Gathering Lies. Meg O'Brien

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СКАЧАТЬ carried a bottle of water.

      Each of our two groups had an air horn that we’d found in the kitchen pantry, nearly buried by flour sacks. They were one of the few things Timmy had set aside for emergencies—not that she’d expected anything like this, I thought. More likely illness, or an invasion by bear.

      Are there bears up here? I suddenly wondered, nervously scanning a thick stand of fir trees. Grizzlies could kill a person with one swat and eat the evidence before anyone was the wiser.

      Stop it. Better to worry about these damned aftershocks. Will they never stop?

      Unable to steady myself as another one hit, I let it take me to my knees, then flattened myself on the ground. Kim fell prone beside me.

      “That one felt stronger than the others,” she said, gripping the ground with her fists. “God help us if the first one was only a foreshock.”

      “Don’t even think it.”

      If I felt like I’d been through hell in Seattle before coming here, that whole business seemed more like purgatory now—the place Catholics believe you can pray yourself out of, like buying tickets to a fair. This—this not knowing what was going to happen next—was hell.

      Or so I thought then, not knowing how much worse things were going to get.

      I stood, brushing sharp, gravel-like sand from my knees and palms. As I did so, I felt like screaming—like running into the woods and beating on the ground. The only thing that kept me from doing that was feeling I had to keep up my spirits. If not for my sake, then for Kim’s. Though she probably didn’t need me for that.

      On first meeting, Kim had seemed spoiled and standoffish. The two times she did show up for after-dinner coffee, she asked endless gossipy questions about our personal lives. I supposed this was what passed for conversation in Hollywood.

      Still, I had to admit that Kim had been proving her mettle, ever since we’d found her outside her cottage yesterday, looking more angry than anything else.

      I said to her now, as we began to walk again, “I’m amazed at how you’re taking all this.”

      Her tone registered amusement. “Because I’m a star you mean?”

      “Well, no…”

      But that was exactly what I’d meant. “I guess you don’t seem the type—” I broke off. “Sorry.”

      “Oh, hell, it’s okay. You couldn’t be expected to know that in less than two years in L.A., I went through fires, floods, riots, and the worst earthquake disaster to hit California in decades. I was in the Valley filming when the Northridge quake struck. We were all cut off from our homes for days, and the worst part was that when we got home, some of us couldn’t even find our front yards beneath the rubble. Then the rains began.” She gave a low laugh. “God, it was awful. I lost the first house I ever bought with my own money, when it slid down a hill onto Pacific Coast Highway.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      “Thanks. It was rough. So I guess I’d have to say that so far, this little rocker is a piece of cake.”

      I smiled. “I’m glad someone feels that way. But I jumped to conclusions about you, and I don’t usually do that.”

      Kim rubbed a smear of dirt from her face. “If it’s any consolation, you’re not the first. C’mon, let’s go.”

      This time I followed, watching the dark red ponytail bob ahead of me. After the rosy sunset the night before, the day had turned chilly, the sky spitting rain. Kim wore only the jeans, long-sleeved sweatshirt and Saucony sports shoes she’d had on when the quake struck the day before. They were soaked clear through.

      I caught up to her. “Kim, listen. I wasn’t thinking when I asked you to come with me. We should have taken more time to find you warm clothes.”

      She smiled. “Guess you’ve never been on location, have you?”

      “No. Pretty tough?”

      “Try swimming in a creek in Yellowstone when it’s thirty degrees out and starting to snow.”

      “Ugh. You must like your work, though, to be so successful at it. They say we thrive the most in the kind of work we love.”

      “I suppose that’s true, at least for some. For me, it’s been a long, hard road, getting to where I am now. Some of it I don’t even want to remember.” Her face clouded over. “What about you?”

      I started to answer just as we rounded another curve on the beach—only to see another stretch of uninhabited shoreline.

      “Damn,” I said. “Where is that house, anyway? I remembered it being closer.”

      “You want to rest?” she asked.

      I shook my head. “I do need something to eat, though.” Pulling out the poppyseed muffin, I broke it in two and offered one half to Kim.

      “Thanks. Listen, let’s sit down a minute so I can take my socks off. There’s so much sand lumped inside them, they’re making my toes sore.”

      Holding the piece of muffin in her teeth, she untied her shoes and removed her socks, stuffing them into a pocket. We both sat for a moment, eating silently.

      “You’re a lawyer, right?” Kim said, as the final bite of muffin disappeared. She brushed crumbs off her jeans. “A public defender?”

      “I was.”

      “You were? What happened? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

      I gave a shrug. “It looks like we’re going to be on this blasted island together for a while, so sure, you can ask. I was a public defender in Seattle. I lost my job.”

      “Cutbacks?”

      “No. I was fired.”

      She looked at me sharply. “I can’t imagine you doing something bad enough to get fired over.”

      “Really? But we hardly know each other.”

      “Well, it’s true I haven’t gotten to know you very well,” Kim admitted. “And that’s my fault. Believe it or not, even though I can hang loose in front of a camera, I don’t feel comfortable in groups of women. I don’t seem to have much in common with them, and I never know what to say. But the way you took over yesterday when the quake happened—not getting freaked out or anything—I guess I saw you as being in some sort of responsible job and never doing anything wrong.”

      I almost laughed. “Well, you’ve got some of that right. I was in a responsible job, and I didn’t do anything wrong. Somebody set me up for drug possession with intent to sell, and now I’ve got a trial pending.”

      “You’re kidding!”

      “I wish.”

      “But, Sarah, doesn’t being an attorney allow you more of a chance of clearing yourself? You can convince a jury you’re innocent, right? Then you can go back to work?”

      “Aye, СКАЧАТЬ