felt a lot like her. The book was precious and had been one of the few things that had never left my side.
After a little while, I closed it then got up to shower. Tomorrow I should take my tablet into town and go somewhere with Wi-Fi to download some movies or shows onto it. Maybe Clara had Wi-Fi at the shop. Stopping at the only window in the house that I hadn’t opened as soon as I got into the almost too-warm apartment—I’d forgotten most places around here didn’t have air-conditioning—I paused and glanced at the main house again.
It was even more illuminated than it’d been when I’d arrived. Light pierced through every huge window along the front and side. This time though, the Parks and Wildlife truck was gone.
For the second time, I wondered what my landlord’s significant other looked like.
Hmm.
I mean, I was already right here, where there was service. Plus, it wasn’t like I had anything else to do. I grabbed my phone and went back to the window.
I typed “TOBIAS RHODES” into the Facebook search box.
There were only a few Tobias Rhodeses, and none of them were based in Colorado. There was one with a picture that looked a little old—and by old I meant maybe ten years or so from how blurry it was, like an old cell phone picture—of a little boy with a dog beside him. It said he lived in Jacksonville, Florida.
I wasn’t sure why I clicked on it, but I did. Someone named Billy Warner had posted on his page a year ago with a link to some article about a new world record fish that had been caught, and after that was a post with an updated profile picture of an even younger little boy and the dog. There were two comments, so I clicked on them.
The first one was from the same Billy Warner, and it said: Am got my looks
The second comment was a reply, and it was from Tobias Rhodes: You wish
Am? As in . . . Amos? The boy? His skin tone was about right.
I went back to the posts and scrolled down. There were barely any. Three actually.
There was an even older profile picture of just the dog, this big white one. And that had been from two years before that.
The other post was from the same Billy person with another fishing link, and that one had comments too.
Being as careful as possible, because I was going to die if I accidentally liked an old post—I would literally have to delete my account and legally change my name—I clicked on the comments. There were six.
The first one was from someone named Johnny Green. It read: When we going fishing?
Tobias Rhodes responded with: Whenever you want to come visit.
Billy Warner replied with: Johnny Green, Rhodes is single again. Let’s go.
Johnny Green: You broke up with Angie? Hell yeah, let’s do it.
Tobias Rhodes: Invite Am too.
Billy Warner: I’ll bring him.
Who Angie was, I had no idea. Chances were, it was an ex-girlfriend or maybe even a current girlfriend? Maybe they had gotten back together? Maybe it was Amos’s mom?
Who Billy or Johnny were, I had no idea either.
There was no other information on his page though, and I didn’t trust myself to snoop through other profiles without getting caught.